“You know, this strange deer meat is growing on me,” Oak said, staring at the town on the horizon, over Geezer’s enormous head. The hellhound sat in front of him, begging for a taste. “Shoo, Geezer. You’ve already eaten your breakfast.”

  “By the Mother. It’s antelope.” Sadia let out a long, suffering sigh and snapped her grandmother’s grimoire shut. The girl had not lied when she promised to pour her heart and soul into studying diabolism. She spent every moment they weren’t traveling with her nose stuck in the book. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  Oak ignored the little spellsinger, as was his right. He had saved the girl’s life, after all. No one could begrudge him a little teasing. “Very gamey. Slightly sweet, and there is a hint of tanginess,” he said.

  Ur-Namma covered his face with his hands and groaned. “We know. You have told us repeatedly.”

  It had taken them a few sweaty days of walking down the old road, but today they would at last reach the town of Kesh. It was supposed to be a waystation for caravans heading north-west across the Hundred Kingdoms. Caravans looking to cross the Hundred Kingdoms and reach Chadash Merkavah.

  We will soon find out.

  Oak stood up and stretched his seven foot tall frame, reaching to pluck the clouds from the sky above. They did not budge, despite his valiant efforts. He even wiggled his fingers at them. Alas, the lonely bastards continued their slow journey across the light blue sky, following the south-wind.

  Go on, clouds. We will follow in your wake, in due course.

  Packing his meager possessions did not take long. Oak owned his weapons and the clothes on his back, and not much else. The small coin pouch on his waist wasn’t exactly bursting with gold, either.

  They would need to make do. He was confident they would.

  “Let’s go already. We are wasting daylight,” Ur-Namma said, and clambered to his feet. “I want to get a sense of the town as soon as possible, so we can discuss our options.”

  For the first time in their journey, the old road did not meander around the plain, twisting and turning like a big brown snake. It led straight ahead, towards Kesh and the immense Lake Nin, on the shore of which the town had been built.

  On the approach to town, they passed the first travelers Oak had seen on the road. A worn down looking family of five trudged along in the dust, shuffling their feet. The man and, presumably, his wife viewed their strange procession with open fear while the children stared, eyes wide and mouths open in wonder.

  None of them had likely seen a northerner before, and Oak was willing to bet they had not seen an elf either. Nor a hellhound, even if they did not know what they were looking at. Funnily enough, Sadia, the little diabolist in training, was the most normal looking of their lot.

  He waved at the family, and hesitantly the black-skinned travelers waved back. They had the look of refugees, most likely from the Korarim Confederacy, based on the color of their skin. Dressed in rags and covered in dust, their gaunt faces told a more complete story than any tale they could have spun with the common tongue.

  The war down south was taking its toll.

  As they got closer to Kesh, it became clear tensions were running high. Instead of a single refugee camp made up of shoddy looking tents outside the town, there were two. One for the refugees from the Korarim Confederacy. And one for the refugees from the Muttalib Caliphate. The two sides of the war, separated only by an empty stretch of land and a single pair of guards armed with spears, standing watch.

  “Hey, Sadia,” Oak said.

  “Yeah?”

  “It might be best if me and Ur-Namma do the talking for now. Try not to say too much, and definitely don’t mention that you can use magic. Let’s keep an ace up our sleeve.”

  The girl nodded, a serious look in her eyes. Oak doubted she wanted a repeat of her last brush with what the locals called ‘law’, but you couldn’t be too careful with teenagers. The buggers were a bunch of morons to a fault. He would know, since he had been an especially moronic teenager.

  “And keep that grimoire hidden away. I don’t want to save you from the gallows for a second time, all right?”

  Sadia groaned, but nodded her assent.

  Oak made a beeline for the guards, sweating in their brigandines. In his experience, the common foot soldier was an excellent source of information. Nobody enjoyed standing watch and bored soldiers liked to complain. In fact, he had never encountered a man-at-arms who ran out of things to complain about when someone was willing to lend an ear to their many grievances.

