“Sir,” said a woman next to the warrior, another Far Westerner but altogether less grand in a shapeless coat and with her long hair so plastered down by the rain she looked drowned.
“Please do not meet his lordship’s eyes directly, for it is an insult.”
Phin glanced away from both of them and saw that the goblin Edgewise now stood beside the last of the four people Phin had seen in the courtyard, a figure cloaked and hooded in a voluminous garment not so very different than Phin’s own robes, though of a beige cloth the weather had dampened to a light brown. Lighter gloves and boots poked out from the wide sleeves and low hem. Thus garbed the figure was shapeless, but for some reason Phin had the idea that there was a woman somewhere in there. He stared for a few moments before the man in ring-mail cleared his throat.
“So what say you, Mr. Wizard? Shall we all away then, each to their own?”
“I am already missing from my duties,” Phin said. “And I seem to recall that my staff has been destroyed. That will not be overlooked by my superiors.”
It was an odd thing for Phin to say given that it was in his best interest to get away from this odd bunch as soon as possible. But a thought had abruptly occurred to him, a thought almost as startling as the rest of this strange morning.
The ring-mailed man and the goblin exchanged a look. “That could be a problem,” Edgewise acknowledged. “Some sort of a cover story…”
“Would be easily detected by my Circle,” Phin interrupted. “No. If I return like this my superiors will know that something requiring inquiry has occurred. There is nothing they enjoy so much as an investigation.”
“If you return?” the ring-mail man asked.
Phin spoke at the goblin as Edgewise seemed to hold some position with the others. It also gave him the opportunity to glance frequently at the woman standing next to the creature. She must be a petite little thing in there…
“You are all bound for Vod’Adia,” Phin said to Edgewise. The goblin blanched.
“Gods no, not me! This bunch, well…their affairs are their own.”
Phin looked at the cloaked woman with her face obscured by her deep hood, and at the Far Westerners. None of them offered anything in return so he turned back to the fellow in the ring-mail, who looked puzzled. Phin addressed him.
“Foreign warriors and what all, heading north toward Galdeez and the entrance to the Vod Wilds. In the last few months I have seen many groups as odd as this one passing through Souterm and they were all bound, every one of them, for the Sable City.”
The ring-mailed man looked over at the others, and the goblin chuckled.
“Considering a bit of desertion from the Circle, are you boy?”
Phin had not conceived of it precisely that way, and yet there it was. All the nights and mornings he had spent staring at courtyard walls waiting for the drawbridge to open to a view of the road north, which he now found himself standing beside, already miles from Souterm. Phin did not doubt that had he been left to his own devices he would have continued to do nothing but look north each morning, for the next month or year or decade, wanting to leave but not taking one step. But now the first step had been taken for him.
“My life in Souterm, and in the Circle, is not quite what I had hoped,” Phin said quietly. The goblin snorted through its wide nostrils.
“Best grow accustomed to disappointment, Phoarty. It is the stuff of life.”
“What are we talking about?” the man in ring-mail asked no one in particular.
“I am talking about leaving the Circle,” Phin said, and he felt his heart rise as he said it out loud. The man blinked at him.
“That doesn’t sound like something a pack of magi lets you do.”
“It happens,” Phin said truthfully. “Particularly among young Wizards of my station. The Circle does not even bother to look for them very hard for retaining a Wizard who does not want to be there is not worth the effort. But…” Phin looked around to include everyone. “Just so you all know. It is easier for them to find a corpse than a live Wizard who does not want to be found. If I disappear, I am only a deserter who has run off. But if I am a member in good standing who turns up murdered, the Circle’s wrath will be great.”
“So we’ve been told,” the axe-man glanced at Edgewise. The goblin spoke to Phin.
“If you want to leave, no one here is going to stop you.”
“I have no money,” Phin said. In fact all he had in the world was presently the clothes on his back, a traveling spell book in an inner pocket of his robes, and a tin coffee cup tied to his belt. “I will need coin to get to Galdeez and from thence to the Sable City, and in truth company on the road seems advisable. But I do not care to join whatever enterprise it is that you are all about. Once I reach the camps outside Vod’Adia I will be able to sell my services to a party of adventurers, for I am after-all a trained Circle Wizard.”
The goblin continued to regard Phin with its bronze eyes narrowed and its smile that was close to a leer. It was obvious Phin had thoroughly misjudged the little creature at their first meeting and he wondered what Edgewise had thought of him in return. Phin decided it had quite probably not been very much.
“Wait where you are,” Edgewise said, then tugged at the sleeve of the hooded woman standing next to him. The two moved off a slight distance and spoke together. After a last hard look at Phin the warrior in the exotic armor sheathed his sword and walked over to the conference, his female companion going with him. Phin was left alone with the man in ring-mail who was still watching him curiously.
“Might I ask you something, Mr. Wizard?”
Phin looked at him steadily. “My name is Phinneas Phoarty. What is yours?”
The man’s smile curled at one side. “If you’ll forgive me, sir, I believe I will wait to see how this all shakes out. Before we become friendly.”
Phin leaned against the cart and tried to look more relaxed than he felt. “It will ‘shake out’ just as I have said. The goblin knows this is the safest way to proceed if he wishes to continue living in Souterm unmolested by my Circle.”
“Well that’s just it, isn’t it? Your Circle. I don’t know much about such things, but as I understand it there are years of training and what-not before a mage, or Wizard if that’s your preferred term, can enter into some magical Order.”
“That is true,” Phin said, wondering again where this man was from. His rough armor looked Zantish but he was just tan rather than actually swarthy, and ‘mage’ was not a common term in the Codian Empire.
“Then why do you want to leave your Circle now, after however many years in training?”
Phin looked south down the Imperial Post Road, back towards the great city looming to the south above which shafts of sun were cutting through the clouds. He could not distinguish the pinnacle of one particular tower on Again Island, but he knew it was there. He sighed.
“Because getting smashed in the head and kidnapped is the most interesting thing that has happened to me in the last ten years.”
The goblin and the shrouded woman spoke at length. Phin only caught a few words and understood none of them, but several times the woman shook a finger in the goblin’s face. Finally Edgewise marched over with a deep scowl.
“They will take you as far as the Camp Town outside of Vod’Adia,” he said. “Feed you on the road, pay the Shugak for your passage there, but that is all. Once in Camp Town you are on your own.”
“I will handle that when the time comes,” Phin said loftily, though he had no idea what he would do out in the middle of a hobgoblin, bullywug, and adventurer-infested wilderness.
“First things first, you must lose those robes. You there, axe-boy. See if you have anything less conspicuous that will fit Mr. Phoarty. A cloak or a coat or something.”
The man nodded at the goblin but before turning to the luggage in the cart he yanked off his right gauntlet and extended the hand at Phin.