Esbert Axar

Esbert Axar is a mercenary of the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign. He says that his father was of Axar stock and his mother from the Empire, and that he served as a soldier before he turned to selling his sword.^{1 2}

A night in Gromkar

Kemp Corvus met him in Ejder Boku ("Dragon Dung"), a tavern of Gromkar counted clean despite its surly elven owner, where Kemp was playing dice with a halfling and two humans. A brawl broke out, a chair was smashed across Kemp's neck and the wounded Esbert was thrown onto his table. Kemp joined in, and the two of them drove off their attackers while dwarven guests threw coins and bought them beer.^{3 4 5}

Esbert said the trouble had begun when he made an offer to a woman whose relatives took offence; he paid for the broken furniture and bought Kemp a drink.^{2 6}

The pair went on through the poor quarter carved into the rock, and later sat outside a place called Kazan sharing tobacco and drink. When Kemp passed out, Esbert carried him to a room upstairs and stayed by him.^{7 8 9}

Scars and stories

Esbert said he had worked with Scarlet Spears, and Kemp recalled the story that had made that company's name: a small band of twenty or thirty men who held a bridge and refused the bribe of a far larger enemy. The Mercenary Compendium describes the Scarlet Spears as the largest mercenary company within the Empire, organised and active across all its lands.^{10 11}

Trading the stories of their scars, he told Kemp that the one on his chest came from a mounted knight in White City who ran him through with a lance after Esbert cursed him for splashing mud; he barely survived the wound and the fever that followed. The scar on his forehead he took six or seven years before in Batıkalkan, on a paid job in a feud between two merchants who sent their men, disguised as bandits, against each other's caravans; when the merchants disowned them, the governor sent soldiers against them as outlaws.^{12 13 14}

The marks on his arms, he said, were left by the witch hunters of the Holy Inquisition. A wolf-tooth necklace handed down from his forefathers had closed his battle wounds, and in a region troubled by real witches that made him a suspect. He spat at his interrogator and was cruelly tortured, and even after they knew he was no mage he could not forget how he had been treated; he and Kemp talked of the fear of magic and the unchecked power of the hunters. The necklace is no longer in his keeping.^{15 16}

Rainer's comrade

Esbert had once fought beside the rebel Rainer Karga, Rainer as a regular soldier and Esbert as a mercenary. Against the skeletons of a necromancer, Rainer refused his commander's order to throw the hired men forward to die, and persuaded about ten fighters to stay and hold a village so that the sick and the children could escape; only three survived, Esbert and Rainer among them. Esbert said he could not square that man with the later tales of burned villages, though he allowed that Rainer might have changed.^{17 18}

Spoiler: Esbert's searchRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #31.5 · Say what you have read

Esbert told Kemp he was looking for another mercenary who had killed a dear friend of his, and wanted only to learn whether it had been treachery or a fair fight; if fair, he would not seek revenge. Then, naming Kemp's family, he admitted that the friend was Rainer and that he had been sounding Kemp out.^{19 20}

Kemp admitted that in the single combat he had taken help without his opponent's knowledge, and said he believed Rainer had been defeated by the Empire. They agreed that Rainer had been neither a fool nor a madman, but perhaps a puppet used by greater hands through his hatred of the Empire.^{21 22}

Esbert said he now bore Kemp no ill will and had given up his search for vengeance. He asked that his friendship with Rainer not be made known, and Kemp advised him to stay out of such affairs, since those who had fought on the rebels' side in the last rising had won their freedom by fighting the goblin army.^{20 23}

Parting

Esbert asked whether the Demirkapı were hiring mercenaries, saying he wanted glorious battle rather than ordinary guard duty; Kemp, knowing the danger that was coming, advised him to stay in the city a few days. He paid the bill and left, saying he could be found at Ejder Boku and Kemp at Tahta Bacak.^{24 25}

Spoiler: Wolf bloodRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #31.5 · Say what you have read

As they parted, Esbert told Kemp, whose good intentions he had come to see, to be more watchful, and hinted that he was a werewolf; Kemp had not noticed. His is a lycanthropy he can control, born of disease or mixed blood, unlike the mighty gifted children of the Great Wolf of the north.^{26 27}