Chadwick Rye

The tavern reeked of cheap ale and cheaper promises. I sat in the darkest corner, one hand curled around my tankard, the other never straying far from the hilt of my blade. Twenty years of bloodshed had taught me caution above all else. They called me Tymon the Red—not for my hair, which had long ago faded to the color of tarnished silver, but for the trail I’d left across six kingdoms.

A fat merchant approached my table, sweat beading on his brow despite the autumn chill. I recognized fear when I smelled it.

“Are you him?” he whispered. “The one they call the Red?”

I didn’t answer immediately, taking another pull of my ale instead. The merchant’s eyes darted to the scars crisscrossing my forearms, the notches on my sword belt—seventeen of them, each marking a contract completed.

“I have coin,” he continued, voice quavering. “More than you’d earn in three normal contracts. There’s a dragon nesting in the northern caves. It’s destroyed two villages already.”

I set down my tankard with deliberate slowness. “I’m retired.”

The merchant blinked, confusion replacing fear. “But you’re Tymon the Red. The kingslayer. The man who fought the witch-lords of Karthax.”

“Aye, and I’m tired,” I replied, feeling the weight of every battle in my bones. “Find another sword.”

After he left, cursing under his breath, I stared into the dregs of my ale. The truth was, there was one job I’d do without payment, one task that would pull me from this self-imposed exile.

The memories flooded back unbidden—of a small village nestled in a valley of wildflowers, of laughter echoing through simple wooden homes. Of her. Saphira, with eyes the color of twilight and hands that could coax life from the most barren soil. The woman who had loved me despite knowing what I was, what I’d done.

The woman who had died while I was away earning coin, slaughtered alongside our neighbors when the Crimson Brotherhood raided our village, seeking vengeance against me.

I’d hunted six of the eight Brotherhood leaders since that day, tracking them across deserts and mountains, through cities and forgotten ruins. My blade had drunk deep of their blood, yet two remained—the twins, Vex and Voren, the architects of the massacre.

For twenty years, they had eluded me, slipping through my fingers like smoke. But three nights ago, a whisper had reached me. The twins had been spotted in Ravensreach, amassing an army of sellswords and cultists.

That was the job I would do for free. Not for coin, not for glory, not for some merchant’s dragon problem. I would find the twins, and I would send them screaming into whatever hell awaited souls like theirs. I would do it for Saphira, for the life we might have had, for the children we never conceived.

I drained my ale and stood, tossing a copper onto the scarred table. Outside, the wind carried the promise of winter, but I felt nothing but the burning in my heart that had sustained me all these years. My sword gleamed dully in the torchlight as I checked its edge.

Some men fight for gold. Some for kings or gods or glory. I had fought for all of those things, had sold my blade to the highest bidder, had waded through rivers of blood for strangers’ causes.

But vengeance? Vengeance I would give freely, the final gift from a man with nothing left to lose.

I turned north, toward Ravensreach, toward the twins who thought they had escaped justice. Twenty years had not dulled my rage nor my skill. They would learn, in their final moments, that some debts can only be paid in blood.

And Tymon the Red always collected what he was owed.