Foolish Fools

he Silver Stag settled slowly back into itself.

Little by little, the old sounds returned—not all at once, but in cautious fragments. A spoon scraped the bottom of a bowl. The lute player tried three uncertain chords, thought better of them, and reached for his drink instead, leaving the unfinished phrase hanging in the smoke.

Warm air carried the smell of woodsmoke and the last of the evening's spiced meat. Karneth and Jaeshu had taken a table in the corner, far enough from the fire to be left alone and near enough to the wall that Jaeshu could watch most of the room without appearing to. His pipe rested between three fingers while his eyes made the same patient circuit again and again: door, windows, stairs, patrons, hearth, then back to the door.

Karneth watched him complete it twice before taking another drink, the ale tasting slightly of the rain that still darkened the boards between their table and the entrance.

“So,” the dwarf said at last, his voice low enough that it nearly belonged to the smoke. “This nasty Orath business. You’ve got that look like you already know what was chasing us, ranger.”

Jaeshu’s eyes remained on the fire a moment longer before shifting to him. “Not know,” he said. “Merely... considerations.”

Karneth snorted softly. “That’s a long word for the same grave.”

The dwarf was broad even by dwarven measure, built thick through the shoulders and chest with the kind of strength that came from labor as much as war. His beard had been trimmed once and then mostly forgotten, while the two axes beside his chair had plainly received more consistent care. Their handles were worn smooth where his hands knew them.

Jaeshu let smoke leave his mouth in a thin stream. “You’ve seen the signs, dwarf,” he said. “The forest black and starving. Shadows themselves moving with will. That isn’t a single man’s doing. Not even a powerful one.”

“Ah, everything’s one man’s doing if you go far enough back, Jaeshu,” the dwarf grunted. “Some power-hungry fool starts somethin', and the rest of us pay for it.”

Jaeshu held steady. “Until something even older corrects the balance.”

The fire shifted in the hearth. A blackened log split with a soft crack. The ranger looked toward it. “Men have taken what they need from these lands for centuries, and then more. Forests for towns. Rivers for kingdoms. Beasts vanish. We call it progress because the word sounds better than hunger.”

His eyes returned to Karneth. “If there were a correction... Orath would be it.”

Karneth let that sit for a moment, then gave a short shake of his head. “A century of demons is a damned long answer.”

“Call it what you like, Karneth. Balance. Judgment. God.” Jaeshu shrugged faintly. “The name matters less than the result.”

There was a quiet precision to Jaeshu even at rest. He sat with his weight centered, never quite relaxed, as though some part of him remained prepared for the room to change without warning. Dark hair fell beneath his hood and across one side of his face, leaving little expression for anyone to read. A short bow rested across his back, a blade at his hip—both worn, both carefully kept, and neither carried in a way that asked to be noticed. They did not need to be.
Karneth picked up his mug again but didn’t drink.

“Bah. I’ve heard this sort of talk before, when the mountains first stirred. We dwarves were there before any of you.” He rapped his chest once, the sound dull against damp wool. “My anvil folded the irons of soldiers who never came back.”

“You were a blacksmith.”

“Aye.”

“Then why didn’t you march?”

Karneth’s thumb stopped against the side of his mug. For a moment the only sound was the low murmur of the room reclaiming itself. “Had a family.”

Jaeshu waited, the patience of a man who had learned that silence often finished what questions could not.

“Armies had plenty of soldiers. My family only had one of me.” The dwarf took a drink that did not seem to taste of much. “So I stayed an' made the swords of my friends.”

“And they never came back.”

Karneth looked into the ale as if the answer might still be floating there. “No.”

Jaeshu's gaze lowered to the table.

Karneth noticed. “You remember.”

“I was a child during the last march.”

“Ah,” the dwarf breathed. “Your father, then.”

Jaeshu's eyes had stopped moving around the room. “There were so many soldiers I thought there couldn't possibly be any left anywhere else. Horses. Wagons. Men marching past from morning until dark.” He paused. “We were told they'd be home before winter.”

“Not one,” Karneth said.

His voice had gone quieter.

“Nothin' to bury. Not even stories.”

