They've All Forgotten You

[Les Misérables]

Closed to Christina Bredith. All bunnying approved.

An hour's travel as the dire wolf runs due north of Sulgoran's Axe, a rounded monstrosity was carved out of the walls of the Gorum Mountains. The labyrinth of tunnels and tainted chambers that made up the maximum security prison were gouged from the living rock and barred with raw damascus gates. In winter months when strong winds lashed the mountains, the halls mingled their moans with the prisoners who were tortured by guards, each other, or their own minds.

The prison had no official name, and no official benefactor, although gold flowed into its vaults from conduits that ran throughout the Northlands. The warden lived in Knife's Edge, and hid his identity behind those conduits, who stayed loyal out of both fear and respect for the warden's wealth. The prison housed only those prisoners whose crimes or secrets deemed them unfit for national jails, yet who had managed to avoid the death penalty. A sub-race of orc-drow hybrids who called themselves the Gorum'Fael served as the prison's guards. They spoke only in the coarse grunts of a little-known orcish dialect, and were forbidden from communicating with the prisoners lest it be using their truncheons. Outcast by the wild of the north and civilisation to the south, they found their calling in that pit of the damned. The Gorum'Fael liked to think the place got its unofficial name specifically from the shape their gnarled and pointed ears; both the prisoners and the public called it Devil's Keep.

In its bowels the prisoners toiled twelve hours a day, mining and refining ore from deep beneath the crust of Althanas. When their bodies could no longer lift a shovel or carry a bucket they were tossed into cramped chambers, locked in with meager rations and the imprinted stench of former occupants.

Dangling into Berevar, the largest chambers of the prison were blocked from freedom by a thick glacier which hugged the cliff face. Rumors of escaped convicts who managed to squeeze through crevices in the ice often circulated, but the deadly tundra at the other end of such tunnels intimidated most prisoners more than the prison.

The prisoners were a mixture of drow and dwarves, men and orcs, and a small population of demons. What few elves got sent there seldom lasted long. They were worn down by overwork and undernourishment, beaten down by the clubs and heavy leather boots of the Gorum'Fael. But in the eyes of many the spark of rebellion still burned. And in the well-oiled mind of one century old drow, a plan of escape and revenge had morphed and molded to perfection over thirty long years.

[Christina Bredith]

Salvar was no place for a woman like Christina Bredith.

As she traversed the snowy wastes in search of the sleepy hamlet of Keepswatch, supposedly the northernmost town in all of Salvar, she often forgot why she had come here, and when she could remember, wondered whether it was worth it. It was an unfortunate and necessary evil: the Corone Empire had long fingers and right now her priority was shaking off its tireless grasp. The Scarlet Brigade itself was after her, she had discovered, and though Salvar was no friend of Corone’s—Empire or Republic—she could not take any chances where those red spectres were involved. Borders and allegiances meant nothing to them.

The plan was simple enough: in Knife’s Edge, the first place any sensible bounty hunter or spy would go for information, she had quietly spread rumours of her own demise after allying with a minor noble somewhere in the south of the country along the Testhan River, whose estates were in a state of chaos as a result of unrest among the peasants and whose soldiers were frequently assaulted and killed with increasing efficiency. It wasn’t the most bulletproof of ploys—there would, of course, be no body to find, and questioning of the actual peasants would yield little—but she had high hopes for its effectiveness because the truth would be so hard to verify when the nobility and their hired swords died every day and received little more than a river burial, piles of their corpses washing swiftly into the Beris Sea. It was a dark time for Salvar, but darkness has always been a friend to those who need to become invisible.

Christina herself made for the furthest point she could find from those river estates, and that point was Keepswatch. Even wrapped in a cloak of thick brown wool trimmed with ermine fur, the bitter cold this far north—and in the dead of winter, besides—was starting to bite at her extremities. Settlements were much farther between this far north than they were in the midlands. If she didn’t find Keepswatch soon, she would have to set up camp and hope for the best. She had a tent and supplies in her pack, but setting up a fire amidst these howling winds and torrents of snow would be impossible. Still, it was less foolish than trying to travel the wastes at night.

It so happened that as the sun was setting beyond the jagged peaks of the highlands to the west, the lights of a village began sparkling to life somewhere to Christina’s right. Not quite east, she judged, but certainly not north, either, which was where she had been heading. Another hour of daylight and she would have passed the village right by! She should have known better than to trust a “cartographer” dressed in a wolfhide loincloth and little else, however much he claimed to have “first-hand knowledge” of the terrain.

But less than an hour later, Christina was past the city limits of sleepy Keepswatch, which was actually not so sleepy after all once you came out of the cold. The only inn in town was called the Last Stop, a two-storied structure of thick brick partly buried underground to conserve heat, and it was bustling with such life that she wondered how they found the energy for it out here on the edge of nowhere. A large, quaintly-decorated fireplace roared against the far wall, surrounded by a bard and his audience; its mantelpiece bore several pairs of reindeer antlers and the mounted head of a particularly unfriendly-looking dire wolf. Music filled the impressive building from wall to wall, and people diced and played cards at every table that wasn’t being danced on.

“Another round, Lady Rosalyn?” one of her dice mates called out across the table some uncounted hours later, for that was what she was going by in these parts. The alias was probably unnecessary—her identity could not possibly be known this far north, and rumours of her passing would take months to reach Knife’s Edge through this bitter winter even if she did anything noteworthy—but there was no point in being careless.

“Of dice, Bernhard,” she called back, eyeing the piles of gold on the table in front of each player, “or drinks?” Well, she had just about broken even so far this evening, about as much as could be hoped for from a game of dice. Nobody ever really won or lost at dice if you played long enough. “Either way, the answer’s no. I’ve had my fill of the first and it’s your turn for the second!”

The middle-aged man grumbled good-naturedly and called out orders to a serving girl passing by, but Christina’s attention was being stolen by a man stumbling into the Last Stop as if he had just been running for his life. Someone near the door blurted something in Salvic with what sounded to be incredulity; all she caught was the man’s name, Algoth. Keepswatch was a small town, and everyone knew everyone, a fact that would take some getting used to. In Radasanth, someone stumbling into an inn like this wouldn’t even attract a mouse’s share of attention.

She did not quite understand Algoth’s response, but it had something to do with devils being unhappy, and prisoners. Quite aside from her limited understanding of the local language, the man was desperate for breath. A strapping man like that must have run a long distance to be so winded. He had very fine arms...

