Chapter 1: The Cardinal Rules of Being a Mercenary

I have ten Cardinal Rules pertaining to being a career mercenary. The first…always get paid up front.

There were a multitude of reasons as to why it was just good business sense, for both employer and employee, but I’ll cut to the quick: it simply means that both parties are willing to agree on a sign of good faith at the start of an exchange. Even if the employer only offers half of the agreed upon price, the fact that he was willing to give a little meant he was serious about making an honest arrangement.

I’d had a long time to come up with these rules. Yes, that’s right. I made them. They didn’t apply to mercenary work as a whole. They were just a bunch of rules I made and maintained over the past five years of my life, like a personal creed to live by. Just my best friend Alverd and I knew about them, and even then, he broke a lot of them without a second thought.

My best friend Alverd was always a trusting sort. I’d warned him against such, because trusting people was for suckers. It was just part and parcel to his upbringing and training. But I respected his judgment (most of the time), and he managed to surprise me with his occasional bursts of insight, so I didn’t heckle him too much about my rules. He indulged me, because he always knew how to rein me in when I went too far.

Alverd was so much the picture of chivalry that he could’ve jumped out of one of his many books on the subject. He was tall and lean, with tousled brown hair, clear blue eyes, impeccably polished armor, a heroic sword and shield bearing a seal of an eagle with widespread wings, and a flowing cape of crimson. He had the face of that homely, reliable country boy you can’t help but like from the moment he smiled at you. What he may have lacked in raw intelligence he more than made up for in terms of charm, charisma and reliability.

He practically reeked of knighthood. He was every girl’s dream, the proverbial and literal knight in shining armor.

It also helped that he was no slouch when it came to a fight. Knights learned about more than just fancy language and defending noblewomen’s honor and whatnot. He had a decade of training under his belt, ranging from sword fighting, horse-riding, jousting and even good old-fashioned fisticuffs. Regardless of his lack of appreciation for combat tactics or battlefield pragmatism, he compensated with strength, discipline, and undeniable leadership skills. More importantly, if he felt something wasn’t on the up and up, he was usually right.

There was a reason people looked up to him, or at the very least, gave him their begrudging respect. He led by example and worked to gain peoples’ admiration. He was every bit the hero, and he deserved that reputation. Even in a turbulent time like this, when the world was full of despair, he was like a light that tried to push back all the darkness around it, shining all the brighter amidst the inscrutable gloom.

But despite all his merits, Alverd was useless without me. The poor guy had the attention span of a dog…and about as much common sense. His saving grace, however, was that he was just as loyal as one. I never would have survived without him. And he without me. We were a team. Always had been. Ever since we’d left home, we’d relied on each other. And we had to, especially since we didn’t have a home to return to anymore.

Right, introductions. It wouldn’t do for you to not know who I am, especially since I’m telling this story. Can’t promise that I’m the most unbiased or impartial narrator, and there are definitely times when I might embellish or change a few things. But I can promise that what I’m about to tell you is a story about a man I call my very best friend, and what it feels like to have his back…and live in his shadow.

My name is Kuro. I’m…a scholar of sorts. I study the arcane laws of magic, and I dabble in some of it. My friend Alverd and I had been mercenaries for five years by this point. Alverd, however, insisted on being called a knight errant, for all the difference that made. At the end of the day, a knight errant was just a more polite way to say mercenary. Soldier of fortune, sellsword, hired muscle, it all boiled down to the same thing. We got hired to do a job, we did the job, we got paid. But if you ever saw me, you’d never believe that I could earn my keep as a mercenary.

Your first impression of me would probably be unfavorable. My black hair is messy and unkempt, and it seems to constantly shine with a greasy sheen even after I wash and dry it. My eyes are a sullen shade of purple, like the color of a freshly inflicted bruise, and they sport dark circles under them that made me look like I’d neglected to sleep for the past week. My arms and legs are like wet noodles and I don’t exactly have much stamina, in both physical and magical endeavors. I’m also pathetically short for my age and gender, just to round out the ensemble.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m not useless. I have a keen eye for strategy and tactics, and my cynical attitude allows me to see things floating beneath the surface that people like Alverd would never pick up on. My tongue was as sharp as any sword when I needed it to be (and sometimes when I didn’t) and I took a lot of pride in putting smug people in their place when they looked down on me, which sadly was pretty often.

I’d be the first to admit that Alverd and I made a very odd pair. We were practically night and day when it came to who we were, how we acted, what we believed and how we did our job. And yet, we made it work. Mercenary work was unpredictable and oftentimes unforgiving; every job could be our last, and it required us to compliment each other’s skillsets just to see our next payday.

But that’s how it was when you were a mercenary. You took what life gave you, and when life wasn’t in a giving mood, you took what you needed. It wasn’t a virtuous way to live, but necessity outweighed morals sometimes. Within limits, of course. We’re hardly public menaces, but we have bounties out on our heads in the country of Kiret for “various disagreements with the established authorities” according to our bounty posters. To be honest, though, that’s mostly my fault. Alverd likes to do things clean, methodical, planned out. In our line of work though, things rarely ever turned out that way.

I mentioned that I was a scholar. The correct term was “mage”. I’m one of an elite fraternity of people who could bend the elemental energies of this world to their will. With just a bit of focus, I could make the five cardinal elements of fire, ice, wind, earth and lightning dance in the palm of my hand. Other mages could heal wounds, manipulate peoples’ dreams, or even speak to the dead, although that last bit fell into a sort of gray area as far as magical law was concerned. Obviously, those kinds of talents were in high demand, so Alverd and I usually didn’t lack for job offers. Mercenary work tended to be the only kind of work we could get. Nobody wanted to hire an ex-knight and a fledgling mage to sweep streets, after all.

As such, while passing through the country of Guilford, specifically the capital city of Bertweld, we found ourselves low on coin; our prospects certainly weren’t looking good. We were forced to stay the night in some two-bit tavern. Guilford was a country on the far western part of the continent of Selarune, the only landmass in existence. It was pockmarked by small mountain ranges that isolated it from its neighbors and was plagued almost year round by snow and cold weather. Not exactly a tourist trap.

We barely had enough money to afford two bowls of lukewarm soup (the owner claimed it had some kind of meat in the broth but I wasn’t convinced it was chicken like he claimed), and only paid for our stay in the ramshackle tavern by performing scut work in the tavern’s kitchen after closing.

