66: Bounty

I didn’t mention this at the time, because it’s not about me, but when I joined Solvej and Kurtis together in matrimony in the sight of Shallya, I bothered to write up a lovely certificate for them. I went out of my way to do it up as artistically as I could, even drawing a little red heart for them and some doves at the bottom of the page. Solvej said that under local Dullen law, if one of the parties destroyed the certificate that would effectively signify an official divorce. So she ate it. And that wasn’t even the worst meal I’d made that week. In any case, in the eyes of Shallya, and as far as I am concerned, they are still married.

Anyway, I was a bit sick of them all and I managed to stay away from them for a good few months. I did bump into them at Eloise’s party. Eloise kept dropping hints that Kurtis had stolen something from her, but instead of getting mad she was sort of excited about it, like he was her performing bad boy. And she introduced him to a wealthy wine merchant called Paula Blun, who he, of course, took advantage of. I think Kurtis saw an opportunity to fund the lifestyle to which he was trying to become accustomed. As promised, Otto presented Eloise with a taxidermy rat-Eloise, which she couldn’t wait to get rid of, and palmed it off on her hapless maid, Sine.

Using the ingredients I had found on our Sigmar-forsaken trek across the Midden Moors I managed to brew eight doses of Nectar of Vitality, a particularly potent potion that should come in handy at some point. I had been doing some work for the Order of the Chalice but that was more administrative and research-based than I had hoped. I thought I might be crossing the Empire with a band of like-minded heroes putting down incursions of the fly lord, but instead I was writing a report on the congenital or developmental essentiality of his minions. The classic question, Nature or Nurgle?

I didn’t see them again until Otto came to summon me to Kurtis’ house with some incoherent story. Apparently, Kurtis had been visiting his outhouse when he was netted by a bounty hunter who had been hiding in his garden. Kurtis had called for Otto and Otto had tried to tackle the bounty hunter while Kurtis extricated himself from the net. They’d had a bit of a fight and the bounty hunter had run off down the back alley.

Fair enough, but Kurtis being Kurtis had run after him and killed him. He said that all he had done was grapple the bloke who then accidentally fell on one of his crossbow bolts and stabbed himself to death, which sounded a lot like one of Kurtis’ lies. Anyway, Kurtis had stuffed the body in his outhouse and called for help. And now, we had to get him out of another mess.

So before long were we all back at Kurtis’ and it turned out that Otto’s ridiculous story had been pretty accurate. Kurtis showed us the wanted poster which mentioned him by name, and which also said that Solvej was his accomplice. It offered fifty crowns for him alive, or twenty dead, for, and I quote, ‘theft of jewel and attempted seduction of Dowager Duchess Clothilde Telland.’ It also offered twenty-five crowns for the wife, not specifying whether this was dead or alive, and twenty -five for the return of the jewel. And five for any accomplices, which, presumably, meant me. Not really happy about only being wanted for five crowns.

We had met Clothilde Telland at Natassia von Saponatheim’s wedding banquet, but as far as I knew, had nothing to do with the missing gem, a ruby called the Rose Tiger. Gulgad had gone to find it, after Kurtis had promised the duchess we would try to help her get it back. I think Gulgad had managed to get hold of it, but Glimbrin the Gnome had stolen it from him again and disappeared with it.

The poster said that the reward would be payable at the Martyred Lady Tavern in Jaeger Keep, which was up in Middenland, so we decided that the best way to deal with things was to travel up to Jaeger Keep and plead innocence and hope they didn’t mind about a dead bounty hunter, which to be fair, is a hazard of the profession. Kurtis did mention that a neighbour had witnesses the whole incident, but he had gone round with a few crowns to keep them quiet.

When Kurtis had left the room for a few moments, Erhardt suggested we might hand Kurtis in ourselves and take the reward. No one agreed with him, but we weren’t exactly enthusiastic in our support for Kurtis.