“What about the prisoners, Algoth?” someone at her table asked in a slow, sharp tone, speaking Tradespeak either for her benefit or without realizing. He was not the only one in the room to have half-risen from his chair. The air had suddenly become tense, until Christina thought she would have trouble breathing it in a moment. Maybe it was thicker after all: she had been gathering her winnings when this Algoth burst in, and she had frozen in place at about the same time silence had gripped the room.

“They’re escaping!” Algoth let loose at last, gulping down the bitter-cold air he had admitted into the room. That was some Salvic she understood quite plainly. “The prisoners are escaping!”

[Les Misérables]

Sulphur and rotting life hung on the dank air in the cells of Devil's Keep. Thick as puss on a rotting corpse it oozed down fractured halls and seeped through barred doors, into Phyr's gut through his nose. The one-armed drow sat cross legged facing the vertical slats between him and the corridor. The first barrier to freedom. His gnarled ears rustled matted grey hair as two pairs of footfalls at the end of the hall rang over the muted moaning which haunted the prison. The shuffling trudge of the Gorum'Fael guard and the rusty clatter of leg irons on his orcish prisoner grew louder. Phyr inhaled, filling his shrunken lungs with as much of the stench as they could stand.

Before long this toxic stench will fade from even my faintest memories.

As soon as the sentry's whiskered snout and the inmate's yellowed tusks came into sight through the damascus bars, Phyr initiated a plan that had danced in the recesses of his compartmentalised mind for nearly twenty years. He nurtured it with constant improvements, always optimising its capacity for success. Like it was one of the devices he'd helped create as an engineer in Alerar, or the children he'd raised so distantly during his time in the military. It expanded until it filled his every waking thought, and visited his sparse dreams. Finally all possible preparation was completed, a flawlessly designed clock which he wound and triggered.

"Hoi there patch-face, didn't your mother ever teach yeh' to clip the fuzz off yer' face?" Phyr called out crassly in the bastardised dialect of the Gorum'Fael. Even with a history in languages, it had taken him years of careful study to pick up snippets of the little-known tongue. The guard turned partially towards him, one hand still on the shackles that bound his orcish prisoner's thick wrists behind its back. The other scarred paw pointed a thick truncheon directly at Phyr's narrow chest.

"What did'jer say?" the twisted creature growled. Any anger it might have felt was clearly surpassed by its confusion at how one of the inmates could possibly be communicating, and having the gall to insult the much mightier guard.

Phyr's sigh was barely audible over the rustle of rags as he stood up. He empathised with the Gorum'Fael more than most of the prisoners. Like him they were not actually criminals, but imprisoned by circumstances far outside their control. The countless hardships they had visited upon him took away any measure of regret he felt, but even so the impoliteness of his next few sentences curdled his stomach as much as the prison's smell.

"Your mother?" he said, etching the crude words with as much loathing as he could muster. "Classy lady. I don't know how you ended up being born though, my son, because I always took her from behind."

At first the guard's eyes seemed to grow three sizes as his tiny brain digest what was possibly the most complex sentence it ever heard. Then rage rolled through the entire girth of its muscular structure as it jammed its face up close to the bars. Howls of pain to come tore from its mouth as it found the key to Phyr's lock on a heavy ring and inserted it in the door.

The sound of tenderised meat echoed down the corridor as the Gorum'Fael's facial bones crumpled against sturdy damascus bars. The shackled prisoner had bulled forwards, driving hundreds of pounds of weight into the distracted mutant's back. Phyr watched the dim light go out in its eyes then scrambled forwards, hissing commands in the most revered orcish dialect he knew. The nordic creature hastened to comply, tossing the unconscious guard away and scraping the cell door open.

Phyr wanted to fall on his knees and weep, but the plan had only sparked. It still needed his constant care, his breath, and lots of fuel. He took the key ring and raced the length of the halls, unlocking doors left and right. The orc in irons stood dumbly, waiting. It had taken years of assuaging fears and de-escalating feuds to get a large enough portion of the inmates working together. He hoped the other races could be trusted.

A dozen or so sleek drow in rags similar to his exited their cells and moved like one body to the downed guard where they crouched, taking everything of value and distributing it to the most capable hands. They were Phyr's cadre within the jail, his most trusted and highly trained companions. Completing the task instantaneously, they swallowed the orc into their midst and hurried him around the corner. Only one purple-skinned elf moved to Phyr, single eye shining with adulation.

"It is begun Sa'resh. With your leadership we cannot fail. Take this and be safe until we meet again." He handed Phyr the Gorum'Fael's sidearm then sprinted after his comrades.

Phyr cradled the ugly gun as lovingly as his wife's hand the last time he saw her. It was a brutish old model which had been out-of-date even thirty years prior when he was a gunsmith in the Aleraran military. Dual-barreled, wheel locked, and ordinarily loaded with buck-and ball, it had replaced the original Aleraran blunderbuss as a skirmishing weapon. And had subsequently been replaced by a number of much better firearms.

Useful for stopping a prisoner on the run. Phyr admitted grimly as he finished checking its barrels and mechanisms and stuffed the brute beneath his rags. Or a guard, if need be.

A one-armed ghost of a shadow, he crept through lamenting corridors towards the rear cliffs of Devil's Keep.

[Christina Bredith]

Within minutes of Algoth’s sudden revelation, alarms resounded from the town’s tall belltowers, and then it wasn’t just the inn that was in frenzy. Through the window, Christina could see that the town had become like a kicked anthill, people scurrying and shouting orders in every which direction. She gulped down the last of her ale—a surprisingly strong, bitter drink, not watered down like the ale in most inns; she suspected it was because liquid water was probably more difficult to get than the ale was in this kind of climate—scooped her winnings into her coin purse, and made for the door.

“Bernhard!” she called, trying to catch the man’s attention before he stepped out. It was difficult; the air was filled with so many sounds that she could barely hear herself. “Bernhard!” Finally he paused and turned, a hurried expression on his face. Not a man who wanted to be kept from his duties right now. Whatever those were. “What the hell is going on?”

He shook his head hastily. “Nothin’ fer a foine lady loike you to bother yerself about, Lady Rosalyn,” he responded gruffly. “This is our business. Ye’d best get upstairs an’ lock yer door toight.”

Christina pursed her lips at the dismissal, which he had doubtless not intended to be as offensive as it had sounded. It was only implied that this was “men’s business,” even if the implication was almost as loud as those alarm bells. But then, the men had not yet seen Rosebite, wrapped tightly in burlap as it had been to protect it from the cold and snow. “Yes,” she responded in exasperation, “but what is your business?”

