Run

oonlight.

Trees.

Boots.

Blood.

The night had narrowed to those few things until the group could no longer remember when they had begun to run.

Only that they had not stopped.

Neil drove his shoulder into a curtain of wet branches and broke through with his shield raised before him. His sword remained bare in his other hand, its edge flashing whenever the moon found it, though there was little room to wield it among the close-grown trees. Brambles tore at his cloak, roots shifted beneath the leaf mold, and the ground rose and fell so sharply that every stride threatened to pitch him forward. Somewhere at his back came the others, close enough to hear but rarely to see: Kenneth crashing through whatever Neil failed to clear, Lindsey's lighter steps slipping between the heavier ones, and farther behind, the violet crystal of Gregory's staff appearing between two trunks only to vanish before Neil could judge the distance.
"Where is Antonio!" Neil shouted.

The wizard yelled back from somewhere in the surrounding darkness, "They got to him, brother! Just keep running!"

Neil slashed through a branch hanging across the trail. “You saw him fall?”

"I saw enough!"

Purple light flared behind them. For an instant the forest existed all at once—black trunks, silver leaves, Gregory stumbling through the middle of it with mud to his knees and one hand white-knuckled around his staff. Then the light contracted again.

"Do not look back!"

Kenneth looked back at once.

The dwarf almost ran headfirst into an oak for his trouble. He ducked at the last moment, struck one shoulder against the trunk anyway, and came stumbling out the other side with several words Neil had never heard combined before. Ordinarily the racket would have sent birds out of the canopy.

None rose here.

Kenneth risked one more glance behind them. The darkness gave him nothing, though something crashed through the undergrowth close enough and sent new strength into his legs.

“I cannot see a damned thing!”

Lindsey vaulted over a fallen tree. "Then grow taller!"

She planted one boot against the slicken bark, sprang over it, and turned in the same motion. Her bow came up without pause and blindly loosed an arrow into the darkness behind - more to break the silence than in hope of striking true. Several loud growls answered from the dark, close and hungry, driving them faster through the trees. Kenneth’s hand tightened around the haft of his axe.
“Well,” Lindsey clucked her tongue. “I hit something."

“What are these things?” Kenneth cried, breath tight but controlled. “They're faster than rust goblins!”

Joshua appeared beside Neil with so little warning that Neil nearly brought his sword across. The ranger was breathing hard, but with an economy Neil envied. His stride shortened where the ground turned bad and lengthened as soon as it cleared. Even now, his attention was not fixed on the path before him. He kept listening to either side.

“They're not trying to catch us, paladin,” he said.

Neil shoved through a stand of saplings. “They have made a convincing attempt.”

“They could have reached Kenneth twice.”

“Everyone can reach Kenneth. He is very near the ground.”

“Keep your laughing, paladin!" Kenneth called from behind them. “I will climb you when this is over and remove your knees!”

Joshua ignored them both. His attention remained fixed upon the trees, not merely ahead but to either side, listening to the pattern beneath the noise. “East, they close the way. South, they give us room. West, they push harder.”

Gregory’s staff flickered through branches behind them. “He is right!”

Lindsey glanced toward Joshua. “They are herding us, ranger.”

“Corralling,” he corrected.

A cry sounded behind them.

The paladin stopped so abruptly that Lindsey nearly collided with him. At first the sound was too distant to be anything but another noise in the forest. Then it came again, and every muscle in him locked before he understood why.

“Neil!”

Antonio.

Gregory shouted for him to move. Neil barely heard him.

“Help me!”

The voice came broken by distance and pain. Antonio. The same impatient rise they had listened to that morning while the artificer complained that damp air ruined fine mechanisms, and once before, when some silly imagined theft of a woman's heart had made Neil his enemy for an week. Or five.

Antonio had been alive that morning.

Neil turned.

Gregory seized the back of his cloak and hauled him forward with surprising force. “That is not Tony!”

“You said you saw him fall!”

“I did!”

“Then how—”

“Neil.”

Something in Gregory's face stopped him. His brother would not say it.

“Are we sure about the artificer?” the Joshua called.

“Last I saw, Antonio was in three pieces,” Kenneth shouted back. “You’re welcome to go back and count them yourself, Ranger!”

The voice came once more, closer now.

“Please, come back...”

Neil stared into the trees. A man had followed him into these woods. A man who had trusted him was somewhere behind them, wounded and afraid, calling his name, and—

Lindsey caught his forearm.

"Tony never said please."

Neil looked at her.

