As much as I wanted to just lounge around and continue doing nothing, enjoying the excesses of my newfound wealth—funnily enough, the first money I’d actually earned at that point—could provide, Gruin had other ideas. He had other ideas, and he had a way of bringing them about kicking and screaming.

  Supposedly, we had business elsewhere. I didn’t need to ask what this business was—monster hunting. I had thought, or perhaps hoped was a better word, that the deed of tracking and fighting the deadliest creatures he could find was nothing more than a means to an end for Gruin.

  Not true.

  For reasons that I had yet to fully uncover, he seemed dogmatically eager to march his way towards whatever it was he thought to be most capable of killing him.

  This put me in an interesting position. Gruin and I had already agreed to split our money fifty-fifty, and between splurging on our inn and food we still had close to nine grains and fifty pennies each.

  Obviously, I wanted to flee from the Grynkori’s side and make a living striking out somewhere else. Maybe try to ply what I’d learned of my father about trade, or invest in some land and marry a pretty whore to make it as a farmer. The problem with that first option was that I didn’t actually know much about trade, of course, and the problem with the latter was that I did not yet have the coin.

  Fundamentally it was the same problem I’d been suffering from since my father had his unexpected change of heart; I needed more wealth than I had. Ten grains was a lot, mind, but it would not keep me comfortable for much more than six months, nor even would it keep me alive for so long as half a decade.

  Not without another source of income. Which left me choosing to either work, likely as a labourer or clerk, or find some way of making another sack of coin sooner rather than later.

  I am not a brave person, not in the slightest. My decision to join Gruin did not come from a place of genuine heroics and courage, let’s be clear on that. I simply feared needing to work the rest of my life more than I feared the prospect of continuing to fight for another few months before growing rich and fat.

  Call it pathetic, because it is, but it’s the way I was. So I wasn’t lying when I told Gruin I’d be joining him as he headed on.

  He seemed unsurprised, and rather pleased by the fact. Slapping me on the back with a plate-sized hand and as usual, threatening to knock me over with the sheer mass of it.

  “That’s the spirit!” he grinned. I grinned back.

  Can you take a guess, dear reader, as to exactly what emotion it was that had me grinning? Gruin certainly couldn’t.

  Now despite all my complaining, the time we spent on the road from there was actually a great deal more pleasant.

  We had horses for one thing, that was a big change. It was also very funny for me to watch Gruin try and ride one. Grynkori are built for many things; load-bearing, pushing, pulling, punching, absorbing punishment and moving without fatigue for hours are among their countless talents. Having the ability to spread their legs far enough to grip the flanks of a horse properly, apparently, is not.

  This meant that I also got free entertainment for the opening span of our journey, as Gruin kept loudly complaining about the bad design of his saddle, stirrups and, on more than one occasion, the horse itself in a sort of abstracted, general sense. It was one of the funnier things I’d gotten to see lately, and was helped by the fact that my amusement seemed to transform directly into his rage.

  “And what the fuck do you think is so funny, earslig!?” he snapped.

  Earslig. Nice word, sounded satisfying as it rolled off your tongue. It wasn’t a Grynkori word, rather it was something from around the region Gruin himself had travelled through before meeting me. Meant, as far as I could tell, ‘arseling’. He only used it when he was truly mad.

  Despite my grin—genuine now, not borne from spasmodic fear—ad the Grynkori’s frustration, it was far from the only positive thing I’d gotten before leaving. My chainmail had been repaired and even expanded out a bit, more links threaded along my arms to leave me protected up to almost the wrists.

  Something I’d been worried about before was actually travelling with a mail garment on as par for the course. Those uninitiated to violence don’t quite understand this, but there’s actually no such thing as light chainmail in practical terms. It all weighs a fuck ton. The shirt I had on—more of a coat, now, really—had been measured before and after my alterations, and the whole thing weighed close to twenty pounds.

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  Not as much as a full set of plate, of course, nor was it remotely close to the lumbering mass of a proper hauberk, but one tenth again the weight of a large man is nothing to scoff at when you’re wearing it for hours. I braced myself for the soreness.

  Hours passed, and it didn’t come.

  ‘Oh, but you were riding horseback’ yes, but if you’ve ever done this for a long period yourself you’ll know how little difference it makes. Horses are not made to be ridden, and the strain they put on your body is surprising. I knew how to do it, at least, having gotten lessons growing up, and I was used to the twinges and aches in my lower back and, for some fucking reason, shoulders. I was also prepared for them all to be so much the worse now.