Bernhard looked greatly as though he would much rather be outside scurrying about with the rest of them. Her keeping him here was like bottling an explosion: she could see him getting ready to burst. Still, it was obvious that she had stepped into the middle of something serious, and that was no time to continue on blindly. “Where do ye think this toown got its name, milady?” he responded at last, held by her suddenly too-firm stare. “We watch Devil’s Keep to make sure things loike this don’ happen.”

“And what the hell is Devil’s Kee—Bernhard!” But it was too late. He had been pulled away by another gruff-looking man—they all were, in this part of the country, bearded and rustic to the last—shouting something furiously in rapid-fire Salvic. Christina let out a hiss of frustration and descended on the traveling sack in which she had been carrying her supplies, including Rosebite. She pulled the sword from its wrappings and fastened its belt around her waist before enveloping herself in the thick woollen cloak and stepping out into the night with the satchel in tow.

The cold air hit her like a hammer, but the snowfall was blessedly light so that she could at least see what was going on around her. That sleepiness had all been just a show. People were now gathering into groups of four or five men each, and she saw that each one had a sword, cudgel, bow, or axe in hand. There was something almost military in their organization, and the vast majority of them were rushing through the snow to the north, where shouts could already be heard—and not all of them human.

It was clear that something dangerous was happening, but Christina wasn’t about to face it without knowing what. Bernhard was nowhere to be found, and neither were any of her dice-mates, or Algoth for that matter. It was just a sea of strangers, like golems seemingly sprouted up out of the snow itself in the town’s defense. Maybe I’ll head south, she thought, judging the sky. It was late and the night would be long yet, but she had passed a pleasant-looking copse of trees an hour or two before arriving in town which should shield her from the worst of the snow and wind. I need to lay low right now, not get dragged into some kind of war.

But cutting straight through the town wouldn’t do. Barricades had been set up blocking the single main street that ran through, with men driving javelins into the ground, their spears pointing up and out at an angle. A spear-barricade! In a sleepy little hamlet like this! Whatever was happening at this “Devil’s Keep,” it was clear that they were trying to keep someone or something from passing through the town on their way south. The main street would certainly be the quickest way to do it, tamped down by constant use as it was. This weather would slow down any sort of travel in the wastes; she knew that all too well first-hand.

That would be problematic for her, too. She had learned that this little trade road, if it could be properly called that, extended quite a ways south and was at least decently well-maintained when the snows weren’t too bad; she had simply missed it entirely on her trip here, which did not surprise her in the least. It would have been the quickest way south to safety, but that was out of the question now. Well, there was nothing else for it: she would cut through the alleyways of Keepswatch and try to find her way out to the city limits from there.

The alleys, as it happened, ran purely from east to west, ribbing off from the main street and not diverting one whisker. It was not something she would have noticed before now, but it seemed like the village was designed such that you had to pass along the main street if you wanted to pass through from the north or the south. It was either that or make the long trek around Keepswatch, which would cost a traveler no small amount of time even in decent weather. Some militia groups were pounding through the snow along these alleys too, presumably to stop anyone trying to do exactly that, but hopefully they wouldn’t think of stopping her.

She headed west, and after some time—less than an hour, she hoped, but it was difficult to keep track in the chaos—she emerged just outside the city limits. There were screams and howls to the north, close enough that she could see a struggle even through the darkness. The burly men of Keepswatch were fighting a group of raggedly-dressed men who blended in with the darkness itself. Drow, Christina figured. Well, these must be the “prisoners” Algoth mentioned earlier. The barricade made more sense now, as did the layout of the town. Poorly dressed as they would usually be, prisoners—wherever it was they were escaping from—would need to move quickly in order to avoid freezing to death in the northlands. These ones seemed to have stolen at least some meagre protection from the elements, so their escape must have been well-planned.

The two men fighting them succumbed quickly against the three escapees, long before Christina could even think to help them. Even if she had wanted to avoid the confrontation, she knew it would have been folly: Drow could see in the dark as easily as if the sun were at high noon, and even now she could feel their eyes on her.

“Look at this,” one of them muttered in his own language, a hissing, guttural thing that he likely thought Christina could not understand. These were not particularly eloquent Drow, and her time with Izzy had taught her at least this much of their language. “Freedom and a plaything all in one night. Sa’resh really did know what he was about!” The other two broke into laughter at this, and all three advanced casually toward her.

Instead of running as they no doubt expected, Christina turned to face them, and made sure to smile for their benefit. “A plaything, am I?” she responded coyly in Tradespeak. Her understanding gave them pause just briefly enough for Christina to throw back her cloak and draw Rosebite, whose runic gems were even now pulsing in their turn with faint multicoloured light. “Well, I am in the mood for a little fun.”

The Dark Elves bellowed a wordless howl and threw themselves to their deaths.

[Les Misérables]

The sounds of skirmishing filled the vaulted hallways and winding staircases of Devil's Keep. Gunshots echoed along the harsh rock interior, amplified to the sound of cannonfire. Roars of anger and agony clashed with fevered warcries. The prisoners fought in small groups, using captured weaponry or chunks of rubble and rusted metal. Their frenzied urgency and soul-searing hatred matched their superior numbers as they pushed the Gorum'Fael back towards the prison's only exit. At the front of the mountain, the half-orcs could hold their own indefinitely, until sufficient resources arrived to suppress the prisoners. But Phyr's plan did not target the front of the Keep.

He moved slowly, ducking into empty cells to avoid the swarming battles and lying amongst the corpses to hide from roving squads of Gorum'Fael. In Phyr's mind his first few years in that hell pit had replaced the remainder of his military training as an officer, and his subsequent survival was more impressive than anything he could have done as a captain in the field. He had earned his stripes in that putrid air, and he knew the front lines were no place for a general. He had put in his time, in Ettermire against the Scarlet Brigade and later in the riots that scarred those rock walls until one claimed his arm. He took that lesson as a torch and used it to weld himself an armor of patience that could not be penetrated. It took nearly an hour, but Phyr reached the storage rooms that bordered on the glacier just as his cadre breached its protective iron bars.

They had assembled a piece of Aleraran equipment from the Keep's basement forges. Called a compression torch, it used large titanium canisters of natural gas to maintain a triangular blue flame.

The two orcs who stood guard wielded a cell door each ignored Phyr as he limped past. His cadre paused momentarily at his arrival, and then wordlessly went back to work, intent on the task. The canister emitted a soft whine as invisible gas spewed in a short stream from its spout. One of the drow flicked the flintlock beneath and with an infant's cough, a tiny blue triangle of freedom sprang into existence. They worked in teams of two, spelling each other so they could maneuver the awkward device as quickly as possible. Phyr waited stoically until they had melted a deep channel into the living glacier, then took out his wheel lock pistol and gestured to two of the drow.

