“I acted fast. I didn’t think we had a chance to defend the harvest against their numbers. I thought to myself, how could I make a difference? The only answer I could come up with was to use the skills that I learned from my mentor. That meant acting my way through the raiders’ defense.” The two nodded with interest as they listened to Brian’s story.
“So, I borrowed the armor, as well as quite a few props from the bins behind stage at the theatre. I went to the raiders and acted like a scout, interested in this hamlet. I then shared with them the reasons for my interest. I shared that there was a bounty on both of your heads.”
“Go on.” Mathew was impressed with his friend’s plans and executions.
“Well, it’s a good thing, the raiders were quite illiterate. I would not call them the most effective bunch. Sure, they are tough, but there are plenty of ways to outwit them. They might just be the worst band of raiders out there.” Brian put his hands on each of their shoulders. “Maybe we are not as bad off out there in the world as we might think. The ability to read and the teaching we received might be rare out there. Apparently, these people are starving, unsavory, malcontents from a northern city called Burklyn. I pieced enough together from what they told me in passing to convince them that the bounty was from a lord up there. I strongly suggest we never go to that place in our journeys. The people are starving and the lords couldn’t care less. Sounds like war is brewing and perhaps these raiders are only the start of it.”
“Was one of these Burklyn lords you heard about named Daefindel by chance?”
“Nope, that name definitely does not ring a bell. Why?”
“Back to the story. What happened next?” Max saw the expression on Brian’s face change to a hurt one.
“Well, they beat me a bit and forced some information out of me, such as the location of the traps that we planned. I told them I watched you all set them up. Then, there was the time after they took you both captive. That was a hard time for me. They ran back into the hamlet, surprising the villagers. They burned a couple of houses down.”
“They talked about kidnapping women for their pleasure. I sure hope they didn’t do that,” Mathew muttered. Max nodded, thinking about his poor, sickly mother and also about Belka. If anything happened to them, he would feel terrible. He did offer himself and his friend as a sacrifice; he knew he should not feel guilty. There was little more he could do. But he realized he could have fought; he could have worked with the hamlet militia to defeat the raiders. He berated himself, thinking a few of them getting hurt in the fight would be easier on the conscience somehow.
“So, after all that, it was hard to keep the act going. I did my best to cause a distraction after getting set up to get the shlup out of there. I bribed one of the guards with what I had salvaged from the hamlet that was of value. I got you both out of there under the carriage of the wagon. You both know the rest. I just hope that at this point, we have lost them.”
Max was astonished by the resourcefulness of his friend. He could thank him for the lives spared in the hamlet and for his own. “Let’s rest here and catch some sleep. Then we better head off at a good pace. I know where we can stop and be safe for a longer rest. After that we should be fine.”
Mathew was holding up their progress quite a bit. It was not for lack of trying though. The mountains of sweat that were pouring over his face and down his body were sickening. He was breathing heavily and it didn’t seem that he could make it around the next bend. As soon as they would get there though, Mathew kept on pushing. His fat body had never been punished in this way in its whole existence. The lack of fresh baked bread from the meal hall was also noticeable as Mathew cursed for a while on missing the bread. After some time, he started to whistle and make up tunes about smelling the bread baking, tasting the bread (even through his nose) as he would enter the meal hall, and then the bliss of the bread finally melting inside his mouth.
Brian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry by his good friend’s predicament. Max felt sorry for Mathew, but he did hope that it would do him some good. He also hoped that Mathew wouldn’t just keel over and die as it almost seemed like he would do.
Brian wasn’t doing perfectly well on his end either. The armor that he wore was heavy. He wasn’t used to wearing it except for on stage. There is one thing to wear armor during a theatrical performance, but it is entirely something else to wear that armor for hour upon grueling hour of marching down the road that led away from the hamlet. Between labored breaths, Mathew gladly took the chance to make jokes about how challenging the actor and his apprentice, Brian would say that delivering lines on the stage was, only to see him now struggling so much just to walk.
