As Dimsbury sat with his feet by the fire, it took him a good hour to give a name to what he was feeling. Contentment didn’t quite do it. Comfort was part of it, but there was something else. A warmish feeling in the stomach that he was quite unaccustomed to. There was something about a good meal after a good day’s work. His plans all in order, everything tilting and tending the way it should. Sated, yes, that was the word he was looking for. He felt sated.

For a moment, he considered ordering another whole dinner. But there was no time. He had completed his errand and should really leave the city before the carnage started. But perhaps he should take a leg of mutton to go. Or–would they have such a thing–some mutton sandwiches?

It was so hard to get good food at the bottom of a dungeon. Yes, he had servants, but they were creations. Not flesh and blood. They viewed roasting as an information-gathering technique, or at best a method of discipline, not as an essential part of cuisine. And spices? Well, Orcs are rare minerals and raw flesh. It was a practice guaranteed to keep the palate in an unrefined state.

None of this even touched on the degradation of his decor and living conditions. Of course, the Wizard could have taken some pains on his own behalf, but there was his work to think of. All else paled in comparison to that. But even here, in this homey inn, the Wizard felt a longing for the comfort he had almost forgotten he could have. A woman’s touch. Yes, that was the phrase.

When the wench came around again, he asked, “Do you make sandwiches? You know, to go?”

“My sandwiches are so good, men have proposed to me after the first bite,” said Asarah with a playful toss of her hair.

Outside, a wolf howled.

“What was that?” Asarah asked, her smile becoming tainted with concern.

She had a nice smile, and the Wizard thought it was all the sweeter for being mixed with fear. Oh yes, thought the Wizard, he would definitely be taking something to go. “It sounded like a wolf,” he said with exaggerated innocence. “I’d like two mutton sandwiches, please.” He smiled.

“With lettuce and tomato?” asked Asarah.

“However you like them.”

“Well, you could enjoy the hospitality of The Bent Eelpout and take fresh ones with you in the morning. Evidently, there are wolves about.”

The Wizard smiled again. “But what assurance do I have that it will still be here in the morning?”

“What, the sandwich?”

“No. The inn.”

* * *

When Boltac heard the howl, he looked up and out the front window. Across the square, the boy still slept in the moonlight. Boltac stood motionless, watching, with the last gold coin clamped in his pliers. After having been bitten, he was taking no more chances. All coins were now guilty until proven innocent.

The peaceful scene outside his window did not change, so Boltac shrugged and touched the coin to the acid. It did not come to life and attack him, so he dropped it in the pile with the others.

He carefully poured the acid back into the bottle and wiped down the counter. Then he gathered up the coins and carried them into the back. He placed them in the other chest, the one that held the normal coins. Then he turned his attention to the pile of soiled goods he had purchased from Rattick.

From the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of something moving past the window. He looked up and out the front of the store. There was a flash of grey. And then again.

Boltac walked forward slowly. He had no idea what was going on, but he was pretty sure he didn’t like it. It was out of the ordinary. And, in Boltac’s experience, anything out of the ordinary was bad for business. In the distance, he heard someone sound a horn. Then, he thought he could hear a woman scream. Or maybe it was a horse? What was going on?

He stepped outside into the empty square. To the north, across the river, he saw the red glow of fire. Ah, thought Boltac: Raiders. He knew this game all too well. He had hoped that the new Duke’s garrison was strong enough to keep the Raiders out. The tariffs and taxes from a crossroads town like Robrecht were valuable. As long as Boltac had been here, the nobles and empires of the world had passed Robrecht back and forth like a toy.

They didn’t even pretend to install a King anymore. Robrecht had been pillaged so many times it didn’t even get to keep the illusion of being its own state. It had been reduced to a mere protectorate. “En henh,” Boltac grumbled. There was scant protection to be found in a protectorate.

Maybe if the Duke had released his tax collectors on the invaders? That might have done it. Boltac shook his head and went inside. He pulled his stool out from behind the counter and set to loading crossbows. Just let them come, thought Boltac grimly; they would find his prices very, very high indeed.

Across the square, he watched the Man in Black emerge from the Tavern holding two sandwiches wrapped in parchment.

