++Be vigilant, always, for the enemies within. For the witches, the vampires, the demons. Trust in your Witchfinder to root them out and see them burned in God’s light.++

  Chapter 5

  Reggie and Ludvich didn’t find more to talk about as they sat there, but somehow the company was nice all the same. It wasn’t like Reggie got much talking done when he was on his own, anyway, and the pub was a much nicer place to sit than his own drafty house. Having a near-zero chance of being randomly eaten by some enterprising wolf spider was a nice bonus too.

  The major downside was being glared, hissed and cursed at by the other regulars. Reggie suspected that if he walked out alone he’d have a fight on his hands. Some drunken dickhead, probably several, looking to teach him a lesson for daring to stay where they could see him. He’d worry about that when it happened.

  The hours dragged on, and day slowly turned into night. More beers came. Reggie was careful not to have too many, he’d seen drunkards before and knew full well that if he sacrificed motor function and mental acuity like that, even for an hour, he’d likely be killed before he could sober up.

  But that didn’t mean he was unaffected by it. Three beers didn’t seem like much, compared to Ludvich’s ten. Reggie should’ve kept the disparity in their Toughness stats in mind. Smaller though he was, the Witchfinder had literally half a dozen times his resistance to any kind of physical interference, from blades to bludgeons. Apparently, alcohol was included in this.

  So by the time Reggie had figured out just how potent a bit of boozing could be, he’d already gotten a nice buzz going and felt himself dangerously relaxed. He decided to stop there, just letting the uncanny warmth of his drink keep rushing through him.

  “What were my parents like?” he asked Ludvich. The question wasn’t an impulse itself, Reggie had had it on his mind for as long as he could remember, but the asking of it…well, he could thank his mild drunkenness for that.

  Unfortunately, Ludvich didn’t seem even slightly tipsy. That meant that actually getting an answer was looking much less likely.

  He surprised Reggie by giving one anyway.

  “Good people,” the Witchfinder growled, “They…They were decent. Kind. I’d never known your father to so much as raise his voice, nor back down when he thought a wrong was being done. Your mother was the best doctor I’ve ever known, however anyone else might have doubted it, and the cleverest damned person in Norvhan.”

  Reggie stared at him, feeling a sudden weight in his throat. This was…what? It was the truth, so that was good right? Except he was just being told the people who’d ruined his life were…

  “Why?” he snapped. “Why did they…why did they do what they did, then?” It escaped him as a whine, and he hated himself then for his lack of control.

  “I can’t tell you that.” Ludvich’s voice had been wistful, almost soft, but now it went hard all over again. Reggie was stunned. What the fuck was going on here?

  “Do you have a secret, old man?” It was a fucking stupid thing to ask, of course Ludvich had a secret. Asking people with secrets about their secrets, though…well that never ended well.

  Fortunately, an interruption came into the pub before Ludvich could hold Reggie down and kill him. The door swung open and a woman slithered in along with cool night-time mists. Reggie froze at the sight of her, because he recognised the stranger from the alley in an instant.

  Seen in the fuller light of the pub, Reggie noted that she was dressed better than literally anyone he’d ever seen before. Her clothes would have been a better fit on the elven emissaries and diplomats who sometimes ventured through on behalf of Warden Erindor. She was pale and dark featured everywhere except her eyes, and would have been pretty.

  Were it not for that damned chill that ran down Reggie’s spine at the sight of her.

  “A newcomer,” Ludvich noted.

  “I spoke with her earlier,” Reggie muttered, “gives me the creeps.”

  Ludvich seemed surprised by that, but didn’t dismiss it.

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” he grumbled.

  “You think she’s a witch?” Reggie couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. If she was a witch, and he’d sussed it out on instinct, that was another very good mark in his favour. It also meant more work to get paid for, and without needing to risk his skin in the grimwoods. He was already halfway through calculating the best method to drag her into an alley and hog-tie her when Ludvich cut in.

  “I don’t,” the Witchfinder corrected him, “but it’s my job to check these things. I’ll probably have a hundred requests to investigate her within another day regardless, the people here don’t like outsiders.”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  That much was definitely true, Reggie could already see plenty of stink-eyes aimed at the woman where she was now lounging near the centre of the room.

  He decided that it was a good opportunity for him to leave.

  “Thanks for the drinks,” he told Ludvich, “but I should scarper before everyone here remembers I exist and gets even drunker.”

  The Witchfinder smiled, nodded, and raised his mug. “I’ll be seeing you lad.”

  Lad.

  Reggie nodded back and headed out.

  Norvhan’s air was frosty as ever, the night having already stolen whatever warmth sunlight had bled into it earlier. Reggie started trudging his way from the pub, pace quick and footfalls steady.

  But not enough.

  About two hundred yards from Garwin’s place, he heard people approaching from behind. Approaching fast.

  He turned, because the alcohol still burning away in his blood made Reggie stupid. The men—the three men—saw him turn, knew he knew, and sped up further. Reggie broke into a run, sprinted fast. He’d had a lot of practice running, trained himself well to do it.

