Bernt trudged up the highway along the Uvner River as the sun rose over the hills on the far side. The road followed the water upstream from Fergefield up through Halfbridge, all the way to Henfelden. The river marked the eastern border of Besermak, beyond which lay the Eastern Wildlands. There were people there, he knew—tribal pagans like Estrid’s people who held whatever tiny territories they could protect, scraping out an existence on the margins of the human world. They lived in an environment dominated by forest trolls, enormous nomadic orc clans, elves and supposedly even some reclusive hill giants far to the east.

  Every few years, an orc warlord or a troll raiding party would try to cross up north at the river’s headwaters or up near the coast at Fort Alborough, but for the most part, Bernt had never felt as though he lived right on the frontier. Or he hadn’t, until a horde of kobolds had come boiling up out of the Depths nearly two years ago, followed by an army of Duergar barely a month later.

  This part of the country had always felt safe—like the heartland. It still felt that way.

  He was surprised then, when the stone point of a spear stopped him as he rounded a bend, poking him roughly in the chest.

  “Hold it!” snarled the weapon’s wielder, a youngish goblin with mottled green and brown skin. “This is a private road.” He grinned, revealing needle-sharp teeth. “You’ll need to pay the toll.”

  Bernt narrowed his eyes at the small highwayman. He was dressed in a motley assortment of rags and an oversized vest that had probably belonged to a human until recently. It had a little splash of dried blood on it. The would-be robber had probably seen Bernt’s expensive robes and lack of guards, and taken him for some kind of rich idiot, wandering the open road without any protection.

  For a moment, Bernt considered just paying him off. Getting into fights was always dangerous, and he was only carrying some silver and a single gold mark—nothing compared to what he had in the bank. But, if he did that, this asshole here would come back to harass the next traveler to come along, and the one after that. Sooner or later, some poor farmer was going to get killed just trying to bring his produce to market in Halfbridge, and that would be on him.

  Besides, unlike that hypothetical farmer, he could fight.

  Bernt glanced to the bushes on either side to check for anyone else waiting in ambush. Then, he reached up to flip his hood up and bulled forward, sweeping his staff into the spear to push the tip to the side.

  The goblin’s eyes widened and he stepped back to try to keep distance from his larger opponent, but Bernt was only trying to keep the goblin between himself and the bushes on his right as he flung white flame directly into the goblin’s face. As it turned out, though, he’d picked the wrong side. Something struck him from behind—an arrow, he thought—and threw off his aim a bit, but it didn’t matter. He hadn’t taken the time to shape the spell into a proper projectile, and the burning arcane liquid splashed haphazardly across his target’s face and neck. The goblin screamed, high and panicked and went down.

  Bernt turned hastily, searching for the second assailant, only to find her bursting from the bushes, fleeing out across an open field.

  Carefully, he shaped the spellform for a fireball, infusing the spell with a bit of his own spirit to help guide it to its target. It took a few seconds—long enough for him to reconsider. He hesitated and, after a moment, let the spellform dissipate without activating it. The idea of killing someone who was running away didn’t sit well with him, even if it was a bandit. Besides, letting her go might do some good. She would carry warning to the rest of her tribe, so they might think twice before trying to take control of a main road like this again.

  Regardless, he’d have to report this in Halfbridge. Count Narald would need to increase patrols and get Vael Dirin involved. The smaller tribes in this region were their tributaries, and keeping them in line was technically their responsibility—quite a task considering that goblin tribes were only hierarchical in the loosest sense. They couldn’t just order them to stop. More likely, they’d try to warn them off, and if that didn’t work, hunt them down and drive their entire tribe out toward the wildlands.

  Keeping that in mind, Bernt returned to the goblin on the road. He might have some identifying marks, or maybe something in his pockets that could help the Vael Dirin figure out which of their tributaries had decided to turn to outlawry. He extinguished the fire with an effort of will, revealing the ghastly, blackened remains of the highwayman’s head and neck. One of the corpse’s legs still twitched, as if it didn’t know it was dead yet.

  Bernt had seen a lot in the last few years, but he still averted his eyes from the grisly sight. This was the third time he’d been accosted on this trip—once by humans outside of Gobford, and again on the same road near Lochholme by a mixed group of humans and orcs.

  Those groups had been larger, though, and better equipped. He’d paid off the first, who had looked like a group of deserters with a spellcaster to back them up. They hadn’t pushed him or tried to take his clothes, either, which suggested they were smart. They knew that causing too much trouble on the road would draw far more attention from the military than shaking down the occasional traveler and merchant. The second group had looked ragged and hungry, and they’d pushed their luck, coming for him at night in his camp. He’d had to kill four before the rest ran for it.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  While he was arguably defending himself this time as well, it was the first time he’d killed someone who probably hadn’t been a serious threat to him. He’d been ready, and the arrow that had struck him had bounced off his robes without a scratch. It felt… different. He didn’t regret it, but it didn’t feel good, either.

  The arrow was a simple construction—stone tipped with fletching that might have been made from chicken feathers. He stuck it in his bag and rifled through the corpse’s pockets.

