"And that's when the sinkhole opened up under him, and we had to go back down into the sand newt nest to rescue him all over again!"
Fenris and Garn cracked up laughing at the end of Alys Brangwin's story.
"I always wondered why Galf never told anyone about what happened on that job," the owner of the Hunter's Guild bar said once the cackling died down. "Usually, he didn't even need to finish his first drink before he'd start in on telling the tale of his latest quest."
"Yeah," Alys agreed, "just the memory of the frustration was enough to sour his beer. Especially since that piece of crawler dung wasn't even grateful for getting saved! Not only did he not offer us any kind of bonus for doing the job twice, he started making noise about shorting our base fee as 'compensation for the additional injuries suffered.' As if it was somehow our fault that he was stomping his feet in a hissy fit while standing on a salt crust."
"He's lucky it was you and Galf," Fenris said. As a fellow hunter, the redheaded woman knew all too well the plague that certain clients could be. "I know plenty of hunters who don't have your high professional standards who'd have said, 'if you're only paying for one rescue, then you only get one rescue' and tossed him back down."
"Believe me, I thought about it. Galf wouldn't have stood for it, though."
"He always thought of hunters as being more than just mercenaries," Garn agreed. "It might have been a job, but even so he thought of the hunters as Motavia's protectors, the thin line between Parmanian society and a hostile world that's not our own. Come to think of it, 'Protector' is the title the Native Motavians use for the folks who do hunter work among their society, isn't it? Like that fellow Hysk you traveled with for a while?"
Alys nodded.
"That's right. They're not paid by the job the way we are, so it's easier to understand the title for them. Galf would have appreciated it. As a mentor, he always tried to get me to be the best person that I could be, holding me to a standard that he hoped all hunters could attain."
"Yo, Alys, babe!"
The voice rang through the bar, loud and strong, and full of utterly misplaced confidence.
"A moment of silence for Galf's dream," Fenris murmured.
It wasn't that Joss Howland was thuggish or corrupt, despite his ox-like body and equally ox-like brain. Rather, it was more that once an idea had lodged in his head, it wasn't coming out, short of using mining tools to extract it.
Alys, after a couple of years of being the object of his futile romantic interest, had come to believe that that was the literal truth rather than a metaphor.
"Long time no see!" he continued to not-quite-bellow as he crossed the bar towards them. "I just got back from wrapping up my latest job, and just wait until you hear what haaaaappppeenn—"
The final word was cut off with a dull thud shockingly reminiscent of a body impacting a stone cellar floor after crashing through a temporary patch in a damaged tavern floor.
"You know, I'm not sure I entirely blame him for that one," Fenris remarked. "He wasn't here when Garn talking about the repairs got Alys going on her story."
"I put a sign right next to the spot warning people about the floor," Garn noted.
"I have to agree with Fen on this one, Garn. If your plan's success requires Joss to stop and read a sign, then it was clearly heading for a fall."