  Of course, it’s not always that simple, but I have an edge. When you are built like a giant and carry a big fucking sword, you tend to get a certain base level of respect thrown your way.

  “Hail, soldiers,” Oak hollered. “What goes on in Kesh?”

  “Hail to you too, stranger.” The man who answered looked like he had swallowed a lemon. Wrinkles marked his brown, clean-shaven face, and he had spots of grey in his black hair. “What goes on? Nothing good, I’m afraid. Nothing good at all.” His fellow guard nodded in agreement, curious eyes roaming between Oak and his companions.

  “You don’t look like refugees, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “How so?” Oak asked, trying to form some rapport with the older man. People usually enjoyed explaining their deductions, and the older guard was no exception.

  “Well, you are about as white as a piece of chalk, that one right behind you is an elf, and you are both carrying too much good quality steel to have much in common with the rabble in those tents around us,” the guard with grey spots of grey in his hair said. “Am I wrong so far?”

  “No, you are quite right. We are not refugees. Just travelers,” Oak replied. “I’m called Oak and these are my companions, Ur-Namma and Sadia. The dog is mine, and he is called Geezer.”

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  Geezer woofed and tried to look like he couldn’t fit a man's head between his jaws. He failed. Miserably.

  “I am Zef and this baby-faced youngster's name is Behar. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Zef leaned on his spear, glowering at the world at large. “You are one huge bastard and so is your dog, if I may say so.”

  “You may.” Oak laughed. People were rarely this candid with him. I love this fellow already. “So, what ails the town, other than the obvious?”

  “Hah. What doesn’t? Well, these refugees are a pain in the ass, both Muttalites and Koromites, but they are far from the worst of it. Or, at least I think so,” Zef said, gaze fixed past them all, towards the refugee family of five shuffling up the old road behind Oak and his companions. “A sorry lot with a sorry past behind them and a sorry future ahead of them. Most of em are too starved and tired to make much trouble, though not all.”

  “So, what has dampened everyone’s spirits, then?” Ur-Namma asked impatiently. Zef clearly loved the sound of his own voice. Oak did not blame the man for dragging things out. Standing watch was dreadfully boring.

  An emancipated looking Muttalite man dressed in a dirty black robe stumbled from between the rows of equally dirty tents and stopped to stare at their little gathering in no-man's-land. Zef glared at him, and the man stumbled back into the squalor of the encampment. He was not wearing shoes.

  “It happened two days ago. See, Kesh was not always this big. Well, it’s no city even now, but you get the idea. Anyway, the town does not have actual walls or a common ward to keep the uglies swimming in the Waking Dream at bay. Every building has its own set of wards.” Zef spat on the dirt. “Two days ago, someone broke the wards of the town nursery and let in a poltergeist. Two babies died.”

  From the corner of his eye, Oak could see Sadia’s eyes widening in horror. The girl let out a gasp and covered her mouth with her hands.

  “A damn shame.” Behar grunted.

  “Indeed. A damn shame,” Zef said. He squeezed the shaft of his spear in a white-knuckled grip. “I can’t say who would do such an evil thing, but I doubt there is a single theurgist of any skill among these refugees.”

  “I am sorry,” Ur-Namma said and stepped up next to Oak. “Are either of you…related to the dead?”

  “No. My kids are luckily adults already and Behar here is yet to father any. Not for lack of trying though, I think the lad is fruitless.”

  “Could be.” Baby-faced Behar shrugged. “I am terribly popular with the ladies. By the numbers, I should have a bastard or two running around already.”

  “I see. Nonetheless, you have my sympathies,” Ur-Namma said and raised a fist over his heart. The elf was clearly a bit put off by the conversation's sudden turn towards the state of Behar’s fruits. “May they rest in peace.”

  “Ay.” Oak shuddered. “A tiny casket is a terrible thing.”

  “So it is.” Zef nodded tiredly, eyes fixed on the horizon, as if the plain could at any moment reveal the identity of the murderer. “The people are up in arms and in each other's throats. Don’t expect a warm welcome.”

