Thorn couldn’t keep the embarrassment off his flushed face. He swore loudly as the howls of laughter from the other Lordlings filled his ears. 

“What’s the matter little Thorn, is the straw dummy too much of a challenge for you?” cackled Ernit, the son of the Lord Yimir Broadbane. His tanned skin and hooked nose were offset by a mop of blonde hair that he constantly had to flick out of his cruel blue eyes. 

Thorn snarled and set himself. He gripped the practice sword in a tight two-handed grip and charged the straw figure. He imagined the dummy was Ernit, he imagined bringing the sword down into his stupid smirking face, he- missed, again, causing him to stumble and fall flat on his face and into the mud. His once pristine tunic was ruined. 

“He can’t even hit a stationary object,” Ernit laughed. “What’s the matter little Thorn, has your drunk of a daddy never taught you how to swing a sword? Get up you pathetic little fool.”

Ernit and his goons stepped forward, grabbed Thorn by the arms and hauled him to his feet.

“Now, you little wuss see how a real Lordling fights.”

Ernit took the practice sword out of Thorn’s hands and set about expertly dismantling the dummy. Thorn’s brown eyes widened at the display. The bastard destroyed it with just four swings of the blade! 

Ernit stepped back admiring his handiwork before turning to face Thorn with a sneer. 

“Empty the fool’s pockets and let’s be on our way. My father will be returning from the capital soon and I’m sure he’ll have some gifts for me from my uncle the King.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Thorn tried to struggle but it was no use, the other lads were bigger and stronger than he was. He cried out as he was lifted into the air and tipped upside down. A few coins fell from his tunic and a neatly wrapped book fell from his trouser pocket. An inquisitive look crossed Ernit’s face.

“Well, well what do we have here?” he said reaching down and picking up the book. He tore away the red and green paper and tossed it into the nearby hedgerow. He opened the book and burst out laughing. 

“You little twerp, you honestly think Lady Lauren will be impressed by a book? Look, it even has a message written inside.”

Thorn groaned. His humiliation was only about to grow. Lauren was the daughter of the local Baron and her beauty was unmatched across the kingdom, well, at least to Thorn it wasn’t. She had smiled at him once at the Feast of the Brave Knight the previous month and ever since Thorn had been besotted. 

“My lady Lauren,’ Ernit began in a poor imitation of a girl’s voice, ‘I think of you every day and every night and yearn for you to be mine.”

Ernit paused and wiped a tear from his eye. For a moment Thorn thought that his powerful, romantic, amazing words were too much for the brute, but that was soon erased as Ernit burst out laughing.

“You don’t even have the balls to sign it? A secret admirer? Oh, little Thorn you are just too pathetic. However, I do hear that she does have a bookish nature, so I think I might just give this to her, message and all,” he added cruelly. Ernit tucked the book into his pocket and picked up the practice sword. He narrowed his eyes and then thwacked Thorn in the stomach with it. Just as Thorn was about to curl into the pain, Ernit’s thugs let go of his ankles and sent him crashing into the mud. 

“See you around little Thorn,” Ernit said with a wink before he led his friends into the woods. 

Thorn rolled onto his back and stared up at the patch of sky poking through the trees. A crow was sitting in the branches looking at him with beady little eyes. It squawked at him. 

“Ugh, you can shut up as well,” Thorn groaned as he slowly rose to his feet. He flinched as he felt something wet land in his hair. The crow had shit on him.

“Can this day get any worse?” he moaned. 

***