As I sat on one of the beds in the meagerly furnished two-person room, I called over to Alverd, who was already making preparations to sleep. “So. Any reason why we had to come to this icy wasteland, friend? We’re kind of pushing it.” I placed my staff beside my bed within easy reach, just in case.

After placing his shield against a nearby nightstand, Alverd stretched his arms towards the ceiling as he yawned vigorously. “We don’t want to be skirting too close to Kiret. You know how persistent the bounty hunters are in that country. I know Guilford is probably the second-to-last place you want to be, Kuro, but I’d rather be here than some cell in Kiret.” He flopped back onto his bed, the frame making an audible creak as he did so.

As he rolled over and pulled the cover onto himself, he looked at me. “I know what we did was for a good cause, Kuro, but I think you went a little far. Rescuing those slaves was more than enough to embarrass that merchant prince, but you had to go and put a delayed-detonation fireball in that cart and wheel it straight through the front door of his villa. Any Kiretian headhunter could take an early retirement with the price on our heads.”

I smiled to myself juvenilely as I remembered how gleeful I felt in that moment, the ball of fire pulsing as I sealed it into the cart before rolling it down the hill towards the villa at the foot. The guards had simply leapt aside as the entire ensemble smashed through the front doors before exploding fantastically, destroying the merchant prince’s vacant summer home as the support columns gave way and the second floor collapsed in on itself.

“Ahh, he had it coming. When you deal in slaves you deserve every bit of ill fortune you come across. Sometimes, though? Some well-meaning individual has to help that ill fortune along to make it stick.” I gave him a toothy grin. “The whole country runs on the slave trade, Alverd. What we did barely makes a dent, although I bet those elves we liberated will tell the elven resistance all about it and then that rat bastard will never live it down.” I tucked myself in, satisfied with myself.

My lifelong friend sighed. “Maybe. But it matters how a thing is done, Kuro. You can’t defeat your enemy by using their tactics. It makes you no better than them. I want to believe that we did something good, but I can’t help but feel that what you did sours the entire affair.” He picked his sheathed sword and held it across his chest, a nervous habit he’d picked up sometime over the past few years. I didn’t blame him. We’d learned the hard way it didn’t pay to not be paranoid.

I turned back towards him, propping my head up with my arm. “Alverd, you get too hung up on that. I know it seems wrong what I did, but I’m the one who did it. You had no way of knowing it was gonna happen until it did. But you should be happier about the fact that twenty elves are gonna go to sleep tonight free in a haven run by their brothers and sisters instead of in chains. You did a good thing, buddy.”

From his bed, Alverd snorted. “I guess you’re right. And the explosion was quite an adequate distraction. The guards were all standing there with no idea what to do. We just ran down the road with the wagon full of elves and were gone before they could pick their collective jaws from the ground.” He turned his head to me, and smiled again. “Thanks for that. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that we did do some good, even if we had to cause a little chaos to do it.”

I chuckled as I rolled back onto my pillow. “Anytime, old friend. Anytime. Tomorrow morning I’ll head down to the bounty board, see if there’s some work we can do. If we’re gonna be stuck in this frozen wasteland for a few weeks, we might as well get paid while we do it.” I reached my hand to the lamp on the table, snuffed out the flame, and let sleep carry me away.

The next morning, as I stumbled into the tavern’s common room in a bleary-eyed haze, I examined the bounty wall for some easy work. The pickings were pretty slim; there wasn’t much to choose from that would pay enough gold for Alverd and I to survive while we kept our heads down. I was about to give up when I spotted one of the newer postings, with ostentatious lettering at its head.

Some puffed-up lord was offering a generous reward for the return of his kidnapped daughter, and it was the deal of a lifetime. A reward of two thousand gold coins was more than enough for Alverd and I to get back on our feet and start anew. I took the flyer back to Alverd and we both agreed that it was the right decision. Within the hour, we headed to the poster’s home in the upper class residential district of the city.

Guilford is a chilly place, made all the colder by its people. The guardsmen looked down upon Alverd and I, sneering at us as we passed them by. Even the common folk saw us as foreigners and outsiders. Their disapproving stares were icier than any blizzard nature could conjure in this god-forsaken corner of Selarune, and I could feel a chill crawling along my skin that had nothing to do with the cold.

Guilford was nestled in the bosom of two separate mountain ranges, and its winters were the harshest on the entire continent of Selarune. Guilfordians boasted that they were the only people in Selarune tough enough to stand up to the cold, amongst other things. The way I saw it, their prideful boasts didn’t prove anything other than they were too stupid to pack up and move somewhere warm where their crops wouldn’t freeze overnight if the wind was blowing, but that was neither here nor there.

It was a country run by cowards and traitors as far as I was concerned. Thinking about it made my blood boil, but not hot enough to keep me warm. Alverd was right; it stung to know that we needed the blood money these gussied-up backbiters were offering, but there was nothing I could do at the moment.

Somewhere deep inside, I hoped that there would be a time when I could.

Like any city, Bertweld was separated into several different districts. The Nobles’ Quarter was sequestered in the north side of the city, built against a mountain’s slope. An old woman we stumbled across in the market gave us directions, and warned us that the nobles were less trustworthy than devils and twice as likely to screw us over. We thanked her for her advice, threw her an extra silver coin for her trouble, and made our way over to the Nobles’ Quarter in search of the bounty’s poster, Baron Everetti.

Like the rest of the citizenry of Guilford I’d seen so far, the market was about as lifeless and dull as a tavern outside of happy hour. Many of the vendors barely had any food to showcase, and what goods they did have looked tough, unappetizing and bland. Even the vendors themselves had no energy. A fishmonger selling freshwater fish merely glared at me as I walked by.

Call me spoiled, but having come from a country where people always had plenty to eat and just as much to offer, I guess I felt like I could look down on these people. Again, it was because I resented them. But as much as I hated them, there were others I hated more. A coward is hated because they stand by and do nothing when evil happens right in front of them. But one shouldn’t forget the one perpetrating the evil in the first place.

Alverd had to pull me away from a butcher who was futilely trying to chop a stringy piece of…something on a cutting board. The man was two seconds away from going on a murder spree; he finally slammed his cleaver into the board and gave up. I waited until we had passed the butcher and were out of earshot before I let loose my snippy comment.