The two of them laughed and continued to heckle each other. Max led the way and listened to their jesting, rarely taking part himself. Though after a few days, the atmosphere had its effect on Max. He tried a few lines of humor with clumsy delivery. The two laughed all the same. Maybe humor wasn’t so hard.
After he finally started cutting in, the other two started to include Max in their jesting a bit more. Max would always fondly remember one point on their journey when Brian, Mathew, and he got into a bit of a tussle. It was all friendly. They did end up rolling off of the dusty road and into a muddy pit on the side of it. Afterwards, they looked like they had fought a battle against a mud monster.
In the hamlet, there was no money. Currency was something more like bartering, though it usually didn’t involve the exchange of actual goods. It was more of a “You do this for me and you know I will do something for you” system. That didn’t work out in the big world beyond and Max knew that. He tried to explain the concepts of money to Brian and Mathew and they really didn’t get it. It is fortunate that Max had some limited exposure when traveling with The Brigand and Phaedra.
This time, Max paid attention and took note of the rickety wooden sign that called the village by its name, Steadmire. They arrived at the village’s inn and tried to take residence in a room. The patron of the establishment, a balding, sickly skinned man, peered upon the three boys with a snaggle toothed sneer.
“We’re just in need of a room for the night. We’ve got these things to give for it.” Max motioned as the two boys each set out a small sack with various knick knacks from their possessions and some bread scraps.
The look on the patrons face did not change except to glance to a nearby set of stools. The men in those stools dwarfed the boys and looked just as ugly as the patron. “Get out of here, riff raff.” He gave the sacks barely a moment of contemplation before knocking them on to the floor.
“Please, just a bed to sleep in for the night. We can work for it. We’ve got strong backs.”
“Trock doesn’t think so, look at the fat one. Hasn’t worked a day and he’ll eat all my grub. Get out or I’ll have the boys get you out.”
Brian cut in, “Woah there Trock. I’m Brian and we are harder workers than you think. Put us to work and give us a roof at least and you won’t be sorry.”
The two big, bald goons stared them down and cracked knuckles, getting ready to remove them. Trock looked the boys up and down. “Probably the first roof you’ve had in weeks. Fine. Get out to the barn and shovel all the hay up into the top and bring it in for the beds. Then you can sleep there amongst the horse shit.”
Some of the villagers did whisper about seeing Max and The Brigand come through some time before. Yet none dared approach him. In fact, it seemed that people were avoiding him just a bit.
Max pulled Mathew and Brian close. “Now that we are safe from immediate danger of Burklyn bandits, I think it’s time for a longer term plan of action.”
The two boys looked back at Max with raised eye brows and Brian spoke for them, “Did you have a plan in mind oh wise one of the outside worlds.”
Max shook his head, “This is no laughing matter. Those raiders are really small on the list of dangers. I have a friend. Her name is Phaedra and she rescued me from a horrible kidnapping and brought me home. She told me to seek her out in the city of Rotheburg, which lies in the other direction than the one that we traveled in from the hamlet.”
Then, Mathew took his turn to shake his head, “Woah, you’re suggesting we head right back through the countryside where we ran into the raiders. You know, those ones that are still looking for us because we have a nice bounty on us.”
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Max looked to the sky, “Look. I understand the risk, but she will actually help us and not kick us out onto the streets. I don’t know if we really have much choice unless we want to be street rats or just crawl back to the hamlet as an embarrassment.”
Brian rubbed his chin, deep in thought, “He’s got a point, Mathew.”
They set off almost without giving the trip another thought, leaving the village of Steadmire behind.
They stayed in town for two days until they decided the amount of work they had to do just to sleep in a bed was far from worth it. They set out as soon as they were finished with their labors for that day.
Each night, the boys would converse around the poorly made campfire about many things. After a few days, no subject seemed to be off limits to the three of them. Brian and Mathew mostly asked Max about his brief adventures outside of the hamlet. Questions also came up about Belka and if they had lain together. They asked him about ole’ gran. They even asked him a few questions about his parents. The one thing Max still didn’t feel totally comfortable sharing with his new best friends was news about the Empath powers that he apparently possessed.
Max could feel his connection with Brian and Mathew getting stronger, not just as friends but also on some deeper level. Some unconscious level that he felt the others probably could not recognize, yet felt deep within them none the less.
