Soren walked away from the Amphitheatre with a hollow feeling inside. He felt a sense of personal loss that seemed to him to be irrational, but he could not shake it off. He hoped some food would alleviate it. It had been a particularly bad year for begging though; he could remember being hungry more often than not lately. Scavenging hadn’t been much better. The end result was that Soren was skinnier than he had ever been. The previous night he had passed the time counting his ribs. Counting was the one thing all of the street children were good at. There were probably reasons for the times being particularly hard, but they were beyond Soren, and he wouldn’t have even wondered at them had they not had an impact on his belly. Nevertheless, he was hungry and despondent, and food was always the best way to cheer himself up.
Begging was prohibited everywhere in the city, but in the market square, known as Crossways, the City Watch made sure that rule was applied in the harshest possible way. A boy he had talked to from time to time, Piero, had died soon after the beating they gave him when he had been caught begging there and he knew of many more stories like that. It was thieving that brought Soren to the market though, not begging. It was a far more effective method to fill one’s belly and you had less chance of making yourself known to the City Watch if it was done properly.
Crossways was a great open square in the middle of the city, bisected by two roads that ran east-west and north-south. From dawn until dusk every day, the square was packed with buyers and sellers. Everything was for sale there; spices and silks from the south, food, slaves and luxuries from across the Middle Sea, furs, metals and precious stones from the north, and every other type of item imaginable from places that Soren had never even heard of. Wagons and fat bellied merchant ships entered the city day and night, providing the city with its lifeblood.
If trade was the city’s religion, then the merchants were its priests. They were jealously protected and it was death to impede their trade. Stealing in Crossways was treated as severely as murder. The death penalty was not such a frightening thing to someone who was starving though. Despite this, Soren was no fool and had no desire to meet a swift end on a watchman’s pike. So he waited and watched for the perfect moment. A loaf of bread, a slab of beef, it didn’t matter so long as it was food.
He had waited most of the afternoon, hoping that the traders would be fatigued and have let their guard down by the early evening. He had also limited himself to the poorer side of the market; the stalls here were smaller, belonging to the lesser merchants, often one-man operations and not so heavily policed by the City Watch. One trader in particular seemed to be paying less attention to his wares than trying to attract customers to his stall. When one finally stopped, Soren saw his opportunity.
The customer was well dressed, not as well dressed as a noble or a wealthier merchant, but neat, clean and tidy. A servant perhaps. Shrewd though, he was haggling hard and this was creating Soren’s chance. The haggling was intense and the opportunity was growing greater by the moment. With as much nonchalance as he could muster with the smell of the different foods all around nearly driving him to madness, he walked quickly, but not too quickly, past the customer and into arm’s reach of a beautifully shaped, golden loaf of bread. A series of inviting diagonal grooves were cut across its back, betraying its crusty shell and no doubt hiding delicious fluffy bread underneath.
His hand was shaking; the thought of the bread set his mouth awash and his heart was racing. The bread was firm to the touch, but yielded to the slight pressure of his hand. Then he had it, clutched to his chest. Keep walking, he thought, slow and steady, it is as easy as anything. The weight of anticipation was beginning to lift from his shoulders when disaster struck.
‘Stop there! Thief!’
For a moment Soren hoped that the shout had been directed at someone else, but a glance over his shoulder proved that it had not. The merchant had pulled a long thin club from underneath his counter and was striding purposefully toward him. One of the smaller side alleys that ran off the square was his best chance; they led to the warren of tight twisting alleys that riddled the city like veins, a web that anyone who had grown up on the streets was intimately familiar with.
With eighteen years under his belt, Soren had found over the last couple of years that his body had become inconveniently large. The small spaces between adults at leg level that had once provided free passage when he was younger were now closed to him. Instead he had to use his size to try to bash people out of his way to clear a path ahead. It was not the most economical of escapes, knocking from person to person.
With each bump and curse, the merchant got a little closer. Just as one of the laneways came into sight and with only a few heads bobbing between him and it, he felt a firm hand grab a handful of his shirt between his shoulder blades. He spun around, and the first swing of the merchant’s club cracked him on the back of the hand and knocked the precious loaf of bread from his grasp. He watched with agonising hunger as the loaf hit the smoothly cobbled ground and was quickly trampled into oblivion.
Recovering quickly from this setback, Soren pushed backward as hard as he could, driving with his legs and forcing his way past the last few people and into the free space at the entrance to the alley. Unfortunately the merchant had followed swiftly through the void he had left in his wake. Throwing himself backward to avoid the swing of the merchant’s club, he fell into a pile of rubbish; various junk heaped there by the nearby traders. Luck smiled upon him as his hand came upon a piece of wooden doweling rod, which he quickly raised to parry off the next blow.
‘You’ll pay for that loaf, you little shit!’ said the merchant.
‘Fuck off, you fat pig!’ said Soren. The merchant could easily afford to lose a loaf of bread. Its value to Soren was ten times what it was to him.