“Guess he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the set if he thought he was gonna cut meat with that dull cleaver of his.” I elbowed Alverd, patting myself on the back for my perhaps not-so-clever play on words. He stared back at me coldly before speaking. “Kuro, this is no jest. You know why these people are in the situation they’re in.” He pointed at a woman trying desperately to sell something that looked like produce that was a week past its prime.

I snorted derisively. “These people put themselves in this position, Alverd. As far as I’m concerned, their problems aren’t my problems. And before you start feeling sorry for them, I’d like to remind you that they had their chance to prove they deserved better.” I grabbed Alverd’s cape and pulled him past the haggard looking woman, who tried her sad act on Alverd. I was pretty sure he managed to press some gold into the woman’s hand, but as I was too busy looking forward, I couldn’t be sure. Her joyful blubbering indicated he probably had.

Alverd’s bleeding heart wasn’t news to me. It wasn’t a practical trait, and that made it very hard for me to tolerate him sometimes. For Alverd, doing good things for others was just baked into who he was. It wasn’t even a byproduct of his days of training to become a knight. He had always been a good person, a veritable goody-two-shoe, since the day I met him. His penchant for helping the helpless was almost a reflex, and I had long since lost count of how many times it had landed us in unnecessary trouble.

And yet, it was the thing I admired most about him.

I tried not to make too much of a scene as I yanked him away from the woman. We traversed the rest of the way to the Noble Quarter without any further incident. The homes of the rich and powerful were constructed mostly of imported wood, treated to resist the perpetually cold weather, with stone foundations and walls surrounding each home. Guards patrolled in meticulous lockstep, looking for troublemakers with wary eyes. I tried not to look too suspicious as I passed them, and failed abysmally at it; I got a few sideways looks from them.

The estate of Baron Yanos Everetti was typical noble pomp. Gardeners fluttered about, maintaining the impeccable floral arrangements and fountains with their crystal clear water. It was almost something out of a fantasy storybook. I was tempted to ask how the gardeners were maintaining the floral arrangements in the cold when I noticed that the flowers were actually made entirely of translucent crystal. The Baron had spared no expense in surrounding his home’s entryway with such blatant luxury. Typical noble, I thought to myself.

The gardeners weren’t the only ones around. A smartly dressed servant was standing beside the front door of the estate, his eyes watching us as we approached. Alverd and I paced down the stone walkway and presented ourselves to him. He pushed the front doors open and announced us; another man just inside ran off to call the lord of the manor.

Baron Everetti was not what I would have called a very benevolent looking man. He was tall and skinny to the point of being almost a scarecrow, right down to the off-putting look on his face. He was all sharp angles and harsh features, and I felt as though I would cut myself simply by shaking his hand. His cheekbones alone looked like he could slice through a glass window if he rubbed his face on it. His expression didn’t change as I grasped his hand, and I couldn’t tell what he was feeling behind his impassive expression. When he leaned forward, I caught a flash of silver along his ear; they were long and pointed, adorned with several expensive looking bands pierced through it. Figures. It didn’t surprise me that Everetti was elven.

Elves are an intellectual lot, and they show it in everything they do. Slender, attractive, and famously long-lived, they’re the subject of many poems and ballads featuring unrequited love and broken hearts. They make humans look dour and plain, and beastmen like animalistic brutes. Beastmen made up for it by looking human but having animal traits depending on what breed they were. Some had the enhanced smell and hearing of wolves, others the strength of bears, and on and on and so forth.

Made humans look bad by comparison. All humans could do was reproduce like rabbits. Sure, we had a crude but adaptable nature that let us outthink beastmen and fight better than elves, but otherwise there wasn’t anything really special about us. Still, the fact that humans outnumbered beastmen and elves on the continent of Selarune meant something. Being human myself, I took pride in my quick thinking. After all, it was all I really had going for me.

The good Baron spun us some tale of woe about how his daughter had been kidnapped by some thugs who were now demanding an obscene ransom. They were holed up in some abandoned mining camp on a nearby mountain that the local mining guild didn’t use anymore, as it was prone to avalanches and the like. Baron Everetti didn’t have any guesses on how many men there were or how well armed they were, but that had never stopped us before.

From what the Baron could surmise, the men who had kidnapped his daughter were a group of bandits who’d likely come to prey on the miners in the mountains. They’d made easy work of pillaging the mines, driving the miners back down the mountain with nothing to show for it. When the bandits realized that nobody was coming back to evict them, they got even bolder.

They then decided to group together, kidnap Baron Everetti’s daughter (knowing her father was close to the Economic Advisor), and told the Baron that if they weren’t sent tribute on a continuous basis, they’d not only start targeting nearby mining sites, but they’d execute his daughter. So far, a group of soldiers had been dispatched. They came back dragging their wounded, numbering twenty three of the thirty men sent out to begin with.

I latched onto that number. “You sent thirty men into the mountains?” Everetti nodded. “That would be correct, young sir.” I sat back in my chair, my head leaning into my palm in exasperation. “Well there you go. No wonder you all got trounced. Thirty men in armor tromping up into the mountains that the bandits have probably set ambushes in would be the height of stupidity. Those men walked straight into a trap.” I leaned forward again. “That has to be one of the dumbest things you lot could’ve done. Who gave that order?”

Everetti tugged at his collar uncomfortably. Ah, I thought. The only reason he wasn’t threatening me with his noble authority to back it was because it was his fault. Still, I felt Alverd nudge me. He spoke up, and was far more diplomatic in his approach. “Baron, forgive my companion. He has the tendency to speak plainly. What if we offered to go, just the two of us? Two men will sneak by the enemy far more readily than thirty. And we will not fail.” He clasped his balled fist against his armor as he bowed respectfully.

I sighed. Even after all this time, and with no need to do so, he was still a knight, and he was going to respect the nobility, even if there was nothing noble about them. I didn’t want to jeopardize our odds of getting the job though, so I kept my mouth shut. He and Alverd hashed out the details, the payment, and the other fine print, although Alverd insisted, as per my rule, that we receive half the money up front. We walked out of Everetti’s home with half of the reward and the promise of the rest upon the completion of our task.

We found the mountain trail easily enough. It was situated just outside the city, and a large contingent of soldiers were now keeping watch at the checkpoint set up at the base of the mountain. They’d erected wooden barricades and some of them were holding leashes attached to vicious looking war hounds. We showed the soldiers Everetti’s writ of passage, explained that we were here to rescue his daughter, and waited for a response.