Everyone can sense others’ emotions. Everyone has a hidden connection of energy. But Max’s ability, he was slowly learning, was gifted indeed. His ability to tap into that energy and “see” that force was something he had to learn to harness. He had to teach himself to utilize every advantage to fulfill whatever this destiny is that he was apparently meant to fulfill.
He wondered if and when he would finally share the knowledge of this gift with his new friends. Would he ever be able to trust them that much, to open himself to such danger? Was it fair to keep the knowledge from them? After all, he had a special connection to them; shouldn’t they be allowed to learn of it? Max figured the answers would probably be forced upon him eventually.
Finally, the monotony of the road, the hills, and the mud pits came to an end. The hills receded; the ground was marked with streams, straight and narrow, carrying water to far off places. It was not broken like the ground they had traveled. The land they had left looked like someone had just dug random pits and piled the remains right next to it, almost in a pattern. This land could almost be called beautiful. There were small gatherings of tall trees along the sides of the rare bends in the streams. The trees were much more massive than the shrubs that had lined the edges of some of the hills they had encountered previously. The sight of this area was less impressive than the massive river that they had forded. Max remembered his own reaction to that unending body of water. He did get some laughs that he shared with his companions when they first saw the river.
In a moment the terrain no longer drew any of their gazes. One by one, their eyes had turned up toward the horizon. In the distance, with the light of the sun receding on the horizon, there were more lights than all three of them together could count. They danced like little individual fires.
“We might want to avoid whatever it is that is up the road from here. I’d like to at least learn a little more about what is going on in this world before we get too tied up in things,” Max said.
“Why don’t we try talking to them and if we don’t like what they have to say, we find another way?” Brian said with hope of acceptance in his tone.
Mathew was still huffing from the previous exertions. “I...” he groaned, “think,” he puffed out air with phlegm, “we should...” he huffed and straightened up, “at least go... have a look.”
Max rubbed the small beard that was starting to form on his face in contemplation. “Let’s just go for the compromise first then and take a look at them from a distance.”
They approached the edges of the camp just after sunset. There wasn’t really much for them to hide behind so Max suggested that they travel down the sides of one of the streams to have a little concealment. They had gotten to distant ear shot range of some guards that were sitting on a couple of stones far outside from the first group of tents. Their torches were propped against the side of the rocks where they sat. Mathew made a remark about how easy it was to sneak up on these guards. Just at that moment, dark figures stood up all around the three of them. There were at least six of them. Their dark cloaks were covered in leaves and tufts of grass. They had probably heard every word! Brian screamed as one of the figures had popped up nearly right in front of his peering face. They had been lying within feet of them.
“Stay where you are, do not run, or we will strike you down where you stand!” said a dark cloaked figure that looked quite similar to all those around him. Bits of dirt, clumps of grass, and similar earthen debris fell off from around the man’s shoulders.
“Wait, wait, wait... we mean no harm, we’re just...” Max spit out, fearing for him and his friends.
“Silence worm! You’ll stay where you are and keep your mouth shut, I’ll have none of your magic playing on me.” Several of the figures hopped down and splashed into the stream. They immediately began to pat down the three young men. Brian’s sword was pulled from its sheath. The dagger Max hid upon himself was quickly found, and the spear that Mathew had upon his back was quickly stripped off.
Even other possessions were taken off their persons and quickly stashed in large sacks. Brian complained as they peeled away from him, his favorite script. One that Lelamar loved that Brian never got to play the lead role in. Mathew lost his pouches of herbs and spices. Max was robbed of items of even lesser value. Small knick knacks he had grabbed along the way of their journey. They felt helpless; Max could tell that the other two felt their journey was already at an end.
It wasn’t long before they were escorted at sword point into the edges of the camp. Once they arrived, each of them had sacks thrown over their head so that they could no longer see and could barely hear a thing. It reminded Max a bit of a memory from growing up in the hamlet. After Belka had started spreading rumors about him, there was one time that a couple of the bigger boys cornered him and quite literally threw him into a large sack that was still filled with remnants of wheat that poked him all over his body. They dragged him to the well and threw him in. Fortunately, they had loosened the sack just before tossing it. After all, they didn’t want to kill him, just scare him a bit.
