We were finally there. After five months of hell, walking up to ten hours a day, never sleeping in the same place for two nights straight, going through almost unexplored regions of the kingdom, crossing rivers, swamps, hills, and occasionally small villages, we had finally arrived. I didn’t know what I expected our destination to look like, but I think even my wildest dreams didn’t quite match the scenery that had just unfolded beneath our eyes. Even the other guards, who had been noticeably indifferent to the landscapes we had traversed during our trip, were taking in the view. We had all stopped, even though we’d received no such order from the head carriage.

From the mountain pass we had just crossed, we were looking at a large valley. There was no trace of human settlements whatsoever, and it looked as if no one had ever set foot here. There was a forest covering most of the flat terrain, and the river we had walked along for the last week or so had become so small that it must have come from a nearby glacier. The wind-swept grasslands were reminiscent of our home province of Halminor, but the snow-capped mountains surrounding us were orders of magnitude taller than the biggest hills I’d seen back there.

We heard a whistle, and the head carriage started moving again. Reluctantly, we followed it and resumed our hike, as was our duty. Having the end in sight, though, was a blessing, and I was hoping we would stay there for at least a few weeks, to prepare for the return trip that would inevitably be as long and arduous as our first one.

I didn’t really have any friends in the royal guard. I think part of me expected to meet and connect with people by taking this job, but I soon realised it was not going to happen. Most of them had been raised close to the royal family, near the castle, and weren’t critical of how things were in the slightest. Even after indulging in the king’s dream of grandeur that was this expedition, the rare times I'd try to talk to them only led to boring conversations about how excited they were about all the good the king would be able to do after having gained this new power. We barely ever saw the man; he never left his carriage during the day, and ate his meals in his large tent every night, surrounded by only a few of his retainers. The king had never once taken part in our small travelling community, and that was just how things were.

The head carriage came to a stop once again near the edge of the forest, and this time, we were told to set up camp for the night. A few of the guards formed a group to go hunting, in hopes of catching a couple of deer or pheasants, and I took a spot fishing in the river, as I did each time we stopped near a body of water. It was a way of helping the community that didn’t require spending too much energy, and allowed me to get lost in my own thoughts, as I liked to do. It had earned me the mocking nickname ‘Henry the fisherman’, and I tried my best to ignore anyone calling me thus when I could afford to.

The hunters returned with a few birds and a single deer, and a stew was quickly made from some wild vegetables, herbs, and clear river water. The meat was added, as were the two larger-than-usual fish I'd managed to catch. It looked like it was better than what we ate most days, but I still couldn't help thinking that we would have been better off if a few cooks and actual hunters had replaced some of the fifty members of the royal guard that the king had ordered to come. We had very little to do in the way of protecting the convoy, apart from fending off a few beasts from time to time, which twenty of us would have been more than enough to take care of.

We ate, and the few of us who were brave enough to try went to wash themselves in the ice-cold river. I couldn’t join them, though. This kind of unspoken physical intimacy was an aspect of community life I’d always been really uncomfortable with, even if the other guards seemed like they didn’t care about it at all. It’d made my life a nightmare for the past few months, and I craved some time alone. In the meantime, I’d gotten used to doing my washing during the night, when no one was looking, and I was living for these few moments by myself, under the stars. We were mostly free to do anything we wanted at night, as the leaders had slowly realised that only a few of us were needed around the camp to protect it. Most of us just slept, of course. The days of endless walking were taking their toll on our bodies. I didn’t sleep a lot myself; the urge to be alone was too great, and I did everything I could to avoid spending my nights in the shared tents with the other guards.

This time, I took my sleeping bag and crossed the river, as I’d found a rocky spot where it was narrower while fishing. I walked for a few moments until I was far enough from the group that I didn’t hear anything other than the wind and the flowing water. I looked around me, and noticed that I was pretty much at the heart of the valley. The grasslands stretched out in front of me, and the flatness of my surroundings was only disturbed by a single large rock, which had probably landed here after coming loose from a cliff and tumbling down the side of a mountain. I decided to make this my spot for the night, and laid on the soft, thick grass, in my sleeping bag. There was something incredibly calming and beautiful about this place.