The captain smirked. “Only two of you? Why should I believe that two of you lousy sellswords will do what thirty of my best men couldn’t? Why don’t you run back to the inn and knock back a couple of ales, and let the real men do the job.” His men all laughed, a mixture of genuine amusement and because it was what their captain was doing. I waited for the laughter to die down before pointing over at the triage tent nearby. “That’s why we’re here. We’re the real men who are gonna fix this problem. If memory serves, you might make happy hour at the tavern if you leave now.” I smirked back at the captain, daring him to take another shot at me.

And he did. The captain reared his armored fist back to punch me, but Alverd stepped forward and caught the man’s attack in his own hand. “There’s no need for this. We both want the same thing. Antagonizing each other is pointless.” He gave me a small but pointed back-kick in the shin to emphasize his point. I winced, but ultimately he was right. I grumbled, and then walked past the captain and up the trail. After a second, Alverd released the captain and followed me.

Alverd waited until we were out of earshot of the guardsmen to speak up. “You know better than to make things harder for us then they need to be, Kuro. Someday that mouth of yours is going to land you in more hot water than I can pull you out of.” I waved my hand dismissively. “Alverd, if I ever land in hot water that deep, you’ll be thrashing around in it right next to me. Those men needed to be taken down a peg. Lots of people do, and my mouth is more than happy to be of service.”

I meant it, too. My mouth moved a little too fast for my brain to filter sometimes. But I never saw that as a bad thing. All too often in certain circles words were just as sharp as any sword or dagger, and they accomplished twice as much. Alverd wasn’t placated, though. He sighed and shook his head in annoyance. “You say that, Kuro, but I know you know better. Sometimes I wonder if those rules of yours aren’t just excuses to say whatever you want, whenever you want.” He plodded ahead, not waiting to hear if I had a response.

I did, but I kept it to myself. It took me a second to catch up to Alverd and his longer stride, but I managed it. “So what do you think? Standard hostage rescue?” My friend nodded. “It would seem that way. We’ll have to take a look at the situation once we get up the mountain, but I don’t think it’ll be too hard to figure out.”

Alverd and I had handled many different situations in our time as mercenaries. Hostage rescue was just one of the many things we had plenty of experience in. At its heart, a hostage situation boiled down to a very simple plan of attack: neutralize the bad guys in one swift stroke, save the hostage, and collect our payday. Of course, that didn’t mean we could just barge in, swords swinging. We needed a plan, and I had plenty of time to come up with one as we made our way to the mountain in question.

The mountains made the cold and snowy terrain utterly unbearable. With each step, I could feel my feet crunch through the layers of dirt and snow, reaching almost up to my knee. It only got worse as we ascended, and every single breath I took came out as a wisp of white fog. Thankfully, my robe was thick enough to keep me relatively warm, but I could only imagine how bad Alverd was doing. He seemed to be fine, but I could tell he was trying not to let his teeth chatter.

Alverd was a trooper like that. He wasn’t going to let anyone lose faith in him. It wasn’t a question of postering. He genuinely didn’t want others to worry about him. I’d seen him do it more than enough to see through it every time. After fifteen years of being his best friend, I could see through a lot of his behaviors. Thankfully he was an honest man, because if it had been anyone else I would have assumed otherwise. Seeing him strive forward, I redoubled my own efforts. If my armor-clad friend could climb this mountain, then so could I.

The road up the mountain vanished after a few hours of travel. At first I thought the heavy snowfall had blanketed the trail, but it became more and more apparent that the road was unfinished. At some point, Alverd and I passed an abandoned camp filled with tools and materials, proving that the work had been halted at some point. I wasn’t sure why the job had been left half done, but if I had to hazard a guess, it was because someone wasn’t willing to pay the workers what they were due.

It took Alverd and I half a day to hike up the trail to the miners’ camp. The kidnappers in question were hiding out in the camp’s barracks, where the off-shift miners had spent their downtime keeping warm, gambling or catching some much-needed shuteye. We could see the lights through the windows, although we couldn’t get close enough to count how many men there were or where they were hiding the Baron’s daughter. We waited until dark, and hid ourselves in the trees to observe our enemies. Ideally, there would only be a small group; if that were the case, one well-aimed magic spell would get most of them out of the way. Alverd’s swordsmanship would account for the rest.

There wasn’t even cause for worry. When the sun began to set, the barracks door swung open and a grumpy looking man clad in cold weather clothes stumbled out, dead drunk. One of the other bandits planted his foot in the middle of the first man’s back, and he landed face first into a pile of snow. Through the open door, I could see everything. There were only ten men in total. And in the back of the building, housed in what had once been the barracks’ storage room, was the Baron’s daughter. I could just barely see her through the tiny window installed in the middle of the storage room door.

This made things a great deal simpler.

The storage room was designed to be able to withstand explosions and fires, given that the Guilfordian ore brought out of the mines was often coated in powder residue volatile enough to be flammable before it was properly processed. Since the bandits had essentially locked the poor girl in the one room capable of surviving a random explosion in the event of an unforeseen accident, I grinned as I arranged for the entire barracks to suffer one such “accident.”

I didn’t even need magic. I ran to a nearby shack, taking great pains to avoid the drunk man still stumbling around the barracks in a lopsided circle. The lock had frozen solid, so a quick application of force shattered the chain and allowed me to open the shack. I mentally crossed my fingers, hoping that what I was looking for was still there. My faith was rewarded when I pried open a box full of short, tubular sticks with string-like wicks poking out their ends.

Dynamite.

Most of the magical community scoffed when dynamite was invented, citing that it was unpredictable, unstable, dangerous and encouraged reckless behavior. The man who invented it not that long ago showed up one day at the prestigious Academy of Advanced Magical Study in the country of Algrustos, missing his left arm and sporting a peg leg to replace the loss of the bottom part of his right leg, to protest that one could say the exact same thing of magic. A protest that the Academy’s Senior Headmaster would have dismissed with great disdain and flippancy…had he not been missing his right hand, his entire left leg, and sporting a glass eye in his right eye socket.

All that aside, it was a tool and tools existed to be used. And in the hands of the resourceful (and sometimes, the foolhardy), a tool could accomplish so much more than what it was originally intended for. I motioned to Alverd, who was still hiding in the brush, to move on the drunk bandit on patrol. He nodded at me, then disappeared back into the brush. Meanwhile, I waited for the drunkard to round the corner of the barracks, then snuck over to the building as quietly as I could.