Several minutes passed. They were sat upon the ground and their hands were tied. The boys were close enough to each other to feel the others’ presences. Max started to feel very cold as the night got later. They had no fire to warm them. They were not moving to stay warm either. Someone’s teeth were chattering, Max couldn’t tell if it was Mathew or Brian or both. Finally, their hoods were torn off their heads. It was done roughly, so hard that Max’s nose was bloodied by the tugging of the hood. Their faces were dirty. Apparently hoods were not the first use of those sacks.
“In the name of Lord Jerrick, how dare you spy on our camp? How could you work for that bastard Candreale? Do you know just what a tyrant he is? What was your mission? Who are you?” The last question was ended with a smack across Brian’s face.
“Who? What are you talking about? We come from a hamlet several days walk from here.” Mathew genuinely sounded confused, and why not, they had obviously been thrust into an unfamiliar situation.
“For spies, your excuses are pretty pathetic. They must be resorting to using some pretty weak men to take care of business. How did they not expect us to hear the fat one coming?”
“That’s exactly why we are not spies,” Max interjected as the look on Mathew’s face became one of anger at the insult.
The man that was questioning them just stood there and shook his head. “We’ve put some serious pressure on Candreale if this is what he has to spare for spies,” he said over his shoulder. It looked like he was just muttering to the tent off to one side of his shoulder. There must have been someone standing beyond the tent just out of sight.
Brian cleared his throat and attempted to spit, though not much came out as his mouth appeared to be quite dry. “Yeah, we are spies from Candreale.” Max and Mathew both inhaled and looked over to Brian in shock. “His men volunteered us! We didn’t want to do it. We were taken from our homes by his men and forced into service. Please forgive us. We don’t want to work for him. He is a tyrant. Please, let us go.”
The man that was questioning them started laughing. “Aaahhh, ha, yeah we got him on his heels. He won’t get any information about our troops with guys like this. Unfortunately for you guys, we can’t just let you go. They might capture you and milk you for information anyway. Yes, I’m quite afraid that you’ll have to stay with us. In fact...”
A voice from behind the tent interrupted him and the figure stepped into view. It seemed as though the questioning man and the man that stepped out expected a reaction from the three captives, but there was no reaction. “Well, we can’t afford sparing men on guarding them either. They could just be good deceivers. I think it is time they proved it. Rearm them with their possessions. They will fight amongst the numbers of our skirmishers. The three of you are being drafted into this army. If you truly believe in what you say about Candreale, you will fight as hard as you can to take his army down.”
“Yes, my lord. We will make it so at once.” A couple of the hooded figures appeared again and slashed the ropes that bound the three of them. Their possessions were quickly dropped in a pile in front of them. “Don’t even try to desert, you’ve already seen how fruitful that effort would be.”
They had all of their meager possessions back and a couple of regular soldiers escorted them to a part of camp that was farthest from the streams. The ground was dry and the dusty, dirty track made a haze in the air from all of the foot traffic. This area of the camp was perhaps the least organized of all that surrounded them. The men here wore no uniforms. The smiles of many men as they walked by reminded Max of The Brigand. These men looked like the type you would not want to trifle with. They all looked one step short of crossing the law. Soldiers killed in battle to survive, explorers perhaps the same, but these men, they wore the expression of killers, of murderers. The sweat from the heat pouring down their faces was a good way to conceal the sweat from their nervousness. The soldiers that had escorted them there stayed close together and watched their backs closely.
After they had walked through a few rows of the camp, the two soldiers pointed ahead with their spears to a larger and more impressive looking tent. The three companions looked ahead and before they could look back the soldiers were gone from sight. They shrugged nervously and made a brisk walking pace to their destination. Unlike the other tents, this one was colored and not just drab tan. They stopped just in front of the tent flap that led inside. Brian shrugged and reached out to move the flap aside and peer inside. He stood there looking dumbfounded with his hand just inside the tent.