The Happy Wizard, and Other Arrangements
Session: 2022-03-09
There is a particular kind of job board that soldiers-turned-mercenaries know on sight. Not the grand proclamations pinned up in guild halls, with their official seals and fine language — but the other kind. The scrawled kind. The kind that promises honest work for honest coin and doesn't ask too many questions about either party.
Respin had read hundreds of them.
This one said: Escort to Phandalin. Meet at the Happy Wizard. Ask for Gundrin or Sildar. And at the bottom, in smaller letters: Ten gold on arrival.
He tore it down and went to find Dwomdin.
He'd spotted him first, which was how it usually went. He knew the set of his shoulders before he saw his face — that particular posture of a man who has learned to sleep lightly and wake fast. Dwomdin. He'd come a long way from Luskan, or so the rumour went; heading toward Neverwinter, looking for work, which put him in the same position as Respin himself. Of the eight who had ridden out together, once, in a different life, only the two of them had come home. That kind of arithmetic leaves a mark, and Respin had long since stopped pretending it hadn't.
But there was something steadying about Dwomdin. Something reliable. He trusted him the way you trust a well-maintained weapon — not out of sentiment, but out of experience.
He handed him the notice. He read it. He shrugged, which meant yes.
The Happy Wizard was warm and loud in the way that good taverns are, full of people who had nowhere better to be and weren't particularly sorry about it. Respin scanned the room out of habit — exit, bar, stairs, corner booth — and then he saw him.
Sildar Hallwinter.
He hadn't seen him in years, but he carried himself exactly as he remembered: the careful stillness of a man who has spent too long in service to relax it entirely. Human. Fighter. Lords' Alliance, if he recalled right, which he did. He had dealt with Hallwinter in his soldiering days. He was, in his considered estimation, an upstanding man — the sort of man he would have gladly served under, in another life.
He found this quietly reassuring. The job, at least, came recommended by someone he respected.
At the same table: a dwarf he didn't know, presumably the Gundrin of the notice. And two others he hadn't expected at all.
The halfling was young — twenty-three, he would later mention, in the tone of someone who considers that a significant number. His name was Blix. Respin, who had stopped counting years some time ago, took note of it anyway. And beside Blix sat a woman — tall, broad, with the particular settled solidity of someone who has long made peace with taking up space. Her name was Helluva. A druid, as it turned out.
Respin sat down. Dwomdin sat down beside him. The arrangement, as it presented itself, seemed reasonable enough.
The job was simple. Mining supplies, ready tomorrow morning. Escort to Phandalin. Ten gold each on delivery, to a merchant named Elmar Barthin at the general store. Gundrin and Sildar would ride ahead; the party would follow with the wagon. Tabs were on Gundrin and Sildar for the evening.
Respin ordered tea and pancakes, and thought that he had heard worse proposals.
Morning arrived grey and ordinary. He found Gundrin and Sildar at a corner table, deep in a conversation that stopped when he came near. Not the pause of men with secrets, exactly — more the pause of men with news that hadn't settled yet. Gundrin introduced himself properly over breakfast. He corrected something he hadn't said: he was an explorer, not an adventurer. The distinction seemed to matter to him.
He had found something, he said. Something he had been looking for, for a long time.
He didn't say what. But the weight of it was there in the way he held his shoulders, and in the way Sildar watched him while he spoke.
The supplies, as it happened, wouldn't be ready until tomorrow. But Gundrin and Sildar needed to leave today. That was how it was going to be. The party would manage the escort themselves. Their contact in Phandalin was one Elmar Barthin — merchant, general store, expecting them. Five gold in advance in the morning, the remaining ten on arrival.
Respin refilled his tea.
There were worse arrangements. He had worked with less, and with people he trusted far less than this particular collection of strangers and one old friend. The job was straightforward. The road was known. The coin was fair.
He watched Gundrin and Sildar leave. Whatever it was they were chasing, it had been a long time coming — he could see that much. He hoped it was worth it.
He had a feeling, in the unhurried way of someone who has lived long enough to recognise such feelings, that they would find out eventually.
For now: the supplies, the road, and Phandalin. One thing at a time.