Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree - 1

“Fuck!” cried Fern, ducking back inside the carriage a whisker before a clawed and scaled hand sailed past. A noxious ribbon of blood trailed in its wake, the owner no longer properly attached.

Fishy gurgles and bubbling roars arose on all sides, and the carriage rocked from another impact as the rattkin tipped back onto the bench, leather satchel clutched to her chest. No sooner had she bruised her own tail than she lunged forward again, flinging the bag aside to wrap furry arms around the gryphet scrabbling at the inside of the door.

Her pet’s bedraggled feathers fluffed around his head, his graying hair bristling along his back. He hooted and huffed hoarsely at the commotion outside, and Fern hugged him against her belly. “Hush, Potroast,” she soothed in a fierce whisper. “Somebody out there is on our side. I know you’re brave, but you’re far too old for this.”

His wing tufts fanned her face indignantly.

When a fishy face and a needle-packed mouth appeared at the window—croaking and hissing and oozing all over the sill—concerns over Potroast’s advancing age were blown clear out of her head.

The door rattled in its frame as the pescadine clawed furiously at the wood, jamming its head into the opening and spraying spittle in all directions. White, staring eyes gleamed like peeled eggs above an overcrowded maw.

The top hinge snapped and bounced off the opposite wall with a cheerful metallic ping.

Fern’s deep well of profanity temporarily ran dry.

In the next moment, the nightmare at the door vanished with a sound like a melon in a mangle.

Through the slimed and splintered window frame, Fern caught moonlit flashes of silver as shrieks rose and were hacked off one by one, each more distant than the last, until eerie silence prevailed. Even Potroast’s wheezing pants subsided.

A strangled moment passed. Then two. Then five.

The chirr of swamp frogs stirred into a relieved chorus.

She caught the wide eyes of the carriage driver taking refuge across from her, his long hands clapped over his mouth as though he couldn’t trust himself not to utter a sound. His knees were drawn up to his chin as he cowered on the opposite bench.

Both their gazes snapped to the door again at the sound of muddy hoof clops approaching.

A sonorous voice echoed from the gloom outside.

A fussy voice. A pompous voice.

The sort of voice that could stultify the unlucky at a thousand paces.

“Ah, the common pescadine. Maltheus famously wrote of them in The Eighty Verses, where he likened them to his in-laws at winter solstice festival. Droll, indeed. My lady, did you know that they have four stomachs? Ha! Yes, and only two are reserved for food and digestion. It’s quite fascinating, really, as unlike their upcountry brethren, the third and fourth are filled with small stones, which they—”

A deep sigh then, and the hiss of a blade finding its sheath.

“Hello?” ventured Fern.

The terrified coachman moaned behind one hand and used the other to frantically beg for her silence.

The sloppy hoofbeats drew nearer.

Gloved fingers wrapped over the windowsill and tugged, wrenching the door half out of its frame on a final, protesting hinge.

“You want to unlatch that?”

A different voice. Un-fussy. Not pompous.

Fern reached across Potroast’s body to flip up the latch, whereupon the coachman squeaked, and the door fell out of its jamb entirely.

Framed there, amidst bearded moss and fireflies, a figure out of legend.

Silver hair cropped short and wild as though with a dull knife.

Eyes the blue of northern ghostlights, deep as glacial pools.

A body rangy and hard, forged by centuries of deeds of the blade.

The white, star-shaped pommel of that blade glinting above one shoulder . . . beside the slender, pointed ear of an eldest elf.

Only one, the other cut cruelly close and centuries scarred over.

“By the shitting Eight, ” breathed Fern.

Astryx One-Ear, Blademistress and Oathmaiden, glanced around the interior of the coach, nodded, and held out a gloved fistful of reins.

“Found your horses. They seem fine. Looks like you are, too.”

When none of the carriage’s occupants moved to accept them, she shrugged and wrapped them over a coat hook set inside the door.

Then she vanished, muddy footfalls marking her departure.

Fern scrambled to lean out the doorway, bringing one paw up to her mouth to holler after the retreating figure, “Um, thank you !”

And then in a smaller voice meant only for herself, “Fucking hells.”

“You swear a lot,” whispered the coachman, joining her to peer after their departing savior.

Fern narrowed her eyes at him, gesturing with a slow sweep at the wreckage of pescadine anatomy radiating outward from the carriage and into the bog beside the road.

The coachman appeared to finally comprehend Astryx’s handiwork.

“Oh. Fucking hells .”

The second, considerably less eventful half of Fern’s journey seemed to take three times as long as the first. She wasn’t sure who was more prone to the spooks, the coachman or the horses. Careful pauses were frequent, the pace positively leaden.

Still, no further perils beset them.

Days after their dramatic rescue at the hands of Astryx—Blademistress, Oathmaiden, etcetera—Potroast hooted in his sleep beside Fern as she read and reread her most recent correspondence with an old friend.

Decades ago, she’d met a brash young orc in the beachside town of Murk. Since then, in a move Fern would once have considered unimaginable, her friend had sheathed her blade for good and opened a “coffee shop” that was apparently extraordinarily successful. Fern didn’t even know what coffee was .

Still, on the strength of fond memory and a series of lengthy letters, Fern had sold Thistleburr, the crusty little bookshop to which she’d dedicated twenty-five years of her adult life. She’d gathered the proceeds of the sale, a preposterously paltry valise of belongings, a satchel belonging to an absent companion, and an increasingly spherical and elderly gryphet, then booked a carriage to the city of Thune.

A new life awaited her there. A new start. A new bookshop. The embers of an old friendship to fan. Perhaps even something she might one day call family.

Also, she was clearly fucking insane.

There was one other letter packed into the satchel, a parting message from another old friend. She fished it out and her eyes fell upon the final lines, although by now she knew them by heart.

Always remember, although the unimaginative see life as a thread stretched from one point to another, birth to death, a life truly lived is a glorious tangle.

One is never lost.

And if one is lucky, one is never found, either.

Yours in the wilderness,

Zelia Greatstrider