“What happened?!” A startled cry emerged from the watchtower beside the dungeon entrance, the watchman within sliding down the ladder in a hurry as he approached the decimated party. Eyes wide, he took in the wolf corpse slung over Rowan’s shoulders, Onder’s body in Geski’s arms, and Klou’s missing limb. “A Fenraith? But we examined the dungeon only three days ago… There shouldn’t have been a climber.” The way he said it made it sound almost like a question, as if he was hoping that the bloodied party before him was just joking.

Rowan too wished that it was all just a joke, for Onder to jump out of Geski’s arms and offer him a joking grin, as out of character as that would have been for jackalman, and for Lekaar to emerge from the dungeon as whole and alive as he had been when they’d entered.

However, that was not the case, and the expressions of the party made it all too clear what had transpired within. Seeming to come to an understanding, the guard reached out towards Klou, but his hand was batted his hand away with an irritated expression.

“Clearly you didn’t examine it well enough,” Klou snarled, pushing past the guard as he headed in the direction of Faebrook. Behind him, Geneser offered the man an apologetic look, while Geski kept his head bowed as they followed Klou.

For a moment, the guard appeared too stunned to speak, his jaw slack as he stared at the departing party. However, a second later a resolute look entered his eyes, and he strode back towards the watchtower with purpose in his step.

Turning his eyes forward again as the man disappeared into the tower, Rowan followed the Jackal Claws, his shoulders aching from the exertion of carrying the heavy Fenraith corpse. It was worse on the surface, the sun beating down hotly even despite the chill in the late autumn air, and Rowan bitterly wished that he could just be done with the day, to curl up under the covers and sleep until a better day dawned.

Unfortunately, reality was not so kind, and the walk back to Faebrook was a blur of discomfort and undirected anger. Unable to take out his displeasure on those around him, Rowan focused it on the road in front of him, the dirt turned to mud from yesterday’s storm.

His boots were thick with muck, and Fenraith blood stained his armour, mixing with the sweat beneath to form a sticky liquid that clung to his skin like oil. Twice, he stumbled, and nearly fell face first into the mud, and both times Klou seemed disappointed to turn back and see that he had not.

Spite thus became Rowan’s primary motivation for putting up a stoic front. He was determined not to let Klou see how the conditions were getting to him, and he remained stubbornly silent as the trees passed them by. After what felt like hours, but in reality had been no more than forty minutes, the academy spires came into view, cheering Rowan up with their promise of hot food and a warm bed, not to mention a bath.

The sentries at the academy gate were not as surprised to see the condition of their party as the guard earlier had been, and they quickly ushered them inside, their eyes sympathetic as they beheld the body of Onder.

After a short discussion with the sentries, Geski was whisked away, Onder still in his arms as a sentry led him deeper within the castle. The other sentry, an elf carrying a halberd, offered them a consoling look as he went back to his post, leaving them alone within the main yard.

The yard was empty right now, the cold weather keeping most students inside, away from the wide open space where the wind howled and seemed to pierce straight through clothing to bite at the skin beneath. Beyond the lawn, the gale stirred the river water into waves, which crashed into the shore like aqueous cavalry, tall and majestic as they assaulted their soily oppressors. Shivering slightly, Rowan looked at Klou, who appeared lost for a moment as he stared at the academy.

Annoyed, Rowan hoisted the Fenraith corpse, rebalancing it upon his shoulders as he glanced again at the lost looking jackalman. It was far too cold to be standing here, especially when his bed and its promise of warmth was so close, and Klou’s seeming indifference was grating on him, eroding his last nerve after a day that had frayed more than a few of them.

Geneser too seemed impatient to get moving, the meerkat beastman’s fur not as thick as that of his boss, but he waited for Klou to get moving before following, not daring to move ahead of his party leader.

Halfway across the lawn, the wind picked up, blowing Rowan’s hair into his eyes and causing him to stumble forward, the Fenraith’s cloaklike fur acting like sails to propel him across the lawn and into an undignified skid through the grass.

Sputtering, Rowan spat out grass and mud, rolling out from under the corpse and giving it a disgusted look. As he did, a chuckle from a few feet away caused him to look up, his eyes meeting Klou’s whose face was alight with malicious mirth, the first smile he had shown in hours. Apparently watching Rowan eat dirt was exactly what he had needed to break out of the depression caused by the deaths of two of his close companions.

Rowan glared, an action which was immediately mirrored by the jackalman. “You have something to say, porter?”