"Take the orcs and bring the rest of the supplies," he said in their native tongue, "be quick, and tell any you see to regroup here. We'll need a force to break through their rear guard." Good soldiers, the drow collected their orcish allies and ran down the hall, footsteps fading rapidly.

Over the next twenty minutes the fissure in the glacier deepened and sloped downwards. Prisoners bearing weapons and wounds amassed in small cliques in the storage room and the halls outside, some chatting, others making up packs of edible supplies from the shelves. Phyr's fingers beat a light tattoo on the butt of his pistol until the foursome he had sent returned, the orcs carrying a heavy titanium chest between them.

Abandoning his thoughts on how to optimise the compression torch's fuel output, the leader of escaping convicts crossed to his lieutenants. They talked over one another in hushed tones. The tide of the rebellion had changed; reinforcements had arrived from the nearby village of Keepswatch to assist with containment. Phyr stowed his weapon and held up a gnarled palm to stop them.

"Run to the front lines and bring back all those who will come. I think some will want to stay... this battle is more important to them than freedom. But all those who wish to spawn new life from our uprising can escape with us."

They disappeared like wraiths in the night as Phyr turned to inspect the melted tunnel in the glacier, which was now longer than two elves and filling rapidly with water. Under his direction the others removed the compression torch from the tunnel and slid sacks of rice to the end to absorb and sit in the water. A thin smile creased the ancient drow's face as he lifted the lid of the iron chest and the familiar smell of black gunpowder leaked to his nose.

"Pack the powder in with a bit of that sack and face the opening away from us at the bottom of the tunnel. Then run a fuse to the corridor, pack as many rocks as you can find on top of that box, and pray to your Thaynes we don't bring the whole mountain down."

[Christina Bredith]

Red stained the crisp white snow, blood streaking out around Christina like a gruesome flower. The two Drow that had reached her first fell to the ground, bodies shredded, and glittering shards floated softly through the air to reform into Christina’s blade, now stained with Drow blood. They moved so lazily, like cherry blossoms floating on a spring breeze, that it was hard to believe they had just moments before been such efficient instruments of destruction.

The remaining Dark Elf had been fortunate enough to stop short of the carnage, and was now scrambling away on all fours, hands and feet struggling to find purchase in the thick snow. Christina flicked her blade to remove the worst of the blood and advanced slowly on him. She looked like death itself; gone were her pretty smile and friendly eyes, both replaced with an emotionless scowl. “Tell me,” she began, pointing Rosebite at the fleeing prisoner, “what’s going on here.”

The elf stammered for several seconds before finding the words to answer her. He found them in Tradespeak, which she found amusing, as if it were some desperate appeal for her to spare his life. She had no intention of killing him unless he gave her reason to, of course, but if his not knowing that would help this proceed more smoothly, she wasn’t going to break his ignorance.

“We... we break free!” the Drow said in his broken attempt at the so-called common tongue. “Kill guards... run, freedom!”

Well, it was passable enough to understand what he was getting at. “How many? Are all the prisoners escaping?” She didn’t know exactly how many that would mean, but any number made for a sobering thought. “Will more prisoners be coming this way?”

The Dark Elf seemed to struggle to understand her, but she didn’t think she could phrase it any more clearly in his own language; she understood it better than she spoke it, which was not saying much. Eventually, though, his eyes stopped searching the air and he shook his head. “Yes, all! But, only little number escape from front. Too many devils.”

“Then what about the rest of them?” she demanded, taking another step forward.

“Don’t know!” he cried instantly, tears beginning to stream. “Find another way. Sa’resh have plan? Arrim not know!” He devolved quickly into bawling then, and though Christina wanted to ask who Sa’resh was, she doubted she’d get anything more coherent out of him. His Tradespeak was broken enough without having to sift through gibbering tears.

“Snare, Rosebite.” A green gem flickered to life along the flat of Rosebite’s blade and, inexplicably, lush green vines sprouted from the snow around the prisoner, binding him tightly to the ground. He hardly seemed to notice through his tears. That would hold him at least until someone from Keepswatch could look after him properly, something Christina had no intention of doing.

A four-man cell of villagers came running out of the village, two of them moving with surprise to the surviving prisoner, and the other two descending on Christina. They picked their way carefully around the bodies, apparently trying very hard not to look at them. “What happened here?” one of them asked gruffly. Neither looked familiar to Christina. “We’re supposed to recapture them, not kill them!”

Christina scoffed and gave them the most incredulous look she could muster. “You can do whatever you damn well please. I prefer not to let myself be outnumbered, raped and killed if I can avoid it, thank you.”

“Leave off, Edvard,” the other man put in. “The penalty for trying to escape from Devil’s Keep is the loss of a leg; I can only imagine the penalty for actually escaping would be death anyway. Not that anyone’s ever managed it before. Not and been foolish enough to get caught.”

“Well, I’d rather leave that to the devils, Ivar, and let them leave us be, too.”

They bantered back and forth for a short while and communicated with the other two men who were picking up the neatly-packaged Arrim before Christina realized she would not exactly have a polite exit from the conversation. She thus interjected with, “Yes, well, I’ll be on my way then.”

“Not so fast,” Edvard responded instantly. “Nobody’s going anywhere tonight, not until all these are rounded up. You’d be mad to try wandering the wastes on a good day, never mind with dangerous convicts on the loose. They’d slit your throat sooner for the clothes on your back than the gold in your purse in this climate, milady. Anyway, Captain Bernhard has been asking after you to make sure you’re all right. Though I see his worry was... unnecessary.”

Christina sighed and rolled her eyes. The man did have a point, though: while she was sure she could handle any of the convicts that she happened across, doing so alone in the dusk-blinded wilderness was not the best way to go about it, especially if they were travelling in groups and she by herself. Plus, she would need to sleep sooner or later, and doing that seemed especially foolish given the circumstances.

“Fine,” she relented. “I’ll head back into town.” Sheathing Rosebite, Christina moved back down the alley through which she had exited Keepswatch, moving briskly toward the main avenue where men were setting up even more barricades. A command post of some kind was now set up a short way down the street from the inn, men stopping in only briefly on their way north, which was longer than they stopped anywhere else. “Captain” Bernhard was busy giving orders, but not enough to miss Christina as she attempted to sneak into the Last Stop.