As I jammed five sticks of dynamite at regular intervals along the wall of the barracks, trying my best to dig them as far under the building as I could, I could hear the sound of a sword being drawn from its sheath. A second later, there was the familiar sound of a man gurgling, the kind of sound someone makes when a long, narrow metal shaft pierces through their skin and bones with the intent of ending their life. There was no further sound, not even the sound of the body being lowered to the ground. Then Alverd came around the side of the barracks and hunched down next to me.

“So…what’s our plan, Kuro?” He leaned down to see why I was digging a small hole in the snow. I showed him the stick of dynamite, my last one, before shoving it into the hole as hard as I could, lodging it tight so that it wouldn’t tip over while I tried to light the damned thing. Alverd’s eyes widened in shock. “Are you mad?!” He whispered at me angrily. I grinned back at him. “Well, I certainly don’t think so. But then again, if I were, would I know that I was?” I chuckled at my own joke as I pulled out the flint I’d looted from the dynamite shed.

Alverd took one look at the flint in my hand and tried to reason with me. “You’re going to kill the girl, too!” I didn’t even look at him. “Relax, Alverd, I have everything figured out. She’ll be fine, I swear it on my soul. Besides, it’s kind of a moot point now.” Alverd cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean?” I pointed at the stick of dynamite I’d just planted. While I had distracted him, I’d used the flint to light it, and the flame was eating its way down the wick.

“That’s why.”

I’d never seen a man in full armor move so fast in my entire life.

The explosion was quite spectacular, though to be honest I’d seen better, and conjured better, not to toot my own horn or anything. Just as I’d predicted, the five-stage explosion utterly annihilated the barracks, disintegrating the entire building and all of its occupants. And when the smoke cleared, just like I’d predicted, the storage space where the girl was being held was still standing, though it looked a lot worse for the wear.

The door to the storage room fell off its hinges, and the girl, visibly shaken, began to bawl like a newborn, screaming for her precious Daddy to come save her. And as soon as we had released her from her bonds, she pushed me aside in a swirl of golden blonde hair and a shower of tears and ran over to Alverd, hiding behind him as though he were some shield she could use to keep me at bay. I sighed heavily.

Sigh. Just as I’d predicted.

We began our long trek down the mountain, and all the while the damnable girl clung to Alverd and gave me the occasional accusatory glance, as if she expected me to blow her up too at the drop of a hat. Eventually, she stopped, but only because she was so intent on crushing the life from Alverd with her bare hands. She had her arms wrapped around him like her life depended on it.

She was sporting a pretty heavy blush in her cheeks. I refused to believe it was because of the cold. Alverd stood on one side of her to keep the cold wind from hitting her, even going so far as to offer his cape to insulate her from said wind. She wrapped herself in it and got very close to my friend, her sky blue eyes shimmering as she gazed at him with unabashed longing. I could almost feel my own heart skip a beat for a second, simply because I forgot everything in the face of her elven beauty; then reality re-asserted itself when she shrunk away as she noticed me looking at her.

At some point Alverd stumbled on a rock or took a bad step, and he had to brace himself by leaning against the girl. Despite being a wisp of a thing, she was able to stop him from toppling over. He had to put his arm around her to avoid tumbling, though, and once she felt his hand on her hip her face turned beet red and she glanced away, likely to hide her embarrassment. I grunted in disgust. Typical.

Alverd just had that effect on girls. Perhaps it was that handsome face or his warm voice, or maybe his generally helpful attitude that made him irresistible to women. Although Alverd expended all of his energy making sure our bedraggled charge was alright, the only thing I could think about was the two thousand gold waiting for us.

Maybe that’s why I wasn’t able to see the double cross coming.

The minute Alverd and I entered the Everetti estate, the Baron had us arrested. We barely had time to walk into his foyer when we were jumped by eight Guilfordian soldiers. Four blades caressed the skin on my neck, with four more doing the same to Alverd’s. The Baron’s daughter ran to her precious father’s side and embraced him tightly; the last thing I saw on the smug son of a bitch’s face was the look of a man who was quite satisfied with outplaying those he deemed beneath him.

“I’m so glad you two saw reason and brought my daughter back to me.” The rat bastard smirked as he took a sip from an immaculate tea cup, his pinkie extended in pretentious noble fashion. “Unfortunately, we Guilfordians do not negotiate with kidnappers.” As a soldier slammed my head against the ground, I looked up at him with naked scorn. “Kidnappers, no. But I guess the same can’t be said of filthy slavers and bloodthirsty barbarians, huh?”

The Baron looked down at me with narrowed eyes. He set his tea cup down on a nearby table, then raised his cane and struck me across the face with it. My vision swam and I nearly lost consciousness; I had enough time to think that Alverd had been right about my mouth before I felt myself being hauled off the floor and dragged away from the Baron. I could feel my staff being wrenched from my hand as I struggled to avoid blacking out.

A pair of cold metal manacles were locked shut around my wrists with an all too familiar snapping sound. I was yanked back to my feet and pushed away from the still smirking Baron alongside Alverd. The last I saw of him before a soldier smacked my head to keep me facing forward was one of the guards handing the Baron my staff. Inwardly, I stewed, but I knew I could do nothing in the moment without it.

With our hands clapped in irons and our weapons confiscated, Alverd and I were led out of the estate and into one of those barred-window carriages that were used to cart prisoners through the public. I saw the arrogant guard captain who’d nearly assaulted me open the door to the carriage and my heart sank. As I stepped into the carriage, I realized that we’d been set up from the very beginning.

We were dragged before a seneschal, who whipped out a long list of falsified and trumped up charges against us. Our “trial” included testimony from several “witnesses” who claimed that we were part of the group who had stolen the Baron’s daughter away, and then the Baron himself testified that we had come to him specifically to demand ransom.

As Alverd and I stood before the seneschal, in the middle of a chamber filled with Guilfordian citizens who had nothing better to do than watch a sham trial, I regarded the entire room with disdain. To be surrounded by such filth, to hear them level false accusations against me, was too much. At last, the seneschal finished his list of lies and looked down at me from behind his gavel and podium. “Do you have any last words?”

Before Alverd could say anything I retorted. “Someday it’ll be Guilford’s turn. And nobody will come to save a country that breaks its bond. You sold us all out for some gold and a pat on the back from people who will put a knife in it soon enough. Our country burned yesterday. Yours will burn tomorrow. And I won’t shed a tear for any of you when that happens.” I then hocked a giant wad of spit at the foot of the seneschal’s podium, satisfied with my rant.

