The last stage of my journey to visit my sister in the Barony of North Shields started off rather pleasantly. The great change in the weather brought on by the upcoming encroachment of Winter had yet to come to pass, but it was on its way. I wasn’t the only one travelling on the road at that time of the year and the sites where I set up my tent at night also usually played host to others.

From conversations with my fellow travellers, I heard much of the goings on of the Kingdom of Teldaria and sometimes even of the other realms. Much of it was local news but every so often I would chance upon something less parochial. One such titbit even concerned two people of whom I once had more than a passing acquaintance.

Back when I knew him Dominic Mann was merely the youngest grandson of Randal Mann, the Count of Caston by his third son, Winston Mann. I know somewhat impressive enough by itself but in the Grand scheme of things he would have been lucky to end up as the lord of a manor somewhere in the county of Caston. The County of Caston in case your Knowledge of the Archduchy of Teldain isn’t up to the level of someone who used to live there, is located next to the County of Habinal whose Count at the time was Connor Mackle who employed my father as his Equerry or if you prefer Master of Horse.

The two Counties and especially their Counts haven’t historically gotten on all that well with each other. They haven’t actually been at war with each other for the past few generations but the two families were always trying to outdo each other in one thing or another. Since the time of Randals and Conner's fathers, this mainly involved Horse Racing and to a lesser extent Greyhound Racing. Whenever they both fielded a horse in any kind of race they would try and make sure they won or at least finished before the other.

For most of the time, my father was the Mackles Equerry his opposite number on the Manns side was one Oliver Sale. They had apparently once been friends but by the time I came along that was no longer the case. Now as you know in Telondia there are two different types of horse racing. The most common and most competitive form involves individuals who have chosen Jockey as their profession. The other uses mainly boys though sometimes girls under fourteen, the age at which the system first activates within the inhabitants of Telondia.

It was unusual but not unheard of for someone of Randal Manns lofty position to have a relative of his ride for him but that was precisely what occurred. Naturally, as the son of someone who worked with horses and had spent all his life around them, I rode for Connor Mackle and I was good at it. But then so was Dominic as he happily demonstrated every time we raced against each other. By the time we had both turned thirteen, we had faced each other on twenty-nine occasions. Of those I had won eleven and so had Dominic but he had placed before me in four of the remaining seven races.

During that final year when we were thirteen me and Dominic, who was just under two months older than me by the way were to face each other five times. Of these, I won the first and fourth and he won the second and third. Which of us was the better rider and thus which of the Count's stables was the best would have to be decided by the last and most important race of the horse racing calendar, which neither of us had won before.

He got off to a good start but by the middle of the race I managed to gain on him and for the last minute or so we were neck and neck until I managed to get ahead of him in the last few seconds to ultimately win the race. Winning that race, the Archduchess Stakes was also how I managed to gain the Title, Child Prodigy

The last time I saw Dominic was the night of that race when he congratulated me and now apparently, three years after the death of his grandfather and one year after that of the eldest of his two uncles he has gotten married to Christina Mackle, second daughter of Count Rodger Mackle, the man who ruined my family and I wish him the best of luck.

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I’m sure the marriage is an attempt by his remaining uncle and her father to put an end to the feud and I am equally sure it will not work out and will instead only make things worse. Now if he had married Christina’s sister Maud my opinion would perhaps be different but she was a few years older than Christina and presumably already married.

Now there wasn’t anything particularly wrong about Christina, not that I can put into words and it has been quite a number of years since I knew her so she could have changed but I just don’t think the two are in any way compatible with each other and I am sure my sister Holly will certainly agree with me when I tell her and that’s not just because they never got on with each other as children on the rare occasions they interacted with each other.

Perhaps I am wrong about the whole thing but either way, it will hopefully keep Rodger occupied. The only other pieces of news I found all that interesting were situations that were developing that might just end up requiring the intervention of a mercenary company or two but sadly sometimes they manage to be sorted out before it gets that far.

Now just because I was travelling did mean I stopped practising, though it meant not being able to travel as far in a day as otherwise I made sure to practice my martial arts both armed and to a certain extent unarmed every day for an hour after I woke of a morning and an hour before having my dinner. Also while I travelled with all the basic provisions I could carry on my horse in between the town and villages I did have to hunt for my dinner most nights

You have Slain (Level 3 Deer)

You have Slain (Level 5 Partridge)

…

You have Slain (Level 6 Boar)

You have Slain (Level 4 Rabbit)

It wasn’t until I was about a week's travel from my destination that the weather started to change for the worse. Now winters in this part of Telondia weren’t all that cold or all that long for that matter but I had hoped to be closer to my destination before it started.

Things weren’t that bad yet and usually, it would be a week before it really set in and the worst of it would only last for about ten days or so but every so often things took a turn for the worse. Historically every five to ten years the Winters hereabouts are much worse than most years. From what I have been told the last time this occurred was five years ago so it might not happen this year but it was still a distinct possibility.

It didn’t help that I had yet to pass through the forest of Matsurn, potentially the most dangerous part of the journey. While on my travels I haven’t heard about any bandits currently operating within the forest but it is I am told a popular enough spot for members of that misguided profession.

It wasn’t until I was nearly at the far end of the forest were I least expected to meet any bandits that they struck. Fortunately for me or should I say unfortunately for them there weren’t all that many of them, they weren’t of all that high a level and I wasn’t at that stage travelling alone. I had been approached by a party to join with them as they travelled through the forest and since they seemed sincere in their request and certainly not because one of their party was an attractive looking young woman who didn’t seem to be particularly close to any of the others I agreed.

My temporary companions of which there were eight, two women and six men were travelling merchants on one last trip before winter set in and had been delayed due to a problem with the axle of one of their two wagons. Only two of them were armed and I wasn’t all that sure how good they were with them but in the end I needn’t have worried. The three of us proved more than a match when the seven bandits struck, not that they surprised us or anything.

We spotted them long before they did us and thus we had the others hang back while we dealt with them. It was slightly risky since other bandits might have been lurking about that we had failed to spot but from the look of the bunch we had spotted this didn’t seem all that likely so we went ahead anyway.

Only one of their number proved even a slight bit of a challenge and even if there had been twice as many of them the outcome would no doubt have been the same.

You have Slain (Level 10 Bandit)

You have Slain (Level 7 Farmer)

You have Slain (Level 8 Warrior)

When we searched the corpses other than the admittedly poor quality swords six of them carried and the slightly higher quality axe the seventh individual had we were only able to find a measly fourteen copper coins and not much else.