Jaeshu drew slowly on his pipe. “Whatever Orath is, it isn't something men can march against and defeat simply because enough of them have gathered beneath the same banner.”

“Aye.”

“If kingdoms failed, I fail to believe the six of us will do better.”

“Five.”

Jaeshu stopped.

Karneth did not look up. “Antonio's dead.”

For a moment the noise of the inn seemed to move farther away, as though the room itself had taken a step back. Jaeshu tapped ash from his pipe with careful precision. “Yes.”

The ranger watched the smoke curl above the table. “Antonio was doomed long before tonight. He believed everything could be solved by being clever enough. If a machine failed, he built a more complicated one. If that failed, he blamed the machine.”

Jaeshu's expression remained flat, though something in his voice had changed. “Tonight he met something that didn't care how clever he was.”

Karneth considered him for a few seconds.

“Damn cold way to say a man's dead, Jaeshu.”

“Does not make it any less true.”

“No.” The dwarf looked back into his ale. “S'pose not.”

A serving girl passed their table carrying bowls against one hip, steam rising and vanishing almost at once. Near the hearth, a man in a patched traveling coat was wrapping two pieces of bread in cloth while a boy slept against his side, mouth slightly open, one small hand still curled as if it had been holding something that was no longer there. Their packs sat unopened beside their boots. The ranger watched them longer than required. Karneth noticed that too.

“I’m not here to lift spirits,” Jaeshu continued, leaning forward just enough that the hood shadowed his eyes more deeply. “I’m here to see what this Orath is. To observe. How far it goes. Hell, whether there’s anything to be done at all.”

He paused, then added, quieter, “And I’ve yet to see anything that suggests there is.”

Jaeshu let the smoke escape gradually.

Karneth leaned forward slightly, forearms on the table. “So that’s it, then?” he said. “You’re just along for the walk? Watch the world fall apart nice and close so you’ve got a good view of it?”

“If a storm is coming that cannot be stopped, standing in its path doesn’t make you brave. It makes you dead.” Jaeshu met his look without flinching. “Just ask what's left of our dear departed artificer.” He gave a small, cloaked nod toward the door. “If you can find enough pieces to put him back together again.”

“Or...” The dwarf's mouth curled faintly. “Ya get a song written about being the first one to punch a storm square in the mouth.”

Jaeshu shook his head once. “You’re a damn fool.”

Karneth didn’t argue. He just sat there a moment, then gave a small, satisfied nod. “Aye,” he said. “That I am.”

Jaeshu’s brow furrowed slightly.

Karneth gestured lazily around the table with one thick finger. “Look at us, ranger, sitting here, drinking foam and yapping about the end of the world like we’ve got any say in it. But then we get up tomorrow and ride straight toward it anyway.”

His grin returned, rough and unbothered. “If that’s not foolish, I don’t know what is.”

The ranger stared at him for a long moment, unable to muster a worthwhile response. He was not a fan of going in circles. He had sweet-leaf left to finish in his pipe, and the night was already longer than it had any right to be.

Across the room Navian sat alone at another table, his bowl of stew cooling untouched before him. The white shield rested against his chair beneath a fold of cloak that failed completely to conceal it. Every few moments he looked toward the entrance or one of the rain-dark windows, as if the forest might still decide to follow them inside. When laughter broke suddenly near the bar, his hand moved toward his sword before he caught himself and forced it back to the table.

Outside, beyond the streaked glass, Lunara and Gaz walked the edge of the inn’s lanternlight, one shape passing briefly beneath the glow of a window before vanishing again into the dark, the violet crystal of the staff appearing and disappearing like a held breath.

The dwarf scratched at his beard. “So. Ya believe in those three kids?”

The ranger did not answer immediately, but followed his glance toward the far side of the inn. He did not look away from Navian. “In what sense?”

“In what they’re doin'. In what they think they can do.”

“They are... capable,” Jaeshu said. “And a paladin is a rare enough thing these days.”

“Wasn’t my question.”

Jaeshu leaned forward slightly. “Look, dwarf. As you've pointed out, after Antonio's demise tonight, there are only five of us now.”

“Aye.” The dwarf nodded, stroking his beard.

