Servant Of The Necromancer

Recollections

The silvery white moonlight spread itself gently to the ground, and the light and strange rocky ground no longer looked so angular under this favor. Asa leaned on the stone near the campfire, watching the moon could not close his eyes.

The moonlight is so beautiful and soft that the exposed skin seems to feel the caress of this pouring out. such moonlight can never be seen in Caledonia. The clouds and soot that hover over the basin all year long make all attempts to reach the sky desperate.

He had been out of Caledonia for more than a month. But as soon as he recalled it, the smell of iron juice and coal immediately revived in his nose, and the sound of hammers striking on the political steel seemed to have faded for less than a minute. The night before he left, the way his father had swung the hammer had burned such a deep image in his mind that it had replaced almost all the feelings of the twenty years he had lived in Caledonia.

His father's rock-steady, wooden face looked like a shrine in the glow of the fire. The muscles were like roots coiled in the armpit, and the hammer struck one by one, and each vibration was transmitted tangibly through the knife to Asa's hand.

The shape of the knife gradually became clearer, and his father took it from his hand and turned it over himself, and Asa lost the beat that resonated with his father, and he understood that the connection with his father would dissipate as the knife was forged. With it came an excitement that the knife also symbolized the beginning of his new life, the beginning of his true life. This anticipation was also hammered into the knife with the clanging sound of the clash over and over again.

It would be a good knife that was not available even in his father's store, forged from the fine iron ore that Asa had secretly accumulated over the past five years.

He was the most rebellious of the tens of thousands of children in the Calendon Basin. He did not misbehave as a child, nor was he as wild and debauched as the others when he was a teenager, so he did not revert to life after being tired of rebellion like the others. He is not rebellious in life, but has to rebel against the whole life from the beginning.

The Calendon Basin has a centuries-old history of metallurgical casting. The mountains around the basin are so rich in minerals that they seem inexhaustible, and the dwarves who live in them are used to interacting with humans and even coming out to mix with them, making the metallurgy here the best on the continent. The people are also accustomed to this tradition and have been engaged in metallurgy and casting for generations. The people here seldom go outside, and the basin restricts their footsteps while their hearts seem to be frozen in it. Since he grew up in the environment of mining, smelting and forging, he had to grow up and become a part of this environment.

Years of habit made an unwritten rule in the basin, once a man reaches the age of 20, he must inherit his father's trade, either as a farmer, a merchant, or more often, a miner and blacksmith. This rule, although it is not known when it was handed down from the hands of someone, but has been very strictly observed, becoming a spiritual symbol of the few in this culturally barren basin.

Until the age of five, Asa was no different from other children, growing up amidst the fire and the sound of banging. At the age of five, he became obsessed with the world outside the basin as told by the old adventurer behind the village. The huge flying dragon that could easily catch a cow in the sky and eat it, the beautiful mermaid that charmed sailors with her song, the corpse that moved by itself, the mud people, all kinds of sub-humans, the countries that believed in the natural elements, the strange customs, and the infinite blue sky with white clouds, the mysterious and unpredictable boundless sea, the prairie that could not be reached even after three days and nights of horseback riding.

Unlike other children who are just happy to hear and fantasize about these stories. Asa think that is the real life, is really belong to his world, so he began to learn from the old adventurers all the knowledge of the outside world. How to survive in the swamps and deserts, how to identify the various plants, the various habits of various subhumans, how to fight, how to set traps. He covered every one of the most inhospitable and unpopulated places in the basin, staying inside for months at a time, imagining that that was the magical world outside, practicing his survival skills inside. In order to have a strong body, enough to fight in front of the orcs are not inferior, he exercised himself every day, and fought with people much older than himself, and at the age of fourteen all the rogues and bandits in the basin no longer dare to go to his village. When he was fifteen years old, he went to the iron ore mines, and as soon as he found good ore, he found a way to sneak it out.

His father was a quiet man, the owner of a small weapons store, and his mother had long since died of illness. In Asa's impression, home was just a place to rest, and his father was just an elder who lived together. He had always lived in the distant hope of his dream, exercising every day, secretly accumulating ore in reveling in getting closer to it step by step.

When the week before his twentieth birthday, he gave his father all the ore he had secretly hidden away, asked him to build him a sword, and told him he was leaving town.

His father didn't stop him or ask him where he was going. Just after a long silence, he helped him to send the ore to the smelter to smelt the refined iron into a knife. Then Asa took the knife with a caravan of out-of-towners who came to purchase it and left Kalendor.

Fingers gently sliding over the blade, the knife is all he has lived for twenty years. Flexing his fingers, it gave a 'humming' whisper, like a lament inside some poem, and like an ode.

