The key to taking power, Randall knew, was dissatisfaction. Find a group of people who were dissatisfied with their lot in life, pretend to be one of them and lead them. During the five days they'd spent travelling from the south coast he'd spent every opportunity talking to the common people in taverns and carriages and the biggest current grievance in Saxony, the thing people complained about the most, seemed to be taxation, so that was what he was going to be the champion of.
A few years before, King David had instituted a poll tax which was bringing to a head an economic discontent that had been growing since the middle of the previous century. There had been violent protests every few years which required the army to put down. The crackdowns brought peace for a while, as families mourned the deaths of loved ones or waited for them to be released from their prison cells, but it wasn't long before the tension was building again and so the cycle turned around and around, seeming to take about ten years for it to return to its starting point.
As luck would have it, the last round of protests had been seven years ago and the discontent was growing again. The tension was building faster than it had the last time, though, because of a piece of legislation passed by the Council of Ministers called the Decree of Labourers that tried to limit the wages that had to be paid to manual labourers following the labour shortage created by the latest orc incursion.
Randall had created a new identity for himself, therefore. Watt Fletcher. Formerly a mild mannered, law abiding family man who was heartbroken and angry following the death of his only son. He and his wife had been driven to destitution by the King's taxes, Randall told everyone he met. Randall had helped them as much as he could until he was also penniless, being forced to sell his family home and everything he possessed. His son's anger had boiled over against the authorities of his home city, Greyburg, and he had assaulted a tax collector, following which the police had arrested him and he had died a month later in a city dungeon. The wife had remarried but there had been no consolation for the father and he had fled the city in case, in his own anger and grief, he suffered the same fate as his son.
The morning after his arrival in Elmton, Randall took the opportunity to tell the story again to the other guests in the Interesting Weasel's common room. "Even now, nearly twelve months later," he said to the wool merchant, his twelve year old son and the rat catcher who was passing through the city on his way to visit relatives in Lendaron, "I still feel a rage coming over me whenever I see a chalk dusted wig or smell a perfumed handkerchief. They have nothing but contempt for us. They think that, with the army and the police behind them, they can commit any atrocity and we will not dare to protest, that we will eat any swill they feed us."
"It's the same everywhere," said the rat catcher. "In every city I pass through and especially in Lendaron itself. In Lendaron you can almost feel the anger rising from the common folk like steam from a haystack getting ready to burst into flames. That's where the first spark will be lit, you mark my words."
Randall feared he might be right. The capital would be where the aristocrats would feel most secure and, therefore, where they would feel free to take the biggest liberties. That would be where the anger of the common folk would be burning brightest. That wouldn't do at all, though. His plan depended on his being at the forefront of the wave of violence soon to wash across the country, but he also needed to be here, in Elmton. The closest city to Gorsty Common, as the site of his secret underground facility had once been called. He needed this city to be his power base. He needed a reason, when he was rich enough, to choose that stretch of countryside to build his country mansion, that being the excuse he'd decided upon to dig in that particular spot. He needed the spark that lit the fire to be here, and he needed to be that spark.
"There's anger everywhere," he said therefore. "As much here as anywhere else, and I can tell you that there's not a man anywhere under VIX's sky that feels that anger more than me. If the spark were to be lit here, I would be standing right beside the man that lit it and I would call him my brother. I would live for him and I would die for him."
"Well said!" said the wool merchant. "You speak for me also, and for every honest working man in the land. The tax collectors know it too. They go around with soldiers now, to protect them, or they'd be torn limb from limb by the honest men they steal from."
Randall leaned forward with interest. "How many soldiers?" he asked.
The merchant stared back, then glanced at the rat catcher. Then he glanced quickly around the room to see if there was anyone close enough to overhear. There was a serving girl taking a tray of drinks to another table, but she was too busy keeping her bottom from being slapped to pay attention to Randall's table. The merchant turned back to Randall. "Three, four," he said. "What are you thinking?"
"That maybe we should send a message," said Randall. "Let them know how strong feelings are. Maybe that's all it'll take. Maybe they'll remember the last trouble, seven years ago, and decide to avoid it by lowering taxes."