“Heh,” said Boltac, “if they come across the river, this prick sure is in for a surprise.”

The Man in Black took notice of the Farm Boy, still asleep on the bench. He looked him up and down. Then he nudged the lad with his toe.

“Some Adventurer,” muttered Boltac, “he doesn’t even wake up! Did I ever do that kid a favor.”

The Man in Black reached into his pocket and produced a whistle. He put it to his lips and blew it. It produced a slightly lower note than the whistle Boltac had used on the coins. The Man in Black sounded the note three times, and then waited.

Boltac heard them coming before he saw them. It sounded like a crowd saying something like, “Hork, Hork, Hork, Hork!” From the darkness came the largest wolves Boltac had ever seen. As they advanced, they snarled and snapped at each other and their riders.

Whistles, thought Boltac, I knew it had to be done with whistles!

Boltac shrank back from the window as one of the wolves sniffed at it and fogged the glass. What in the Gods’ names were they? And the men that rode on their backs? They seemed more animal than man. Their greyish green skin looked thick and inhuman, as if it should have scales. Their evil little eyes were set too close together. Their proportionally small mouths were overflowing with teeth, and gave the impression they would gnaw rather than chew. They had large, wide noses and pointed ears set high on their heads.

“Ah,” thought Boltac, “These would be Orcs.”

There was no way Rattick had fought one of those things. And there was no way they wore jewelry. Perhaps a necklace made of ears, but not expensive rubies.

The Orcs converged on the Man in Black. For a moment, Boltac thought the wolves would tear the man’s face off. But then the Man in Black said something and the growls and snarls changed to frightened whimpers. Two of the Orcs dismounted and their wolves ran away.

The Orcs turned as if to chase after their steeds, but a sharp bark from the Man in Black stopped them. Who was this man who commanded monsters, Boltac wondered?

Boltac sighted his crossbow on the Man in Black, and then thought better of it. After all, he wasn’t involved in this transaction. He should stay calm, keep his head down, and hope they passed his store by. That was the surest way to avoid a loss in this situation. At least that’s what his head told him. But his heart offered a different commentary as he watched the two Orcs kick in the door of The Bent Eelpout.

Asarah!

She’d be fine, Boltac told himself. She was a strong woman and used to dealing with unruly customers. She had come through raids before. She’d be fine. The Man in Black dismissed the remaining, still-mounted Orcs. The… whattaya call a bunch of Orcs anyway? A troupe, a band, a herd, a gaggle? Anyway, the rest of them rode south.

With a crossbow in the crook of his right arm, not taking his eyes from the square, he eased back to the weapons rack and grabbed a double-headed axe without looking at it.

He asked himself, “What are you doing? Asking for trouble, that’s what. Don’t do anything stupid. You’re a Merchant, not a Hero. She’ll be fine. You’re no help to anybody dead.” Then he placed the axe, head down, beneath the windowsill, beside the other crossbow.

Across the square, he saw the two Orcs emerge from the inn holding Asarah between them. She struggled against them and cursed.

“Still think she is going to be okay?” he asked the voice in his head. It didn’t answer.

The Man in Black turned to look at Asarah, and she spit on him. Then the Man in Black struck her across the face. Knocked sideways from the blow, Asarah struggled to bring her head upright again and roll her hair out of her eyes. The Man in Black stood with his back to Boltac’s store, so that Boltac could not see his face. Whatever expression the unpleasant man wore, when Asarah saw it she screamed.

Something broke inside of Boltac. Before he knew what he was doing, he had fired both crossbows and was charging out the door with the axe in hand. The first crossbow bolt took the Orc on Asarah’s left in the throat. The second hit the other Orc in the shoulder.

Asarah screamed a plea and a question, “Boltac?”

But the Boltac she knew was no longer there. The rational, calculating, cunning Merchant who stuck his neck out for nobody was not the same creature whose lungs burned and heart pumped as his feet pounded across the cobblestones. That Boltac was lifting the axe and imagining cleaving the Man in Black from neck to breastbone.

That Boltac didn’t hear it coming until it was too late.