“Not once in all the miserable days I knew him!” Kenneth growled as he ran past.

That small truth broke the hold of the voice. Neil ran.

The voice behind them began to weep.

"My dear friends..."

"Stop stopping!” Gregory shot back.

They pressed on through ground that grew steeper and more tangled, though Joshua altered their course whenever the creatures gathered too heavily around. He never looked behind them. Twice he stopped Neil from taking what appeared to be the clearest path, and twice something large moved within the darkness there only after they had passed it by.

Kenneth eventually broke the silence. “Gods. Whatever they are, they smell worse than the wizard's traveling cloak!”

“My cloak smells of sulfur because you sat on it all morning!”

“A dwarf needs his comforts!”

“Can you two argue more quietly?” Lindsey scolded.

“No!” they answered together.

The word had barely left them when something cracked overhead. Joshua lifted one hand.

“Right.”

All five turned without asking. A tree came down behind them with a force that shook the ground, its trunk smashing across the place Gregory would have reached two breaths later. The wizard stumbled, caught himself against his staff and kept going.

Neil's lungs burned. Blood warmed the inside of his sleeve; he no longer knew whether a branch or claw had opened the skin. His shield arm had begun to tremble, but he kept himself at the front. When the ground dropped, he found the fall first. When branches barred their way, he took them across shield or shoulder.

He had led men out of losing battles before. He knew the moment courage stopped being useful, when refusing to retreat became nothing more noble than choosing which men would die with you. He had given orders that saved twenty and killed three. The three had always been easier to remember.

Six companions had entered beneath the trees. Only five remained running.

Neil forced his legs onward.

Then the tree line broke, the forest ending without warning.

One moment the paladin was fighting through branches and black trunks; the next there was nothing ahead of him. He burst onto wet grass and nearly went to one knee before finding his balance. The others spilled out after him, one by one into the clearing in a staggered rush, boots slipping in mud as the forest spat them out onto open ground.

Rain struck his face.

Ahead, on a low rise, stood a timber building with warm lanternlight in its windows and smoke turning above a stone chimney. A painted sign swung gently over the door, and upon it a white deer stood beneath a crown of antlers.

The Silver Stag.

Neil took another step toward it before he heard what was missing. Behind them, the forest had gone completely silent. No crash. No roar. No final surge. Just… absence.

Lindsey turned halfway, bow already in hand.

“Don’t,” Neil snapped, reaching forward with a whisper. “Do not give it your attention.”

Kenneth, one axe already back in hand, waited for the inevitable ambush. Neil stood beside him, the paladin's hand resting on the hilt of his sword - though he hesitated to draw it, unwilling to give the darkness another sound by which to find them.

“I think," Kenneth whispered. "I think they're gone."

“No...” Gregory leaned heavily upon his staff. Its purple light had diminished to little more than a dull ember, leaving his face pale with fatigue. He closed his eyes and listened—not with his ears alone, but with whatever inward sense allowed him to feel magic where the others felt only dread.

“...They are not.”

Joshua stepped nearer the tree line, though he did not cross back beneath it. Rain ran from the edge of his hood. The ranger stopped before the first roots and listened.

“No footfalls.”

Kenneth swallowed. “Good.”

“No breathing.”

“Better.”

Joshua remained still a moment longer. “No insects.”

The dwarf turned his head toward him. “You possess a rare gift for spoiling things.”

Lindsey lowered her bow by degrees. “The whole forest is… quiet.”

Neil stared into the darkness.

The five stood beneath the rain, staring into the black wall of trees, their heaving breaths mercifully slowing. Throughout their flight there had always been something behind them they could not see: snapping wood, scraping claws, the oppressive weight of unseen bodies driving them onward. Now there was no movement at all.

Rain pattering on leaves and mud.

Neil forced a slow breath into his lungs and stood taller. “Whatever followed us does not wish to enter the clearing.”

Joshua remained facing the tree line.

“Or it has no need to.”

Kenneth gave him a sharp look, but said nothing.

The inn stood before them like an answer offered too easily, but the forest behind them allowed no honest choice. Light glowed beyond the windows. Shadows moved inside. Ordinary people, most likely, eating ordinary meals and believing the worst danger of the evening was the storm.

The paladin disliked it immediately.

Neil turned to the others, and though weariness lay plain upon him, something of command remained in his bearing. “Enough. We cannot remain in the open," he said, wiping blood from his mouth. "Compose yourselves."

Kenneth looked down at himself. “I am covered in blood.”

