The Fool on the Road

Opening

The ice came down before the riders understood it was coming.

Yeltsu had been fast all fight — faster than a cleric had any right to be, the haste still singing in his limbs — and when his turn came around again he found the forward line of Zhentarim cavalry bunched too close to survive it. He raised his hand and a storm answered, hailstones the size of fists tearing out of a sky that had no clouds to give them. The horses screamed first. Then the men. When the falling ice stopped, the front of the enemy formation was down in the churned mud outside Phandalin, and somewhere behind the shattered line Zuktind heard a commander's voice crack with frustration.

This was where the last week had left them: mid-battle, the town at their backs seized by raiders who had come for one thing, and the whole ugly arithmetic of it still unsettled — because none of them yet knew what it would cost.

The Cavalry Breaks

Yeltsu carried the early rounds, and he knew it. A second Ice Storm dropped nearly two hundred feet out, onto four riders holding a tight diamond formation that thought distance made them safe. Giant hailstones found all four at once. The ground under them turned to broken glass.

Zuktind fought from a tree. He had taken the branches for the height and the sightlines, and from them he poured Sharpshooter fire into the enemy leader — musket shots thrown out at a penalty he could afford, hunting for the one that would land hard enough to matter. Rusty stood guard below him, patient as a machine is patient, and when Yeltsu's bardic inspiration drifted across the field to Zuktind, the table found something none of them had ever thought to try: a construct could take that inspiration too. Rusty could be inspired. It was a small thing, filed away without ceremony, the kind of knowledge that changes nothing today and everything later.

Rathenfall said little, as Rathenfall did. He moved to the man in front of him, and when the raider turned to face the newcomer, Lightbringer came around twice into his skull and put him down where he stood.

Behind all of it, unseen, Lissandra worked from cover under Greater Invisibility, fire blooming out of empty air where no caster could be found.

And the enemy commander — a woman, badly hurt now, bleeding and debilitated — broke. She ran to a mounted comrade, who caught her by the hand and swung her up behind him. "Lock the way in retreat," she called as they wheeled. "Let's go to the camp." They dashed for the hill beyond the town, and the fight went with them.

Then two strangers ended what was left of it.

The first was a big man swinging a war hammer two-handed, wading into the beaten infantry with the appetite of someone who had been looking forward to this. "Well, you had to spoil the fun, Tessa," he complained to the second, over the noise. "I was just getting warmed up." The second came in full plate, longsword and shield, and moved like judgment given armor. Her blade fell once and opened a raider from shoulder to hip, radiance flaring along the steel. But she did not press it. "There is no reason to spill blood when it's not necessary, Aldrik," she said. "These men are defeated, and they have seen it." She turned her helm toward the tree. "We seek no bloodshed, only justice."

Then, to Zuktind directly: "Well done, dragonkin. We've been waiting for you."

"Thank you," Zuktind called down, earnest as ever. "Sorry we were late."

The Burning House

Yeltsu did not stay to be thanked. There were fires.

The raiders had set houses alight on their way through, and while the last of the cavalry scattered he broke off toward the village to fight the flames the only way a frost-caster knows how — Ray of Frost, again and again, cold hammering the blaze down a little with each casting until a burning wall was only a smoking one. Rathenfall came with him, scooping dirt on his way, and when a man on the bucket brigade caught his eye and pointed him toward a spare pail, he took it and threw water on what the cold hadn't reached.

The house they were saving was old Harbin Wester's, and the question hung over it the whole time: was anyone inside? Yeltsu searched, and searched carefully, and the answer came back clean. Empty. The Zhentarim had torched it to make a point, not a grave. It was intimidation written in fire.

When the flames were beaten to smoke, Yeltsu stood in the mess of it and let himself feel, for a moment, that he had done the right thing. "That's a good thing," he told no one in particular. "Good knowing there are people taking care of it. I was just wanting to help." Then he turned back to find his friends.

The Chase That Wasn't

Zuktind, still hasted, still airborne, made the choice that his nature always makes: he went after the fleeing commander.

It seemed right. Bring her back, let her face the town's judgment with the rest. He flew alone toward the hill and the running horses — and then, mid-pursuit, something in him began to argue with itself. A weight he couldn't name. A wrongness sitting behind his breastbone that said, without reason, give it up. He spent half a minute arguing with the feeling while the others took their turns, and in the end he listened to it. He gave up the chase and turned back toward the field to find out what the strangers wanted.

The instant he shifted his focus off the running men, his perception opened wide, and he saw them: twelve, hidden, waiting along the very path he had been flying. Not the three ahead he'd been watching. Twelve. An ambush laid for exactly the fool who would fly out alone after a wounded quarry.

"Oh," he said, when it landed. "It was an ambush. That would have sucked."

He never learned how a part of him had known. He only spent his last breath of the turn on a warning, shouted back across the field: more cavalry — there was an ambush — we're not done. Then he came home to the others, shaken by a death he had talked himself out of walking into.

Turning Point — Murderer

The woman in plate found him again when the fighting was over, and she did not come to congratulate him.

"And what did you learn from this, dragonkin?"

Zuktind answered honestly. Not to tell strangers things — about wealth, about fortune, not even to justify a purchase.

"A child should know that." Her voice did not rise. That was the worst of it. "What did you learn, dragonkin?"

To keep his mouth shut, he tried.

"Again. A child should learn that. Is that all you have learned? Your actions affect others."

