“What are we doing now—grr, master?” Baldwin asked.

  The two men were currently walking further away from the abandoned village where the squad was—resuming the mission that had been interrupted by their discovery of the Tower of Death. They had already swapped their gambesons, so Tybalt’s chest now enjoyed a cool breeze just over the place where Baldwin had been stabbed. He noticed that he was swimming a little in Baldwin’s gambeson, but there was no helping that. He would simply have to hope no one noticed.

  Tybalt enjoyed Baldwin’s continuing discomfort with the word “master.” Even if Tybalt had been a little uncertain about being addressed as “master” when he impulsively made that rule up, he knew now that he would get used to it.

  “I told you, Baldwin,” Tybalt said. “We’re scouting, the same as before everything that happened.”

  “You also said we’re going to kill a bunch of people,” Baldwin said. “Since there aren’t any other humans around, I assumed you meant our squad. If we’re murdering them, how much scouting do we actually need to do?”

  “We can’t kill them all right now,” Tybalt said, rolling his eyes.

  “Why not? You got a class, didn’t you? Must be a pretty powerful one, since you brought me back from the dead. So, you shoot them with death balls or whatever, and I’ll flank them from the side, stabbing people with my spear.”

  “I’m not that strong yet,” Tybalt said. “When you get a new class, you start at level zero.”

  “Oh.”

  Baldwin thought for a minute, allowing Tybalt to walk in silent contemplation for a short time.

  “I did notice you were looking a little scrawny,” Baldwin finally added.

  Tybalt was fairly certain his appearance hadn’t noticeably changed, and he wondered for a moment if the revenant was just taking the opportunity to lightly mock him.

  “Thank you, Baldwin,” he said icily. “I’m trying to think of what to tell our squadmates right now, since we are not going to kill them when we go back—because that is not a possible option for just the two of us. If you have ideas, feel free to share them. If not, I’d appreciate some quiet.”

  Baldwin shut up.

  Tybalt was glad that the pecking order was setting in for him.

  The two men continued walking in silence for another ten minutes before Tybalt finally spoke up.

  “Well, it doesn’t look like we’re going to see any sign of those demihumans we came to deal with,” he said wryly.

  “Wait, were we still looking for them?” Baldwin blurted, surprised.

  “Not really,” Tybalt said. “If anything, they might be future allies, given that we share a common enemy. But if we knew where they were, that would be another factor under our control. Something to help us manipulate this situation a little better.” He paused. “I have been thinking over our options, and there are really just a few variations that I think work. There’s nothing that really makes me happy, though. Nothing that screams success.”

  “Were you hoping for my opinion, master?” Baldwin asked.

  There was a slight haughtiness to his tone that Tybalt found amusing.

  “I was interested in your superior wisdom, as it happens, old man,” Tybalt replied.

  “Then go ahead and fill me in on the options,” Baldwin replied, immediately dropping any effort to sound self-important.

  It struck Tybalt that perhaps if he had known Baldwin better pre-mortem, the two of them might have genuinely liked each other—or perhaps the revenant was just faking having a more pleasant, sober, and reasonable personality so as to lower Tybalt’s guard. It was impossible to be certain.

  “I think we either go back together, or I send you off on your own,” Tybalt said, raising a finger for each option. “If I sent you off on your own, you could find the salt mines that are active around here and start killing salt miners. That gets you experience, so you can level, and hopefully it gets me some dead bodies I can work on. If we go back together, we have to say that I was attacked, and you saved my life and helped me swallow a health potion despite my deadly wounds. The other option is that I say that the enemy attacked us and dragged you off. That one is a little dangerous, because then I would have to describe the enemy or pretend I somehow didn’t see them even though they clearly stabbed me in the chest—although now that I think of it, we could just switch shirts back, and I could fake having been struck on the head.”

  “Why didn’t they drag you off if they dragged me off?” Baldwin asked.

  Tybalt pointed at him. “That’s an excellent question, Baldwin. I’m glad I decided to bounce ideas off of you.” He thought for a moment. “I don’t think that question actually has a satisfactory answer if Volusia thinks to ask it.”

  “He’s not a complete idiot,” Baldwin said bluntly. “I know you think that of him, but he has at least some basic reasoning skills.”