“And wipe your axes.”

“They are the cleanest part of me.”

Lindsey returned the arrow she had been holding to her quiver and pulled her cloak more tightly around herself. Gregory extinguished the violet light atop his staff, leaving nothing but dark wood and metal where the violet flame had burned. Joshua drew his hood lower.

Neil re-sheathed his half-drawn sword and adjusted the strap of his shield so its white face rested partly beneath his cloak. Paladin shields had never been made for concealment; the lion worked into his was meant to be recognized across a battlefield, and even half-hidden it would tell the right person what kind of man carried it — but perhaps exhaustion and poor light would spare them questions until morning. He pulled one steadying breath before stepping forward.

"Remember," he said. "We go in as simple travelers. Nothing more.”

Lindsey looked over the five of them covered in blood.

Neil sighed. “Unfortunate travelers.”

“That, I can manage.”

They crossed the clearing at a walk. Moving slowly felt unnatural now, and Neil had to resist the urge to look behind. Rain pattered against shield and cloak as they climbed the rise, the lanternlight reaching farther over the wet grass with each step. The others settled unconsciously around him—not the loose scatter of people fleeing for their lives, but the distances they had begun to keep on the road, learned in only two days and already returned to without thought.

Behind them, the forest stood silent. If anything watched from within it, it gave no sign.

Neil did not look back again.

At the door Neil placed one hand against the timber before opening it. Solid wood, iron beneath his palm where the latch passed through. Something made by people, for people.

For one breath, that was enough.

He pushed inside.

Warm air met them, though less warmly than the windows had promised, and the conversation in the common room stopped.

The Silver Stag was neither large nor poor. Smoke had darkened the ceiling beams over many years, and the hearth on the far wall had burned down to a steady bed of coals. A farmer sat with both hands around a bowl. Two men in road-stained boots occupied a table near the stairs. An older woman sat beside the fire with a shawl drawn over her hair. All of them turned toward the newcomers.

Neil could hardly blame them. Kenneth had leaves in his beard, Gregory looked one spell from collapse, blood had dried black across Lindsey's sleeve, and Joshua had entered with one hand close enough to a knife for anyone familiar with violence to notice. Neil himself had given up pretending the white shield could truly be hidden.

The five drew slightly closer without discussing it.

The patrons stared for another heartbeat.

Then they returned to their meals.

Neil remained near the door. No whisper passed between the tables. No chair scraped farther away. The farmer simply lifted his spoon again.

Joshua's eyes traveled once around the room.

“Interesting.”

“We sit, we eat, and we wait," Neil murmured under his breath. "By morning the forest should be clear. We watch over these patrons till then."

The innkeeper stood behind the counter polishing a wooden cup. He was broad through the shoulders, gray beginning at his temples, and looked once at Neil's shield as the paladin approached.

Neil placed several coins on the wood and slid them. “Food, please. And water.”

"Ale here," Kenneth added, dropping a grimy coin onto the pile.

The innkeeper studied them briefly, then gave a short nod, eyes flicking once to the shield upon Neil’s back and the sword at his side. “You’ll have it.”

He returned the cup.

Neil waited, but there was no question about where they had come from, whose blood they wore, or why five armed travelers had arrived after dark from the only stretch of forest for miles. Eventually he stepped away.

Only then did he realize the coins remained on the counter. He reached toward them, uncertain whether he had misunderstood, and the innkeeper covered them with one hand without ever looking away from the cup.

Joshua had already selected a table against the wall. From there he could see the entrance and most of the room without turning his head. Kenneth lowered himself onto a bench with a grunt he disguised poorly as a cough. Gregory set his staff beside the table with unusual care before sitting. Lindsey placed her bow within reach and turned it so the wet string faced the hearth.

Neil sat last.

For a while none of them spoke. Pain returned now that their bodies had no immediate use for fear. Kenneth rolled the shoulder he had struck against the oak. Gregory flexed the fingers of his casting hand beneath the table. Joshua, who had seemed nearly untouched while running, pressed two fingers into the muscle above one knee until a tremor there subsided. Lindsey noticed and looked away before he could see that she had.

Food came: thick stew, coarse bread, boiled roots. Neil barely tasted the first mouthfuls. Hunger made the decision for him.

Around them, the common room gradually resumed its life. Someone complained about a broken axle on the northern road to the Ferguson Pools. A farmer had lost two lambs to sickness and blamed the rain. Near the stairs, one man insisted flour was cheaper in Caerhaven while his companion called him a liar with the amusing exhaustion of someone who had been doing so for years.