“Five,” Jaeshu repeated, his knuckles rapping the table.

“I can goddamn count, ranger,” the dwarf growled.

“I wasn't certain.”

Karneth looked down at the mug in his hand. “I’ve had five beers tonight,” he said, then loosed a loud belch. Half a dozen patrons nearby laughed and raised their cups.

Karneth raised his own in return, then looked back at the ranger as though nothing had happened.

Jaeshu slowly blinked once.

“My point, Karneth,” he said, “is that you are sitting in a tavern pretending we might accomplish what entire kingdoms could not. Meanwhile, we run from dogs. We are utterly out of our league.”

“Aye.”

Karneth glanced toward the window as Gaz's figure passed momentarily beyond it, his staff silhouetted against the lanternlight.

The ranger leaned back and kindled his pipe, and for a fleeting moment the flame cast a warm, orange light beneath his hood, revealing the stern lines of his face. “Good,” he hummed. “Then we are of one mind.”

The ember faded as swiftly as it had arisen, and Jaeshu’s features once more surrendered to the dim.

“But,” Karneth went on, finger in the air, “it is more than most are doing.”

Jaeshu flicked his eyes toward him and let out a single, thoughtful puff. The man beside the hearth had finished wrapping the bread. He was tightening the straps on his pack now, slowly so as not to wake the boy. A fae near the stairs had a map spread across her knees. Her finger followed a road west, stopped, then followed another farther south. She noticed Karneth watching, and slowly folded the map.

The dwarf's voice remained quiet, but there was a firmness in it now that had not been there before. “Most of these folk are runnin',” he said. “Every day. Some hidin' like damn cowards. Just waitin' for it to pass.”

He shook his head faintly. “This Orath business ain't somethin' that will just pass. No prayers or animal sacrifices for a god's mercy. We cannot outrun this.”

“Not with those legs,” said a dwarven barmaid, setting another ale before Karneth. She pushed a loose strand of hair beneath the blue bandana tied around her head, the motion quick and practiced.

Karneth slowly accepted the mug. She winked and walked away.

He watched her go, the ale still suspended halfway between the table and his mouth.

Jaeshu took a satisfied puff from his pipe.

“And she’s a dwarf.”

Karneth turned his head very slowly toward him.

“Anyway.” He took a breath and sat back. “Doin' nothin' is just doin' nothin'. And that is how I see it.”

Jaeshu considered arguing for a moment, then realized he had likely reached the depths of dwarven logic. He drew slowly on his pipe, the ember briefly lighting his eyes, and instead shifted his attention toward Navian again. The paladin had finally begun eating, slowly, as though only just remembering the bowl was there. Beyond him, Lunara’s shape crossed one of the windows and vanished once more into the rain, her longbow a dark line against the glass for an instant before it too was gone.

“And so...” His face fell back into shadow. “Those three choose to go toward it.”

Karneth’s grip tightened slightly on the cup. “Aye.”

The ranger was quiet. Another draft passed through the room. This time, Karneth felt it clearly against the side of his face. The candles nearest the windows leaned toward the glass. Jaeshu noticed them too. His eyes lingered there for a moment before returning to Karneth.

“Foolish.”

“Ho, undoubtedly,” replied the dwarf with a proud nod.

Jaeshu looked across the room again.

No army, no plan, and no reason to believe they would fare any better than the thousands who had marched east before them.

Karneth watched the ranger watching them. “That enough for you?”

Jaeshu did not answer at once. The smoke from his pipe rose and thinned and disappeared into the darker air near the beams.

“No,” he said at last. “But it is enough to begin.”

The dwarven warrior let out a slow breath, then lifted his mug once more. “To a beginning, then,” he said.

Jaeshu did not raise his mug, but he did not turn away. “To the five fools remaining,” he warned again.

Karneth rested his arm across the haft of his axe and grunted. “Keep that up and it'll be four.”

The ranger hesitated only a heartbeat before finally chuckling—a short, reluctant sound—and reached for his mug. “I’d be a fool to let you send me back to Antonio just as the fates have spared me from the fat bastard.”

They met with a dull, quiet knock, swallowed almost at once by the noise of the tavern around them.

“To foolish fools.”