The bounty hunter had a medallion around his neck, which proved his occupation, so Konrad decided to take that. He’d also got word that the wanted poster was all over the place from here to Ubersreik, and Kurtis was worried that he might be recognised trying to leave the city so we hatched a plan to leave by boat. We just needed his wealthy wine merchant girlfriend to lend him a boat for the evening, so Otto and I went to talk to her.

I had not met her before, but she wasn’t very pleased to see Otto. She was plainly livid at Kurtis for humiliating her and said she never wanted to see him again. She showed us a salacious pamphlet that had been doing the rounds describing Solvej’s life with Kurtis. We knew there was no chance of borrowing a boat, so made our excuses and left taking the pamphlet with us.

The pamphlet described Solvej’s (fictional, I would like to think) upbringing in Nordland which involved cavorting with beastmen and daemons and said she was unable to be satisfied (not sure what that means) by men until she met Kurtis. And the pair of them engaged in unholy unions. This was all terrible stuff and I had to read it to Otto several times so we could be sure of our facts.

By the time we got back to Kurtis’ Erhardt was enacting some sort of plan. He got Kurtis to take off all his metal bits and lie down on the floor. Then he invaded his body with choking shadows until he passed out.

Why use such awful magic when a simple draught could do the job? Like everything magical it was extremely heavy handed and probably dangerous but at the same time, I couldn’t help feeling a certain amount of satisfaction that Kurtis was so helpless and silent. I couldn’t help thinking, may Shallya forgive me, that simply dumping him in the Reik alongside the bounty hunter would be the best way to deal with all this, in the long term. I couldn’t do anything like that of course, but if my colleagues did something like that without telling me, there wouldn’t be much I could do about it.

Aunt Clara came in and was shocked to see Kurtis writhing around on the floor, suffocating, and I tried to tell her everything would be alright, but she seemed to think I was threatening her to keep quiet, and I found it difficult to say the right thing without it sounding like an ominous threat. And I wasn’t helped by Solvej making the slit throat gesture at her behind my back.

Erhardt cast a spell on Solvej so that she looked a bit different, in case she was recognised, and she took the bounty hunter’s body down to the Reik and threw it in. On the way back she bumped into Ursula. Ursula warned her about cavorting with daemons but because they were old friends, Ursula allowed her to simply leave town. I think she decided it wouldn’t be good for her newly recovered career if it were known she was friends with the now infamous Solvej and Kurtis, even if she brought them to justice.

We tied Kurtis’ unconscious body to the back of Buttercup and Konrad disguised himself with the bounty hunter’s stuff and led Kurtis out of the city. He knew the bloke on the gate, in any case, so it went smoothly enough. This all went on in the middle of the night, so we were all a bit tired.

And once we had cleared the gates, I woke Kurtis up and untied him. He got very mad and lunged at Erhardt and punched him. Erhardt hit him with his staff but we managed to cool things down.

So we walked through the night along the North Road. Kurtis and Solvej got together again and started chatting among themselves. Although they were an estranged couple who had barely spoken since their wedding night, they seemed to be getting on fine again. I think they were united in their dislike of Erhardt and were gossiping about his insecurity and his lack of leadership skills. At least they weren’t talking to me.

I had a bit of a moan, myself, as we walked along, but I spoke to Shallya. I’m not sure it was my place, but I did feel the need to ask her why she had sent me back to this group. I had been mostly content at the temple in the Order of the Chalice doing research and helping people. And then I was dragged back to this group because they supposedly needed me. Perhaps it was a test. But perhaps I had failed the test, already. Perhaps the test was to have the strength to tell Kurtis and Solvej and the rest of them where to go. Helping protect Kurtis’ and Solvej’s reputation from stupid gossip and covering for the murder of a bounty hunter is hardly Shallya’s work.

Anyway, we thought about staying at the Travellers’ Rest, but Kurtis decided he would need to pay off his tab, which we had enjoyed several times. And since we had practically kidnapped him, he hadn’t been able to get his money. Then as we were walking, a man came out of the forest. He looked like a hunter type and well used to the outdoors. And he greeted us as friends, as if he knew us, although I’m sure none of us had ever seen him before.