I left with the warriors. Perhaps that's the worst word for the type of people they were. Sellswords and rapists a lot of them. We began the journey by leaving the forest where my parents' house was. Arthael stayed behind. I could not say why. I don’t remember much of what the men said. My mind was a fog, filled with only pain.I tried not to think of what happened, and the road ahead was too uncertain to even contemplate where it might lead.
It was when we left my parent’s homestead that we saw Arwale and Jerile. Jerile immediately looked at me and confusion wracked his features. He mouthed something but words did not come out. And then he looked at the men around me, with their weapons and armor. The man was a good man, and a friend to my father. But I would be a liar if I said what he did next didn’t hurt. He simply ran off the road into the forest, leaving Arwale behind.
Arwale stared at us with a blank expression as our group approached him. There was no fear in him, no remorse that his friend had left him.
Our column eventually stopped because the man didn’t move. I felt a tension in the group as Roth looked down at the man from his horse. He waved a hand in front of his face and seemed to regard the man for a moment. I thought the kid might kill him, or one of the others might do so. But Roth waved his hand, and our column split around the man and continued on down the road past Cliffs mouth. It would be many years before I saw Arwale again.
A few hours later we came to a new city. It was much bigger than Cliff’s edge. I still remember seeing the enormous wooden gates sitting ajar and the smells that greeted me as we entered the city. People were moving everywhere, talking to each other, yelling at each other, or even in some cases hitting each other. I could hear languages that I had never heard—loud breathy voices—and nasal, high-pitched ones too.
It was ruled by no one and everyone. There were light-colored folk, dark-skinned folk, and everything in between. The possibility was everywhere, and I learned later that this made it a truly unique place. By the time we had arrived there, I hadn't said any words at all. And when we had come, it was all I could do but stare.
I remember seeing firsthand how little life meant to the people in Portsmouth. There was simply so much of it to go around and too little time to care. It was a place of strangers, a place of meetings, and for some, a place they would never come back to, and you could tell by how they treated it.
Death was an everyday thing in Portsmouth, and I witnessed it the first time I entered the city. A huge man was dragged out from a building and tossed in the street. The limp engorged body rolled a few feet and then was run over by a passing carriage.
Then a small child, younger than me, scampered over to the man and picked through his pockets. The child looked disappointed as he hurried away, and he stuck his tongue out at me.
A woman stepped out of a building and relieved herself next to the man, and I could see yellow liquid begin to soak the man's dirty shirt. After a moment of relieving herself, she seemed to notice the body and wrinkled her nose at it. Then she hiked up her skirts and went back inside.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
It was easy to understand why the stench of shit and piss seemed to perfume the air. But the scent of the sea had also washed over me then, and I gulped it in as if it could wash away the horrors before me.
I looked towards the ocean, where blue water stretched as far as the eye could see. But then I was drawn to what was near the waterline. Some buildings bore huge nets, strange skulls, and massive skeletal jaws. Men traded red bloody raw fish. Elsewhere, guts lay across tables, and flies buzzed in the air.
"Do you like Portsmouth, boy?" Roth asked with a grin on his face. He would ask me questions frequently, trying to pry out words from me as if we were longtime friends. I shrugged and looked away, but I could still feel his eyes boring into my back.
He was cruel and ruthless, but I could tell that he was clever. Perhaps moreso than me. Maybe that is why the men followed him. I didn't like Roth, but I would be lying if I wasn't suddenly glad to be among killers because they surrounded us everywhere I looked.
Many men carried curved scabbards at their waists, and crossbows on their backs; for a moment, it became my singular idea to look for a man or woman who didn't seem to have a weapon showing somewhere on their body. After only a few minutes, I gave up. My father had used an ax to chop trees, and my mother had used a knife to cut our meat, but these things were tools, not weapons. Weapons hurt people, and I had only just begun to realize the pain that they could bring. But then there was Arthael. The man who had killed my father with only his fists.
As we continued down the cobbled road through the city, Roth held out a knife to me as if he had read my thoughts. "Do you want it?" I looked down at it, and some part of me wanted to take it and put it in Roth's neck.
For a moment, I just stared at the blade in his hand, wondering if I could do it, or even would do it. "Take it, lad." Roth mistook my hesitation for shyness and clapped me on the shoulder. Then he handed me the sheathed knife. Maybe it was a game to him, to show me how little he feared me.
The scent of the sea got noticeably stronger as we turned the corner, and then it was before us. Huge ships, small ships, and a handful of docks led out into the sea. I had never seen a boat before, and most of these couldn't be considered that. There were huge ships that seemed large enough to live in. I wondered what it was like to be on one. Some looked like they were about to depart as men climbed tall poles in the center of ships and let loose sails.
Roth got off his horse and beckoned to me. Then, turning, he looked to the red-eyed man whom I had suspected was his second. "Rebert, find a nice stable," he said.
Rebert nodded, then he turned and looked at the other men in our small company still on their horses. He looked as if he was about to say something or ask another soldier to come with him, but he looked disappointed—as if none of the stock in front of him would be worth the trouble.
He started to move away, but then the big man—the man who always seemed to have some sort of itch in his crotch—got off his horse. I had since learned his name was Horndall, and he seemed to be behind Rebert in the group's chain of command.
Horndall dismounted in a heavy, clumsy movement that seemed to irritate his crotch even more. With one final scratch, he thumped Rebert on the shoulder, and then the two of them took off. It wasn't long before they became lost in the throng of people moving around the docks.