The merchant's eyes widened with alarm, but also excitement. "Ye knows what happens to agitators," he warned in a low voice. His son stared up at him, equally alarmed. Then he looked across at Randall. Don't put my father in danger, his innocent brown eyes seemed to say.
"I do," Randall replied. He remembered the dead man hanging from a gibbet in Tettlehall being pecked at by the crows and he had no intention of allowing all his grand ambitions to come to such an ignominious end. "I'm not talking about agitating," he said. "Just talking to them. Maybe they genuinely don't know how high feelings are among the common folk."
"And maybe pigs can fly," replied the merchant. "They know all right. They just don't care."
"Well, maybe they should be made to care," said Randall. "Things happen, after all. There are dangerous folks out in the woods. Even soldiers might not be safe, and if something did happen, who could say who was responsible?"
"You want to waylay the tax collector?" said the rat catcher incredulously, "We could be hung just for talking about it!"
It occurred to Randall that, some time over the past day or two, he'd stopped noticing the strange accent with which people spoke in this new world. It seemed just like normal conversation now, and it took a deliberate effort to notice the yez instead of you and the other strange words they used. His brain was translating for him without his even being aware of it. He filed the thought away for later consideration. "Do the tax collectors follow a predictable route?" he asked.
"No," replied the merchant. "They're afraid of bandits and robbers, but someone could follow them out of the city. Keep out of sight until they're in a remote spot before striking. Theoretically."
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"We, I mean they, whoever would do such a thing, would want to hit them on the way back to the city," said the rat catcher. "Not just as they're setting out. They'd have more money then."
"We're not doing it to rob them," said Randall, turning on him angrily. "We're not thieves. They're the thieves. We're honest men who are just fighting back against an evil regime that steals from honest men. It doesn't matter how much money they've got on them when we hit them, just so long as we send them scurrying back to the city with their tails between their legs." He paused as if in thought. "It should happen somewhere with witnesses," he said. "We need people to see that there's hope, that the aristocrats can be beaten."
"Yes!" said the merchant. "But we'll need more men. The three of us won't be enough." He paused in thought for a moment. "There's people here right now, came into the city with me, driving my wagons and guarding it from orcs and bandits. Some of them are right hotheads. If they tie sheets around their faces so they can't be recognised, I think I can persuade some of them to come along."
"How much time to you need?" asked Randall.
"I have business to conduct in town, but maybe it'll wait 'till later. If we're going to hit the tax collector, it'll have to be quick, before they get too far away and lose themselves in the countryside." He paused again. "I can have a few good lads gathered by the west gate in an hour."
"Good," said Randall. He turned to the rat catcher. "You in?" he said.
"You bet," he said with a grin. "I wouldn't miss it for all the tea in Cathay."
And if things don't go well, you can scarper off and be twenty miles away by nightfall, thought Randall. He doesn't live around here. An itinerant worker like him can always leave his troubles behind and move to another part of the country, which made him less likely to avoid trouble in the first place. Especially if there was an opportunity for a little coin to be made. Randall made himself smile with gratitude, though. Right now, he needed every man he could get.
"Good," he said therefore. "See you by the gate in an hour,"
The other two men agreed, and they raised their tankards together to take a deep, celebratory quaff of the rich, brown ale.
☆☆☆
An hour later Randall went to the gate stables to collect the horse he'd ridden in on the day before. He led it by the reins the short distance to the gates themselves, now standing open and with a steady stream of men and wagons passing through in both directions.
The wool merchant, whose name Randall had forgotten to ask, was there waiting for him. His son wasn't with him, he must have left the boy somewhere for safety, but he'd come with seven tough looking men, all standing beside a saddled horse and wearing woollen cloaks tied close around their necks against the cold. The rat catcher turned up at almost the same time leading a donkey.
The wool merchant frowned at the beast. You'll be left behind if there's any rough riding to be done," he said.
"Number Seven is faster than he looks," the rat catcher replied with a wide grin. In the full light of day Randall thought he looked a little like a rat himself with his narrow face and the thin moustache that looked almost like a pair of whiskers. If he'd had a thin, hairless tail hanging behind him Randall wouldn't have been surprised.
"Number Seven?" asked the merchant.
"He's my seventh," the rat catcher replied, giving the donkey a fond pat on the neck. "My seventh loyal companion. Been with me all up an down the country, he has. Everywhere I've been the past three years, he's been too. Me wife, Number Two, likes 'im too. That's my seconds wife, you see."