The merchant didn’t reply. Soren’s backchat just infuriated him. He bellowed in rage and kept furiously hitting down at Soren with his club. Soren scrambled to his feet, fending off each attack with his rough wooden rod. He consciously mirrored the stance of the swordsmen in the arena, his feet planted wide apart and his knees slightly bent. The contact of the two pieces of wood made a satisfying ‘thwock’ and Soren found that he was almost enjoying himself, or would have been if it were not for the painful hollowness in his belly and the disappointment at having lost the loaf of bread, which he was still feeling keenly. The merchant swung at him from left and right, the club swishing through the air. Some strikes Soren ducked, others he sidestepped, but the most pleasurable were those where wood struck wood, and Soren effortlessly deflected the club up, down, left or right; to any direction of his choosing. The merchant’s attacks seemed to come at him at a snail’s pace and Soren felt as though he could do as he liked.
The merchant, on the other hand, was not enjoying himself. Each spoiled attack was enraging him further. Instead of the satisfaction of beating the daylights out of a street urchin who had just robbed him, he was presented with the smiling face of a filthy gutter rat who he could not seem to lay a single blow upon. Furthermore, a chase that he had expected to take but a moment was requiring considerably more time, and his stall was unattended and inviting further theft. Finally reason overcame rage, and he paused, his face red as he gasped for breath. Soren remained in a crouch, gently swaying his weight from foot to foot, his piece of wood held out in front of him, the tip deadly still. With a curse at both Soren and the conspicuously absent City Watch, he flung his club at Soren, which Soren easily dodged, turned and walked back toward his stall. Soren put one hand on his hip and with the other raised his club high, in the salute that Amero had always made after easily defeating an opponent.
As he stood and straightened himself, the bitter disappointment at having lost the loaf struck him, and his empty belly with renewed force, but he was quickly distracted by a slow clapping sound. It was not the sharp sound of bare skin against skin, but that of soft, thick leather on leather drumming out behind him.
‘Bravo, young man, bravo! I particularly liked the salute!’
Soren turned to face the source of the sound and was greeted by the fine figure of a gentleman and his servant. The gentleman stood in front of his servant, who had a suspicious look on his face. He was finely dressed, his breeches crisp and swash topped boots gleaming. He wore a fine dark doublet with puffed shoulders and sleeves, with only the collar and cuffs of a white silk shirt visible beneath. His hand rested on the beautifully shaped hilt of a rapier. A long black cloak with fine silver trim was slung casually back over his shoulders and a wide brimmed, feathered hat sat slightly askew atop his head. His countenance was cocky, and he seemed to be leaning on the pommel of his sword with perfect balance.
Soren wondered what a gentleman was doing in an alley like this until he spotted the red mage lamp of a brothel hanging above a doorway some way behind him.
‘Where did you learn to wield a stick like that, boy?’ the gentleman asked.
‘I don’t know, my Lord,’ said Soren.
‘Really. That’s very interesting. Do me a favour, boy, and there’s a crown in it for you.’
A crown was more money than Soren had ever had before, a veritable fortune, but nonetheless he hesitated a moment. The gentleman sensed this and laughed out loud.
‘Fear not, boy, I just wish to see another demonstration of your skills with a stick! Spar with Emeric here for a few moments.’ He gestured to his servant who, with a look of resentment on his face stepped forward and picked up the wooden club that the merchant had discarded. He adopted a low pose with the club held well out in front of him. Soren dropped back into the easy stance he had used against the merchant.
‘Go!’ said the noble, his voice a mixture of amusement and curiosity.
The man called Emeric shrugged his cloak back over his shoulders and jabbed forward quickly, the tip of the club shooting forward in a smooth motion with far more control than the merchant had ever exhibited. It jabbed Soren hard in the chest and left a stinging welt that sucked the breath from his lungs. He had only just regained his balance in time to slap the next attack to the side and was not able to linger over the pleasant sound it made. Unlike the merchant though, Emeric was not long knocked out of his rhythm by the parry and recovered almost instantly, countering with a swipe that nearly caught Soren in the midsection.
He danced out of the way, spinning as he did, swishing the chair leg through the air until it satisfyingly connected with cloth and flesh.
‘Enough!’
Soren was breathing heavily and feeling light headed with hunger by the time they stopped. His arms and legs burned and he was not at all certain that he would not be sick.
‘You say you’ve never had any training at all?’ asked the gentleman.
‘No, my Lord, none,’ replied Soren.
‘Tell me then, what is your name?’
‘Soren, sir.’
The gentleman remained silent for a moment and then conferred with his servant Emeric for several more. He turned back to Soren and scrutinised him for a moment longer before speaking again.
‘Well, Soren, my retainer disagrees with me, but I am feeling in a generous mood this evening. How would you like to learn how to use a sword properly?’ he asked.
Seeing opportunity, Soren grabbed at it with both hands. ‘Very much, sir!’ he said. ‘I’d like a hot meal also,’ he added more in hope than expectation.
The brazen request drew a laugh from the noble. ‘I’m sure we can manage a hot meal as well. You are now under my patronage. I am Banneret of the Blue Amero, Count of Moreno. Emeric here will see to your needs.’
The name sent a shiver through Soren’s body. The gentleman had seemed vaguely familiar, something about his bearing, his voice, but in the shadows of the alleyway, Soren had not recognised him. He had only ever seen Amero from a distance anyway.
Amero gestured to Emeric who discarded the wooden club and turned back to Soren.
‘Well, lad, you’ve had a stroke of luck today. Let’s see about getting you that meal,’ said Emeric.