“Lady Rosalyn!” he called, jogging over to her. Where had that pudgy little mouse-haired man gotten that suit of chainmail and broad sword? This was as peculiar a town as she had ever seen! “Me men said they saw ye headin’ out o’ the town! It’s much too dangerous to be out alone right now. I’m afraid I can’ spare any men to see ye down to Fort Frosthold, but perhaps in the morning—”

“Don’t worry about me, captain,” she responded with a well-meant smirk. “I can look after myself.”

Just then, Edvard and Ivan’s two companions caught up with the prisoner in tow, vines still draped over his sobbing form. “Updated numbers, captain,” Edvard said with a salute. “Two prisoners dead, one captured.”

Bernhard hissed at that, shaking his head. “Dead? Tch... well, I suppose what’s done do be done. Still, ye know that our orders were—”

“That was my fault, Bernhard,” Christina interjected. She could have been talking about painting her nails. The captain whipped around to look at her in sudden shock, but she didn’t bother to elaborate. “Since I’m apparently not going anywhere tonight, maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me what exactly is going on here. What is this Devil’s Keep everyone’s in such an uproar about?”

It took a moment before the man could think clearly enough to respond. He had been staring at her as if seeing her for the first time. “Ah, right. Well, it’s a prison. Maximum security.” His voice faltered understandably at that one. This was not exactly a mark in favour of the prison’s reputation. “It’s fer prisoners who’ve committed serious crimes but, fer one reason or another, ain’t sentenced ta death. They get sent here, and then they’re the devils’ responsibility.”

The “devils,” then, must have been the keepers, not the kept, but that was little more than a point of mild trivia for Christina right now. “So you’re saying these are all dangerous men.”

“Oh, very much, milady. I don’ mean to frighten ye—uh, er, beggin’ yer pardon.” There was that look again, as if he’d never seen thorns on a rose before, but he cleared his throat and pressed on. “Thieves, murderers, rapists... the devils look after the worst of ‘em, and more besides.”

“And now they’re loose,” Christina finished, prompting nods from each of the men gathered nearby. “Surely you have some kind of plan? You organized this quickly enough.” She swept a hand in general across the militarized town.

“‘Course, milady. This whole town is designed to slow anyone down what wants to get south from the keep. You either ‘ave to go straight through, which is impossible when we don’ want ye to, or around, which takes a deadly-long time in this snow.”

“What if they try to bypass the town entirely?” It seemed an obvious enough plan: if one were to stay out of sight of the town itself, one might escape the attention of whatever patrols were being sent out to guard the border.

“We send patrols out to cover the wastes, o’ course, with dire wolves to track their scents. What we don’ catch, Salvar itself takes to their graves.”

Christina nodded, remembering all of her father’s tactics lessons (which had not been meant for her, but on which she had listened in anyway). It seemed as solid as could be managed given the amount of ground such a small population had to cover surrounding the town, but such a wide net would still leave holes easy enough for small groups to slip through, especially at night. The best way to contain this breakout was to stem the flow of escapees straight from the source. “What about the keep itself?” she asked.

“The devils hold it. The front face o’ Devil’s Keep is heavily fortified; they can hold it against large numbers of prisoners almost indefinitely, and it's the only way in or out. Only the odd straggler or two will manage to get past.”

“One straggler too many if you ask me,” she said. “Are there reinforcements?”

“All the time. We’ve sent several dozen parties north to reinforce the devils and tighten the net on any escapees. With a little luck, we’ll be able to break through and start rounding them up inside the prison itself. Then we’ll cork up the bottle, as it were.”

Christina nodded. “Then I think I’ll go join them.”

Bernhard sputtered at that. “You, Lady Rosalyn? Beggin’ yer pardon, but I don’ think—”

“Captain!” someone shouted, rushing down the street from the north. He waved his hand to get Bernhard’s attention and spoke quickly in Salvic. Christina thought she heard the word for “retreat,” which was either a bad thing, or just a perplexing one. Bernhard answered which by looking perplexed himself.

“Apparently the prisoners are starting to retreat,” he explained for her benefit. “We... have no idea why, to be honest.” She couldn’t blame him for that. It didn’t make any sense. Where would they retreat to? The only place would be the prison, and surely they couldn’t have completely taken it in such a short time.

“Ever heard of someone named Sa'resh? Neither have I, but I have a feeling he may be able to answer that question. Yes, captain, I think I will join them,” she said in response to his earlier question, already making her way north. “After all, this just got interesting.”

[Les Misérables]

Freedom.

The frigid air tasted like a platter of rich food served to a starving drow. The wind that lashed his body with such force he nearly fell was reminiscent of adulation from his brothers after a successful mission.

He was no longer the unwanted remainder of a prisoner, wasting away and plotting impotent revenge. A single ice-shattering explosion had transformed him into Phyr Sa'resh, General of an independent army of escaped convicts. And they trusted him with their very lives.

The gargantuan glacier that hugged the wall of the Keep gaped at the dreary sky in astonishment, a section of it blown open as if a giant had fired a massive musket through it. Escapees still poured out of the opening like waves of sewage at the base of a city. Phyr limped back and forth from one group to the next, checking their armaments and adjusting their positioning. Frostbite gnashed at his withered feet through thin rawhide boots, threatening to freeze his flesh like the thin layer of snow he trod upon. Phyr had a special place in his mind for all thoughts that did not relate to the overall success of his plan; a tiny darkened compartment where they would not bother him, even if his legs broke off at the knees.

A haunting howl rounded the curvature of the mountain prison, rolling and growing as several similar sounds supported it.

"Dire wolves!" A Salvic human cried, causing a stir amongst the troops. He skipped to Phyr's side, shivering in his leader's presence as much as the cold. "Sa'resh, the Gorum'Fael keep dozens of them stabled as mounts. They will be here in seconds!" Phyr nodded and forced himself to relinquish his death grip on the firearm beneath his rags. Revealing his single hand, he clapped it heartily onto the Salvic man's shoulder and spoke to him in hushed tones. Nervous but responsive, the human repeated Phyr's orders in a loud tenor that cut the wind and reached every ear.

"Form two double columns facing north and south at the base of the mountain! Long guns standing in back column, sidearms crouched in front! Polearms form groups of six on high ground, be ready to charge on my command! Everyone else, guard the flanks and prepare to kill!"

The rag-tag company of perhaps sixty beings snapped to with surprising alacrity, those who understood Tradespeak assisting those who did not. Although it seemed many of the former prisoners had chosen to die in the Keep or flee as soon as they got free, Phyr felt confident with his army. The Gorum'Fael were a host of guards, not a militia. So numbers and tactics should be on our side.

