Lug dragged his gaze back to the edge of the wood. ‘What— who are you?’
‘A traveller. A friend. I want you to get behind me. Move slowly. Don’t stop looking at it. Then move as I move.’
‘What if it attacks?’
‘Do as I say!’ and Lug did, unable to refuse the command. The speaker was half a foot taller than him, the side and back of his head hidden by the hood of his studded leather cloak. He carried a heavy pack on his back. One hand rested inside the cloak, probably on a weapon. The rest of the details were lost in the twilight.
The Pilgrim Stranger appears in the short story ‘Alms and the Beast’ by James Wallis, published in The New Hero: Vol 2.
James Wallis is a games designer and author with fourteen books under his belt. He’s best known as the founder/director of Hogshead Publishing Ltd, the largest publisher of role-playing games in the UK in the 1990s, but he’s also been a TV presenter, magazine editor and Sunday Times journalist, a university lecturer and an award-winning graphic designer. Previous fiction includes titles for the Black Library, Puffin Books and Virgin Publishing, and his game designs include the storytelling games Once Upon a Time and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen. These days he runs the games consultancy Spaaace and lives in London with his wife and 1d4-1 children. You can read about James’ New Hero here.
All New Hero artwork by Gene Ha.
The Stone Skin Press Kickstarter and more information can be found here.
[…] This is interesting to me because I like the Pelgrane folk immensely, they have had the considerable good sense to appoint Robin D. Laws as line-editor on the books, and Robin has had the lesser good sense to include a new story of mine, ‘Alms and the Beast’ in New Hero vol. 2, which is featured on the front page of the Stoneskin Press site today. […]