The woods blur by me and I find myself really enjoying the run. Weighed down as I am with the supplies, I can still go full tilt, dodging around trees and leaping over fallen logs. Once I plant the blade of my spear into a large rock and pole vault over some dense bushes.

It’s a test of my maneuverability and speed, I tell myself, but deep down I’m just being a kid again, running through the woods and giggling.

I’m lucky I don’t put my eye out on a branch or something.

Hypa’s place isn’t far, and even though I didn’t stray from the place to go exploring during my recovery, I’m starting to recognize little bits here and there. I’m just glad I was able to get here before dark.

So, I’m not prepared at all when I get there and the place is gone.

I don’t mean destroyed or burned to the ground or anything. Gone.

Ten dead men in dull gray armor lay in broken heaps, yes, but for the moment they are much less interesting than the complete disappearance of Hypa’s temple and hospital. There’s no sign there was ever a structure here of any type. There are trees now standing where the living room was, for Pete’s sake.

The dead men would have been in and around the porch area.

I inspect them now. Cold but no rigor mortis. Lividity.... All dead for a few hours. All of them King’s Paladins. A few still have their weapons in their hands. Most don't.

I start to call for Hypa, thinking that maybe the place is hidden by some kind of illusion, one that must have tactile elements because it’s not like it’s invisible. I can’t feel anything there.

The third time I call her name something white falls past my nose.

There on the ground between my feet is an envelope. I pick it up. It’s got my name on it.

 

Dear Mark,

You must take Wendy and Caedi and go. Protect the caravan to Fort Reach. This place is no longer safe for us, you are fully recovered, Caedi is ready to begin her journeyman work, and I have been selfish to keep her and you so long.

Know that our time was precious to me, with all of you, and I shall see you again. I am well, I promise. Go and fulfill your word. Bring back the Order of the Open Heart, establish the Knights of Hyparien, and please, one more thing. Look after Caedi and allow her to watch over you and Wendy. I’m afraid I’ve done her a bit of a disservice and she has some growing to do that I have, unavoidably, inhibited. Please find enclosed a personal letter from me to her.

Go now, love. The men killed here have friends that will look for them. I shall miss you all.

Love,

Your Hypa.

 

I don’t expect the heartache I feel once I’ve finished reading her letter. I haven’t known her long and yes, I may have been developing a crush, or more than that maybe, but the loss feels deeper than that. 

Knowing Wendy will want to read it too, I tuck her letter away inside my tunic beside the one with Caedi’s name on it. 

I hear something moving in the woods and that’s enough to send me running back to the caravan.

 

When I get back it’s almost dark and looks like they’re about ready to resume their journey to Fort Reach. The third wagon is gone, presumably on its way back to Bull’s Tavern with the five who were seriously wounded and need more time to recover.

Wendy is talking with Caedi and that merchant guy, Randon Frent. They wave to me when I come out of the trees and frown when they see that my pack is still full of the supplies we bought for Hypa.

Wendy says something to Frent who steps away to check the horses pulling his wagon.

Caedi says, “What happened?”

“Caedi,” I say. “Hypa’s not there.”

The healer gasps.

I hurry on to reassure her. “She’s fine. She left us a note.” I take both letters out of my tunic, hand the one she left for me to Wendy and the other to Caedi.

They both open and read.

Caedi starts crying long before she finishes.

I stand there not knowing what to do.

Wendy hops up on the side of the wagon to put a hand on Caedi’s shoulder.

Caedi looks over at her and sniffs before going back to the letter. Soon she lowers it and uses her other hand to pat Wendy’s.

“She says she’s going away and that I’m ready to go on by myself but I’m not ready at all!” Caedi says.

Wendy rubs her back. “You aren’t alone at all, sweetheart,” she says. “Hypa’s asked us to stick with you, as long as you like. Go with us to Fort Reach like she says. You’ll earn some money and we can all figure out what to do from there.”

Caedi wipes her eyes and nods. She allows Wendy to pull her into a quick hug then, with a brave smile, she walks to the front of the caravan and reads her letter again.

“I don’t know why she thinks she’s not ready,” I say. “The goddess said she was. Hypa thinks she is. She did well in the fight. You see her, like, golf that one kobold’s head nearly off?”

Wendy nods. “I think she was with Hypa a long time,” she says.

“Hypa’s awesome,” I say. “Somehow she killed a bunch of those paladin assholes and made it look like her temple hospital never existed there. There’s no sign of it. It’s completely gone.”

“Wow. Don’t tell Caedi that, Mark,” says Wendy. “I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet.”

 

 

We tell Frent that we’ll take the job and soon he’s able to get the caravan moving again. There are five other guards besides me, Wendy, and Caedi. They’re all in scale armor, with helmets on their heads, short swords on their hips, shields on their backs, and spears in their hands. Here I am walking around in little more than a bathrobe. Wendy doesn’t even own a pair of pants. Between the two of us and gentle Caedi, I’m sure we don’t make much of an impression on our new colleagues.

They seem nice enough though. There aren’t any snide remarks or anything. No short jokes. The captain’s name is Wilma Gray. She’s human, towering above us at about five foot eight inches tall. Golden blonde hair flows out of her helmet. She’s lean and prettier than any guard has a right to be. She’s also nice and seems glad to have us.

“I saw you guys take apart those kobolds,” she says. “Your girlfriend broke one and tossed him over a wagon!”

“That’s my wife,” I say, grinning like an idiot. “As of two days ago." 

I trot up to where Wendy walks beside the lead wagon.

I say to Wendy, “You know, when you think about the supplies we bought in town, I wonder—.”

