Hob Goodfellowe

The boy stumbled up the wooden steps of the guest house. He paused at the entry, only to lean against its frame and catch his breath for a few wheezing gasps. Alright. Alright. You can do this. He pushed at the door and slipped inside. Then, he cut through the crowd and went straight up…

But he was quick. By the time the soldiers did look up, he was already hiding behind a rain barrel on the other side of the cobbles. Breathing hard, he waited as long as he dared, then snuck down a crooked, narrow space between two buildings, and then into a gap behind the inn. There…

After a moment’s pause, the boy remembered his urgency and upped his pace again. He went up one narrow lane after another, across a horse-yard, and down a zig-zag slope of alleyways. The crowds were thinner here, though at one point he got tangled up with some fire worshippers performing a ceremony outside their brightly…

He tried to edge away, when fingers like bands of steel gripped his wrist. The man sitting to the right said, suddenly, “Here! Watch it!” The looked down. He was overflowing the cup. The foamy puddle was spreading on the table. A big growling red-bearded face turned to him. “You simple, boy?” The man who…

The boy was more or less ready to give up and go back to the inn. He turned himself about, trying to figure out the most direct way back, when he noticed a small wayhouse across the square. It was a tidy, respectable little place with a wooden landing open to the air. It was…

Once the room was paid for, Caewen and Fleat retreated behind a closed door and stayed there. But someone needed to scout the town and gather news. The boy slipped quietly out through a side door of the inn. He started off at a directionless walk, listening quietly to everyone and everything. All the while…

The town of Baght was stinking, dark with looming half-timber houses, and full to the walls with every walk of humanity. Soldiers of the Sorthe Princes lingered about in thuggish groups on every street corner. Several times, soldiers grabbed some young man or woman off the street and ‘accepted’ their enlistment into the army. Once,…

Upon the evening of that day, they broke out of the wilderness and tangled scrublands, and came suddenly to farmed country. The tilled countryside had been visible from high up on the mountain slopes, but they had lost sight of it whilst moving through the wild woods and tangle-scrubs of the foothills. The fields that…

The draig-rider was gone by morning light. Where he had winged off to, they could not tell. But he was nowhere in sight at least. They tracked carefully north and west for the next two days. For a time they moved only through wilderness and met no troubles, not even feral boggarts out of the…