To my utter surprise, Alverd spoke up in support of me. “He is right. You betrayed your word to a country that pledged peace to you in good faith. And the ones who urged you to do so are only a mountain range away, building their strength with each passing day. When they come for you, death will be a mercy. It might be preferable to the shackles and whips that wait for those who survive.”

A few people in the room laughed, but the seneschal did not join them. Instead, his already grim expression became even more severe. “You waste your last words on scare tactics. The people of Guilford are not soft. Generations of our proud brethren were born and bred of this harsh land, and we have not only survived, but thrived. Your people were soft, and they chose to be reliant on others. And if you aren’t working a field under your new masters…”

The rat bastard leaned down from his podium to make himself seem more imposing. “…then I’d wager you ran for your lives and left all those people you supposedly care about behind. So who’s the real coward here, boy?” The entire room broke into full mockery as they pointed and jeered at me. I felt my teeth begin to grind in my mouth. I should’ve known better.

You can’t humiliate people who don’t feel shame.

We were thrown into jail, penniless, deceived, and distraught. I kicked myself for my poor judgment, especially since it was my job to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Alverd sat on his bunk, still wearing his armor, which the guards had been unable to pry him out of, meditating serenely. He was calm in spite of everything we’d been through and what we were about to go through, a product of years of training.

That was just one of the many things I envied about my longtime friend; his ability to stay calm no matter what seemed to befall him. I was one step away from losing my tenuous grip on my composure. I wanted to focus on anything but our impending execution, perhaps a way to weasel out of our predicament. But nothing came to me, and the threat of imminent death hung over me like a patient specter.

Two hours later, we were marched out of our cell and brought to the gallows in the middle of the castle town square, where we were sentenced to hang until we were dead. My wrists were bound with rope and tied to Alverd, who was in turn led forward by a man holding the rope tied to Alverd’s wrists. I knew escaping would be pointless, as with Alverd and I bound thus, I’d be dead weight to him once I ran out of stamina.

Then I saw it before me; a wooden platform with the hangman’s noose swaying gently as the hangman himself tied it tight, awaiting the moment when he would slip it over my head. The lever that would sweep the floor out from beneath me sat off to the side, leaving me to dance one final jig before I passed to the other side. My hands reflexively went to my neck, and I could almost feel the rope digging into my skin.

The hangmen were in a good mood today. The one minding my rope looked at me and chuckled. “I didn’t know we was ‘anging children today. I wonder if ‘e’s even ‘eavy enough to ‘ave his neck snap in one go. But if not, we can always watch ‘im dance before ‘e dies.” The other was no better. He saw Alverd’s armor and laughed too. “This one, though, e’s gonna go in one drop. All that armor, ‘e’ll go down like a stone in a pond. Make a right proper snap, ‘e will.” They guffawed in morbid glee together.

That was when I saw it. The Baron was in attendance, and he was using my magic staff as a cane. The staff in question was a four foot long oaken stick, imbued with magical properties. In my hand, it became a tool of destruction capable of allowing me to channel the power of magic to its fullest potential.

The Baron was also holding Alverd’s sword, inspecting the blade as he pulled it from its scabbard; it was steel, marred with bites and cuts in the blade where it had seen battle, but still with a polish that made it shine. The Baron nodded in approval, and then sheathed the sword and held it at his side. He even had Alverd’s shield attached to the scabbard.

Ha! The old fool. The strongest of mages were so in tune with their instruments of magic, that the very staves they used to conjure were almost an extension of their own bodies. Even if a mage were separated from his or her staff, the inherent magical energy within the staff, carved by the user him or herself, would allow the mage to reclaim their staff through telekinetic means. It was something that all mages learned to do once they graduated from apprentice level, and that made it possible for even an unarmed mage to be dangerous.

Yeah. Kinda wished I could do that.

Unfortunately for yours truly, I was still at apprentice level. And to rub salt into that particular wound, I was never good at much of anything other than destroying stuff. And even then, I couldn’t manage that without my staff. To see it so close at hand, and yet so far away, stung me like a razor sharp barb. There was another reason why I couldn’t just yank the staff out of the Baron’s grip either, but just thinking about it made me even angrier.

I wrung my hands violently in desperation, in anger…only for me to sense something very, very wrong. I looked down and saw that the ropes binding my hands were loose; my abnormally thin wrists had ensured that the ropes could not hold me as tight as they could Alverd’s. With only a minor bit of effort, I could slip my entire hand through the rope circle and essentially be free of my restraints.

Huh. I guess it didn’t pay to be all muscle-bound after all.

I immediately hatched a plan. It wasn’t good, smart, or even a sane plan. But it was the only plan I had, and I could count on it working for exactly the three seconds I would need to get my staff back from Baron Scarecrow, hopefully before any of his guardsmen could hopefully react. When the hangman stood me before the noose, and made ready to slip it over my neck, I made my move.

Screeching like some wounded animal, I swung my balled up fists into the hangman’s face. He obviously wasn’t expecting it, because he hit the ground like a lead weight. It hurt my hands immensely, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. Making another cry, I dove forward off the gallows and straight at Baron Everetti.

His beady little eyes opened wider than I had ever seen. He tried to scramble back, but it was too little, too late. I landed on top of the backstabbing little weasel like the wrath of an angry god, flailing my weak little fists at his face, now free of my ropes. Finally, he let go of both my staff and Alverd’s sword, and I grabbed both. Just for good measure I swung the staff at the Baron’s face and clubbed him with the blunt end; he crumpled to the ground with little resistance. What goes around comes around, oftentimes with some extra karma to boot, I thought to myself.

Alverd, being the savvy knight he was, followed my lead. He too attacked the hangman next to him, though he was unable to slip free of his restraints. A two-fisted swing to the hangman’s stomach caused him to buckle, and Alverd followed up by slamming his balled hands down onto the back of the hangman’s neck, flooring him.

Several guardsmen ran up to the gallows to catch him; however, Alverd leaped off the platform and barreled into a group of them like an armored missile, knocking them to the ground. He ran to me, and I swung his heavy sword as precisely as I could despite my weakness and the sword’s weight. Alverd barely had time to hold his wrists to the sides before the steel of his longsword scythed down onto his ropes.

Thank the gods for adrenaline. I managed to cut the ropes in one swing, without cutting off his hands or fingers. I flipped the sword out of my hands, and he caught the handle with practiced precision. I threw him his shield, its eagle emblem shining in the midday sun, and he slipped it onto his left arm. We wheeled around, and faced our enemies.

