It was one of the last days of Autumn, about halfway through Kaldezeit. Mannslieb had cursed the previous night with his absence, leaving only the faint glow of the witch-moon Morrslieb to illuminate the nightly firmament.

The night had already shown the creeping breath of Ulric, the savage Winter-Lord, but now, as the sun had slowly risen above the treeline, the air warmed quickly. lending new vigour and wakeful alertness to the wanderer on the road between Worlitz and Diesdorf. The young man was an uncommon sight, for he wore the guise of the pampered, fine breeches, an exquisite, red doublet of velvet, and a respectable three finger rings showed enough disregard for personal safety to distract any wayward onlooker from the worn leather that provided the wanderer his dust-caked shoes, as well as the clear sluggish drunken tiredness with which the rake stumbled along.

His features were sharp, even while pale, his eyes had a piercing arrogance about them, even contrasted against dark rings beneath and too much sweat on the brow above.

Further above the dark blonde brow sat a beret of the same make as the doublet, showing off two rather capital pheasant-feathers, that would have surely impressed the middle class of the wanderer’s home-city; at least it had always worked on the poor and dumb girls there, anyways.

The sun had risen further, warming him to an unpleasant degree, when he finally rounded on the first house he’d seen since yesterday noon. It was a simple, wooden construction; four walls and a thatched roof, and hadn’t it been for the visible enclosure and smaller sheds out to its back, the young man would have been rather content to assume this place as a stables, not the home of a whole family.

Out in front of the house sat a woman that hid her brown hair under a simple, white headwrap. She was knitting on a bench in the rising sun.

With a weary look over his shoulder, gazing into the shady Reikwald, the wanderer decided to approach, if only to see how far he’d come.

“Good day, Fräulein.” he spoke with more firmness in his voice than he felt in his legs. The woman jerked awake from the engrossment in her task. The way she stared at him for a second he almost feared he’d end with her needles stuck in his eyes, until she regained her bearing, now only looking puzzled instead of mortified.

“Mornin’ mein Herr,” she spoke with a tone that told of her lowly upbringing, but an acceptable amount of common courtesy; “can I help you?”  

The man took a closer look at the woman, wagering her no older than twenty four years of age, youthful energy ruined with the daily strain of adult-drudgery. Thankfully that would not be his lot.

“Yes, you can.” he spoke again, mustering all his city-borne aloofness. “I fear I am parched, and the length of my travels yet remains unknown to me.”

The peasant woman stared at him like his professors had stared at one of his Tilean rivals once, a simple fool unable to speak Reikspiel, the most elegant and manly tongue in all the Old World.

“There’s a well out back.” she finally said, rising from her bench. “Please, sit, I will be right back.” 

He waited until the woman had disappeared into the house, before falling onto the wooden bench with more need than he himself wished to admit. After whipping his backpack from his shoulder, he rummaged through his foodstuffs, settling on devouring an apple. This year’s harvest, fresh, with only three slightly brown parts. After carving these unsavoury things out with his knife, the fruit disappeared rather quickly. He was just sucking the slightly sour juices from his fingers when he became aware of a small presence to his right. From the door had slinked a small, mud caked thing, with large, wondrous eyes. The child’s simple clothes were indiscernible under a thick layer of dirt.

Stolen novel; please report.

He raised an eyebrow at the simpleton thing. He didn’t care for children. His youngest brother, Adalbert, was a mere ten years old. And this particular specimen here didn’t even have the bonus of Adalbert’s uncommon eloquence. 

The dirt-ball-child was torn from its stupefaction by the sharp inhalation of its mother, who had returned with a simple clay cup.

“Rudi!” the woman spoke with maternal sternness. The child, wise beyond its years, knew not to draw the ire of a woman, and retreated inside quickly. 

“I’m sorry, Herr…?” she apologized and questioned. The wanderer was shocked by his manners; he hadn’t introduced himself!

“Bolstedt, Adebar von Bolstedt.” he corrected his mistake, accepting the cup of water with slightly trembling hands. “Thank you.” 

“Would you do me the favour of telling me your name too?” he finally managed to posit after drinking so deeply from the clay vessel that it was nigh empty once more.

“Magda Holzer.” came the curt reply. She now stood, seemingly rather uncomfortably. Von Bolstedt noted this with some satisfaction, before deciding to take after the gentile manner his father had taught him, motioning for her to sit as well.

“Please, no need for senseless propriety like that, Frau Holzer.” 

The two sat for a while, Holzer returning to knitting. Von Bolstedt observed for a while, like he had once observed his own mother, finding with little effort that the piece was supposed to become a simple cap for the dirt-child, Rudi, as the woman had called him. He hoped the boy’s full name was Rudolf, and that he wasn’t cursed with a mere 

abbreviation to be called by.

Eventually the peasant woman took heart, speaking her mind.

“We don’t get many visitors of your...standing here, Herr von Bolstedt.” Oh no. The dreaded questions he feared to answer in the future.

“What takes you out here, into the Reikwald?”

He made to sip up the last remnants of water within his cup, trying to buy some time. What would he tell her? That he’d grown bored of being his father’s third son, had stabbed one of his older brothers in a drunken honour-duel and had then fled his family household in Altdorf, only to then take a coach, hoping to make for Nuln, where young, intelligent men had a chance in the world, only to be thrown out here, in the middle of nowhere, when the coachman had actually counted the bag of shillings he’d been offered? No, he had long since decided, the truth was, as so often, for history alone to know. 

“Well, Frau Holzer, I am here to follow divine example! I wished to set out into the world like our beloved Lord Sigmar, to see his domain, aid his peoples, see my share of adventure before I take up my familial duties.”

He stared rather stoically into the rising sun, hoping that the damage he was causing to his eyes somewhat helped sell the pathos-laden hogwash he’d just released.

Much to his surprise, Holzer had stopped knitting, looking at him with a mixture of careful approval and healthy skepticism. 

“If only you nobles were all so…” she spoke carefully, seemingly failing to find a word.

“Sigmar knows our Empire would be better off that way. You’ll be wanting to go south, then, to Kemperbad?” Von Bolstedt barely had time to react before she started blathering in a most damning manner, enthusiasm finally taking over. “My husband could take you to Diesdorf when he returns, it wouldn’t be any trouble, really. Let none say we Reiklanders don’t appreciate our patron.” As he wanted to protest, trying to tell her that he’d best be off now, he stood no chance against Holzer’s enthusiasm to ‘aid a man with a calling’.

Alas, he spent half the day on the Holzer homestead, finding out both that Rudi was indeed stuck with that infernal abbreviation, among many other things, such as Magda Holzer’s life story, her family background, the sister that had fancied a boy that had become a Sigmarite priest, how the family was deeply religious, and how excited the neighbours would be to hear of a nobleman that took his responsibility to land and people seriously. When he finally met the man of the household, a wiry man with a crazed mustache and a reddish tone to his hair, he stood corrected in his assumption that peasant girls weren’t very talkative. Thoroughly refuted, even. Magda Holzer filled her husband in on her firm demand that von Bolstedt be taken to Diesdorf, the man then apologized that his work had taken so long, explaining that he was the local huntsman and that he enjoyed the woods very much.

As the wagon finally rolled and they departed with filled flasks into the afternoon sun, Adebar understood the huntsman’s preference of the quiet outside world to his own house very, very well.