The Wheelwright's Apprentice

1 The arrow hit the wall behind him with a solid thunk, and quivered slightly. It had come through one of the many cracks and holes in the outhouse. If he hadn’t been bending down to pull up his pants, the arrow would have caught him right in the chest. After a short moment, which seemed to him very drawn out, reality punched him in the gut. His mind swirled and pitched, then settled. If someone was shooting arrows around, something was obviously very wrong. He quickly looked through another of the cracks, and saw several mounted men. They were raiding the village, his village, where he had spent all of his fifteen years, and they were killing everyone. He saw old Don the baker run at one with a scythe, only to be stopped well short of his target by a well placed arrow in the throat. He was not the only one. He looked out of other holes and he saw a couple of other corpses, one obviously his mother. He couldn’t see her face but he knew her clothes well enough to recognize her. He knew she was dead as her head was laying a couple of feet away, connected to her body by a pool of blood. He could see over a dozen raiders, and knew that there had to be more. They were a fearsome bunch. They carried swords, spears and bows. He saw one trample old mother blacksmith’s henhouse, and another lazily ride up behind big Dem, the innkeeper’s son, and simply behead him with an easy stroke as he passed. Their collection of horned helms seemed unnecessary, if they were only to instill fear. Their actions were more than enough. The world flipped upside down, and he collapsed back on the seat. He had never known the emotions that were converging on him all at once. He felt fear, sorrow, terror, despair and a burning need to be somewhere else, any somewhere else, and he didn’t even know if he had the willpower left to stand. He sat there for what for him felt like forever but in reality was only a few seconds. “What do I do?” His mind wailed inside his head. “What can I do?” A more logical part of his brain supplied. At last, instinct kicked in, and he realized, “I have to move, and I have to move fast.” He looked out through a crack and thought, “Is there anywhere close that I can go to and be safe?” He simply had to get as far away as he could as quickly as possible. The sounds of the raiders now started to impinge. There were the horses with their hoof beats and their neighing. There was shouting, both from raiders and villagers. There were squeals from the livestock, and the wailing and the struggling of the few pretty girls, as they were grabbed as booty. He had no brothers or sisters to worry about. In fact the only person who mattered to him was already lying dead just yards away. He was alone. He was now reliant only on himself, and all that self reliant brain told him was to run fast and run far. As soon as he left the concealment of the outhouse he would be seen, and he could not afford to just hide where he was. The band of raiders was plainly large, and he would be found in the end. He would have to choose his moment to make a run for it. But when? Without opening the door, he unlatched it. He peeked again and still saw plenty of mounted men. He was sure they would come and look in the outhouse at any moment. There was no chance that they could ignore it. Should he run now while there was still plenty of confusion and hope to be ignored? Where was the nearest cover? There was a copse of trees down by the millpond, but apart from the buildings which were now mostly burning, that was it. He would have to be missed by the raiders who were undoubtedly helping themselves to all the flour in the millhouse. “Please! Please!” He wished with all his heart, as if his life depended on it, which of course it did. “Let them not see me while I rush for cover.” Inch by inch he slowly eased the door open. The moment came not by logic or luck, it was chosen by a burst of terror which impelled him into rapid motion. Before he realized it, he was sprinting across the commons towards the millpond. Such was the fear that chased him that he couldn’t swerve from his path even when a raider appeared almost in front of him. All he could do besides run was keep repeating the mantra to himself, “Please don’t let them see me!” and surprisingly, it appeared that they didn’t. He ran past one raider who ignored him, and then a further group who seemed to look right through him. He didn’t question fate, but kept running. The copse loomed big, and he dashed into it, collapsing behind an elm tree. “How was it that I made it this far?” he asked himself, while his chest heaved like a bellows and cold sweat made his shirt stick to his back. “I still need to move, but where next?” That was the question. No answer came so he burrowed a little further in and waited for his brain to start working again. In a little while, he saw two choices: move or stay. Would they leave or would they stay? What would the raiders do if they stayed? What should he do? For a while all he could think was, “Please don’t let them come this way.” He woke cold, damp and miserable, but alive. Somehow he must have slept. It was dark with enough moonlight to see. There were no sounds coming from anywhere except for an occasional crackle. It was the sound of the embers of a house that had burned. He couldn’t tell which one, but, as he was cold he was drawn there. Carefully he got up, and moved towards it as quietly as he could. He still saw no one. Nobody appeared to be near, nobody living anyway. He quickly looked around for the corpses he had seen earlier, but they had been moved. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to find his mother; it was that he didn’t want to see her dead up close. He wanted his last memories of her to be live ones, so he just sat in what was left of the warmth, and let his mind become numb as his body returned to normal. Eventually he allowed memories of his mother to swirl around. Riffling through this personal legacy, one memory itched as it surfaced, “Who was my father, and does he ever come around here?” he remembered asking his mother one evening, as he was cleaning up after supper. She had sat down in her usual chair, and said, “To be honest I don’t know who he is, as I don’t think he gave me his true name, but he is an important man, and a very handsome one. I used to see him six or seven times a year for about a year and a half. I looked forward to his visits. He brought me nice presents, and was always very good to me. The last time he visited was when I told him I was pregnant with you. He was very happy that time, and also a little sad. That was when he told me, “When he is old enough, send him to me. I always spend fifth month in the mountains. I have a place between Horseford and Midpass. He won’t be able to miss it. You need to remember that!” his mother had made sure he recalled it as well, and he had. Now sitting close to the dying embers, he thought, “Well I suppose I have somewhere to aim for, but I am not even sure where Horseford is, and I think it is almost fifth month already.” He waited numbly for dawn and the light of the sun, first tracing the lines between the flagstones on the floor in the flickering firelight, and then again as day slowly encroached on the night. As soon as he could see well enough, he got up, and moved around looking for what had been left. He knew he couldn’t stay, as everyone else was dead. He also knew that he would need money and supplies if he were to travel. He went to see what could be scavenged from the ruins of the village. Four hours later the sun was high, and it was getting hot. He hadn’t found much of value left in the village. He had found the corpses all piled together, stripped of everything. It looked like pretty much everyone from the village, although he couldn’t bear to look inside the pile. He didn’t really have the nerve to touch them anyway. He had inventoried his sack. Two threadbare blankets, three silver and four copper coins from Rom Butcher’s stash which his dead friend Gim Butcher had told him about, a flask that one of the raiders must have flung aside that he had washed out several times to remove the taint of spirits, and a knife he had found on the ground. He had not speculated as to how it had got there. He was very depressed. He was also very angry, but he had not let his anger out until now. As he first put one foot in front of the other, he felt his anger rise slowly, growing with each step. With his face turned to the nearest village, Joman’s Crossing, some fifteen miles away, he vowed that he would somehow make the raiders suffer, sometime, for what they had done, but he had no idea how.