There were maybe eight or nine men standing between us and the gate that would lead to the main street out of this place. Beyond that, I wasn’t sure how we were going to escape. I couldn’t even begin to guess how many guards stood between us and the city entrance, and how we’d get to safety beyond that. Best to worry about that later, I thought.

I chuckled. “I’ll take the ones on the left,” I confidently boasted to my friend. Alverd laughed. “Of course you would take the side with fewer enemies. Fine with me, old friend.” He veered off to the right and charged at his foes with his sword at the ready. I had just enough time to smirk about his lighthearted quip before I twirled my staff and faced the four men who were now moving towards me, spears pointed as they ran.

Magic requires power from a catalyst in order to form. In this instance, I “reached” for the presence of water in the chilly mountain air and pulled it toward my staff. I could feel the energy being concentrated into the staff, adding power to the spell. For a simple spell of elemancy, the doctrine of basic elemental attack magic, such was the foundation; taking existing elemental forces and using them to augment my spell was as basic as counting to ten.

There was no need for an incantation or any other means of enhancing the spell. I had everything I needed to accomplish what I wanted of the magic. I pressed my staff against the ground, and when I released the power gathered within it, it spread out across the stone tiles of the town square, covering it in a sheet of ice. The ice crept up the feet of the charging soldiers, freezing them where they stood, the spread of ice stopping just after locking the men’s knees in place. The men tried to pull free of the ice, to no avail.

As far as magic went, it was a pretty weak effect. As an apprentice level mage, I didn’t have much in the way of actual power under normal circumstances. But in my mind, it was all about application. Finding the right way to make my weak magic effective bridged the gap in power between me and an actual mage. While the soldiers tried to chip away at the ice, I ran past them to get a head start on Alverd.

Alverd had little difficulty dealing with his own enemies. He sidestepped the first soldier’s blind swing and stabbed him through his unprotected flank. The second soldier tried to bring an axe to bear, but Alverd parried with his shield and thrust his sword straight through the man’s armored breastplate, killing him instantly.

The third man tried to keep distance with a spear, but Alverd pushed the point of the weapon away with his shield and dispatched him with a clean horizontal swipe of his sword. Alverd bashed the next man in the face with his shield, knocking him unconscious in a single blow, and then killed the final soldier with a brutal spinning slash that nearly severed the man in half at the waist. Blood splattered across the icy cobblestone as we made good our escape.

We didn’t have time to rest on our laurels. As the two of us took off, there was a scream of rage behind me. Turning back, I saw that Baron Everetti had recovered and was hot on our heels with nearly a score of his personal soldiers. Peasants were roughly pushed to the side as the soldiers ran toward us, while others ran for the safety of homes or shops flanking the street to avoid being trampled by the tide of angry men. Fear gave renewed strength to my feet, and Alverd and I fled down the stone path towards the marketplace. Our only hope was to lose our enemy in the crowd, and make our way to the city entrance.

A few of Everetti’s men began to pull away from the others, outrunning them due to their lighter armor. Stealing a backwards look, I could see that they were crossbowmen, trained to wear less armor and be far more mobile than standard infantry. One of them stopped running and brought his crossbow up to fire, aiming at Alverd. He didn’t come to a full stop before doing so, however, and his foot slid on the slick, ice-crusted cobblestone, interfering with his aim.

The crossbowman’s shot went wide and hit a man a full foot to the left of where Alverd was running. The poor peasant fell to the ground screaming, the bolt lodged deep in his shoulder. Blood was already soaking his tunic. A young girl, probably the man’s daughter, was screaming over his body helplessly. No one went to help either of them, looking on in fear from the sides of the street or from the safety of their homes.

Alverd screeched to a halt, took one look at the scene before him and began pushing all of the civilians near him away, first to his left, then his right. He strode out of the crowd with a defiant air. A second crossbowman lifted his crossbow to fire, and loosed the bolt at Alverd. Without flinching, Alverd brought his shield up and deflected the bolt to careen harmlessly off its angled surface and off into a nearby lamppost. Even if these people were not his own, even if they were subjects of his enemy, they were innocents, and he would allow no harm to befall them on his watch. With a face set like stone, he dared the enemy to come after him.

Raising his sword, he screamed a challenge. “Filth! Bad enough you make a mockery of the law, now you endanger your own citizens?! I’m right here! Face me if you have the nerve, bastards!” He slammed his sword against the ground, throwing up some sparks when the blade hit the stone. The soldiers glanced at each other, scared of the stand my friend was making. A few peasants finally pulled the man and his daughter away, looking at Alverd with both appreciation and disbelief.

From where I stood, I shook my head, but I could not fault him. That was Alverd; he would never allow others to be hurt if he could help it. While I was looking at the ground in resignation, I saw a dandelion growing from a crack in the ground between several small tiles. I grinned, another plan coming to mind.

I reached down and pushed the dandelion to the ground, placing the whole of my palm against the cold stone tile, feeling for the earth beneath it. I could sense it, cold, damp, so full of life. I pulled the energy from it into myself and through my staff. I looked at where the twenty men were surging towards my friend, and took aim with my spell. A glowing brown ball of energy began to form at the tip of my staff, and I grit my teeth as it grew.

This was going to be tougher than the last one. What I was about to do was more than just coat some feet in ice. I was going to redirect the energy of nature into a hostile effect. I squeezed my eyes shut and focused as hard as I could. I could feel the magical force surge out of the ground, through my body, and into the focal point of my staff. If I lost my concentration, the spell would either fizzle out harmlessly or discharge haphazardly without any means to control it. Luckily I didn’t have to hold it for long.

I released the energy as the soldiers came into range, sending the gathered power back through the staff and my body and into the earth. The ground beneath them erupted, and the smooth stone tiles became jagged edges that thrust upward at janky angles, skewering the soldiers and throwing them into disarray. They shrieked in pain as the stones pierced and shredded, and none of them could escape. The crowd backed away from me in fear, and many of them made holy warding gestures, like I was some monster.

As if I had time for that nonsense. The men coming after us were all fair game in my eyes. They were just following Rule Eight of my ten rules: you’re loyal to your employer, not his cause. Their need to kill us was just an unfortunate side effect of their job. I didn’t pretend it was that simple, but it was a lot easier to kill people when you decided to look at life in black and white. It’d taken a long time for me to reach that level of detachment, and it wasn’t something I liked to boast about.

