Sorry Please Thank You (8 page)

Because the center of the action was defined as: wherever
I was. The way they were all looking at me, I didn’t have the heart to tell them the truth. Maybe later, I thought, when the time is right.

So yeah, I led them in here.

I led a thief (Fjoork), two mages (Trin and Byr), and a swordsman (Rostejn) into a devastated wasteland: brutal terrain, limitless bad guys, and, as far as I can tell, pretty much no chicken.

Fjoork is still getting hammered on. Trin and Byr have run out of magic for at least two rounds and now each of them is just randomly stabbing with Ordinary Daggers.

Rostejn and I are the only ones who are doing any kind of real damage, but neither of us is feeling exactly Thor-like at the moment.

I’m not going to die or anything, feeling about thirty-five, maybe forty percent health. Rostejn looks like he’s worse off than that.

We’re finishing off a cluster of these hellhounds, hoping against hope we’re close to a resting point, when a fresh wave of murderous dogs comes rushing in from the north. The worst part is their breath. Dog breath is one thing. And demons are generally pretty good about dental hygiene. But for some reason when you put the two together, it’s like, oh boy, now, that’s not fresh breath. Definitely not my favorite smell out here.

Rostejn’s a couple of feet in front of me, and when the new batch shows up, I see his shoulders slump. He slashes a
demon dog in the throat and cuts another one’s legs off in two clean and efficient motions, then turns to look at me as if to say, chicken sure would be good right now.

I grunt in agreement.

Then it’s just there. I don’t know if it’s the prayers to the deity that worked or we just lucked out, but there it is. A whole delicious chicken, cooked and on a platter, just sitting there under a tree.

Go for it, Rostejn says.

No you, I say.

Eat it, he says.

This is what it’s all about. These guys, they all freaking love one another. And by guys, I am including Trin and Byr, who are like sisters, but also guys, but also, I might be slightly in love with Trin, like slightly and maybe also totally in love, like maybe ever since that double full moon in Oondar, when we spent a night flank to flank for warmth, but other than that, we are all like brothers, like chicken-sharing brothers.

Eat it, Rosti, I finally say, with authority. I tell him I feel great, only half lying. He needs it more, but even if he didn’t, this is what a hero does, right? Right?

No really, right? I am really asking. I wish there were someone who could answer.

We set up camp for the night. Everyone is demoralized. Turns out that chicken Rostejn and I kept offering each other wasn’t a chicken after all, just one of those smooth,
chicken-looking-kind-of-rock mounds that stick out of the ground around these parts, so when Rostejn got nipped on the arm by one of those canine hell spawn, it took him down to twenty percent life bar and I’m sitting not so pretty myself at thirty-two, I just said to hell with it and used the Power Move I’d been saving for the last nine rounds. Lucky for everyone, it worked. But just barely. We all scrambled to this saving place, a little clearing near a cave. A place to hide out and heal our wounds, before setting out again in the morning.

We take stock of our equipment before dinner. A lot of it’s pretty banged up. Byr has the whole mess laid out in front of her and Fjoork is reading off the scroll of items.

Shield of the righteous.

Check.

+1 short sword.

Check.

+1 long sword.

Check.

+1 medium sword.

Check.

+1 medium long sword.

Check.

“Jesus,” someone mumbles.

“No wonder my back hurts,” Trin says.

“Do we really need Blade of Slashing and Blade of Slicing?” Fjoork asks. Everyone knows it’s directed at Rostejn. This is a thing with us. Too much baggage.

Darts of Severe Pain.

Check.

Darts of Moderate Pain.

Check.

Dagger of Nothing in Particular.

Check.

Chain mail’s one thing, and everyone knows you can never really have enough Heal Wounds, or Elixir of Potency, but yeah, it’s getting to the point where we need to make some changes.

Fjoork and Rostejn cook a meal together without saying a word. Afterward, we all pass around a wineskin and look up at the night sky.

Byr says, “Have you ever wanted to be something else?”

I want so bad to say yes. To tell them, I don’t want to be the Hero.

“Probably a bard, I guess,” Rostejn says. “I’m told I have a good singing voice.”

“No,” Byr says. “Not a different class. What if there were no classes? What if there were something, other than ranger or thief, paladin or mage? Something else. What if you could be anything?”

Fjoork says, “I’d change my name to something cool. Like Vengor, or Caldor. Or Steve. I mean, why do we all have to have weird names? Does that really help our quest?”

The fire burns down and the group drifts off to sleep.

I watch them all snoring, Trin the loudest. She’s a single mother. Who is taking care of her kid at home? I don’t even know. I am in love with her, and I don’t even know who takes care of her kid.