  ***

  A tiny casket was a terrible thing.

  Oak could smell the mix of sorrow and anger in the air as the four of them walked through the town. The people they encountered did not smile or linger in the streets. Unfriendly eyes hounded their backs and hurried steps fled from their path. He saw an old woman with a face like scratched rock looking at him from an open window and nodded at her. The granny spat on the ground and closed the shutters.

  There was a tension hanging over Kesh, like an executioner's axe about to fall.

  Despite the tension, Oak felt surprisingly comfortable. While the towns of the North were built out of timber and stone, and Kesh was the product of clay bricks, mudbricks and mortar, they had many things in common. Unlike in the ancient capital of the Old Empire, the streets were not paved with cobblestones, and signs of wealth were few and far between.

  A shabby mid-sized town like this was far more his style than the hallowed opulence of Ma’aseh Merkavah.

  Zef had given them instructions to an inn owned by his cousin, a woman named Vjollca, and after a few twists and turns, Oak stood in the shade in front of a worn down looking two story building made of clay brick with a flat roof. There was a sign hanging lopsidedly on the wall with the picture of an ox and some letters that he assumed included the word inn.

  Oak was not fluent in the local dialect just yet. A smile graced his lips. Based on the look of the place, the graying soldier had clearly guessed their price range correctly. They filed in through the door one after the other, crowding the small entrance hall.

  The hazy inside of the inn turned out to be a welcome refuge from the blistering heat outside. Oak did not know how the builders of the structure had done it, but the difference in temperature was impressive. For the first time in hours, he didn’t feel fresh sweat dripping down his back.

  There was a wooden counter with no one behind it facing the front door. A bell made of bronze rested on top of the counter. Oak grabbed the thing and rang it. Nothing happened. He rang it again and listened carefully. Not even a whisper graced his ears. The building was silent like a tomb.

  He raised his arm to ring the bell for the third time.

  A door behind the counter burst open, and a middle-aged local woman stepped into the entrance hall. She wore a long and loose-fitting light brown robe and had tied her black hair into a bun. Her strong eyebrows jumped towards the ceiling in glee when she noticed Oak and his companions, but after she looked them all up and down, she frowned.

  “Hello. Are you Vjollca?” Oak asked.

  The woman’s frown deepened. She pulled up the sleeves of her robe, started muttering something in the local dialect, and stepped up from behind the counter.

  “Um. Ur-Namma?”

  “Yes, barbarian?”

  “Is that lady about to throw hands? What is happening?”

  ***

  The door slammed shut behind Oak’s back.

  He stood inside a well lit space dominated by a large wooden barrel tub full of water, standing proudly in the middle of the room. A warm ray of sunlight from a wide window near the ceiling bathed the washroom in golden light. At some point during the rush through the inn, Vjollca had handed him a cotton washcloth, and he stared at it, filled with incomprehension.

  What? How? Why?

  He had just wanted to buy them all some rooms. Was that too much to ask?

  An idea wormed its way to the forefront of Oak’s mind. He sniffed his armpit and shuddered in disgust. All right. Maybe the lady has a point. The language barrier didn’t stop Oak from deducing that the innkeeper would not allow them to purchase room and board before they had washed off the dust and grime of the road.

  Being chased to a bath like a mangy mutt drove the point home swimmingly.

  Since arguing with someone who he didn’t share a common language with seemed like a pointless exercise in frustration, Oak set aside his weapons, took off his clothes and got in the tub.

  The water was pleasantly cool. Black specks of dirt flaked from his skin into the water. He rubbed himself all over vigorously and lathered himself with water, but no matter how much he rubbed, the flow of grime hardly lessened. As he tried and failed to untangle a series of knots covered in dried blood from his hair, Oak noticed something white and rectangular next to the tub.

  There was a bar of soap on a small clay plate next to the tub.

  As the old man said, if you do something, do it properly.

  Oak reached for the soap. He was going to untangle his hair, or die in the attempt.

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