Before I could remind the terrified townspeople that a crossbowman had fired on them not a few moments earlier, I began to tip over as the rebound from my spell stole the strength from my knees. My legs buckled beneath me and I toppled over before the first word could leave my mouth.

Alverd snatched me before I hit the ground. Magic like that was quite exhausting for an apprentice-level mage like me. He grunted with exertion as he lifted my arm over his shoulder and started hauling me down the street. “This is why you need to think before you do things like that, Kuro! You know how hard it is to carry you after you do magic of that caliber…come on, use your legs!” He made his way past the civilians, who cleared the way as they watched me warily.

As tired as I was from my previous spell, I could still spare plenty of energy to resent the townsfolk for their reaction. It was nothing new for me to be the object of either ridicule or fear, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed it. Even if Alverd tried his best to advocate for me, there were times when I’d never be disappointed when it came to expecting the worst from people.

Alverd took a right and began jogging down a side alley, taking cover under an archway. By that time, I’d recovered enough to stand on my own. We watched the soldiers tromp down the main street, unaware that we’d taken shelter nearby. We carefully made our way down backroads and over fences until we had gotten almost to the city’s entrance, a large set of wooden gates built into an imposing stone wall.

We reached the front gates before news of what had happened in the upper part of the city had reached the guardsmen standing watch. We brushed past them, and found a small convoy of merchants who were taking the main road east. I had stolen Baron Everetti’s coin purse while I was busy wailing on him, and when we told one that we would give him gold in exchange for passage, no questions asked, he took it solemnly, motioned to the back of his cart, and didn’t say another word.

The merchant, a beastkin, probably wolf by the look of the tall, furry ears sticking out of the top of his human-looking head and bushy, swinging tail, took a second to bite down on one of the gold coins, and, satisfied that they were real, pocketed the rest. He was so lost in counting the coins in the purse that he seemed to forget all about us, which was fine by me. The less attention on Alverd and I, the better.

We rode on the back of that cart for about three hours, watching as the capital city faded into the distance behind us. Guilford wouldn’t be able to send horses after us, thanks to the fact that they didn’t have actual cavalry to chase us with. Horses didn’t really enjoy being ridden over the rough, unforgiving terrain that Guilford was known for, so the merchant convoy was being driven by a herd of gridaban, small, four-legged animals akin to an ox that were strong and sturdy enough to pull carts but not big enough and too temperamental to ride. Even with the burden of a cart, a gridaban’s top speed was sufficient enough that there was no hope anybody would catch up unless they felt like sprinting to make up the head start we’d gained.

However, I knew that catching up on foot was unnecessary. Thanks to magic, Baron Everetti would no doubt send messages via magic communication sphere to every city in Guilford. He would have artists sketch our likenesses to go along with it, and by the time we made it to whatever city this caravan was bound for, the authorities would have everything they needed to know to arrest us. We needed a new plan.

I pulled out my compass in frustration as I tried to put something together. To my anger, I found that it had been damaged. The entire thing had been smashed, probably when I had tackled the Baron. I threw the broken thing away with a snarl. Alverd sat next to me in silence, unmoving except for the occasional jostling of the cart.

“Damn it,” I whimpered. “I have no idea how we’re getting out of this one, Alverd.” I held my face with my hands in exasperation. “I’m sorry, old friend. I should’ve been paying attention. I should’ve known that sonuvabitch Everetti was going to betray us.” I slammed my hands down on my knees.

He patted me on the shoulder. “Peace, Kuro. Simply because you didn’t see it coming doesn’t mean it’s your fault. People are not sunrises, Kuro. You can’t always predict their motives or behaviors. If we could, imagine what it would be like. Utter madness.” Alverd chuckled to himself. I snorted. Yeah, he was right. It would be chaos. Unfortunately, his brief moment of clarity did little to alleviate our current situation.

Despite Alverd’s tendency to think simplistically, I never really thought of such a quality as a detriment. He was always level-headed, and offered strangely profound sentiments every now and then. Even after being his best friend for a decade and a half, he could still surprise me with his occasional bursts of intellect. I guess it was comforting to know that underneath his practiced chivalry there were a few original thoughts rattling around in that big empty head of his.

I sighed, looking off to my right at the majestic mountains with their snow-tipped caps, reaching up towards the sky. I lost track of time as I focused on those peaks. Suddenly I was jarred out of my daydream by the cart shifting directions. I looked and saw a sign on the side of the road. It read, “DANGER: DO NOT GO THIS WAY”. The path led off toward the mountains I was looking at. I leaned back and spoke to our driver. “Hey, where does that path go?”

The merchant shivered visibly. “My generous friend, that leads to the Devil’s Jaw. It’s a mountain pass that connects Guilford with Ishmar. You really don’t want to go there.” The man made the same religious gesture on his chest the townspeople had. “You ask anybody on the whole damn continent of Selarune, they’ll tell you the same thing. Ain’t nothing in Ishmar but death and damnation. Nobody crosses that path, and even if they did, well, the Ishmarians would gut you as soon as look at you.”

He turned his attention back to the road, then muttered, “besides, they say that pass is haunted. The ghosts of some battle hundreds of years ago can’t find rest there. Place is supposed to be littered with the corpses of strange beasts made of iron and steel. But if you don’t believe me, well-“

As the beastkin merchant rambled on and I kept my eyes on the mountains and at the path that was overrun with vegetation and mud from years of not being taken. I looked at Alverd meaningfully. He nodded. Together, we slipped off the back of the cart soundlessly.

The cart continued on, its driver either blissfully unaware of our decision or completely at peace with it. My friend and I stared down that long, winding road leading into the heart of the mountains. And then, grimly, we started down it. Step by step, we began walking toward those mountains. It may have been Ishmar on the other side, but if it meant escape, it was a risk we had to take.

Had I known what would await us there, I probably would have changed my mind. Had I known what would have transpired beyond the Devil’s Jaw, I never would have even considered it. But I didn’t have the power of foresight. That was what had gotten me into trouble with Baron Everetti in the first place. I’d violated one of the Cardinal Rules of Being a Mercenary. The First Cardinal Rule was to always get paid up front. It was important, hence why it was the First Rule. But in my mind, the Second Rule was always more important.

The Second Cardinal Rule of Being a Mercenary is to always expect your employer to betray you…especially if they pay up front.