To trust his friends, he said. To think about how his actions land on them.

She let that sit, and then she opened the wound properly. "Heroes of Phandalin — that's what we heard when we arrived in this town. Seems more like troublemakers to me." How many, she asked, had they killed of the Zhentarim. Had he counted. Or had he simply panicked and dealt death, and called it defending the town.

"We never found out how many were killed," Zuktind said. "We panicked. We thought they may have killed many."

"So in your panic you decided to deliver death. That was the proper payment." She turned the blade. "I wonder who is the criminal here. Are the Zhentarim the criminals — or is it you, murderer?"

"We thought we were defending the people."

"Your thoughts are not good enough. Your thoughts are wrong." So far, she told him, the Zhentarim had killed nobody — nobody — in taking this town. And now, with their dead uncounted in the mud and their commander fled bleeding to a camp on the hill, what would they do? Raid it in earnest. Burn it. Slay the townsfolk. "All because of you. A fool on the road."

Zuktind reached for the one defense he had. They had been at Mount Celestia. They had come back only because they were shown what was happening here — because Tyr had sent them.

"Perhaps you should have stayed there."

She was done. She turned her back on him and looked out over the square, and then turned once more. "Aldrik. You'd better go back to work. Their attack is even more certain now." The big man only agreed, and went to a makeshift forge set up behind the fighting, and after a moment the square filled with the steady rhythm of a hammer on metal — the sound of a town that had already decided it would have to fight again.

The Square

They walked into Phandalin proper, and Phandalin was holding its breath.

The streets were empty but for figures darting between buildings, heads down, moving fast. Windows boarded. Doors shut — and here and there doors simply gone, torn off, the rooms behind them ransacked while strangers picked through what was left. The frontier clatter of the place had been replaced by the heavy quiet of occupation. On the town hall wall a sign still hung, that no one had cared to take down:

The dragonkin called Zuktind will present himself and his bag of holding by dawn tomorrow, or this town burns.

Dawn. That was the deadline.

The people, at least, were not their enemies. They were glad to see the party back; they thanked the gods when they saw Zuktind's face, and he told them plainly that Tyr had shown him their plight and given him the chance to come home and help. Sildar had come out to jail the captured raiders, and they were behind bars now, all of them.

The Shrine of Luck had become a field hospital. Makeshift cots lined the walls — a dozen people bruised and cut, one with a splinted leg, the burns the worst of it, the worst that had happened since the Zhentarim seized the town. And moving among the hurt was a man Zuktind did not know: white-bearded, in simple robes, a walking staff leaning unused against the wall as though he had no need of it. He pressed his hands to the forehead of a woman burning with fever, and the fever broke under his touch, her breathing easing, color returning to her face. Real magical healing, done quietly, by a stranger.

Zuktind watched the old man, and out of an instinct drilled into him since childhood — something he had always done around old human men — he searched the air for canaries. For the small tell that would mean Fizban, that would mean Bahamut wearing a borrowed face. He found none, around this old man or any of the elders in the square, and reminded himself that expecting the Platinum Dragon to walk into every field hospital was too much to ask.

The townsfolk who could still stand were gathering to defend the place. Aurora was among them with her father; Sister Garaele was there, and Linene from the Lionshield Coster, and Halia Thornton. And it was Halia who stepped toward Zuktind with the first thing that had sounded like a way out all day.

"I can negotiate the truce," she said. "I have spoken with them before. They are not interested in murdering the population of Phandalin."

The Bag

The manor had been pillaged. Anything valuable and left unhidden was already gone when they reached it — the occupation had been thorough.

What remained was in the bag of holding, and Zuktind sorted it with care, because the Zhentarim only knew about the money. Out came the things he meant to keep: the owlbear parts, a bag of spices, the two-person tent and bedroll, thieves' tools, rations — and the dragon chess set and the fine clothes, which they'd never named and would never miss. What stayed inside was what they had asked for and what they hadn't bothered to ask for: roughly eighteen hundred gold, four thousand silver, a hundred platinum, a playing card set he didn't care about, and a short sword.

Lissandra reached into the bag before he could close it. "I'll keep that one for me," she said, drawing out the Netherese rod. To Zuktind it read as nothing but a curiosity worth twenty-five hundred gold; to her it hummed with a magic he couldn't feel. He moved it to the party's equipment so she could take it properly. The platinum mirror he left in the party's keeping too — no one wanted to carry that on the road to a hostile camp.

He had a plan he kept mostly to himself. The bag was his own infusion; he could unmake it whenever he chose. Hand it over full of coin, let the Zhentarim ride off satisfied — and once they were at least a day's journey out, dissolve the thing entirely and let the money spill on some far road. Halia and the townsfolk talked him toward patience: the raiders were after the contents, not the bag, and a broken promise too soon would only send their frustration back into Phandalin. He agreed to wait. A day's journey. He could hold that long.

Closing

So they went to give it away.

Zuktind would hand the bag over himself. Yeltsu went with him, meaning to stand near the front where his own silver tongue might help Halia hold the truce together. Rusty followed, because Rusty always followed. Rathenfall went too, silent, and the money in the bag belonged, technically, to all of them.

They turned toward the hill outside town, where the tents stood in a makeshift camp and the horses waited, and started across the town green with Halia Thornton at the front — walking, in the failing light of a town that had a single dawn left to survive, toward the men they had already given every reason to burn it.