“If Hypa knew something?” says Wendy. “C’mon, Mark, I’m not that dumb. We bought non-perishables, bread, jerky, bandages, and medicines that would keep for a while. We weren’t buying her supplies. She had us buying ours.”

“You think the goddess told her something?” I say. “Like, she had a vision?”

“I asked Caedi,” says Wendy, nodding over to where Caedi is riding beside the driver of the covered wagon. “She says that visions aren’t typical of a priestess of Love, but that Hypa wasn’t a normal priestess so it's possible.”

“What did she mean by that?”

“I think she’s got a little hero worship going on for her old mentor.”

“You don’t think they….”

“Were lovers? I don’t think so,” says Wendy. “I’m not getting that vibe, so to speak.”

“Ha ha,” I say.

Captain Gray says, “Mark! What news from up ahead?”

She’s giving me crap because I’m talking and not attending my duties. I'm supposed to be checking out the road ahead and reporting back. 

“I’ll go see, shall I?” I say and run up the road.

 

The plan is to travel all night and get to Fort Reach by midmorning tomorrow. We're all worried the bandits will regroup and come at us again.  Moving quickly seems a good idea. At first, it’s exciting. I’ve never been a guard before and it’s fun and kind of scary to go up the road in the dark by myself, looking for trouble. I’m not too worried about finding anything. Gnomes can see pretty well in the dark and it’s likely I’ll see anything before they can see me, whatever it is, but I keep finding nothing.

I tell myself it’s a good thing. Protecting folks is what I’m supposed to do. What I want to do. Fighting isn’t.

Still, as the caravan moves farther from the battle with the kobolds and no new threat emerges, I start to get bored. I do what I can to stay alert, of course. Complacency doesn’t seem like a good idea, but it’s tricky to stay on your toes at nothing after nothing after nothing.

At one point, after I report back, I sidle up to Captain Gray. “Have you been a caravan guard long?”

She grins. “Bored already?”

“A little,” I say. “But I’ve never been to Fort Reach and want to know a little bit about it before I get there.”

“But you didn’t ask about Fort Reach,” she says, smirking. “You asked about me.”

Oh shit. I think she thinks I’m flirting with her. Okay, she’s hot but I’m a newlywed.

I shrug. “You’ve been there though. They employ you. Getting a sense of who you are tells me a little bit about the ones that hired you and the town.”

The smirk softens. She says, “I was on the city watch back in Truhaven. The capital, not Bull’s Tavern. Did that for three years. Then, when Mr. Thalazar was recruiting for caravan guards to run between his new settlement and the Tavern, well, the pay was a bit better and there was a promotion in it for me.”

“Makes sense.”

“I’ve been at this five years now.”

“Are bandit attacks normal?” I ask.

“Not really,” says Gray. “They’ve been a little more common lately. Mr. Frent spoke true that he’s the third merchant who’s been ambushed on the road there, the others all killed and their goods looted. Maybe by those same kobolds. They seemed pretty well outfitted.”

“Kobolds usually aren’t?” I ask.

“No,” says Gray, scratching her forehead with the back of her thumb. “They’re normally scavengers equipped with whatever they find laying around. I’ve got some of their equipment with us to show Mr. Thalazar. I figure they had that armor made for them. Now, that could be because these bandits are just that good.”

“But?”

“It could also mean they’ve got support from somewhere,” she says. “In that case we might be able to trace the armor back to whoever made it. The armorer then could tell us who he sold it to, see?”

“Smart,” I say.

“Thanks,” she says.

“So, what’s Fort Reach like?” I ask.

“It’s a frontier town,” she says. “It’s economy is adventure-based, like most of them. People go out into the wild to explore ruins or monster’s dens. Bandit camps. That sort of thing. They come back with loot. Treasure, magical reagents, enchanted weapons that they sell to the store.”

“The only one in town?” I ask.

Gray nods at Frent. “Until he’s able to set up shop, yeah.”

“And the store sells stuff back to other adventurers?”

“Yeah, though King Elmund has placed a bounty on everything above a certain power level or value. That all gets shipped back to Bull’s Tavern, sometimes by me, and then on back to Truhaven and the king. Some of the other stuff that doesn’t sell gets shipped off elsewhere too. Fort Reach’s entire economy is built around adventuring. We have smiths and armorers, inns and hostels, stables, the general store, and a number of taverns. It’s a rough crowd, yes, but they’re mostly rough to external threats and tolerant of each other. Mostly.”

To me it sounded a lot like the Wild West.

“I don’t know what your plans are, Mark,” says Gray. “But Mr. Thalazar would probably hire you, Wendy, and Caedi as caravan guards on my say so. You really saved our asses back there. You’re all pretty good in a fight. Though Fort Reach has a small hospital too, if Caedi would rather. Good healers can pretty much write their own ticket. You could probably join any adventuring party you wanted if it meant taking her too.”

“Which is better?”

Gray shrugs. “Depends on what you want,” she says. “Adventuring pays the best and you’re self-employed. You’ll see a lot of fighting, of course and whole groups disappear from time to time, presumed dead. A caravan guard’s got it quieter, for the most part. Most don’t want to mess with us, but when they do it can get pretty bad. Those other two merchant trains? There were no survivors. The pay is steady and we hire good people. I’d put you on my crew, if it was okay with Mr. Thalazar.” She smiles. “Some might call that a bonus.”

“Something to talk over with Wendy, I guess,” I say.

She arches an eyebrow.

“About the jobs,” I say in a hurry. “We decide these things together.”

She smiles and nods.

“Because I love her.”

She laughs and sends me back out to scout.