"Good knife." Like the unpleasant sound of two dull knives blades rubbing and cutting against each other. The veteran at the campfire woke up and looked at Asa with one eye open, the light of the fire reflecting his face that didn't quite look like a face.

Half of the cheek of that face was sunken in, sinew and flesh mixing with the broken bones into a puddle of uneven flesh, the marks left by hammer-like weapons. The other half of the face was from the forehead to the mouth of a deep and long scar strung up, there are several small and shallow scars left and right across, the features are torn by the scars are somewhat out of place. It was a face made strange by the wounds, but even stranger was the fact that this man was still alive after so many wounds.

Asa gave the veteran a friendly smile. This is a veteran who has been fighting in the battlefield for decades but never rolled to death, and is said to have hundreds of small and large wounds all over his body. Because he couldn't die all the time, a lot of people in the army called him 'the old immortal'.

"Where have you done it before?" Seeing that the knife was not the standard equipment of the regular army, the veteran thought Asa was a single mercenary.

Asa shook his head, he had joined in Brakada when he saw a unit recruiting mercenaries. When he came out of Caloundo he realized that it was not easy to live freely outside. Food, adventure items all need money. Almost have to consider to find bandits to join or to help the rogues fight when they see a scouting unit is recruiting temporary soldiers, immediately signed up to join.

Half of this troop of a hundred men was recruited temporarily around Brakada. There were peasants, vagrants, and seemingly a few outlaws mixed in, unruly and lively. The most eccentric looking veteran was actually a regular soldier.

The old soldier probably couldn't sleep and struck up a conversation with Asa: "The young man seems to be in good shape, why do you want to become a soldier?"

"Because there is nothing else to do, in fact I am thinking of becoming a bandit." Asa told the honest truth.

The veteran chuckled like he had broken a pot, and Asa noticed that he had a cut on his throat, probably bruising his vocal cords as well. "Interesting lad. In fact, there are times when being a bandit is better than being a soldier, at least not as dangerous as being a soldier. If you can beat a bandit, you can rob him, and if you can't beat him, you can run away. If you are a soldier, you may be told to rush when you should be fleeing."

"Then you don't have to rush, you should run away."

"If you violate the military order, the chief will cut off your head."

"Then the only way is to cut off the officer's head first, and then run away." Asa replied with his own thought.

The veteran soldier kara-kara laughed again, "There is no such soldier."

"What kind of man is there who is commanded by others when he knows he is going to die?" Asa felt incomprehensible. "Of course it is to find a way to survive. Asking me to go and die, why doesn't he go up and die first to show me?"

The old soldier shook his head, his only remaining one eye showed a blank look, his twisted features twitched into a distorted expression that no onlooker could understand, and muttered, "That's how it is when you're a soldier."

There came the sound of jangling, and Asa knew it was Captain Sanders, the only one who would still be patrolling in steel armor now.

"Why aren't you in bed yet? You have a mission tomorrow." Captain Sanders was still fully equipped. A steel armor, head with a steel helmet, left waist with a sword right waist hanging shield, these things seem to grow on his body, never see him take off. The armor and shield had a holy cross embossed on them, which Asa had heard was the symbol of the Paladin Order, which was unknown even in the dull and dreary part of his homeland, and was one of the strongest units in the Empire.

"We are exchanging experiences as soldiers." Asa still told the honest truth.

"Why are you still awake, Captain? We're going to bed soon." The veteran soldier was afraid that Asa would bullshit up and hastily took over the conversation.

Sanders nodded and said kindly, "I'll make my rounds." His tone and expression were easygoing, and even his looks made people feel a bit inexplicably friendly. This young captain had a high prestige among the regular soldiers, while the others hired with Asa were a bit unimpressed.

The lower class commoners usually have little affection for the nobility, and the lack of dislike has proved that the young man is very affable. But Asa was quite a bit in awe of him, although he had never seen him fight, but I could see that the captain was much more powerful than himself.

Sanders looked at Asa and asked, "Are you the recruit who has beaten four infantrymen in the draft?" When conscripting soldiers, you have to compete with several infantry soldiers to see if they have enough strength and fighting power. Asa easily put down several soldiers who were much bigger than him.

"Yes." Asa replied. Sanders nodded and said in an approving tone, "You have good hands, do a good job, you can definitely do well."

Although Asa had great doubts about being a soldier as a profession after talking to the veteran, he couldn't help but nod his head very vigorously.

It seems that not all nobles are so arrogant and obnoxious. It's always nice to hear a compliment, and Asa has forgotten the last time he was complimented.

A guard whistle suddenly sounded outside the camp, its shrill tone tearing the silence of the wilderness night in two.