Pitt looked at the gathered men. Some of them reached for their swords. He wondered which of them they would attack. He decided that he would wait until one of them came at him before he did anything.

It wasn't his job to prove he was the real monster hunter. That was especially true when he was trying to stay away from trouble.

Which way would the fake Roland jump? That would decide what he would have to do. The rest would flow from that.

“The stable isn't clean,” said the fake Roland. His gauntleted hand clenched the hilt of his sword. “It's gone.”

“It will be clean in the next few seconds,” said Pitt. “The river will do the job for me. I think our business is done unless you want something else.”

“You can't expect me to let you go,” said the fake Roland. “I can't let you go around blabbing I'm a fake. Even if no one believed you, it would still cause problems if the rumor took hold.”

“Are you sure you want to do this,” said Pitt. “I'm willing to let bygones be bygones, but if you pull your sword, you will be hurt. You have an easy life here. You should enjoy that and not pick a fight with a tramp like me.”

“If you are really a tramp, I don't have anything to lose,” said Roland.

"If I'm really Roland the Cutter, you're as good as dead,” said Pitt. “Take a moment to think about the ramifications. The only way to win is to walk away without doing anything. You can still expand your power here after I'm gone.”

“I can't take that chance,” said the fake Roland. He drew his sword with the speed and strength of a dozen men.

Pitt moved forward. His open hand slammed against the gold breastplate of the impersonator. The armored menace vanished with a scream trailing behind him.

“Do any of you want to try your hand?,” asked Pitt. He stepped back in case the henchmen tried to rush him. He doubted any of them were as strong as the fake, but he was ready to reevaluate in case he was wrong.

Most of the men looked like they were waking up from a spell. Some of them looked sick.

“I abandoned my family,” said one of the men. “I have to get back home. How long have I been here?”

“Go ahead,” said Pitt. “This place won't last that long without magic fueling it.”

The men split up and headed toward the road. Their lives were ruined unless their families were sympathethic.

Pitt wished them the best of luck as he watched them go.

He wondered if he should let the house stand. It looked more worn as he looked at it. Maybe magic kept it going when it should have fallen down. It wasn't the first time he had seen something like that.

He decided that it wasn't his problem. He had sent the owner on a flight, and caused all of his enslaved helpers to be free. He didn't have to burn down the house if he didn't have a reason.

He decided that he should at least look around to see if there was any tobacco. That would be some gain out of this fiasco. He smiled.

Pitt went to the door and pushed it in. He decided the best place to find tobacco was the parlor. When he was done looking there, he would try the master's bedroom. After that came the servant's quarters.

Pitt started looking for tobacco, combing the place on the bottom floor first. He felt something was in the house, but he couldn't match anything to the feeling. He went through the top floor and didn't find anything there either. He paused in the hall outside the master bedroom.

Did the place have a cellar? Maybe they had tobacco down there? It might be stashed in the supplies.

He hated to think the fake had lied about having tobacco just to bait him into the obvious trap. If that was what happened, he had taken it too easy on the con man.

He looked around until he found a door leading down under the house. He paused to second guess himself. He decided he didn't have anything to lose since everyone else was gone.

And the victor got to claim the spoils.

Pitt walked down the steps to the cobbled cellar. He didn't like the smell in the cool air. Something was down there. The feeling he had felt upstairs was even stronger down under the house.

He found a torch in a bracket. He lit it with a snap of his fingers. He took it out of the bracket and searched the cellar. It seemed empty except for a door in a wall that led out in the ground the house was built on. He pulled the door out of his way and stepped inside the room.

An orb of light floated in a pool of water in a bowl on a pedestal. The feeling it gave off intensified as he stepped closer to look at it.

“How's it going?,” said Pitt. “I haven't seen one of you in a long time. How did you wind up in the birdbath?”

The feeling of hate intensified. Pitt frowned. It was actually doing something to his mind. If he waited long enough, he would be another gold wearing patsy accumulating slaves.

He kicked the pedestal. It flew against the wall and shattered. The orb dropped to the ground and bounced with the sound of cracking glass. He kicked that against the wall as hard as he could. It broke apart on impact. Mist burst forth from the crystal and headed away from the room as fast as possible.

“That explains why your vassel thought he had a chance,” said Pitt. “I wonder if he survived hitting the ground. I doubt it. If he did, maybe he will be thinking more clearly now without your bad influence.”

Pitt shook his head. He still hadn't found any tobacco. He would have to stop at the next town and see if someone had some for sale. He hated that, but he couldn't do without a smoke.

He was sure he would find a town off the road. The servants had to have come from somewhere to be servants.

At least this part of the country would be safer without a spirit ball taking what it could from whomever it came across.

He climbed out of the cellar and walked out the front door. He started down the drive to the road. He glanced behind him. The house looked worse than when he had started searching it.

He supposed the magic that kept the servants bound, and the fake Roland strong, made the house look better than it did. If it kept going, it would start falling apart by the time he was out of sight. He thought that would be good.

It wouldn't be the first time he had wrecked something when he wrecked a primary carrying block. He could live with it.

Pitt walked down the driveway and paused at the road. He checked the sun. He was leaving the line of travel to follow the road. He would have to change directions to cross the sun when he found a place to turn and cut back through the wilderness.

Maybe if he found a town, he could get a horse to help him speed up his traveling. He wanted to get home before he turned gray and wrinkled.

Walking didn't bother him except that it was slow, and he preferred to get to where he was going as fast as he could once he was on the move. A stop every once and a while was okay too.

He walked down the road. He looked back over his shoulder once. The house had started to slump down. He thought the roof would go soon enough. Anyone moving in there would have some work to do to bring it back up to living conditions.

He wished them the best of luck.

Pitt came across a sign and a crossroad. There was a town in the direction he wanted to go. He turned and headed down the road toward the town. A dinner at an inn and the chance of a smoke made it worthwhile in his eyes.

He wondered how long it would take for him to walk the distance. Maybe he would get lucky and run into a merchant who wouldn't mind him riding along to the next town. It shouldn't be that much of a problem.

Pitt wondered if there was any trade moving down the road. He supposed that some of it had been choked off by the hydra in the river. He supposed that word would get out that something had come along and killed the hydra. It might make people scared to travel until they figured out nothing else was getting killed on the river.

He wondered how long that would take. The rumor mill might turn what he did into an attack by some lightning throwing bird with talons of silver and eyes of gold. He had seen it happen to other exploits the Brotherhood had done when they had actively hunted monsters across the world.

One time he and Neil had come across someone claiming a guy named Ran killed the giant Brodrun after a pitched battle. He had heard similar rumors while moving around.

He had killed Brodrun with one stroke during an ambush. And the Brotherhood didn't have any members named Ran as far as he knew. There might have been someone named that among the thousand members, but he doubted it.

But he never saw anyone claiming to be Ran either.

Pitt kept walking, watching the sun move across the sky, marching toward his fourth job.