  They were there of course, but despite the chainmail pulling down and worsening every minor strain, I didn’t really feel any worse done than usual. Maybe I’d just gotten used to enough to pain and discomfort that the minor torments of horse travel didn’t register the same any more, it was hardly unheard of for men to ride in mail after all.

  “Did you not get any armour?” I asked Gruin, glancing over to see him riding, as usual, with nothing but a few rags. Essentially no protection at all against so much as a glass bottle, and certainly not magic claws or well-sharpened steel.

  “Costs more for me,” he grunted, “humans need to make a lot of adjustments, and none of you are good at it.”

  I hadn’t considered that, because of the idiot thing, but it made sense.

  Travel by horse was, if less comfortable than just walking, also far faster. We made easily twice the time we had been before, and whenever we stopped to make camp I found myself with far more energy than before. Tempting as it was to fall back into old habits, I knew another fight would be meeting me soon enough. I got back to practicing.

  Gruin made an interesting sparring partner. I’d certainly never fought someone with his build before, it was essentially unheard of in humans, and I worried that a lot of what I practiced against him would be largely inapplicable for combat against my own kind. On the other hand, lots wouldn’t be.

  He was fast, and slow. Gruin had no capacity for footwork. This wasn’t a problem of technique or skill, his legs simply did not allow him the sort of strides that permitted distance to be quickly shrunk or grown, and so I enjoyed the edge of mobility and choice of engagement in every bout we fought. On the other hand he was tireless, and his short arms meant that once he did close, every blow he swung came in almost no time at all.

  Neither of us could really commit well to our fighting though, moving without using our weapons of choice. My sword had a real edge, deadly for obvious reasons, and Gruin’s hammer was heavy enough that there was just no way to safely train with it—even wrapped in a pillow I might have died.

  It was practice, in any case. The landscape drifted by and the days slipped away at that time. Something about being almost killed so often in so little time had left me rather shot, unable to feel quite normal. It didn’t help that the way I was spending my relaxation, then, was so very different from how I’d spent it for most of my life too.

  So it came as something of a relief when we finally started to approach the first actual settlement we’d seen in some time. The area around Rogrid was mostly consumed by mining infrastructure, and though we’d both flitted by a good few towns on our way, there’d been a dry spell—maybe two weeks—of encountering nothing but forest and dirt road.

  Anglyn was not a big country, but people just didn’t tend to move very much within it. Those areas with great wealth of natural resources had been settled by vast cities long before the Thirty Years War, and most of the others were spread thin. I didn’t have the frame of reference to know that at the time though, to me it was just natural.

  This was more of a village than a town, though, and I recognised its make. About the size of Sheppleberry, maybe a bit smaller, it had only the bare minimum of wooden walls to defend it from natural threats, and even its Blackmist shelter was a shoddy thing. Granted, I was pleased to see it all the same. Gruin and I had come dangerously close to being caught outside when the mists came a week prior, and had narrowly survived by stumbling on a cave and blockading ourselves in.

  Compared to that, the safe haven up ahead looked positively welcoming. It was heavy stone, without anything as insecure as windows, and looked like it could fit half again the village’s population. Perfect for surviving another bout of blackmist.

  And both Gruin and I were certain we could feel another one imminent.

  That added an understandable level of haste to our approach, and we were at the gates so quickly that I could hear my horse struggling for breath. They were open of course, villages like this tended not to leave themselves shut away entirely unless an actual threat was visible on the horizon. Two homeless men with a sword and hammer were certainly not that.

  On the other hand, we were still two homeless men with a sword and a hammer. One of us, also, was clearly a Grynkori—and those aren’t well liked among wider human society, let me tell you. It was no surprise that we got stopped at the gate by who I could only assume was its sentry.

  “Halt!” he squeaked, “who goes there?!”

  It was the most pitiable impression of an actual guard I’d ever heard, and for more reasons than just the man’s uncertain use of words he’d clearly just heard in passing. I could tell moments after hearing him that he was not really a man at all, merely a boy maybe three years my junior.

  So not the finest man to ever guard a settlement’s gate. I resisted the instinctive urge for cruel mockery, realising it would be undiplomatic and probably self-defeating in this case, to try a more polite way of getting what I wanted instead.

  “Good evening,” I began, “my name is Kyvaine, this is Gruin. We are—”

  —the boy surprised me then by interrupting.

  “Hang on, Kyvaine and Gruin?” I saw him frowning, looking between us with…recognition. “You two are the ones who saved Rogrid, aren’t you?”

  Things were, it appeared, about to get rather more complicated for me.

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