Kenneth took a drink, then set his mug down with a deliberate thump in the center of the table.

"Antonio did not go... peacefully."

The words quieted the group.

Neil's spoon came to rest in his bowl. “We can double back in the morning. At least see if—”

“There is nothing left to see,” Gregory said.

He spoke without looking up, and there was enough finality in his voice that Neil allowed the idea to die.

“Believe me,” the wizard added more quietly. “We would only lose time and gain another memory best left unfound.”

Lindsey looked at her bow leaning aside the table. “He told me my quiver had an inefficient center of weight.”

Kenneth leaned back. “He called my axes primitive.”

Gregory lifted his spoon. “They are primitive.”

The dwarf stared at him. “You are choosing a dangerous hour for this conversation.”

Neil remembered Antonio kneeling beside Kenneth's saddlebag that morning with three metal clasps between his teeth, explaining counterweights to a dwarf who had stopped listening almost immediately. He had finished the alteration anyway. The two complained until they broke camp and never removed it.

“He wanted to put a wheel on the pony,” Neil said.

“One wheel,” Gregory corrected.

A little warmth moved through the table. For a moment Antonio was there in the shape of everyone's irritation.

“Artificers,” Joshua scoffed, eating his stew without at anyone. “Always thinking they’re cleverer than the rest of us. Tony was the same. Cocky as a lord, too fat to hide and too slow to flee. Damn fool was his own undoing."

Kenneth raised his eyebrows and drank.

Rainwater still darkened the boards between their table and the door. Neil watched it gather in the grooves.

“At least we lost those things,” the dwarf said.

Neil's gaze remained on the room. “I don't think we lost anything.”

Lindsey lifted her head slightly, her expression drawn. “Whatever they were, if they followed us here, we cannot let them harm these people. Not again.”

“Agreed,” Gregory said quietly. “My conscience has weighed enough this week.”

Joshua shifted in his chair. “Two days.”

Kenneth frowned. “What?”

“I have known you people for two days.”

“You say that as though it has been a long two days.”

Joshua looked around the table. “It has been an extraordinarily long two days. And I’m beginning to regret joining you three siblings."

The dwarf cradled his mug. “Ha. Same. Two days in and I've already done things I’m not proud of.”

“A remarkable pace for you, I’m sure,” Lindsey marked.

No one smiled.

She sat quiet for a moment longer, the bow still in her hand, before her fear found words. At last she drew Neil aside and, with a hand on his shoulder, spoke low enough that only he could hear.

“Brother."

"Mm?"

“I am afraid,” she said.

Neil waited.

Her eyes moved toward the table. The dwarf was rubbing his injured shoulder now that he thought no one watched. The ranger tamped tobacco into his pipe with more care than the task deserved.

“Even with those two,” Lindsey said, “I don't think we're enough.”

Two days was not enough time to trust anyone. It had apparently been enough time to learn who ran back when another person stumbled.

Neil looked through the nearest window. Lanternlight painted a narrow strip of wet yard and stopped.

“The rain seems to have died. Perhaps you and Gregory should take a turn outside,” Neil said. “Walk the edges of the yards and listen awhile. No farther than lanternlight. If anything followed us from the dark, know of it before it reaches the door."

“Even if it sounds human?”

Neil's eyes remained on the dark.

“Especially then. Have Gregory flare his staff to warn us if he sees anything. We will see his light through the windows.”

She was quiet for a moment. “And you?”

"We will keep watch within and change the guard by turns. I will take the next. Then the ranger and the dwarf after me.”

Lindsey turned to go, then stopped.

“Neil.”

There were questions in her face he had no desire to hear spoken. He thought of Antonio calling from the trees, of the half-step he had taken toward him, of Gregory's fist closing around his cloak.

Lindsey spared him the question.

“We stay,” Neil said. "Together."

She nodded and returned to the table. Gregory saw her coming, finished the last bite on his plate and stood. He was halfway to the door when he remembered the bread hidden inside his robe, touched it through the cloth with a small look of relief, and kept walking.

Above them, the rain pattered against the tavern’s timber shingles in a steady, hollow rhythm, softening the room beneath it. Within the Silver Stag, there was warmth, and light, and the low murmur of ordinary lives continuing as they always had.

Yet around it, unseen and unspoken, something of the forest remained with them—not in sound, nor in sight, but in the quiet certainty that whatever had walked the dark behind them had not been turned aside.

They had not found the Silver Stag.

They had been brought to it.