If it had been a man on a horse riding him down, he would have heard him coming from a week away. But the pads of a wolf on the cobblestones? He realized his mistake when it was too late. The wolf’s fangs sank into his shoulder and lifted him from the ground at a dead run.

“HORRRRRRRRRRRRRRK!” cried the triumphant Orc.

In pain and with animal rage, Boltac slashed blindly with the axe. He felt the edge sink deep into the wolf’s neck. He heard it grunt in pain. The pressure in his shoulder went away as the wolf let go. Wolf, Orc, and shopkeeper tumbled across the cobblestones and landed in a heap. Somehow, Boltac kept his grip on the axe.

In a haze, he watched Asarah struggling with the Man in Black. She was shouting, but the only thing Boltac could hear was the pounding of his own heart. He pulled himself from beneath the wolf, tried to stand, and failed. His knee folded sideways underneath him. The pain from the second fall was worse than the first. Clutching the axe, he started to crawl.

Behind him, the Orc got to his feet and recovered his pike. He cocked his head sideways at this strange man crawling towards The Master. Then he lifted his weapon and went to finish him.

“Hold!” commanded the Man in Black. The Orc stayed the final blow.

“My, my, my, but you are determined,” said the Man in Black with an air of amusement that made Boltac hate him even more. “You are something more than a Merchant, I think,” said the Wizard.

“En-henh,” Boltac said, and kept crawling.

“Boltac, what are you doing?” asked Asarah. Boltac could not answer because he was fighting off a wave of pain. But still he crawled. He was oblivious to the pike above his head and only aware of the Man in Black’s expensive boots in front of him. He was going to cut the bastard’s feet off and see where it went from there.

Dimsbury shook his head at the poor spectacle beneath him. A fat Merchant, crawling to his death as the hot stuff of life trailed on the cobbles behind him. How was it that the poor Merchant’s arm had not been completely severed? He turned to his prize. “Come, my dear, let me take you away from all of this.”

“Let me go!” she cried, “I must tend my inn.”

“Ah, yes,” said Dimsbury. He waved his hand without taking his eyes from her, and the front of The Bent Eelpout was engulfed in flame.

Asarah screamed again.

“Please,” said Dimsbury, “refrain from screaming in my ear.” To the Orc he said, “Finish him.” Then he gripped Asarah around the waist and held her to him. Before she could struggle, he took flight and disappeared straight up into the night with her.

Boltac fought his way to his knees and reached after her.

The Orc brought the butt end of his pike down on Boltac’s back and knocked him to the ground. Boltac heard some of his ribs separate from his spine. He thought that was bad, until the Orc kicked him in those same ribs. His world went white with pain and Boltac rolled over onto his back.

This was it. The Orc spun the pike and touched him gently on the nose with the point. Then lifted the pike into the air for the coup de grace.

In that final moment, Boltac discovered that he wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t even angry. His last thought was of Asarah, and he was sad. Sad that he would never get to see her again. Sad that he would never again get to play the game of cheating her out of a drink, or drive her mad with his haggling, or marvel at the way her hair would bounce and turn like a living thing as she worked her way through the common room of her inn.

At times like these, ordinary men try negotiating with death. They offer every promise, pledge, and advantage they can think of in exchange for life. But Boltac was not an ordinary man. And certainly not an ordinary negotiator. At that moment, he realized that his life alone was not worth negotiating for. If he was to haggle with fate, it would not be for his life–it would not be for his store or his fortune. Boltac was surprised to discover that, in the final accounting, those things were worth nothing to him. The only thing worth negotiating for was life with her. Without her, he couldn’t come up with a reason to bother.

As if in a dream, he watched two feet of steel blade emerge from the Orc’s belly. The pike fell, not on Boltac’s head, but next to him on the cobbled street. As the Orc’s body fell away to one side, Boltac saw the Farm Boy standing there, trying to hold the Orc up with the sword Boltac had given him. No scream of victory echoed from the boy’s throat. Instead, he looked at the blood and the blade and the corpse that was dragging his hand towards the ground as if he couldn’t quite understand what had just happened.

“That blade is a quality item,” Boltac said. Then he passed out.