The tavern was subdued at this late hour, far past the time when the people with families returned home The rowdy drunks were either unconscious or soon to be, the serious drinkers were focused on killing themselves one drink at a time, and then there was Taac. He slowly nursed a tankard in a booth almost lost in the shadows of the back corner.
This should have been easy, he mused bitterly while he sipped the truly excellent brew,
there’s always
a war going on in the highlands. And beyond the never ending feuds, there’s the giants in the caves, witches in the woods, orc shamen, and undead! So why can’t I find a job?! Taac sighed and leaned back in his seat, cursing the stubbornness of the clans and their idiotic honor code. There was an unwritten rule here on the highlands: If you want to fight highlanders, you have to be a highlander. Bring an outside threat in, and
all the clans would be after you. That rule, which seemed to be the only thing the clans agreed upon, turned what should have been the freesword version of utopia into his own private little purgatory. In the two weeks he had been in the highlands, he had received exactly one bite on his discreet inquiries about mercenary work. So now, here he sat, with the night so far gone it was nearly morning, waiting for a job.
A young man slipped quietly into the bar from the backroom, unnoticed by the majority of the occupants, and Taac’s eyes narrowed. The man moved with the kind of furtive movement that almost screams how much they want to remain unnoticed. Pretty much exactly the kind of attitude to be expected from someone about to do something they know full well they shouldn’t be doing. The young man’s nearly frantic scanning finally saw Taac in the corner and quickly slid into the chair opposite him.
“I have a problem,” the young man blurted out before he even finished sitting down, “and I can pay.”
Taac sat up and put on his best smile, his earlier melancholy banished behind its facade. “Well, then I bet I have a solution to your problem, let’s hear it.”
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“So that’s the gist of it,” Taac told his hastily assembled group an hour later as they gathered in the bunkhouse he had rented earlier that week. “We’ll track out a couple days North then cut East into the woods. There’s a couple of game trails that we can take to catch the actual path to our destination without officially entering the territory of either of the clans that claim those woods. We check out the cabin, eliminate anyone there, then skedaddle back here with no one the wiser. Any questions?” A hand quickly rose, belonging to one of the clanless highlanders, Taac noted.
“More of a comment really,” said the young man as he played with a long handled knife, “Those woods are dangerous even without the clans. We’ll need to keep watch, and more than one man.”
“Good point,” Taac said seriously while inwardly rolling his eyes at the highlander’s superstition, “we’ve got enough men that we can take shifts and still make good time. Anything else?” No one volunteered any more questions and Taac stood up. “Alright then, I want us on the road at daybreak, get your gear together and meet at the North gate at first light. If you’re late, you’re left behind.”
———————————————————
They reached the cabin four days later, and Taac was seriously on edge. For a covert kill job, this felt anything but hidden. Someone, or something, had dogged their steps from the minute they set foot in the forest late on the second day, and roadblocks and strange misfortunes had followed. The superstitious highlander, despite his theoretically better knowledge of the area, had been the first casualty, when a thorned vine had struck out at him, severely lacerating his leg. They had cut him free within seconds, but the damage was done. He was walking wounded now, but his face had the sort of waxen look Taac had seen before. He wouldn’t be leaving this forest alive, the infection would see to that as surely as a blade through his throat. Several other misadventures had befallen them before nightfall, none thankfully as deadly as the first, and Taac had decided to go ahead and take shifts watching. The first night was rough. Snarls and howls came sporadically from all sides, the fire kept dying for no apparent reason, and everyone could sense the watchfulness around them. The second day in the woods was easier, though twice more they were attacked by the strange vines, no one was injured, and the men set up the nights camp much more cheerfully. They were all awoken during the second watch by the screams of one of the men standing watch.
By the time that Taac had emerged from his tent, sword in hand, it was over. The man’s body hung limply from a tree outside the camp, a thorny vine wrapped around his throat like a noose. No one had the courage to go near the vine as it swayed gently in the breezeless night, and so his corpse had hung there through the night, as Taac and his men waited for enough light to travel by. By morning the body, and the vine, were gone, and Taac had heaved a sigh of relief when they hit a path early in the morning. Now that they had arrived, however, the sense of foreboding was back with a vengeance.
The cabin was a smallish affair, one story, with large windows covered with daintily carved wooden shutters. It was set in a large clearing, with a stable behind the house. Taac noted the lock on the outside of the stable and the way the curtains were tightly closed in the middle of the day, and motioned a couple of his men closer.
“I think it’s safe to say that we were noticed coming up the track. Someone is here, which means we have a job to do. You,” Taac pointed to one of the men, “grab two others to watch the barn with you, I don’t want surprises. You,” he pointed to another, “grab two and circle around back, come in when you hear us go in. And you,” he pointed to the third, “grab the last two and kick down the front door.”
“Um,” the second man ventured hesitantly, “Where will you be, sir?”
“Me? I’m going through the window as soon as y’all kick the doors down. This place gives me the creeps, I want us to hit whoever is inside from too many angles. Make them surrender.” He grinned, the rush of combat settling on his shoulders like an old friend. “Let’s do it!”