For a moment, Rowan considered giving him a piece of his mind, but rationality won out, and he kept his mouth closed. It would do him no good to get into a fight with the overly proud beastman now. Just a few more minutes and he could toss away the Fenraith corpse, collect his pay, and never work with the bastard again. Just a few more minutes…

As Rowan bent down to collect the Fenraith corpse, Klou snorted. “That’s what I thought,” he muttered, just loud enough that Rowan could hear it. Rowan stiffened but said nothing. Resettling the Fenraith upon his shoulders, he glanced away, doing his best to focus upon the river in order to drown out Klou’s provocations.

It was a relief to enter the courtyard, its walls dulling the wind’s bite and the cobblestones a welcome change from the mushy ground outside.

“We’ll part ways here,” Klou announced as they came to a stop outside the main entrance. “Geneser, you take the Fenraith, I’ll carry the bag.”

With a reluctant expression, Geneser handed the bloody sack to Klou, who appeared unconcerned by the sticky fabric as he slung it casually over his shoulder. Eager to finally hand off the heavy corpse, Rowan moved towards Geneser, transferring the body from his shoulders to Geneser’s, whose legs quivered slightly as he adjusted to the weight.

“Let’s go,” Klou told Geneser, who turned to follow his boss inside. For a moment, Rowan just stood there, watching dumbfounded as they left.

“Wait,” Rowan called out, causing the pair to pause. “Where’s my pay?”

“You’ll get it once we sell the stuff,” Klou responded. Rowan frowned. Something he had learned over the last few months was that it was relatively simple to calculate how much a party had earned from most dungeons.

Brass-tier dungeons were the lowest tier, and the market for most of the monsters and items inside was fairly stable. As a result, most parties did not bring the porter with them to sell their loot, but simply paid them from their party funds and then sold the loot later, with the understanding that they would reimburse him later if they earned significantly more than they had expected.

The only reason the Frostblades had brought him along was because the body of the Aracocytus had thrown a curveball into their calculations. Apart from that first time, he had only visited the broker’s hall on one other occasion, with a party that had been too fresh to properly calculate the value of the items they had acquired. The Jackal Claws were too experienced for this to be the case, however, and Rowan suspected that their hasty departure was an attempt to get away without paying him the already pitiful cut they had promised.

“That wasn’t the deal,” Rowan told Klou. “You owe me my cut.”

“You’ll get it later,” Klou insisted. “Once we sell this stuff. We don’t have the money to pay you right now, and the brokers aren’t here today so we can’t get anything for it right now. You’ll have to wait until the next broker day.”

Now Rowan knew he was being swindled. The academy was more than happy to purchase the spoils of a successful dungeon run from their students, and their prices were fairly competitive. While a decent broker usually paid slightly more, many parties opted to sell to the school just to avoid having to deal with the cunning merchants.

For Klou to claim that he did not have the funds to pay Rowan’s paltry one fortieth cut was complete bullshit, and Klou knew it, his face set in a challenging expression that seemed to ask Rowan what he was going to do about it.

Glancing at Geneser, Rowan could see that he at at least had the good grace to appear ashamed, the skin beneath his fur blushing red as he looked away. Clearly, he did not agree with Klou’s underhanded tactics, though the fact that he still went along with them meant he was just as bad in Rowan’s eyes.

“Either pay me now, or I’m going to the academy,” Rowan threatened, finally dropping the pretense of civility. He refused to have all the work and trauma he had gone through today to have been for nothing. If he did not get paid, then why had he even been there? Was his role only to watch them die, unable to help?

Guilt fueled anger, and Rowan glared at Klou, who returned it with a dark stare of his own. “Fine,” Klou rumbled, reaching into his armour and drawing out a handful of coins which he threw heavily at Rowan. Tilting his head to the side, Rowan avoided the bulk of them, a few bouncing harmlessly off his armour. Metallic clinks ran through the courtyard, as coins hit the cobblestones and rolled, clattering as they came to a rest. “There’s your damn money,” Klou told him. “Now get out of my sight.”

Rowan glanced at the coins all around him. Years of practice identifying dropped money meant that he could instantly tell that it was not even half of what he should have received, even without the corpse of the Fenraith added to the loot total.

“Where’s the rest?” Rowan demanded, his jaw clenched as he looked back at Klou.

“That’s what you get,” Klou replied.

“I was promised a fortieth,” Rowan said. Sweeping his arm, he indicated the coins around him. “This isn’t a fortieth.”

“This is what you deserve,” Klou said, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “If you wanted more, you should have contributed. Because you were so weak, we lost two members. If you’d been able to fight, they’d still be alive. You should be glad we’re even giving you that much to a narsaani Draigwyn like you.“

“Ut mine narsaani,” Rowan snarled, finally giving up the pretense that he didn’t understand the jackal dialect. Klou’s eyes widened at this, his jaw opening as if to respond, but Rowan cut him off. “Yeah, you heard me,” he taunted. “You’re the weakling. If you were a better leader, Onder might have lived. Instead he’s dead because you decided to rush in like an idiot.”

