Martin was perturbed. Nothing had gone as planned. Neither his own plan, or Adam’s more ambitious one had worked out. Even the duke’s travesty hadn’t played out as expected, although his plan was the closest to the actual events of the day.
Adam’s bear form proved easy to track, so he had the wherewithal to review his final conversation with the duke while he followed the trail.
“Martin. Elinoria and I have been rethinking this whole trip to the forest.”
“Milord? Are we canceling it?”
“Canceling it? No, or course not. We believe it will be too easy for the boy. You will need to find ways to make it more difficult on him. The coming years will be hard for us all, but nothing is more important than the children’s lives remaining uninterrupted. The boy must be tested to be sure that he can perform adequately under extreme pressure. Fighting ability is all well and good, but he will also be raising our children. His ability to carry out both tasks must be assessed.”
“What did you have in mind, Milord?”
“Push him to fight trolls. They should be near the difficulty of the expected adversaries if the timeline works out as anticipated. And make sure the younger boy is as much of a burden as possible. To that end, we have had a number of poisons added to your gear. Nothing fatal, simply draughts of weakness, paralysis, and sickness. Administer them as needed to make the test as difficult as necessary. It is of no consequence if the new boy is injured or killed, but it would mean that we have to put our plans on hold while we level the other one’s Care Bear class to a functional level.”
Despite the sick feeling in his stomach, Martin still accepted his orders. Of course, he’d never used the poinsons, Jay had gotten sick on his own. That didn’t mean he forgave himself for not putting up more of a fight at the time they were issued.
Now, after having had time to process, with the solitude and silence as he followed an easy trail, he still didn’t have a plan for the future, but he did have an objective. He would shelter the boys, and the duke’s children, from as much as he could. That conversation had finally opened his eyes to the truth. The duke and his wife were monsters.
Over his years within the duke’s household he hadn’t ever been as close to the duke as he had become since he purchased Adam. Even having saved the duke’s life, he hadn’t become a confidant, or a friend. He had only been elevated to freedom and given a position as a guard. Their recent conferences had been marked by increasingly disturbing revelations and demands from his employer. It was jarring to suddenly realize the truth behind so many of the rumors about nobles.
He’d always known that nobles were a different breed. The higher their ranking the worse the behavior they were rumored to engage in. There were certainly good ones out there, but they were the quieter, more respectful types, and were therefore less likely to be doing the sorts of things that cause people to talk about them. Based on the lack of such rumors about the DeVilles, Martin had assumed that they tended more towards the better end of the spectrum.
Now he found that his assumptions had been wrong. Very, very wrong.
He certainly didn’t have the power, position, or resources to get the boys away from the duke and duchess, so he would have to find another way. The best he could think up was to complete the tasks the duke gave him, but to circumvent the more… outlandish portions of his orders. He’d have to get creative, both in how he fulfilled his tasks, but also in how he reported on them. He couldn’t lie; he was certain that the duke had skills to detect that. Instead he would need to find a reason that whatever creative solution he came up with was a better fit for the desired outcome without insulting the duke, or implying that he was involved in something the duke was taking such a personal interest in. He’d be balancing on a sword’s blade, and he didn’t have the right Skills for it.
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For the rest of the trip he would focus on making Jay a complication instead of just a distraction, but that didn’t mean he would be poisoning a child. The very thought was abhorrent. With the emotional weight of his current untenable position lifted, he would at least be more attentive to their surroundings in the future so another troll “ambush” was off the table, but he remained unsure of how to implement the complications. He’d discuss it with Adam when he found them. He might be a boy, but he was the one with the Mother class. If anyone knew how best to push his skills in the right ways, it would be him.
None of that mattered at the moment, however. His most pressing task was to focus on finding the boys. Luckily, the trolls seemed to want nothing to do with the large bear moving through their territory. In an inverse of their intended method of escape, Adam and Jay had distracted the trolls while Martin escaped. He was still shaking his head at the remembered image of the massive bear chasing a small child through the troll’s dispersed forces. The only thing more impressive to him than the audacity of the boys’ actions was how fast the trolls abandoned the surrounding areas.
He was also thankful. The original idea of him attacking a troll to draw attention had virtually guaranteed his death.
He spent a brief period of time studying the evidence of a bear and troll in combat before laughing to himself. He could read most of the story in the tracks and blood left behind. He wasn’t the most skilled of trackers, but he got the basics. Bear fought troll. Bear won, troll lived, both left.
Eventually he found what he was looking for, smiling at the sight. A large bear was laying under a downed tree. The tree had fallen in such a way that there was a large area underneath its thick trunk where shelter could be found. The back wall of the naturally formed tree cave had originally been brush and roots, but time had filled in the gaps with mud and dirt that had eventually solidified to form the wall. The entrance was filled with a sprawled out bear gnawing on the broken bones of a troll’s arm. He could only assume that Jay was tucked in behind Adam’s bear form.
He approached slowly, being sure to make noise. He didn’t have a clear understanding of Adam’s Mama Bear skill, so he wasn’t certain how the huge animal would react to his presence. At the first noise, the bear looked up and huffed in displeasure, and he paused before continuing his approach. He could see the rippling of muscle under the fur and tensed to run before realizing it was Adam deactivating the skill. The boy must have been waiting for his arrival to release the transformation. Only as the large form shrunk into that of a boy did he remember the last time Adam had used Mama Bear, and the several days he was unconscious. Too late to stop him, he could only watch as the skill fully released, fully expecting that they would all be camping out in the woods for a few days. Already his mind was running through how he would manage to keep them all safe while they waited for the boy to awaken. With such a costly side effect of using the skill, he was concerned that it would always leave him in a dangerous position.
To his surprise, Adam seemed more sleepy than exhausted. In his shock, he simply blurted out, “Why aren’t you passing out?”
Adam snorted, but answered back, “The amount of power that gets fed into the skill depends on the perceived level of threat. I was only thinking about fighting a troll or two, not the whole group.”
Martin nodded absentmindedly. He’d noticed Jay in the back of the shelter. The boy was filthy, but appeared unharmed. He was uncertain why he appeared to be unconscious, as well as haphazardly tossed into the overhang. On second thought, the tossed portion made sense. Bears weren’t equipped to move children as well as people were.
Seeing them both safe, he smiled proudly at Adam, clapping him on the shoulder. “Off plan, but we all made it. Good work. Get some rest, I’ll take first watch.” There was time on their trip back to the way station in the morning to discuss the events of the day, and the details of the future. They’d have to do double rotations on watch, but they’d most likely be safe for the rest of the night. Between the trolls and the bear, not much else was likely to still be in the area.