The long road.

Lucius trudged along the road in the cool morning air his eyes traveling up the merchant caravan he’d bartered travel with.  It was six wagons long and carried at least three dozen bondmaids. Some of the girls were kept in cages and some with their wrists bound walking behind and along side the wagons. He ventured a guess that the caged girls were worth more than those walking for whatever reason or perhaps they had just been the first to be acquired and got cage space before it ran out.  Lucius had managed to convince them to let him travel along as a guard of sorts, it was more a joke among the other hired hands than anything that  he was a “guard” for the caravan.

Each day Lucius was stuck with menial tasks like feeding slaves, in fact, that was his only task.  He didn’t mind really aside from the jokes that were cracked at him. The slaves were beautiful and he much preferred being surrounded by them and looking on their near naked bodies rather than dealing with the sweaty grime of  the other guards. The bondsmaids seemed to talk a rather instant liking to him despite his age. He noted that one of the taller red heads , Souxie, followed him around wherever he went and he was sure it was because she wanted him to take her to the furs. Later in life looking back he would realize that she was mothering him a little, even though a slave she saw a man child in him and felt the need to care for him.

Later in the week he sat near the fire with Souxie watching the orange flames lick against the night sky. He head lay against his chest as the night air set in and his arm found its way around her waist while she drifted off to sleep.  Lucius had nearly drifted off when he heard the first call for help, the screaming of slave girls and the clatter of their chains as they tried to hide.  He leaped up from Souxie who had already awakened and was looking about confusedly at all the commotion.  

Lucius leaped up and drew his sword looking about realizing finally that they were under attack by bandits, no doubt after the slaves for their own or to profit from. Without thinking he crouched a dodge to the side as a sword came wishing down meant to cleave his skull. Before he knew what had happened the man was laying on the ground with Lucius’ sword sticking out of him. He started to feel sick but the feeling quickly faded as he saw two more men rushing upon him.

It seemed that his body reacted on instinct and dumb luck affording him an opening to dodge past them and open the belly of one of the men. He looked over his shoulder and saw Souxie running behind a wagon comforted temporarily that she was finding her way to safety. Lucius squared off with the second man both having sword in hand.

“Leave it boy, you don’t have to die like this.” the man said to him in a thick southern accent.

Lucius from somewhere inside found a bit of arrogance and replied, “I can kill you.”

The man lunged at Lucius and he saw red as the blade of the sword slide across his chest slicing open his tunic and leaving a gash in his skin across his chest. His eyes jerked just in time to see the other mans elbow coming toward his head and his ears found the blood curdling scream of his opponent just before he fell to the ground seeing stars. 

He didn’t know how long he lay there trying to get his bearings and pull himself to his feet, a few minutes or an hour would have seemed just the same. He turned just in time to see a sword flashing towards him and a woman flying through the air towards his assailant. The sword cut sharply across his face over his left eye, the bridge of his nose and down across his right cheek. He fell to the ground his hands loosing his blade and finding his face as he screamed in pain only seconded by the scream of a woman.

Lucius looked up just in time to see the man pushing Souxie off his sword. He watched her lifeless body crumple to the ground staining the snow a sickening crimson. In a fury of rage he forgot about the searing pain radiating across his face and grabbed his sword lunging at the man more like an animal than a person hacking his sword arm from his body. The man screamed and looked at him terrified now as Lucius circled him like a mad dog ready to pounce. 

“Please, no, don’t kill me.” the man wept holding out his good arm as if he could ward Lucius away.

Lucius in one fluid motion displayed the only thing his father had ever taught him, how to kill a man. His sword sang as it cut through the air hacking the other arm of wrenching another agonized scream from the man. He twisted with a sickening grace and the blade found the mans head lopping it from his body. 

He dropped his sword and fell into the snow atop Souxie. He’d have cried if he had not lost consciousness.

Journal Entry 1

The first page of his journal is written in black ink and appears to be stained by saltwater. The words are still for the most part legible however at some points from the water staining the ink is lighter and appears to be a dark blue rather than black like the rest.