“It was a climber,” Klou growled menacingly. “It shouldn’t have been there.” The veins in his neck and forehead were bulging, his fur flaring out as he grew angrier. Had Rowan heeded his instincts for self-preservation, he would have stopped there, but years of repressed anger were finally being unleashed, and he was too far gone to stop it now. Instead of going silent, Rowan laughed in the jackalman’s face.

“So what if it was a climber? Doesn’t change the fact that you went in blind, and he’s dead because of it,” Rowan shot back. “But that wasn’t enough for you, was it? You sacrificed Lekaar just to buy you a bit more time to triple team the climber, because you were too weak to take it on yourself.” Rowan laughed incredulously. “And you have the gall to call yourself a warrior? You’re nothing but a dishonourable coward who sacrifices his own teammates to-”

With a cracking sound, Rowan felt his feet leave the ground. In front of him, Klou’s eyes promised vengeance, his fist still held out in front of him as his body was carried forward by the intertia of the blow he had just dealt.

For a moment, Rowan was weightless, and then gravity exerted her merciless grip on him, slamming his body into the unforgiving stone below. The breath driven from his lungs, it took Rowan a moment to recover his senses, the suddenness of Klou’s attack having taken him by surprise. His jaw was definitely broken, and he could feel warm liquid flowing from his nose over his lips, a coppery tang filling his mouth. His right wrist also felt strangely hot, though not broken, thankfully. A single blow, but damn if Klou hadn’t made it count.

Klou, right. Through blurry eyes, Rowan peered at where the party leader stood. His face full of rage. He was struggling against Geneser’s grip, the meerkat beastman doing his best to keep his boss from charging the downed Rowan.

“Let me go, Geneser!” Klou howled. “I’m gonna kill him!”

“You can’t!” Geneser shouted back, his feet digging into the cobblestones beneath him. Despite his combat prowess and Klou’s lack of an arm, it appeared that the healer was still having difficulties holding him back. “We’re in the academy, if you do it here, you’ll be expelled, or worse, executed!”

“What’s going on here?”

The voice of a guard pierced through the din, drawn by the commotion they were causing. Her arrival seemed to calm Klou down, enough at least that Geneser was able to release him from the bearhug he’d put him in.

“What’s happening here?” The guard asked again, drawing close with the party, her eyes flickering between the downed Rowan and the two beastmen standing over him, as well as the corpse of the Fenraith and Klou’s missing arm.

“Nothing, ma’am,” Geneser responded, his voice changing instantly as he adopted a conciliatory tone. “We were just discussing the distribution of loot from the dungeon we just ran, and things got a little heated.”

“What he said,” Klou said lamely, his voice wooden. Moving forward, he offered his hand to Rowan. Rather than accept it, Rowan climbed to his feet on his own, not wanting to give Klou the satisfaction of helping him up.

For a moment, he glanced at the guard. Although her presence may have alleviated any potential for further violence, there was not a chance in hell he was going to turn to her for help. He had had enough interactions with guards throughout his life to know that they served only the interests of their masters. He would get no help from her. Plus, he might be a street rat, but he was no snitch. He could solve his own problems.

“If you’re done here, then get moving,” the guard told them. “I’ve got enough to do today without filling out an incident report explaining why students were fighting in the courtyard.”

“Of course,” Geneser replied. “We were just leaving.”

The guard made a non-commital noise, her eyes narrowing as she watched them for any signs of mischief. It was clear to Rowan that despite her words, the guard knew what was going on. However, it seemed that she was also aware that nobles preferred to solve things between themselves. So long as neither side made any overly threatening moves, she was content to allow them to work it out on their own. But that did not mean she was going to let them do that here under her watch, and her aggressive stance and ready polearm both served to let them know this fact.

Taking the hint, Geneser shouldered the corpse of the Fenraith, motioning for Klou to follow him inside.

Glaring at Rowan, Klou leaned in, his breath hot on Rowan’s cheek as he exhaled.

“You had better pray that I never see you outside the academy, little rat,” Klou whispered before spinning away to follow Geneser, the discarded sack of loot in hand.

Shooting a glare at Klou’s retreating figure, Rowan also departed, but not before picking up the coins that Klou had scattered all around. He was angry, not rich.

Heedful of the guard’s impatient stare, Rowan left the courtyard with coins in hand. Although he wanted nothing more than to head back to the dormitory and sleep, he now had another destination that took priority, courtesy of Klou.

Massaging his jaw, Rowan headed for the infirmary, his thoughts dark as he considered the events of today. He did not know how, but one thing was for certain: Klou would pay for what he had done.