✦ ✦ ✦

“Henry! What in the hell are you still doing here?”

I slowly opened my eyes, only to immediately close them, blinded by the sunlight.

“Seriously, you and your nighttime escapades! You’re not safe out here by yourself, what were you thinking?” the voice of my superior shouted.

There were five head guards, one for every ten men. My superior, Martin, was thankfully among the less strict ones, and he was also pretty down to earth and understanding—that is to say, as much as someone with power in this community could be. We weren’t friends by any means, but I at least knew him more than the others. This time, however, I had wandered a bit too far from the group for his liking.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” I said, still half asleep. “What do you even need me for out there, catching some fish for breakfast?”

“That’s not it,” he explained, “the king doesn’t want us to stay here too long, and he asked that we start looking for the outpost.”

“Really?” I asked, with a suspicious tone in my voice. “Is he not supposed to do that by himself? How are we meant to find it?”

"He's given Richard some instructions, they're gathering a couple of scouts at the moment, and it's time you put your observational skills to good use."

I didn’t have the willpower to argue with him, so I simply gave in. “All right, I’ll be there. Just… Give me a few minutes to get ready.”

After folding my sleeping bag, I returned to the others. I grabbed a pot of leftover stew and sat under a tree, trying to picture the sword in my head. I still had trouble believing it was actually real. A powerful sword, infused with ancient magic, sitting in a forgotten outpost. A sword that attunes to its wielder, sharing its power with them and making them the greatest warrior known to man. This was a folk legend, but the royal mages and highborns from the government would never have spent so much time and resources on this expedition if they weren't sure of themselves. It had to be real. However, the king was already the most powerful man in the Lands of Hal, and he didn’t really have a need to become a great warrior himself. My best guess was that he wanted the royal mages to study the power of the sword in order to replicate it, while at the same time making sure nobody else would threaten him with it.

Magic had always fascinated me. We knew it had once been widespread, centuries ago. But the many wars that had ravaged our lands had destroyed most of the information known about it. Entire cities, renowned for the quality of their magical institutions, had been wiped out, and people who could wield magic had become extremely rare. Their power was only a fraction of what their ancestors had access to.

The scouts were ready to set foot, and seeing that Martin was with them reassured me slightly. The small group was made up of him, a few other guards I had almost never spoken with before, and Richard. Richard was a royal mage, and one of the most knowledgeable ones at that. Unfortunately, he was also very close to the royal family and was said to have done some really bad things during the last civil war, twenty or so years ago. I wasn’t born at that time, but it was common knowledge among the castle staff that avoiding any interaction with him was safer. It was really odd not seeing him in a mage robe, as he had worn one for the entirety of the trip. Now that he had to walk instead of simply sitting in the head carriage, he had dropped it for a head guard uniform, and some of the scouts on hand were visibly trying to contain their laughter at this sight. 

Richard cleared his throat, and addressed the small group. “Alright, lads, I’ve been entrusted by His Highness the king to lead this small reconnaissance trip. My goal is to make sure we arrive at the right spot. Your goal is to protect me along the way, and help locate the outpost once we’re on site. Understood?”

We all saluted, as was customary when addressing someone of his rank. He then took out a compass and a little scroll from a pocket on his backpack, and we set off on the hike.

✦ ✦ ✦

“That’s it! Hey, everyone, I think I see it!” I screamed with all my might. My voice came out deafeningly loud, and echoed for several seconds against the various surrounding cliffsides.