 

The sea was rough today it seems like this storm will never end. The skies were clear when we left Port Kar and now for as far as the eye can see it’s as black as night *unreadable* and we wouldn’t even know it. We lost one of the crew overboard and I expect to loose perhaps two men to illness before we make it to the Schendi Jungles where I heard the rest had fled to after Laura fell. Our supplies are adequate for the moment but will likely need to make port soon to seek a physcian to treat the sickness spreading around the crew and replace the lost hand as well.

I don’t care about these men and I’d rather make the trip alone if I could. They are not my crew just some fool priavteers that were unemployed in Kar where my crew would go no further. Perhaps this was a fool’s errand searching for my cohorts in crime. Anything was better than staying around there with *unreadable* Assassins. I’m sure they knew *unreadable* er and what I had done.

It doesn’t matter, none of it matters anymore. The only thing to do now is put as much distance between them and myself as I can. They don’t even venture this far south. South is the only way to be free of them and their prying eyes, their constant appearnces everywhere I go, yes south.

*unreadable* said that he was put here to *unreadable* I suppose the Preist Kings have some sort of plan after all if he was thrown overboard in a storm. Pity, knowing what I know now I would have enjoyed killing him myself. No matter, he’s dead and we can go on about our business

 

The rest of the page is mostly unreadable only a few words here and there can be made out. They are varying nautical terms and what could possibly be course headings but they are not legible enough to really be made out to be anything more than a series of numbers.  96118  581720128  602  8185217

From whence he came?

He was born in a hall in Torvaldsland to a warrior of Ar sent on a “diplomatic exploration” and a woman he met there.  They were not companioned, his father had learned at least the traditions and claimed the woman as his own. She was a beautiful curvy blond woman with sparkling blue eyes named Deidre, a pity she wound up with his father, a tall dark skinned man of the cities whose disgrace had earned his mission or rather banishment to the north never to be seen again. His father was not particularly well liked or disliked among those of the hall in which he had found a home, merely tolerated. His claim on Deidre went unchallenged only because like him or not he was still a free man and that afforded him some small measure of respect among those who lived there. If anything his taking of Deidre made him more well liked, she being a woman of integrity whose ways were deeply entrenched in the beliefs of the society she had grown up in lead her to be loyal to the man that had claimed her smoothing over disagreements, doing what she could manage to make him a bit more well liked among the populace.

Lucius was born a healthy boy in the early spring and named by his father. He was large for a baby with dark skin and a light sheen of dark hair on his head already with the same sparkling blue eyes as his mother. His father would later curse those eyes the only thing in his son that would remind him of the woman he discarded into slavery to be rid of her. Her only crime had been naievity. She had believed that her loving him and being what she believed that he deisred would earn his affections, she had been sorely mistaken.  One day he had decided that she was becoming too much of an annoyance with her constant presence in his home and he had taken her out that night and sold her off to a caravan of slavers.

By the time Lucius was twelve he had forgotten what his mother even looked like only that she had blue eyes like his and only because when his father would beat him he would constantly tell him that he deserved it,  ”It’s your mother in you making you act like this and those damned blue eyes of hers prove it.” It was then that he would be beaten with fists, belts, scabbards whatever his father could get his hands on to hit him with.  He became almost accustomed to his daily beatings expecting them when his father got home from a night of drinking, he had also learned to fear the nights that he did not get beaten because it seemed that whatever rage drove his father to beat him so would build in strength if not released on him nightly.

It wouldn’t be long before Lucius would grow tired or being beaten almost daily. He guessed it was about his fifteenth birthday, they had never celebrated it. “I’m not going to celebrate anything that reminds me of that whore that cursed me with you.” He figured if the old man had said that near his birthday every year as it seemed to be an annual phrase that he would be at least fifteen if not sixteen. He’d had enough and one night while his father slept, without a struggle, without ceremony he crept and slit the old man’s throat with his own sword and left him there. “A fitting end you son of a bitch.”

He pilfered through all of the old man’s belongings taking anything that he found to be useful, money, weapons, clothing; and gathered them together. Lucius made his way out into the cold night thankful it wasn’t quite winter yet and set his feet on course for the nearest port hoping that he could barter passage with a caravan along the way.