"Do you have children?" asked the merchant.
"Aye, an' number three seems set to follow his old dad into the family business. Never seen a five year old able to drown a rat like him. He can do seven a minute, almost as quick as me. Hands still pudgy and fat but quick as lightning. Still gets bit now an then, though. I show him how to do it, how you gotta grab 'em by the scruff o' the neck..."
"Has the tax collector been through yet?" Interrupted Randall irritably.
"About a hour ago," replied the wool merchant. "He must have been passing through while we were still talking about it in the Weasel."
"Can we still catch him?" asked Randall with concern. Had they lost a whole day? Would it be possible to catch the tax collector tomorrow or would the others have lost interest by then, having become distracted by other matters? He felt a sense of frantic urgency come over him. He looked up and saw an almost full moon rising in the east, and now that he knew what to look for he could see the signs of massive engineering projects on the moon's surface with his unaided eyes. Up there, super futuristic machines with minds of their own were busy building a massive civilisation for themselves while he was stuck down here about to try to ride a real horse for the first time in his life.
"Dont you worry, mate," said the Merchant cheerfully. "I were talking to one o' the gate guards while we were waiting for you to turn up." He rubbed a thumb and middle finger together suggestively with his palm turned upwards, the eternal gesture for the passing of a small bribe. "Turns out he overheard the tax collector talking to one of the soldiers. They're going to Wombwell Upon Deech first, then heading north to Duffield. If we cut through Ringer Woods we can get to Duffield before them."
The rat catcher frowned. "Ringer Woods," he said. "Rough country."
"Yeah," said the merchant, "which is why the tax collector doesn't go that way, but if we're going to catch him we've got to go a way he won't go. Right?"
"Suppose," the other man agreed doubtfully.
"So. Are we still going to do this or have we cooled down a little and changed our minds?"
"No," said Randall firmly. "We're still going to do it. We've got to show them they can't keep milking us like cows and expect us to not rise up. I'm not a cow. I'm a bull."
"Right!" agreed the merchant brightly. "That's what we all are. The Bulls. Right?"
"The bulls!" cried the merchant's men, but not so loudly that a passer by might have heard them.
"The bulls!" Randall agreed, raising a hand in a fist.
"So let's go!" The merchant jumped onto the back of his horse and his men followed suit, along with the rat catcher.
This was the moment Randall had dreaded. He had never ridden a real horse before and he was faced with the prospect of falling off repeatedly or failing to control the animal, making himself a laughing stock to these people that he was trying to become the leader of. There was one ray of hope, though. Back in his teenage years there had been a computer game he'd liked to play, a wild west adventure, for which an accessory was required; a mechanical horse bearing a rough similarity to a rodeo bull riding machine. The manufacturers had boasted that it was the closest thing to riding a real horse, requiring the same controls and body movements as a real horse.
Randall had been quite good at it, and if the manufacturers had been true to their word then he ought to be able to control this horse now, but these game companies wanted their games to sell, and that wouldn't happen if they were too difficult to play. Had they simplified the riding of a horse to make the game more appealing to spoiled rich kids with the attention span of a goldfish? If so he was about to become famous in the city for all the wrong reasons.
The others were waiting impatiently for him. Randall took hold of the saddle, put his foot in the stirrup and lifted himself up into the seat, swinging his legs across to the other side with practiced ease. So far so good. Encouraged, he gave the horse a gentle squeeze with his legs. The horse walked forward and Randall shifted his weight a little to the left and gave a gentle pull on the reins to turn the horse towards his new companions. He felt a thrill as the horse obeyed him, a thrill he hadn't felt since he'd been sixteen, about to join Sheriff Dillon's posse in pursuit of the Tom Bell gang.
His spirits rose as none of the other men on horseback paid him any attention. They were accepting him as an experienced horse rider, as skilled with the animal as any of them. Well, that remained to be seen. All he'd done so far was sit on it and make it cross the street. It was coming back to him like riding a bike, but how would he fare if they had to break into a gallop? A wave of exhilaration was sweeping away his doubts, though, and he couldn't help but grin with delight as the merchant moved aside to let him lead the way out of the city.