After a few hours of walking, we had arrived at the base of one of the largest surrounding mountains, and from there, we had all gone our separate ways to try and maximise our chances. Richard had informed us that there was no precise indication of where the outpost was located, but that it was supposedly around where we’d ended up. Before letting us go, he had cast a simple spell to amplify our voices, so that we could call for each other in case one of us found the outpost.

I had nothing better to do than sit down on a rock and wait for everyone else to gather here. I was still a little bit concerned that I’d called out to them for nothing, which would’ve probably earned me a very bad moment face-to-face with Richard, but there was no possible doubt. I had gone up a steep part of the mountain, until I’d met a vertical cliff that I couldn’t climb. From there, I’d looked in every direction around me, until…

“So, found the outpost, huh?” I heard someone ask. It was Richard, who had just lifted the spell, according to the natural volume of his voice.

I risked an answer. “Yes sir, I think that’s it, right over there,” I said, pointing at the opposite cliff.

Somewhere in the distance, on a large rock protruding from the cliff, there was a modest stone brick tower. We could barely make out a few small paths leading to it, springing out in all directions, that seemed to be carved in the sides of the mountain.

I waited for an answer, but it didn’t come. After a few terrifyingly long seconds, though, he spoke, in a very quiet voice. “Yes. This is indeed the outpost. Good work, young man.”

A few minutes later, the light fog that persisted from the morning had cleared up, and the outpost was really visible now. Everyone had arrived one after the other, and once we were all gathered, Richard spoke up once more. “The outpost has been found, everyone, as well as a path leading to it. This is the end of our mission here. The king shall be escorted here tomorrow morning, and if everything goes well, we leave this place in two days.”

Everyone breathed out a sigh of relief, but I was horrified. I tried my best to hide it at first, but once we’d started hiking back down towards the valley, my thoughts started racing.

I didn’t want to leave this place. I didn’t want to get back on the road. Why was everyone so eager to walk all the way back home? Did they not want to rest here for a while? Did nobody see the beauty of this valley?

I tried to think about it really hard. Why? Maybe they wanted to get back to their families? To their homes?

I had no family. I had no home either. That was the reason I’d joined the army, after all. I didn’t want to live on the dirty, dark streets of Halminor city. I had offered myself to the army in hopes of finding shelter, which had indeed happened. Then I’d been offered to work as a royal guard, and I had accepted the job, without expecting this journey to be such a hellish experience.

No one, nothing was waiting for me back there. If I deserted the royal guard, I wouldn’t really be missed. I would finally be alone, for a change.

In fact, I could do something even bolder.

Really though. I could easily hide behind a rock. I could wait for the group to be out of sight. And I could run back to the outpost. I could get the sword.

This was a flawless plan. If the sword were indeed there, I’d be transformed into the most powerful warrior known to man, and I could probably defeat all of the guards if they tried to attack me. If there was no sword, or if the magic didn’t work, I could simply keep running, and the others would likely never find me, and I’d then wait for them to leave. I would settle in this beautiful valley, and live here by myself, under the stars. No one from the army would ever come back here; we were way too far from the capital.

So I hid behind a rock. I’d been the last one in the line for a while, and the gap between me and the others had grown larger while I was lost in my thoughts. I waited for the group to be out of sight—it took a while until I didn’t see them anymore, but they hadn’t noticed a thing—and I ran back to the outpost.

The path that was carved into the mountainside was perilous. I almost tripped on several small rocks, a mistake that would have sent me tumbling down the cliffside to a certain death. But in the end, I didn’t fall, and I wasn’t worried anymore. The outpost was right in front of me.

I quickly pushed the old wooden door, and it collapsed on the floor, almost crumbling into dust. I had no idea how much time I had, so I quickly stepped inside without a second thought. The room was small and empty, except for a dusty stone altar in the middle, with a rusty sword simply laid on top.

And I took it.

Luna_C

First chapter of my second ever story! This time, I wanted to try my hand at fantasy and magic stuff, and I really love how it's turning out. Let's see what happens to Henry in the next chapters c: