The Mephit's Tales

An almost negligent wave of the man’s hand, and the force keeping Alderian up in the air shifted smoothly downward, letting him get all fours properly onto the ground. It was a marked improvement; he was hardly afraid of heights, certainly not the mere foot’s breadth he’d been at, but it was such an undignified way to be hanging there, not like proper flight at all.

Not that Edric was quite ready to trust him enough to release him entirely, apparently; he was allowed to furl his wings, but then force bound them against his body, and he was not permitted to walk around, or even to sit. He was stuck standing with his legs outstretched, at the human’s mercy.

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Kirrik swept a forehand over the metal surface, watching the shifting light that glinted off the surface. “The good news is, it’s not going to get worse for us,” he reported. “The hatch warped when it hit the deck, and tore a little. It’s no longer airtight. Between that and the vents, there’s enough air getting in here. The walls are all fine, and there’s no weight pushing down on them, so it’s not going to collapse on us or anything.”

His companion’s head tilted to one side. “There’s a ‘but’ waiting there,” Krinni accused.

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At last, home was in sight.

Well, maybe not his own actual home. He was from the coast, and once his discharge was processed, to the coast he’d return for the rest of his aborted training. But it was his homeland, there past the river and the line of border forts straddling it, torches on their roofs gleaming like brilliant jewels in Hakenteri’s keen sight.

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Autumn was a hard time to be a working pegasus in Horseshoe Corners. While summer mostly called for clear days with just enough rain to keep crops growing well, in autumn things were more complicated. First, the pegasi needed to stir up a lot more wind to keep things properly cool. Rain was just as important – letting crops dry out just before harvest-time would be disastrous. But rain at the wrong time would be bad, too; the fields couldn’t be too wet for the farmers to harvest them. So all the pegasi were worked to the wingbones to move clouds into place when it was time for rain, make sure they rained properly, and then shoo them off over the surrounding hills when enough had fallen on the fields.

And somepony needed to be sure all of it was happening at the right times – and in Horseshoe Corners, somepony meant Stormchaser.

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“She wasn’t pleased that I chose to bring it up,” Rima said, pushing the door shut. “However, with that already done and well-received, she is in favour of going ahead with it.”

“So what will ‘it’ entail?” Jisarr asked. “I don’t know how much of it I’ll be able to understand, but I am curious.” He was sitting on the cushioned seat he’d used for reading, now placed in the middle of the room rather than at the wall.

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There’d be no difficulty on his part this time; Jisarr’s heart was pounding before he reached Dren’s door, an uncomfortable tightness growing in his clothing by the time Dren hesitantly opened it in answer to his knock. There was a deep yearning in the smaller man’s eyes now, a need grown almost painful; and though he felt a pang of guilt for leaving Dren alone while that need built up, anticipation of the forceful climax that it heralded made him tremble.

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It was a bizarre mix of new and familiar. Kob had never set foot in this inn before, yet it was just like others he’d been in – comfortably warm, dimly-lit by candles under tinted glass globes at each table, the furnishings plush and well-carved rather than the ramshackle benches and trestle tables at most common inns. The bartop was gleaming, polished mahogany; the patrons held quiet conversations under the strains of the bard’s lute and her soft singing.

Rather than being a place for the masses to come for a decent and affordable meal, this was a place where people of means could conduct discreet business – and in any big city, there was some business that was discreet by nature. Practitioners of the sort Kob had sought out knew of each other; even across sea and desert, the token of the Silver Serpent of Sharktooth Bay carried some weight, when its bearer knew the right names. And while Kob had never acquired a taste for ostentation, he’d long since passed the point where a meal at a place like this was an expense worth noting; he could afford the polite measure of treating his contact to a good meal.

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It was still a mercenary camp; there was a fundamental order to the place that the bivouacs of larger units lacked. And with several bands in the same space, far from succumbing to the disorder of those larger units, the divisions were only strengthened. Stepping from one band’s section of the camp to another’s brought a distinction as plain as that between night and day, even more so than that between the inside of the camp and the world beyond its border.

Gone, though, was the expectant tension. The work they’d been mustered for was done, and done well, by gods and ancestors and whatever else the disparate fighters held dear. None of these bands would never truly relax their discipline, not while they were still mustered – that discipline was part of what had made them the best, the most-esteemed, the most-sought-for warriors in the land. Sentries still watched the camp, looking outward, keeping an eye on the interior, even minding the skies. Officers and small cadres of armed fighters still roamed the camp and kept the peace.

But the mood in the camp was one of celebration. Freed captives, brought in for assessment and treatment by the mercenaries’ healers, now rested with their rescuers, and those who had not greatly suffered for their ordeal celebrated with them. Bands that had been wary and distrustful of one another had worked together and come to respect each other, and now, though each band had its district, the mercenaries all roamed freely between those districts, whether as residents or welcome guests.

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Tension spread through the camp in the returning scout’s wake. She’d passed the challenges, and the guards at the edge of camp knew the cat and her mission; none sought to impede her. One of the skirmishers brought her a waterskin, which she drank from as she hustled; other than that, everybody stayed out of her way.

She reached the command tent without a word spoken since answering the sentries’ challenges, and the duty guard lifted the flap for her the moment she came into view. So it was that she ducked through and was still panting from her run when she found herself under the scrutiny of four very different people, no two of the same race, never mind the same insignia – the commanders of four different mercenary companies in joint council. Her salute wasn’t entirely regulation-crisp, but nobody in the tent much minded

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