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Grandfather Reminder
Mevela 23rd, 1125 Dom.
“Fire starter!” Someone said to my rear.
“Hello.” I waved.
It was nice to not have to worry if the whispered words of men behind my back were humors or insults, it was nice knowing that some (not all, lord knows I couldn’t change everyones mind) people were getting a new opinion of me. A better one.
“Fire starter, have you thought about it some?” Captain Kinsley said. Who, I believe, belonged to the fifth. A burly man with a handle-bar mustache and a fetish for bulbous big, bulky armor.
“I’m still thinking.”
“Well don’t think too long.” He said and went off his way down the path towards another cart. Near me the horse trotted slowly, a half-asleep drive bobbed his head up and down.
“Don’t let it get to your head, kid.” Old Chet came around from behind one of the whiny wheels, his hands full of a basket of carrots.
“What’s wrong with a little love?”
“Nothing.” He smiled. “Are you too famous to help me out now?”
“No. Never.” I lifted the carrots to my chest which were surprisingly light. I walked, he rolled.
“You’ve done good, kid. Things are going well for you, ain’t they?” He asked.
“Yeah. They are.”
“You even learned to speak, finally.” He said. “You’re as good as any of the mainlanders now.” He said.
“Yeah. I guess that’s true.” I said.
To my rear, horses ran with men carrying packages. Letters mostly. On some of their hinds, the attached decapitated skulls of monsters macabre and pale. I saw about a dozen messengers going forward, and carts being whipped faster past us. Us - walking casually along this path, on this flat road of half-brick and half-dirt. We’d be going to Windhelm soon, Sylas told me. Vicentius confirmed.
“Why are they in a hurry?” I asked. The jockeys lowered their heads below depressed and lanky black branches.
“We’re getting closer to the capitol. Me thinks Vicentius wants something. I don’t know what, but knowing that boy it’s something big.”
“We’re heading there after Windhelm?” I asked.
“That’s the plan, they say.”
“What do you think Vincent wants?” I asked.
“Some people think it’s a big job. A dragon. Or a Hydra far off from the capitol. Me thinks it’s something bigger though, the boy always dreamed big.” He said.
“Like?”
“Well…” His eyes went shift. “I don’t think Vicentius is hunting monsters at all. I think he’s hunting a chair.”
“A chair?”
“In the senate.” Old Chet’s crooked smile came to its full.
Three people approached me. Three people that stopped Old Chet and myself, that almost made the basket of carrots fall from my chest.
“Are you Virgil?” One of them asked.
Two of them looked alike, with green cloaks and long brunette pony tails. One of them had bangs (the taller one), the other kept his sides shaved and hair neat (the younger). The shortest person, however, didn’t seem even closely related to the two. He was young. Fifteen years young, if I had to guess. With red frizzled hair and a soft, rounded face, two big black eyes and freckles down from his cheeks to his neck, to his arms that when he extended them made him look like he was covered in a pox.
I put the basket on Old Chet’s lap. He heaved.
“Tell me ‘fore you do that, punk.” Chet said.
“Hello.” I shook their hands one by one.
“You’re black cheeks?” The younger of the green cloaks said. “You don’t look that black.”
“No. No. He’s the fire starter!” The red haired one said.
“I’m Edwin Silverfang.” The tallest one said with the messy pony tail.
“I’m Lowell Silverfang.” The younger one said. Edwin grabbed his hair and made him do a little bow.
“And you are?” I asked the red haired one.
“Oh. Oh me?” He shook a bit. “I’m not related.” He pointed to his hair. “No. No. No. I’m Justinian, Justinian Gustavius.”
“You have two first names. Huh.” I said.
“Is it…i-is it weird?” He looked down but gave periodic stares back up to me. A boy looking for affirmation, I could read that face well. The face I gave Vicentius, I’m sure.
He clasped his hands and put his head down.
“No?” I said.
“Oh. Thank the gods.”
Edwin stepped up. “Hello, Virgil. We’ve come here specifically for you. Well, not you, but your company. You’re the underhand of Sylas, correct?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“We’re here to join the fourteenth then.”
“This all too fast. W-what do you want again? The uh…silverfurs…silverhands?”
“Silverfangs. We’re authors.” Edwin smiled. “My brother catalogs every creature we come across and I write stories, to hope the present survives the future. Yes, I am a story teller.”
His arms were open wide as if to clasp into hug - not an amorous one, some perverted kind.
“Right. So you thought you’d join a monster hunter company for more material, then?”
“Precisely!” Edwin said. “And what better squad to join if not Sylas’s? Sylas, the wind of the west. Sylas who conquered Klysonia with fifty cubics of blackfyre! Sylas who danced with the spear chuckers of Isholia. Sylas who-”
“Yeah. I get it.” I said. “But shouldn’t you be asking him then? He’s the captain.”
“That’s the problem…” Lowell stepped forward, head hung low and standing close to his brothers arm. “We didn’t see him and when we didn’t see him, Vicentius sent us to you. Yeah.”
“You’re making a nasty face Virgil, like you just ate some rotten mutton again.” Chet laughed in the background of treading horses and rising canvas tops.
“You here for the same thing?” I looked to Justinian.
“I-well. I came for you. I r-really am a fan of you, fire starter. I’ve heard your stories.” He grinned, front teeth chipped. “Is it true you blew up the mountain side by Lao Lo with a flick of your hand?”
“Jesus Christ.” I said.
“Who’s Jesus?” