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Wet ground.
A slick, scarcely comfortable terrain lay out before the un-amused eyes of Thaine.
With a sharp two fingered gesture over his shoulder, he motioned for his traveling troupe to go on ahead of him, looking over their faces as they passed.
The first to pass him was Zara’tul. This gruff odorous warrior was clad up and down with furs and leathers, skins and hides – and proudly wore three stripes of hair along the top of his head. Where Thaine was from, such a man would be labeled a barbarian – a tribesman from the absolute fringes of civilization, where the peak of their technological achievement was the genius discovery of killing a man, and taking his better crafted gear and weapons. Such methodology had distinct advantages. However – one doesn’t simply call a man a barbarian – a word associated as an insult to those less advanced, one calls such a man a warrior or a hunter out of respect – respect, or a desire to keep one’s jugular vein in tact.
Next up was the mystifyingly beautiful E’yala. She passed with a quiet tugging smirk on the edge of those feminine lips, her eyes at a glance to Thaine’s. Thaine figured she fancied him a bit – and indeed, with all honesty due in a disembodied narrator voice, the feeling was very much returned. She slinked by, those brown locks of hair, and enchanting set of eyes teasing him as she did.
Taking up the lead was a bizarre bald man, shaved from head to toe, brandishing a long spear. Thaine had heard of them eastern monks – not the sort to sit around and copy holy text from one book to another, but rather put a fist or staff end somewhere you don’t want it going. Unsettling.
Thaine himself had a matted head of long hair, and a gruff relaxed air to him, a tankard hanging proudly from one hip, and a blade on the other.
Thaine heard rumor of war hereabouts, in these woods. War meant fighting, fighting meant someone needed to do the fighting, and that means money for those who don’t care enough to take an honest side.
“We’ll be settin’ up th’camp herabouts, aye?” Thaine made a long gesture, roughly indicating the clearing they had just walked into, and no sooner did Thaine say it than Zara’tul made a quick nod and grabbed up the gear from his back and began to prepare the site.
Heaving an over exaggerated sigh, Thaine began to unload his own equipment, under the moistened mist of the damp forest air, “Oi’m guessin’ y’gree then?” he said silently and a bit sarcastically.
…
Sounds. Noises. Battle was at their doorstep. Two forces had collided on the roadway next to their campsite. In a flurry, Thaine drew up a blade and dashed forward, keeping low to the ground.
“Wot in th’nione ‘ells …”
What was going on? Grumbling in the stead of battle cries. Gibberish in the stead of tactics. Discomfort replacing the tension of a heated battle. Was this a battle, a skirmish, a scuffle? Or was it the council meeting of the local parliament. It was difficult to differentiate.
Unconsciously, Thaine’s blade slowly lowered, sensing a severe lack of aggression from either side of the conflict – two sides that seemed to be standing, waiting for the other to do something.
Was this what happened when you handed a sword to a scholar, or a pampered nobleboy? Even a farmer could brandish a pitchfork and charge passionately for the sake of his homestead, family, or country.
When the sides finally did meet, there was a chanting in the air – people repeating phrases desperately in some foreign tongue. With a confused look to his movements, and a sour look on his face, he moved away from the battle, and plopped down in front of his freshly raised tent.
“Bloo’y. Oi’ were hopin’ t’gut me some pom-pus sold-yer toipes.”
“Oi’ guess oi’ll jus’ troi’n stay ‘wake fer now.”
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A good man developes a moral philosophy, and lives it. A selfish man creates his philosophy out of how he already lives.
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