As a fresh wave of howling encircled the mountain, the coarse warcries of the Gorum'Fael joined the voices of their mounts, and then the devils poured around either side of the mountain in a crescent pincer. Perhaps fifty of them, perhaps less. They carried long lances or short muskets or massive crossbows and fired intermittently as they rode. Phyr threw back his head and cackled to the sky as the enemy wasted their ammunition, for every single shot went high or wide. He sobered rapidly when some of his contingent returned fire with equal inaccuracy. Cursing in Aleraran, Phyr belted the nearest perpetrator on the back of the head then grabbed the Salvarian by the collar and shouted another string of orders to be repeated in his ear.

"Hold your fire you... ah, hold until my command!" The human censored Phyr's profanity but communicated the important parts. The volume of the wolves' howls increased until they were within forty yards of Phyr's crew. At that point he could spot individual flecks of saliva flying from fanged muzzles. He clapped his surrogate set of lungs on the back.

"Musketeers fire!"

The sequence of explosions sounded like a Sky-Lights spectacle. Several orcs fell from each side of the pincer, while others ignored their wounds and pushed their mounts for greater speed. A half dozen of the musketeers went down as well; the orcs were close enough for their weapons to be minutely effective, even while riding. Phyr signaled his unofficial lieutenant once more.

"Small arms, fire!"

The sound of the pistols going off was more like the sizzling pop of fine meat on the grill. But lead ball-shot swarmed through the air like angry hornets, causing devastation in the ranks of the Gorum'Fael to the extent that their charge actually halted fifteen yards away from the columns.

Phyr did not have to give the last order. His skirmishers, primed and ready, hit the Gorum'Fael from high ground like an avalanche of pikes and sharpened poles. The battle ended faster than he could have possibly imagined. A cowed whimpering replaced the howls of the wolves in the space of a second.

The Salvarian, it seemed, had also learned to act on his own.

"Grab everything you can and let's make our way south! We'll take the town of Keepswatch and make it our own!" A chorus of cheers greeted the tenor's suggestion. Phyr slunk away from the center of attention, choosing instead to inspect the saddles of the dire wolves that hadn't been killed in the crossfire.

The army was no more; a rioting mob had replaced his carefully crafted militia. Without the looming threat of the Gorum'Fael or continued imprisonment, they had no reason to listen to him. And that suited Phyr just fine. Better than just fine. I couldn't have made a more perfect plan.

As the mob gathered weapons and seethed towards the south to make war on Keepswatch, Phyr shrouded himself in a heavy cloak and climbed into the saddle atop the largest dire wolf. When he rested his face and torso in the beast's shaggy fur, a casual observer might miss him entirely, for the cloak camouflaged well against the wolf and the dark grey backdrop of the wastes.

With one last glance at the criminals who had been the tools of his escape, Phyr turned his steed towards the north-east and coaxed it into a a smooth, prowling run.

[Christina Bredith]

There wasn’t a great distance between Keepswatch and Sulgoran’s Axe, where Devil’s Keep was located. In fact, those massive mountains already seemed to loom over the town even from within. The going was slow due to the weather, though, and the citizens moved with an almost military precision that served intimidation more than speed. They moved in groups of four or five and these arranged themselves like a fan as they swept north, an arrangement that would serve well to catch any prisoners trying to make their way south from Devil’s Keep.

Christina was a member of one of those groups, led by a walking tree of aman named Esben, and she encountered far fewer of those escaped prisoners than she had expected. Then again, perhaps that was what she should have expected: by now even the prisoners would be realizing that simply forging south was a poor idea. Those few that had tried had been captured or killed. Maybe that explained why the rest had retreated. Maybe.

She estimated that the trek to Sulgoran’s Axe would take them about an hour from the border of Keepswatch, assuming the size of those mountains wasn’t throwing off her estimate too greatly, but less than a half hour in the company began to hear shouts in the distance, and the clatter of metal on metal. Perhaps she had underestimated the distance after all. No, she assured herself, those mountains are still too far away.

The answer came before she could puzzle it out herself: a small swarm of bedraggled men and women were pouring south like ants, brandishing weapons both makeshift and proper. Obviously they had overpowered their wardens and were now planning to take the fight south en masse, which they figured was the best chance of freedom. Christina couldn’t blame them. Sneaking around Keepswatch would take too long, and with the way the mountains curved around this little basin, there wasn’t a lot of room to avoid mobile sentries anyway. Fighting would be quicker, and adrenaline would keep the prisoners warm besides. If they could well and truly take the town, they’d have a safe-haven full of provisions and warmth before pressing on southward. Of course, if word got to the King’s army in Knife’s Edge, their breakaway would get no further south than Sularik Lake, but they could hardly be blamed for choosing to ignore that.

While Christina would have enjoyed boasting about how she would never allow them to get half so far, there simply wasn’t time: the prisoners fell on them like a tidal wave crashing onto the shore, and Christina’s battlecry was lost between her companions and the howling mountain wind.

She instantly fell on a Drow wielding a spiked club, slipping around his sloppy blow and using the form-obscuring cloak to its best advantage. Rosebite struck out like a viper’s tongue and pierced the Dark Elf through the side, sending him sprawling on the crisp white snow. Not a killing blow, but in this bitter cold, even slight wounds would be crippling in such a state of undress. She spun reflexively, ducking under a jagged blade and taking another Drow’s legs out from under him. A powerful thrust allowed her to push to the side to avoid his falling body, just in time to run a burly human through the stomach. The militia may have had orders to avoid killing, but all bets were off now. This had gone from a simple prison break to an outright bloodbath, and if someone had to die, then they had better be the ones that deserved it.

A heavy club swung from above prompted Christina to unleash Rosebite’s Sonic Sable, throwing the aggressor backwards to bowl through a whole host of combatants, prisoner and militia alike. The counter-force of her attack propelled her back, too, and she found herself soon pressed up against a brick wall. But that was impossible, and indeed it was no wall: arms like tree trunks encircled her throat and she was surprised at how easily she felt about to snap like a twig. “Shatter, Rosebite,” she rasped, thinking quickly, and white cracks glowing with light began to crisscross along her sword’s blade. Instantly it broke into thousands of jagged pieces, swirling about her like a cloud, each a spinning whirligig of death. There was a throaty gurgle of pain behind her; viscous blood trickled down her back and over her shoulders; the arms loosened, and the brick wall fell away. She looked back to see something that still made her blood run irrationally cold:

An orc. A dead orc, but an orc nonetheless.