  It didn’t matter. He was a Vagrant and they were Workers, sheer Attributes overcame whatever meagre advantages he’d scraped out for himself over an untrained man and they were on him in seconds.

  The first Reggie felt of them was a hand on one shoulder. He reacted well to that, mind still keen enough that he did the proper thing of leaning into their grip as they yanked on him. That surprised the grabber, unbalanced him enough that Reggie’s elbow swung around and caught them perfectly right beneath the eye.

  Drunkenness and imbalance was what forced the man back more than anything, and Reggie felt the shock of his strike run up the arm he’d used. He wasn’t feeling it for long before a fist buried itself deep in his belly, driving the air right out of him and punting him a good two feet backwards to fall.

  Reggie puked up pretty much everything in his stomach, as well as anything he’d ever even considered putting in his stomach. There might’ve been a wolf spider slopping out of him, for the sheer volume of vomit now squirting free it wouldn’t have been such an odd thing to find.

  “Thought you could put yourself out in public?” A kick found him right in his back, just beside the bone. The force of it lifted Reggie an inch off the ground and sent him rolling so fast he didn’t stop for another yard. This time he pissed himself, as if his body realised it had nothing left in the other tank but was still desperate to lighten the load.

  So this was it then. Reggie had crawled through a grimwood and now he was getting kicked to death by a pack of mouth-breathers because they were bothered by the sight of him. It would’ve been funny, if it hadn’t been his own ribs at risk of getting smashed in.

  “I…was…with Ludvich.” So speech was out of the question, then, it seemed. That wasn’t good, speaking was about the only chance Reggie had of getting out of this. A hand closed on his shoulder and hauled him right up into the air as if his twelve stone body was an empty sack. Reggie was staring into three faces a moment later, and not friendly ones.

  “Oh we noticed. How did you manage to con him into overlooking you, eh? Doesn’t matter. We know better.”

  Another chipped in, at that, just as nasty, just as cruel and with just as much alcohol on his breath. “We’ve been watching you, seen you mutter and mumble, see you twitch. We know that demon in your head is there and we know what it’s planning.”

  Reggie felt fear grip him. They were going to kill him now, he could see it in their eyes. This was how he died.

  “Fuck you,” he spat. Funny how he could find the coherence for those words, but not as funny as seeing the cobble he’d deftly lifted from the road crack right across the lead man’s face. His grip loosened and Reggie stumbled out of it, raising space, readying his improvised weapon.

  It was so odd watching the men come on, like seeing a carriage crashing. Speed and power mingled with clumsiness, mingled with a horrible reek of death. They bumbled their way towards him and the nearest one didn’t even try to dodge as Reggie swung again, flattening his nose with the cobble. He wasn’t quick enough to line up a solid hit when the next one came for him, watching as his stony weapon bounced right off a skull harder than any rock.

  Then the fist found his side. Reggie felt the difference, then, between himself and a Worker. Felt it as pain, as movement, as the sensation of his own ribs breaking and shifting under the skin where impossibly hard knuckles dug in deep. For the second time he went down, and he knew before he’d even settled on the road that he wouldn’t be getting up again.

  Not this time.

  Why didn’t I use my gun? They were going to kill Reggie, so what did he care if he was hanged? At least he’d die with company, at least he’d get to see—the boot broke his arm in a way Reggie hadn’t known arms could be broken, like a twig crushed underfoot. He didn’t even have the breath to scream, so he just lay there writhing around like a snail with its shell crushed.

  More blows came, more bones broke. These were clumsy and ill-aimed stomps, the product of unbalanced bodies left haphazard by drink, but the sheer amount of strength behind them was so great that it didn’t matter. Even without hitting the Worker’s pinnacle like Ludvich had, most Workers who exercised their Strength on the regular would push it up into the high-teens. They were literally double Reggie’s strength or more.

  Another bone broke, this time one of his shoulder blades. Reggie’s body was starting to go numb now. That was nice, it meant less pain. It also meant no more rolling with the blows and prolonging his life. Here it was, this was it. The end. He braced himself for it.

  But it didn’t come.

  “Excuse me,” a voice called out, “hey, excuse me!” There wasn’t much more than a touch of force to it, but somehow it still drew over not only the gazes of those three men slowly kicking Reggie into oblivion, but Reggie himself.

  He was somehow not surprised to see the outsider from the pub walking over.

  “What…do you want?” one of the men, the de facto leader Reggie realised, demanded. The woman kept walking, kept smiling. Idiot. She didn’t realise how dangerous this was. These men were so drunk, blood already up with violence, that if they got the slightest suspicion she’d report what she saw here—

  —”I was just coming over to warn you off killing that man,” she smiled, “or else I’ll have to report you to the guards.”

  Reggie’s heart sank and he tried to rise, failed. His limbs just couldn’t obey in their condition. Vision failing, the last thing he saw was the drunks who’d killed him closing in on the woman trying to save him.