The Lady In Red Really Wants Me Dead

Episode 4: Steel, Blood, Tears, and Hairy Feet

"A very wise man once said that the pen is mightier than the sword. Lived before the discovery of magic, I'm guessing. And the invention of the .600 Pfeizandor Spellhammer revolver."

                                                                                  Jack O, Halfling Detective

If someone had asked Jack O if he disliked his job, and he trusted them enough, he might have confessed that he did —in fact— struggle with moments in which every fiber of his being told him, screaming, that this time he had to head back to the family farm and hang up the .600.

Moment when all those mistakes, all that red smothered across long years —finally— turned out to be just a little bit too much. Moments he hated.

This was one of them.

The farmstead had been burned to the ground. In the small grove next to the blackened remains, a child wept, curled up in the arms of an older child who was trying hard as he could not to cry. Idriel was with them, something which Jack would respect her for as long as she let it last.

He knew where the mother and the father were, what had happened to them, and he had told everyone he'd shoot them dead if they ever told the kids.

Clenching his fist to a shake, Jack wished his loaded .600 were in it, and the damned degenerates that had done this were anywhere, as long as it was less than six-hundred yards, and somewhere vaguely in front of him.

He looked up at Sting, perched on the brim of his bowler hat. "Don't worry little guy, we'll get them, eventually." The hummingbird fluttered down to his finger, cocking his head in fierce agreement.

The rest of the party were still inside the Baron's tent, talking to the other survivors. Jack had learned long ago that in situations such as these a nose was a much better ally than an ear.

He perked his very own ally up to the wind, tasting all it brought with it. The ash, still smoldering. The salt in the tears. The blood, the piss. Hints of food not yet digested. And under it, the smell of the original owner of each and every one of them. In all this monumental shit storm of a mess, the only thing that could be cast as lucky —if one squinted exceptionally hard— was that it had happened recently.

Jack twitched his head one way, then the other, flaring his nostrils like a dragon.

There they were. Three —four dozen of them, distinctly out of tune with those of the farmstead. These scents were cold and barren, stone and ice. Humans wearing polar bear and walrus skin, riding... skentusks. Humans, and... No. That made no sense. Orcs? As far as Jack knew, barbarian tribes were rather prickly about mingling with other than their own. Prickly as artillery-fire. But there they were with the rest of them, coming out of the forest from the south, and then straight north. The nose never lied. There were goblins, too.

Extremely high on Jack's list of unlikely things.

He rolled a cigarette, took in the taste of tobacco, then rushed back to the baron's tent, stepping carefully. He didn't want his hairy feet to get full of someone's spillings. Idriel waved as he went past. She was kneeling next to the children, holding them with an almost miserable look in her leaf green eyes —except for that bit of fire Jack caught in there, as he tipped his bowler hat.

The tent was a patchwork sewn from a rather impressive variety of lengths of cloth, with an even more impressive array of sizes and colors. Their age could be individually told by their apparent state of disrepair. At the very top flew a standard with what Jack assumed to be the most ancient and honorable arms of the Holdenflames: A white bear under a yellow and red sun, upon a field of black. Quite appropriate, considering the rather impressive amount of shit a bear could produce.