Orcs had taken everything away from her all those years ago. Her home, her family—everything. In a way they had given her what she had now—her freedom, her strength, even Rosebite—but the price she had paid for it was not one she would have chosen to pay now or ever. Her rage was irrational and she knew it: this orc was not responsible for what had happened in Laricia, nor was most of his species. But the very sight of one still brought feelings bubbling to the surface that she found extremely difficult to control.

The failure to do so threw her into a rage. It was a controlled rage, sharp and precisely-applied, dangerous like an assassin’s dagger is dangerous, deadly like a Ranger’s arrow is deadly. She would not allow orcs to ravage another city like they had ravaged Laricia. Nature showed its fury through the barren snow: glittering red petals of death, swirling through the air and leaving blood in their wake; vines sprouting out of the ground to strangle Dark Elven necks; spires of thorned vines, impaling prisoners with indiscriminate and very bloody abandon. Christina forged her way ever northward, taking more than her share of prisoners to their deaths. There were times when, as the citizens of Keepswatch would later tell in their stories, she seemed to be moving so quickly that a shadow passed behind her, a blur, as if she were really two people. Only briefly. A mirage brought on by the snow and the cold, surely.

As her fatigue grew and her focus waned, her attacks became increasingly poorly-aimed and thereafter most of them crippled rather than killed, but the effect was the same. The Keepswatch militia pressed slowly forward. The wave had broken.

Was it an hour of fighting, or had she been out here for a year? When it seemed the last prisoner had fallen, either to death or exhaustion from his wounds, when it seemed the last sounds of ringing metal had died down, Christina could no longer tell how much time had progressed. She thought she could see the moon sometimes, during brief breaks in the cloud cover, but she hadn’t thought to check its position when the fighting had started. Dawn approached, the sky burning red like a mirror of the bloody wastes below. Exhaustion burned, too, in seemingly every muscle in her body.

“Units one through twenty survey the wounded!” a voice shouted from somewhere far behind. It seemed far behind, anyway, but voices did not travel well compared with the howling wind, so Christina knew it was a message that had been relayed several times by messengers from the back of the militia to its head. She was not one of the aforementioned units. “The rest, make for Devil’s Keep! See what remains of it!”

She placed Rosebite back in its scabbard and pressed forward, ignoring the aches of her muscles and the gnawing of fatigue at her bones. The bitter cold was only a tertiary concern; the adrenaline had taken care of that. She was so tired, but she had to press on. If Devil’s Keep could be retaken, they could take shelter there for a while, and assist the guards in performing a head count. They just had to reach the keep. That was it.

It was truly a horrible structure. The thing was carved out of the dark stone of the surrounding mountains and pressed up against an ancient glacier. Just the look of it was impregnable, but the evidence was all around them that it was not. The “devils”—she assumed that must have been what they were—littered the ground all around. Devils was right: how else could they be described? The hulking physique of orcs, and their tusks, set in faces entirely too humanoid to fit the body. Skin a sickly hue of greenish-black, or blackish-green, made her think of a swamp. And they were all dead. All of these—whatever they were—they were all dead. Maybe the only whatever-they-were that had ever existed. Maybe the last that would ever exist. Suddenly it did not seem so bad that so many of the prisoners were dead; who would look after them now?

The morning sun was finally beginning to creep into the valley. Christina lifted her sword to the heavens. “Nourish, Rosebite!” A lime green runestone on the blade’s face began to glow, and she felt light coursing into her as if it were food, warmth, energy. The fatigue began slowly melting away in a process that would take much of the next hour, but would be a decent substitute for a night’s sleep when there was no time for one.

The worst was over, but there was still much to be done here in the mouth of hell.

[Les Misérables]

Swathed by heavy fabric and curled against the dire wolf's broad back, Phyr felt warm as babe in the womb.

For years he had deprived himself of fantasies about living a normal life again. They seemed futile for so long, and only distracted him from more pressing matters. But as the muscular beast bearing him trotted up a long slight slope, Phyr found his thoughts flying to the future.

Images of Salvar, both recollections of cities he had visited and details from maps memorised long ago, melded and mingled in his reverie. A short trek through Berevar would shake anyone hunting a bounty. For most civilised beings the unmapped tundra of the far Northlands represented horror and death. For Phyr it was a calculated risk greatly reduced by his steed. The wolf would find a path through the mountains, and from there if he steered himself watchfully and followed the waterways, he could reach Knife's Edge in less than a month. Ships sailed from the Knife's port every day, sturdy vessels that would take him anywhere he wished to go. If he took good care of the wolf it would bring a fair price in the city, more than enough to pay his passage. And the railroad through the Ahyark Mountains called to him. It could bear him back to Alerar, the homeland he knew like the lines on his single palm. He knew the name of the drow officer who had betrayed him. There was always a chance, if he was willing to fight...

With a start, Phyr woke up and realised the wolf was not moving. Like a being possessed the drow staggered to his feet, tearing the heavy hood away from his face. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom, and then found the doorway.

He was in a barn. One of the small outbuildings near the Keep's front entrance. Two other dire wolves slept nearby, apparently having followed the same habit as Phyr's mount.

With a low moan the ancient drow stumbled and fell, smashing his skull against a hardwood stick on the floor. Color exploded amidst spinning images in his mind as the full effects of the adrenaline-soaked night and years of malnutrition sapped his strength. Cowering against the saddled wolf, the drow closed his eyes and willed himself to get his bearings.

I am still free. They will not take that away.

The wind howled through the open barn and banged the door against the wall. Phyr gripped a handful of wolf fur and forced himself to stand. Be the automaton they always wanted. Move your feet. Find what's useful. Unconsciously checking and re-checking the double barreled pistol beneath his cloak, the ancient drow stumbled from one wall of the barn to the next. He picked up the stick which had nearly split his scalp, a long straight polished piece of blackwood about the right size, and used it as a cane. His legs both felt full of sand and a knotted cramp was growing at the back of his left calf. Poking about in the shadowy corners he found a heavy iron bayonet that was dull as a midnight horizon but otherwise in good condition. Some orc's idiocy equals my gain, he thought as he wedged the weapon in the padded cuff of one boot.

With the barn's resources exhausted Phyr re-wrapped himself in the heavy cloak and led his steed out into the morning.

