Connall ran to greet the riders as they entered. He had finished all of the daily work that Frater Avrid had given him that morning, and had been lucky enough to slip away before the frater could assign him anything more. He had planned to play in the creek for a bit, and then maybe sneak some bread into the dormitory and have a little nap. Connall had started taking short naps during the day to keep his energy up, so that he could go to the garden at night. He still held out hope that the sorcerer would come back there, and that he would get the chance to talk to him again. But those plans had all been set aside when Connall saw the group of men approaching the Travelers’ Gate.
There were five of them, all on horseback. Large, beautiful, healthy-looking horses. They even had an extra horse with no rider, just carrying packs. Most people would have used a mule or an ox for a task like that, but these travelers had given the job to a horse that was just as amazing as the ones they rode. The men were even more impressive than their mounts. They were big, strong-looking men with several days’ growth on their faces and hair that fell into their eyes and flapped in the wind as they rode. They all wore thick leather armor that looked as if it had been repaired more than a few times, and a few of them even wore bits of ring mail here and there. As Connall came closer, he saw that they all wore weapons, too– swords and daggers of all shapes and sizes. One man even had a strange-looking axe strapped to his back, which Connall was fairly certain hadn’t been made for splitting firewood.
A few novices were rushing down the hill behind him, but Connall got to them first. “Welcome to the Fraternary of Saint Covell!” he called out.
One of the travelers rode to the front of the group and leapt down from his horse, landing lightly on his feet, and flashed Connall a bright smile. The others dismounted behind him. This man was slightly thinner than the others, but a little taller, too, with honey-gold hair and sparkling green eyes. “Good day to you, boy, and thank you,” he answered cheerfully, then he stooped down to Connall’s eye-level and ruffled Connall’s hair with one hand. “I have some business with your pater. I’m hoping you can take me to him?”
“Of course!” Connall replied.
At that point, the novices arrived, all out of breath from running. “Our greetings to you,” one of them gasped, “Welcome to the Fraternary of Saint Covell.” He looked around at the travelers, then added, “We’d be pleased to take your horses to our stables, where they will be well cared-for . . . and . . . um, w-we have a secure store-room where your . . . ah . . . armaments will be kept safe during your stay.”
One of the travelers, the big man with the axe on his back, began to grumble angrily, but stopped when the leader raised his hand. “That will be much appreciated,” he said, turning his bright smile toward the novice who had spoken. He made a show of removing his own sword-belt and handing it over, then he turned and clapped the axeman on the shoulder and added, “We all understand the rules here. It’s not a problem.”
The large man looked at him for a moment, then sighed heavily and, grumbling under his breath, unstrapped the giant axe from his back and placed it in the arms of one of the novices, who dropped it immediately. Connall was afraid that the man would be angry, but instead he laughed. “Aren’t you Fraters supposed to work hard all day doing the Gods’ work?” he asked in a booming voice, “I thought you’d be stronger.”
The leader laughed with him. “I guess the Gods’ work doesn’t include lifting heavy axes,” he quipped, then added, “Perhaps you can help them take it to their storage room?” He turned back to Connall. “Now, I believe this young man was going to take me to see your pater.”
He led the man to the sanctum, then to the small room off the side, where Pater Barthis had his office. Connall tapped at the door. “Pater Barthis?” he called out, “Are you in? There’s a man here to see you.”
He heard some movement, and then the door opened. The pater peered at the traveler for a moment, then smiled warmly. “How may I help you, my son?”
The traveler grinned. “Actually, I’ve come on the business of helping you, Pater. May I come in?”
The two of them went into the office and closed the door, leaving Connall alone in the sanctum. He didn’t bother listening at the door. He’d tried to do that a few times before, and had never been able to make out any words through that thick wooden door and stone walls. So instead, he skipped back to the travelers’ hostel, hoping to talk to the man’s companions.
Connall found them all standing outside the hostel, talking among themselves and waiting for their leader to return. As he made his way toward them, one of the novices called out to him, and he stopped to see what he wanted. “I don’t think those are the sort of travelers you want to talk to, Connall,” he warned. “They seem dangerous.”
Connall rolled his eyes. Just because a man carried a weapon while he was on the road, didn’t mean he was a bad person. Good people carried weapons, too. “They don’t seem all that bad to me,” he argued.
“No, I mean it,” the novice insisted, then whispered, “I think they might be mercenaries.”
“What’s that?”
“Soldiers for hire. They’ll fight and kill for anyone, just for money.”
Connall put his hands on his hips and stared at him. “And what makes you so sure these guys are mercenaries?”
“Just a feeling I get from them,” he shrugged. “I wouldn’t be alone with them, if I were you.”
So that was it. He was just scared. Connall thought about it for a minute. No, their leader had said they had business with the pater. Pater Barthis wouldn’t do business with bad people. This novice only thought they were bad because they were armed. “I’ll be careful,” he promised, then he skipped down toward the hostel.
“You, there!” one of the men shouted when Connall came near, “Weren’t you taking our friend to meet your pater?”
“Yes, sir,” Connall replied.
“Well, are they done, yet?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “They went into Pater Barthis’s office to talk.”
The man rolled his eyes. “Allard is talking,” he said as he sat down on the ground. “This could take hours.”
Another man laughed and sat with him. “You get that fellow talking,” he explained, “and he never stops.”
Soon all four men were sitting on the ground outside the hostel, swapping jokes about their leader. Some of them made Connall laugh, but most of them he didn’t really understand.
After a while, one of them looked at Connall. “What about you, boy?” he asked, “You look a bit too young to be a novice. Do you live here?”
“I do,” Connall replied. “I was left here by some travelers when I was a fresh-born baby.” He’d told this story so many times now, that he’d begun quoting this same explanation, word-for-word, every time. “Been here ever since.”
“Now, that’s a sad tale,” said the big man who had carried the axe.
Connall stared at the man for a moment, then asked, “Are you mercenaries?”
This set all of them laughing again. “What questions come from the mouths of children!” one of them exclaimed.
Another man leaned forward. “I guess you could say we’re a sort of mercenary. We do offer our services in exchange for payment.”
Connall’s eyes widened. So the novice had been right, after all. “Why?” he asked.
The axeman smiled at him. “When you’re a soldier,” he explained, “you fight for whatever lord you’re born working for. Whether you like him or not. But men like us, we get to choose who we fight for. If we don’t like a man, we don’t work for him. And those we do like, they pay us in coin to do whatever needs doing, and then we go on our way.” He sat back and looked around at his friends. “It’s about freedom.”
“Oh.” Connall thought about that. That didn’t sound so bad. Actually, it sounded like the perfect kind of life to him. “So what are you going to do for Pater Barthis?”
A shorter man with a red-brown beard answered him. “We’ve been going around to different sanctums and fraternaries. We take a look around, inspect the defenses, then we help make them stronger, so little orphan boys like yourself can be safer inside these walls.”
“Oh, I’m sure the pater will like that,” Connall told them. “And I know a few fraters and novices who would like that, too.”
The men laughed again, and this time Connall laughed with them.
But he was thinking about the sorcerer boy. If these mercenaries made the fraternary walls bigger, would the sorcerer ever be able to come back again?
No comments:
Post a Comment