  “So, I could say you died and I survived, and when I got away, they dragged you off, but then I have to describe the ‘enemy,’” Tybalt said. “The problem with that is that if I describe the enemy, and they later find an enemy that doesn’t look like the one I described, I start to look suspicious.”

  “I think almost anything we come up with will smell a bit suspicious,” Baldwin observed. “We went out scouting, and one of us almost got killed, while the other is totally uninjured. That’s already suspicious.”

  “But us both backing up that story makes it believable. We can just say it was a small number of enemies, they surprised me, and you—being a bigger, stronger guy—scared them off.”

  “Why don’t we just both disappear? You mentioned sending me off to kill salt miners. Why can’t we both go do that? Double the effect.”

  “I kind of liked that idea when I thought of it,” Tybalt admitted. “The problem is that our biggest hazard is that the Royal Army sends reinforcements here. Volusia is too smart to go chasing shadows if men just start disappearing on him. If two of us go missing, it’s likely that he goes back and fetches a bigger force—maybe the whole company—and this situation gets bigger than we can manage. Disappearing in the middle of the Salt Waste is hard enough when we’re also committing murders to build up our own little army. I think it’s impossible to do that if we have a whole company of soldiers looking for us right away.” Tybalt did not mention that he now had a quest from Lord Mudo’s angel, demanding that he kill off the squad. “We need time above all. Time for me to grow stronger.” His eyes bored deep into Baldwin’s. “So at least one of us has to be back with the squad to try to manage their next move and make certain that they don’t report back to the company. That buys us time. The company will wait at least a few weeks before they send another squad if they don’t hear back from Volusia… Maybe a couple of months or more—I hope.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Baldwin snorted slightly at the uncertainty in Tybalt’s last few words.

  “Isn’t it you who always likes to say that hope is not a strategy?” Baldwin asked.

  “I hope about the things I can’t influence,” Tybalt snapped. “If one of us isn’t with the squad, we give up all our influence over what they do next. It leaves too much up to chance.”

  Tybalt’s eye suddenly spotted something, and his scowl turned to a look of cautious optimism.

  “What’s with your face?” Baldwin asked.

  “I think I have an idea,” Tybalt said.

  The two men had been walking in a valley between two mountains for some time. Now Tybalt pointed to something up on the cliff face opposite the side of the valley where they stood.

  “Do you see what I see?” he asked.

  Baldwin looked up where Tybalt was pointing. It took the revenant a minute to see, but Tybalt caught the exact moment when Baldwin noticed what Tybalt was looking at.

  “I see,” Baldwin finally said. “You… have good eyes. I guess I know why you’re a scout. But I didn’t think we were looking—”

  “Just details for the story,” Tybalt said, a smile slowly spreading across his face. “For now.”

  —

  The pair of soldiers made a sorry sight as they came running out of the slightly thinning fog, figurative tails between their legs.

  Lieutenant Sperry curled her lips slightly as she watched them moving like the Lord of Kur was chasing them with his trident. The image was a little funny—until suddenly, it wasn’t. She saw the damage to Tybalt’s clothing and the looks on his and Baldwin’s faces, and the humor of the scene died.

  Fellow soldiers rushed out of the abandoned village huts where they were making camp at the sound of the returning scouts.

  “What lit the fire under you two?” barked Commander Volusia. Then he gasped and shot forward, as the two men stepped into clearer view.

  Both scouts were breathless. But Tybalt had a large hole in his shirt that appeared to be the result of a stabbing with some sort of broad-bladed weapon, or perhaps more than one weapon. There were bloodstains. The resulting wounds had closed up, but the pale flesh around the area—white even compared to Tybalt’s normally pallid complexion—seemed to indicate the injuries were only freshly healed. Baldwin appeared to be unharmed.

  “What’s happened?” asked Volusia brusquely, moving quickly to close the distance with the scouts. “Talk to me, soldiers.” He turned his head and barked out, “Medic!”

  The squad’s medic, Specialist Curtis, rushed forward to meet the trio of men at the front.

  Lieutenant Sperry kept her distance and watched all that unfolded with interest, listening and paying close attention to everything that transpired.

  The two men told a disturbing story of being attacked by unseen figures. Tybalt had been struck first, with a tightly grouped pair of arrows to the chest, while Baldwin saw what had happened to Tybalt and managed to drop to the ground and avoid the next group of arrows that came flying from an elevated position to their side. The two fled with Tybalt across Baldwin’s shoulders, and once they were at a safe distance, Baldwin helped Tybalt to pull the arrows from his chest and poured health elixir down his throat.