Sweat sprung from his pores. Beneath the unfiltered sun snow and ice were already creating tiny streams on the ground, and the dark gray of the cloak caught enough light to turn it into a steam-engine's furnace. Treading carefully so as not to slip, Phyr guided his mount towards Sulgoran's Axe. He felt naked, striding in plain site of the victorious force from Keepswatch. But he was far from undisguised. Swaddled from head to toe in thick clothing, he looked similar to the humans who were collecting dozens of strayed dire wolves. The reigns were up his right sleeve and slip-knotted to the stump of his right arm, giving the appearance of a man with no gloves keeping his hand warm. His one blue hand was similarly disguised, and from the left sleeve protruded the black hardwood stick. Every so often he stopped, cursed under his breath in common and struck the wolf with the stick. Just in case anyone notices we are moving away from the Keep. A bone weary or wounded soldier glancing at the scene might have construed it as a tall thin man trying and failing to drag a stubborn wolf back to the barn.

I once commanded a platoon. Now I arrange theatrics for mud-brained humans.

He kept up a steady charade until he had crossed from the open plain into the snaking mountain pass known as the Axe. There was still a risk of running in to stragglers, but he doubted anyone would question him if he hurried. Grunting as his left leg spasmed, he heaved himself into the saddle and set the wolf to a sprint.

"I'll call you Annelle," he said into the slipstream, not knowing or caring if the wolf was female. Annelle had been his wife's name, and if any memory could get him through what was to come, it was hers. "When we get to this town we'll get us both something to eat, Annelle." In a moment of external awareness he realized he was speaking in Aleraran to a beast brought up and trained by humans. Annelle, forgive me, and guide me. Keep me sane. If my mind goes... give me the grace to end it. Phyr licked his lips. They were dry and tasted of salt, either from perspiration or blood.

"But first my lovely beast... we must find me a proper drink."

[Christina Bredith]

Almost immediately, Christina knew that Devil’s Keep was done for. The innards of the mountain were in even worse shape than its entrance, with clear evidence abounding that the prisoners had gotten their hands on explosives and used them with utter reckless abandon. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the damage was to the cells themselves, a number of which had been blown outward to facilitate escape, and others which seemed to have simply been caught in explosions intended for other purposes (to cause as much damage to the wardens as possible, she supposed).

At any rate, though there were a few usable cells left in the building, it would be many years before Devil’s Keep could be used as a maximum security prison again, at least to its previous capacity. The cleanup alone could take months, and getting the supplies to rebuild this far north would only extend their difficulties. She wasn’t sure how that boded for Keepswatch: could the city now exist in peace without the headman’s axe of safeguarding Devil’s Keep hovering overhead, or would the lack of its founding purpose doom it to obscurity?

Not your concern, she told herself. She didn’t want to be unfeeling toward them, but she had her own problems to deal with before worrying about theirs.

As it happened, there was very little to find in the keep itself. Bodies of both the prisoners and their monstrous wardens, the Gorum’Fael as she had been told they were called, littered the hallways and were even now being carted out into the snow by the men of Keepswatch. The damage was worse the deeper they went: in the bowels of the mountain, where the riot has presumably started, the Gorum’Fael had begun at an advantage and the deaths of the prisoners had been widespread and gruesome. She would have called it a slaughter if she wasn’t so sure it had been necessary.

She made her way through the poorly-lit tunnels to what one of the few surviving Gorum’Fael told her group was the back of the mountain, and there they saw something that made her blood run cold. The rock here bore the scars of a very large explosion, and what had originally been a fairly small, square storage room now had only the vague appearance of a room—boxy on three sides with a huge opening blown into the fourth. It had the look of an escape tunnel, if imprecisely-made, and the warden was apparently explaining to the group (through a translator, of which there were quite a few in the town) that this was the purpose they suspected of it. The ice of the glacier had been melted or chipped away somehow, and the tunnel descended into darkness.

“Gods know how many of them have escaped through here!” she exclaimed in frustration. One of the men translated for the warden—their language did not sound at all right on a human tongue—but the thing made no response. They all knew there was little to be done for catching the prisoners if they had escaped into Berevar. In other words, their entire attempt to contain this break had been a wash.

Back outside, groups of men from Keepswatch were herding the tamed dire wolves into the mostly-undamaged stables where they had been kept. It was a strange sight; by and large, the creatures were larger than their herders, and it was frightening to think of them being used as mounts by the even more frightening Gorum’Fael. Horses would make for poor riding in this terrain, though.

A little further south, a thin man draped in a thick cloak seemed to be having trouble getting his wolf back to the stable. Despite lashing himself to it firmly and making every effort to move it toward the barn, he seemed to be moving more steadily south, presumably because of the animal’s size. Slight as he was, he shouldn’t have been trying to handle such a massive animal. It wouldn’t do for one of them to escape into the populated south unchecked. The beasts here seemed docile enough, but dire wolves were extremely dangerous and if it went hungry, then all bets were off.

Christina drew her cloak tightly around herself and pushed through the snow to go help the man before he lost control of the beast. Before she could take more than a few steps, however, she saw the man climb into the wolf’s saddle and take off into the mountains at a sprint. Christina let out a curse. She should have known he was too scrawny to be Salvic!

“There’s a prisoner escaping into the mountains!” she called, waving to catch the attention of nearby men with one hand and pointing with the other. “If any of you know how to ride these things, you’d better get after him!”

For her part, she had no idea where to begin—she knew it couldn’t be anything like riding a horse—and neither did most of the men from Keepswatch, but a few of them did run back toward the stables. Within minutes, two dire wolves sprinted past her, mounted by two men each. She turned to head back into the keep when a third wolf leapt in front of her, this one being controlled by one of the Gorum’Fael. It grunted something unintelligible at her, but from the way it extended its hand, she supposed it was offering her a ride.

“I usually get to know someone better before going for a ride with them.” The orc/drow hybrid merely stared at her, eyes blank and pale, with no semblance of understanding evident. She drifted off uncomfortably and shook her head. “Oh, right. I forgot. Well, what the hell.”

She had no sooner reached for the devil’s hand than been swung into the saddle with such force as to nearly pull her arm out of its socket. Rubbing her shoulder, she grumbled, “You could learn a thing or two about treating a lady.” The Gorum’Fael responded only by kicking the wolf’s sides and grunting, and it bounded forward so very unlike a horse that Christina had to clutch the rider’s waist to avoid being thrown off.

It was surprising how quickly such a large animal could move: they were into the mountain pass in less time than it had taken the wolves to gather in the first place. The escapee had a head start, but at this pace, he wouldn’t keep it for long. Christina, for her part, was determined to make sure one part of this night went as planned.