  There wasn’t much to go on. A bag heavy with coppers and a few silver marks, a hunting knife sized for a human and an odd sort of doll made of bone, canvas and woven grass. It was a bird of some sort—decent work, but at least it wasn’t the sort of thing you stole from a passing farmer. He pocketed the doll and dragged the goblin off the road, where he buried him with the help of a hastily modified tunneling spell.

  Had the roads always been this dangerous? Bernt didn’t think so. Things were getting worse, even though the war was over.

  ***

  In a way, all cities were the same. The noise, the press of the streets, the smells. Despite that, though, Bernt knew if someone had blindfolded him three weeks ago and carted him here, he would still have recognized this city in particular. Halfbridge was home. He’d grown up running through the streets here, catching rats and running errands for coppers. In the years before he’d left, he’d worked underneath the streets. He knew this place, quite literally, inside and out.

  He breathed in the comforting familiarity of it all as he made his way through the Lower District, walking around the Temple District out of habit to reach the Undercity Gate. He’d been avoiding houses of the gods for so long that it was second nature. For most of his tenure as an underkeeper, Bernt had worked with his demonic familiar, Jori. While the imp was extraordinarily sneaky, he didn’t want to risk offending a god or an overenthusiastic paladin by parading a demon around in front of a temple.

  As he approached the river docks, Bernt finally ran into something… new. A lot of somethings. Nearly two years ago, a Duergar army had forced their way up past the Undercity and burned their way through the Crafter’s and Lower Districts. When Bernt had left, most of the buildings here had been in ruins, or in desperate need of repairs. Now, the place was virtually unrecognizable. The layout of the streets was the same, mostly, but the buildings…

  Wooden tenements, warehouses and the occasional rickety ale house had been replaced with tall, blocky buildings made of smooth, gray stone. They were tall, each one exactly four stories, and nearly identical to each other. It wasn’t exactly ugly, but it was stark. Utilitarian. In a way, it reminded Bernt of Norhold, with its oddly square layout and buildings, but he recognized the architectural style from the city of Highstone in the Depths a year ago. This was Duergar work.

  For all its drabness, it was an obvious improvement over what had come before. The ground floors had larger windows than the upper ones and housed shops, alehouses and especially businesses and small workshops—something that had been lacking in this area before. A baker had set up shop near his old street, and a small tailor’s shop. People bustled through the streets, working, eating and shopping, not just hurrying to get inside or get elsewhere.

  The Crafter’s District had been restored in a similar style, though more purpose-built. A large smelting facility had been erected on Smith’s Lane, with a chimney so tall it reached high above the city walls. It belched smoke high into the air, keeping the atmosphere down in the street remarkably breathable. Where eight or nine smithies had once stood before, there was now just one enormous facility, the clink of hammers ringing out the open windows.

  The Undercity Gate, at least, looked just the same as it always had. Bernt didn’t recognize the gray-clad Underkeeper guard standing at the entrance, but he waved to her all the same. The guard’s arms and armor, he noted, had been upgraded—instead of a simple gambeson, she also wore a mail shirt and a steel helm. The spears were slightly shorter than before with a narrower tip and a steel cap on the butt. Where had Ed gotten the funding for all that?

  Maybe things weren’t going so badly here after all. After a year of worsening news about the state of things all over the country, it was refreshing to see a city that looked to be prospering. As he made his way down the tunnel and into the Undercity Market, however, he realized what, and who, he hadn’t seen.

  Easily two-thirds of the people shopping and running market stalls in the Undercity market were goblins and orcs, followed by dwarves and only a handful of humans. He didn’t see a single gnome or half-elf. The refugees from Loamfurth had visibly changed the demographics here, and by the looks of things, had also scared off at least some of the humans. By contrast, the vast majority of people walking around up above were humans, with plenty of dwarves and gnomes and little of anyone else.

  The implications were obvious. Halfbridge’s society was dividing. However well the city was doing as a whole, they were suffering the consequences of last years’ Conclave just like everyone else.

  The Underkeepers’ Headquarters looked exactly the same as it had before, and Bernt thought he recognized Morix, Nirlig’s father guarding the door. For a moment, he considered going to say hello and to go in and speak with Ed right away, but he changed his mind almost immediately, taking a right-hand turn into a broad tunnel that led to the Goblin Quarter, where his house was. He needed a bath, a nap in an actual bed and some proper hot food before he started dealing with anything resembling work.

  It wasn’t until he stood in front of his house, his tired mind slowly processing the tables and stands filling his front room and spilling out next to his front door that he remembered that he’d forgotten someone when he’d sent messages ahead to Ed and Iriala, notifying them of his return. He’d traded the temporary use of his house to a goblin shaman named Grixit, a moderately successful merchant in Halfbridge, and the only one who had been able to supply Bernt with what passed for enchanted gear on a budget at a time when he needed it very badly—multiple times, actually.

  The goblin had transformed Bernt’s house into what looked like a third-hand garbage trading station—the trademark look of any goblin trader. He had miscellaneous bits of plant and animal matter, random clothing and armor, a few knives, a club and assorted bits and bobs of every description except “new”. The man himself stood just inside, behind a small counter made from a plank of wood he’d laid over two small wooden kegs. Bernt raised a hand and waved at him lamely, trying not to look like he’d just been surprised by an arrangement he’d suggested in the first place.

  “Hi! Ehm… I’m back!”