  “You saved my life, man,” Tybalt said over and over with an expression of gratitude.

  Baldwin, in turn, mostly just looked smug and nodded in agreement.

  Commander Volusia was incensed and wanted to immediately pursue the enemy, but Baldwin suggested that might be just what they wanted. He was the hero of the hour, and that may have lent his analysis just a little more weight with the Commander.

  Baldwin was correct that the sun was getting low in the sky, and it would be night soon—giving those who knew the terrain best a powerful advantage against any pursuers.

  Tybalt and Baldwin could not even offer a theory as to where the archer or archers would hole up for the night. They promised to show the squad where it had happened, but both men insisted that it wait until the morning so the group would not risk fighting in the dark.

  Volusia finally agreed that they would still camp in the huts for the night and head out in the morning, but he also shouted orders doubling the planned night time guard rotation.

  Several of the other men, gathered around Tybalt and Baldwin, congratulated them—mainly Baldwin—for surviving the volleys of arrows. Despite having been injured, Tybalt remained unmistakably unpopular with the men.

  I wonder what he did to alienate them.

  Watching from a distance, though, Lieutenant Sperry couldn’t help but think that something else about the image the two scouts presented seemed slightly off.

  What is it?

  It took a minute for her to put her finger on the cause, after Tybalt had risen from being inspected by the medic.

  His shirt.

  It was impossible to be certain, with the ragged rips in the front and the dried blood, but wasn’t the shirt a bit too large for him? It looked loose to her.

  Since Volusia gave her responsibility for the squad’s supplies, she had paid close attention to the details of things like how many gambesons the soldiers went through, how much small beer was needed to keep an expedition like this comfortable, and how much elixir the squad needed—she had added a margin of safety to that calculation in particular that she hoped would help avoid any loss of life on this trip.

  Maybe it was that responsibility that gave her some confidence in thinking something was slightly off.

  Tybalt wore a large, right? And Baldwin was extra large?

  Sperry waited until the excitement had died down a bit, and people had mostly dispersed, before she approached Volusia about it. He was just finishing a conversation with the cook when she took him aside.

  “Commander, had you noticed that Specialist Tybalt’s shirt seemed a little big on him?” she asked.

  Volusia raised an eyebrow. “His shirt? No. I know we don’t have a lot of sizes here, so I could conceive him being outfitted in something too large for him. That runty bastard isn’t one of the tougher, more robust soldiers out here, in my opinion.”

  Sperry knew that was the Commander’s personal bias talking, and she knew to ignore that. In the few engagements the squad had seen since she joined, Tybalt had always carried his weight and never seemed to lack for toughness. And it was funny to call him “runty” when he was taller than Volusia or Sperry, albeit thin.

  I guess Tybalt could have picked up the wrong size last time laundry came around. But it seems unlikely that both he and Baldwin would have done that…

  “It was just interesting to me that this particular shirt looked a little large for him, and Baldwin’s was a tighter fit,” she said. “I’m wondering if maybe something else about their story could be off.”

  “It was interesting? As in, you’re genuinely paying attention to their clothing choices?” the Commander asked. “Listen, Lieutenant, if I thought there was a chance that Specialist Tybalt could be lying in an official reconnaissance report to me, I’d be eager to hang the little bastard from the nearest tree—or cactus, as the case might be.” He chuckled at his own joke, and Sperry forced a grin as well. “But Baldwin is a solid man. He has twenty years with us, if I’m not mistaken.” His eyes widened slightly. “Although perhaps they could have accidentally swapped shirts before the ambush, if my joke about them being lovers was true…” Volusia looked grossed out.

  Lieutenant Sperry couldn’t see much chance of that.

  Baldwin, like almost half the squad at one point or another, had propositioned her before while he was drunk—a behavior that had been unpleasantly common in her first weeks here. He definitely liked women.

  “Forgive me for wasting your time, Commander,” Sperry said, saluting.

  Volusia waved his hand. “Dismissed, Lieutenant. Don’t worry about it. I, um, appreciate your attention to details. Let me know if you think of a defensible reason for me to hang the bastard.” He chuckled.

  I’ll let you know… if I find anything suspicious.