Wanderer's Tale

Chapter One The Moot at Wintus Hall There was an air of mounting excitement as the market hall began to fill. Each passing minute would see more people pass through the heavy oaken doors to enter the echoing vaults beneath Wintus Hall, swelling the throng that waited in anticipation there. Although these vaults were cavernous, built to accommodate the entire household of Wintus Hall in the event of siege, those newly arriving had to push their way through the crowd just to find somewhere to stand. And with each minute the noise grew more tumultuous, as all waited impatiently for the proceedings to commence. Master Gapp Radnar sat toward one end of the dais, squinting at the crowd through his spectacles and occasionally rubbing his reddened eyes. A thick haze of tobacco smoke hung in the air, its obnoxious fumes tainted further by the caustic odor of various other herbs being smoked throughout the hall. No one else even seemed to notice this pollution, but Gapp was suffering badly as his eyes smarted incessantly. Occasionally he scratched the back of his neck in discomfort, where the thongs holding his lenses in place kept itching behind his ears. Despite his fifteen years, he felt very small and vulnerable sitting there, flanked by men who were all bigger and much more important. He was confronted by the largest crowd of onlookers he had ever seen in his life. All of them seemed to be staring right back at him, and he felt nervous, intimidated and so self-conscious that it was all he could do to stop himself burying his face in his hands. Steepling his fingers before him in an effort to look self-collected and important, he covertly studied the men arrayed before him in the body of the hall. What a bunch of blackguards, he thought. I wouldn't trust one of them to run an errand, let alone embark upon a sacred quest. Ordinarily used as a meeting place of the Peladanes alone, it would normally have been a sea of green, that being the predominant color worn by their order. Peladane society observed strict rules of hierarchy, one's rank determining the number of colors one could wear, but each and every member, from highest to lowest, wore a long green robe called the Ulleanh. Today, however, the vaults of Wintus Hall were liberally sprinkled with the alternative shades favored by a wide variety of mercenaries. Just look at the ditch-born scum, Gapp's thoughts went on. Dented armor, notched axes, dirty clothes, filthy faces, and hair that looks as if it's served to clean out the grease tray under the pork spit . . . Of course, he knew, many of them had endured days, possibly weeks, of hard travel to get here. The boy ran a finger through the shock of clean, well-combed brown hair that crowned the top of his own head, and wondered briefly if he too might look as they did in the weeks to come. There was one in particular to whom Gapp had taken a dislike right from the moment he had first clapped eyes on him. That one there, right in the front row, the one who was staring at him even now. Though Gapp kept trying to avoid eye contact, their eyes constantly seemed to meet. The boy would casually survey the back of the hall or rest his gaze on the middle distance, but always there would be the old rogue staring, glaring, straight back at him. This time Gapp hurriedly averted his gaze and studied the tabletop instead, nervously scratching at its surface with his fingernails. "Will you cut that out, you little prat!" snarled a hungover voice at his side. "It's like demons scraping their claws on the inside of my skull . . ." [read more]