When Martin had finished his portion of the slaver group he only paused long enough to locate the keys and toss them to the nearest slave before returning to find the boys. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Thomas, it was the opposite. He trusted the man to do the worst things possible when he could get away with it. He was determined to not leave the boys in his care any longer than possible.
His arrival held a multitude of surprises. He honestly hadn’t believed that Adam could handle the four, well three, remaining slavers alone. It looked like he had been proven wrong in the bloodiest of ways. Literally, there was blood everywhere. Three fairly large, for their species anyways, men bleeding out made quite a mess. Add in however much had been squeezed out of Adam’s bear form, and the previous battle with the bloody thorns and Martin could be forgiven for thinking the clearing had been painted by a particularly bizarre artist. Not that what he left behind was any cleaner.
Adam and Jay were easy to find. They were the only things above the puddles of blood. Much as Martin had suspected, Adam was unconscious again. There was sufficient evidence to point to him having used Mama Bear for at least a portion of the fight, in addition to the unlikely possibility that he managed to kill three early evolved combat classers while they were not only aware of him as a threat, but facing him. The orc was obviously complete surprise.
Looking closer, he still couldn’t quite put the fight together in his head, but that was normal if people hadn’t seen it themselves. A closer look could probably allow him to puzzle it out, but there were so many different skills that it was a near impossibility for someone to actually be able to pinpoint each and every detail of a fight. That wasn’t to say he couldn’t grab the major points.
The elf died from wounds inflicted by bear claws, but the fighting blades found nearby were covered in blood, meaning he got at least a few shots in before dying. By the blood, and the wounds on Adam, he suspected that the elf got more than a few shots in. A closer look at Adam’s wounds revealed that he must have taken the crossbow bolt while in bear form as there was no chance the boy would take that little damage any other way. Spotting the dwarf, he could tell he’d died of a broken neck, although how it had been sustained he couldn’t figure out. The claw wounds on the head weren’t deep enough to indicate a jerking motion to break the neck while embedded. Shrugging off that particular mystery, he spotted the human man. He had a pretty good guess at that one, seeing Adam’s paring knife nearby. The mass of bruising and torn skin combined with the small size of the bloody foot prints that led to Jay pointed to him getting a few good kicks in.
He smiled, glad to see the boys getting through a bonding moment together. He would have preferred nearly any other form of bonding than having to brutally murder slavers together, but couldn’t deny the effectiveness of the choice. After all, Adam’s head was currently laid in Jay’s lap as the boy glared at Martin.
He walked closer, then sat in the only blood free spot in the area. He sighed and said, “I know you’re angry, and I’m sorry I wasn’t here.” He held up a finger before the younger boy could do more than open his mouth. “I went through my own battle while he was handling these four. There are twenty more slavers dead just past the trees there. These were just the vanguard.” Jay’s mouth shut, but the glare remained. He understood the boy wouldn’t forgive easily, but tried to explain anyways.
“Adam will be the bodyguard to the duke’s children. Things like this will eventually be far too common for him. To be positive that he could handle events like this, the duke had me bring the two of you out here. I thought it was just fighting spiders and goblins, but he sent another man to make sure it was a proper test.” He did nothing to disguise the disgust and fury in his voice. If he ever wanted either of the two bloodied boys to trust him again, he needed to make it clear that this wasn’t his fault. “If I had helped Adam before going off to fight the rest of the slavers, that man would have set up another, more difficult, test. One that was guaranteed to make sure that Adam was tested to the best of his abilities and beyond, and that I had no possible way to interfere in.”
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He rubbed his eyes with one hand, then massaged the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. He didn’t want to explain the next part, but the kid deserved to know. They’d been mostly keeping it from him, but it was too late to hide it. Best to get it out in the open. He met Jay’s eyes and explained the rest of it.
“The duke purchased you specifically to test Adam. He cares not at all what happens to you, other than as a way to measure how successful Adam will be in the future. Even your death wouldn’t necessarily mean failure, but a need for more training and levels before Adam could do the work he was purchased for.” He could see the horror creeping up on the child as he realized the truth. Martin spoke before he could process it all. It was important to get it all out there before interruptions kept vital intelligence from people.
He pointed at Adam, still laid out unconscious in Jay’s lap. “You never saw him slack on his responsibilities the entire time we were out here. Not because he wanted to earn the responsibility of caring for the duke’s children, but because he didn’t want anyone else to suffer because of him. He refused to let you die. It’s who he is, even if he doesn’t know it. You weren’t the first child he protected from monsters, and you won’t be the last.” He sighed again. The next part would be hard. And strange.
“There’s some things you should know. I can’t give you all the details, mostly because I don’t know them, but Adam has a bit of a strange class. It’s some sort of combat nanny thing called Care Bear. At least one of his skills controls his speech patterns around kids. That makes it nearly impossible for him to have a frank conversation with you, and would probably force him to try and stop me from explaining things like this. I’ve tried to drop a few hints over the last few days, but I don’t think you’ve understood?” He paused, and eventually Jay shrugged, still looking wary.
“Yeah, OK, that’s fine. Best to do this while he’s still out.” Another sigh. And then he told the boy what he knew of Adam’s life. The orphanage, Harold, enslavement, and his upcoming role in the Duke’s household. He held nothing back, even going so far as to explain some of the vagaries of Adam’s imagined class that tied the two boys together.
It was the closest he could come to the full truth, not knowing if Ubuyama was still in the area. He wouldn’t have bothered, but he felt for the boy. Both of them in truth, but while Adam already had a path to follow, Jay did not. If telling him Adam’s circumstances and story helped to draw the two closer together, that was a win in his book. The boy needed someone to look up to, even a little. Adam was a realistic role model for Jay. A protective figure, always standing in the way of trouble, but also a caring one that healed sickness and provided warmth.
He chuckled to himself. He’d just described exactly what Adam was fast becoming in many ways. A Mother.
He left Adam in Jay’s care while he quickly scouted the remains of the slavers the boy had killed. There was nothing particularly valuable on their bodies other than coin. None of the weapons or armor had much in the way of resale value comparative to their weight and difficulty of transport, so he left them behind. He did keep a fair number of the elf’s knives, hoping they might do Jay some good in the future, stashing them in his bag.
Returning to the clearing, he hoisted Adam up on his shoulders, then said to Jay, “Let’s get moving. It’s still a few hours to the way station and this lump will probably be unconscious the entire way. You can ask your questions while we’re moving.”
The younger boy had many questions on their way back, but Martin did his best to answer all of them.