Malvick had been tracking the three men for two days now.  Tarch Mortwell, Lener Hask and Gedwin Tabe were notorious con men who worked out of Magnimar. The three had recently run an illegal card game that had swindled quite a bit of money out of the purses of some generally stupid men.  The three would never have gotten away with their sloppy cons in his home city of Korvosa, Malvick though, But Magnimar was so much more... liberal. 

The job was normally not something that would have caught the attention of someone of Malvick's talents, but one of the swindled happened to be the fiance of the daughter of an influential city councellor.  Said councellor had retained Malvick's services to retrieve his son-in-law's gold, and teach Mortwell, Hask and Tabe to select their marks with more care in the future.  Malvick scowled.  Another fat, corrupt ruler ruining people's lives.  He would have happily turned the job down, secretly giving the con men his blessing, but work had been scarce recently, so here he was, trudging through the cold autumn mud.

By the time Malvick had been given the job, the three had already pulled up stakes and moved on to their next con.  Rumour had it they had a rich mark lined up. They had hired some muscle, and headed west out of town in a hurry. Malvick picked up their trail about eight hours outside the city limits and had tracked them to the old Bradly farm near the town of Sandpoint along the Lost Coast road.

Ariva let out a low growl as they closed in on the abandoned barn.  Then the madman burst from the tree line.  Eyes wild, mouth frothing, and clothing caked with blood, he ran straight at Malvick, screaming incoherently, hands clawing at the air.