Byr wakes up and catches me staring at Trin.

“She loves you, you know.”

“Did she actually say that?” I ask her.

“Yeah,” Byr says, throwing a stick into the fire. “But she thinks you’d be a shitty dad.”

Eventually, I drift off into a restless sleep of my own. I dream the ancient dream, the immense dream of the ancients, I am looking out across the gray timeless expanse of Evermoor, having the greatest of all dreams, until just before dawn, when I wake to the sound of Rostejn relieving himself in the wooded area.

In the morning we set out for Argoq. Fjoork, who always seems to have a sense of these things, says he knows a guy who knows an elf who says to take the long way around, steering clear of the Lake of Sensual Pleasures. The group sort of grumbles, but everyone knows they have to stay focused on the mission, relentlessly scrolling toward the right.

We stop into a shop run by an old druid friend of Trin’s. Trin greets him with a peck on the cheek. Seeing her kiss him slays me. I need to make a small saving throw just to avoid getting dizzy.

The druid shows off his new wares. Boots of speed, harp of discord, bag of merry diversion. The usual clatter thrown off by the steady flow of questers along the Silvan Route.

“How much,” asks Trin, “for that Ring of Regeneration?”

“Fifty,” the shopkeeper says, “but for you, twenty-five.”

I fish coins out of my pouch and drop them in the keeper’s hand. He gives me the ring, which I nonchalantly pass over to Trin, trying to be cool about it.

Byr raises her eyebrows at Fjoork, as in, hey, get a load of Grenner the Romantic over here.

Trin refuses it. “You need this a lot more than I do,” she says.

I take it back, pretending not to care, and notice that Byr is suppressing a smile. OMG: how have I never realized this before? Byr is in love with Trin. She can barely contain herself.

I’m staring at Byr who is staring at Trin who is trying to pretend that this triangle of unrequited staring is not happening. Lucky for me, Rostejn breaks up the tension.

“Check this out,” he says, holding up a vial of something yellow and bubbly.

“Oil of Reciprocated Feelings,” the shopkeeper says.

“We’ll take two,” Rostejn says, flinging the coins onto the counter. I shoot him a look.

“What?” he says. “You never know when this might come in handy. You just never know.”

It is a half moon later when Krugnor joins our group. We’d spent several days slashing through wave after wave of dumb meat, orcs and ogres. Toward the end, we were barely talking to one another, just carving up bodies, leaving them in piles. Green flesh hacked up everywhere.

Krugnor isn’t any of the classic types. Krugnor is special, and everyone can see it right away.

It used to be there were only four kinds of people: fighters, mages, clerics, and thieves. What someone did for a living said something about who they were, what they thought of themselves, how they approached the world: strength, intelligence, wisdom, or charisma.

Krugnor, on the other hand, is part of the new generation.

“I’m a warrior-mystic,” he says. That’s how he introduces himself, when we find him by a babbling brook, doing yoga. “But I’m really not into labels. We’re all just people, you know?”

I try to roll my eyes at Trin, but she’s not looking at me. She likes him. I can tell right away. I look over at Byr, to see if she’s noticing this, but even she seems to be in some kind of trance.

Even my own disciple is smitten. “We need that guy,” Fjoork says.

So I put it to a vote.

Trin votes yes, tries to not look excited.

“He’ll help with hit points,” Byr says. “We could take on a thousand-ogre wave, if we had to. Brute-force our way through. Just plain outslug the monsters.”

Rostejn votes yes, too, although I get the sense that he just wants to get at some of the hardware Krugnor is toting in his equipment sack.

And Fjoork looks head over heels for the new guy already.

No need for me to even weigh in.

Krugnor joins the group.

“Shall we make it official?” he asks.

I say, uh, sure, what does he have in mind?

“Stare into one another’s souls, of course,” he says. “Isn’t that how you guys do it?”

I say, yeah, sure, okay.

Krugnor starts with Trin, big surprise, takes her head in his large, callused hands. They lock eyes and she seems to melt.

“So that’s what a hero looks like,” Byr says.

I tell Byr to shut up.

Each member of the group gets their own turn. When it comes to me, I take a pass, but Krugnor’s not having any of it.

“If we are going to be brothers-in-arms,” he says, “we will need to touch souls.”

I tell him I’m getting over a cold.

“It was really a nasty bug. For your own good.”

“Okay,” he says. “But don’t think you’re off the hook.”

After he’s done with all the soul-staring, Krugnor asks me for a copy of the battle plan. I say, uh, yeah, I’ll get that right to you.