I was just returning from a visit to my uncle in his villa when the trouble that was to change my life began.The situation which would change the course of my life all began one Autumn night as a was returning home from a visit with my uncle in his villa on the other side of the village from my father's inn.
The village which had by the way no official name that I can ever remember hearing was simply called gap by the villagers. This was because its small harbour was the only place for almost a hundred leagues in either direction that a ship could easily unload cargo or take one on. I imagine you are now wondering why it was only a village and not at least a town if not a city.
Well, the reason is that the sea there about ps is abundant in undersea reefs and other nautical hazards. Only the most knowledgeable local sailors can safely steer small ships to shore and they guard the secrets of these paths, only passing them down from father to son.
Perhaps if the father and son pair picked up by the pirates weren't the last living members of their family, his wife, eldest son and two daughters having died of the same plague that killed my mother last winter, things might have been different. However, it wasn't to be and after the relevant application of pressure by them on his son's person he reluctantly guided a pirate ship to shore and my adventure began.
The pirates stormed ashore and easily seized the village's small harbour before advancing on the village itself. It was at this point in time that a ran into a small party of these pirates and defended myself to the best of my ability. Luckily and unusually for me, I happened to have a sword with me to defend myself, otherwise, I would have died that day. There were three pirates amongst the party I encountered and I think that they were as surprised to see me as I was them. You'd think that they'd be the ones to make the first move but it just wasn't the case. The reasons for this are multiple but at the time they seemed not much older than me, I think this must have been one of if not the first raid they had been on and they weren't expecting much if any armed opposition. If they had been older and more experienced perhaps our fate would have been reversed especially since this was also my first experience with real violence.
The three pirates in question were each armed with a small cutlass though the quality of them varied greatly. I on the other hand had a rapier, a blade that is harder to master than a cutlass but just as deadly. That's not to say I had in any way mastered the weapon, having first used a training one just less than two years ago.
It was my uncle Roderic whom I had just paid a visit to that trained me how to use one and he was a good teacher, or so at least it seemed to me. He had left the gap shortly before I had been born and served in various mercenary outfits before returning home with a heavily pregnant wife a little over two years ago. The child had died of the plague and his wife had taken sick but somehow survived though her health wasn't great afterwards. And before you ask it was his idea to train me in the use of the sword, we were both the third sons of our fathers and thus had fewer prospects and he felt that I perhaps might follow in his footsteps and leave to become a mercenary. He further thought that if I didn't take that path I might leave home to do something else and it is always a good idea to be able to protect yourself, especially in such troublesome times.
At the time I had no real plan for what to do with my life and thus went along with his idea. Since then I spent at least two hours, usually more, every day with him or only my own learning the art of the sword. He also taught me to ride and fight on horseback, the history of the larger mercenary company's past and present and various other things of a practical nature.
Discuss his teachings I would have no doubt easily died at the hands of these pirates or perhaps somehow managed to run from them but fallen later to others. I wasn't carrying my new sword and its scabbard as one would usually do as I didn't wish to advertise my possessions of one. Not that it was illegal to do so or that I feared anyone might try and steal it from me. Rather I didn't wish the intention possessing one would bring me, I was a quiet unassuming lad with few true friends and I felt I already stood apart from them because my extended family was perhaps the most well-to-do in the area other than the local noble one that lorded over us. I was instead carrying it in my arms, wrapped in a cloth blanket.
Luckily the pirates I faced took enough time to react to my presence for me to run away from them towards the General direction of my home, clumsily unwrapping the sword from the blankets and then withdrawing the blade from its resting place as I did so. When I stopped running and turned around to face them I was surprised to find that only one of them was following closely behind me, the others currently out of sight.
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I could I suppose describe the following sword fight in excruciating detail perhaps using the fancy terms of sword moves such as parting the sun or the wind cutting the barley but the truth is that most if not all of you would have no idea what they actually entailed and furthermore it was over much too quickly.
I had won my very first sword fight and mortally wounded my foe, he would have taken minutes if not hours to die but as my uncle had taught me I spared him that indignity. I should have been more careful doing so as the other two pirates came along me as I was doing so and nearly caught me unawares. My uncle trained me for such situations by occasionally having his wife throw things at me while he was training me. It was very annoying at the time and guaranteed to make me lose concentration but now it might just have saved my life.
One of the pirates was just moments away from stabbing me through my heart or some other vital organ with a dagger of some description that I hadn't noticed him having on his person earlier when I turned around to face him. He was slightly harder to dispatch than the first one but I was able to deal with him before the third pirate came on the scene. Now he was a lot harder to deal with and if he was just a bit quicker or I made a mistake then he would have killed me.
But it wasn't to be though he did manage to draw first blood, a minor scratch below the chin hardly worth mentioning as far as I could tell. After dealing with him it was time to decide what to do next, there was no telling how many other pirates had managed to land but their purpose was easily guessed at, plunder what goods and coin they could from the village and the immediate surroundings, take as many of the villagers that they could as slaves and perhaps use the village as a base to plunder further afield.
What this all meant for his present situation was hard to say, since he first lead eyes on the three pirates he hadn't encountered any others or any of the villagers for that matter. At this time of the day there should be plenty of them about, have they all been rounded up or fled. If that's the case then should I too flee, no I first must head home to the inn to warn them.
It wasn't all that far to the inn but since I tried to avoid contact with any pirates that might be about it took longer than it otherwise would have. I somehow managed to avoid running into any pirates or anyone else, not even when I got home coming in the back entrance just to be on the safe side. There was no one in the inn, well no one besides old man Dever the village drunk who was helping himself to the good stuff. Thankfully he wasn't too far into his drinking so he was able to provide clear enough answers to my questions.
The pirate ploy had been uncovered by some of the villagers shortly after they first set foot ashore and instead of attacking them, it was decided to flee and head to a series of underground tunnels next to the nearby ruins of an old temple. It had apparently once been set up as a shelter in case of attack and while these days food was no longer stored there it was defence and still held some weapons though in what condition they might currently be was unknown. I wasn't all that familiar with the ruins never mind the caves and expecting most of the pirates to be searching for the runaway villagers I decided to head back to my uncle and hope he would still be there or at least prove easier to find.
After failing to convince Dever to come with me and leaving him to his own fate I slowly retraced my steps and made my way back to my uncles. I should have detoured around where I had killed the pirates earlier but I was foolish and paid the consequences for having done so. Luckily they were not fatal or not yet anyway but out of all the things I did that day it was I think the thing most responsible for setting me down the path that I have followed ever since. I should have expected that a good part of the pirates would have stayed in the village if only to guard their only means of escape never mind pillaging it as quickly as possible because of the merest possibility of an impending reversal of fortune.
One of them, unfortunately, spotted me before I did them though it did him no good since I had retrieved a Pair of throwing daggers, a throwing axe and a few other things from my bedroom before leaving the inn. To tell you the truth I was not all that good at using the daggers but the axe on the other hand, as long as I was close enough to the target I rarely missed. This wasn't one of these times but since it was my first aiming at a living and breathing target it was in no way perfect and definitely not quiet. The others in his party which numbered six in total couldn't but hear his dying scream and react accordingly.
At the moment I had only two options, stand and fight or flee, if there had only been one or two remaining I would perhaps have stood my ground but there were more and thus I didn't. My knowledge of the area was what allowed me to do so successfully because otherwise the other pirates that I nearly ran into during my escape would have killed me or at least slowed me down and allowed the first batch to catch up with me and do the deed themselves. I managed to lose them all by hiding in an old wooden half-rotten corf that had once been used to keep the fish caught by the villagers fresh until they returned to the harbour at the end of the day.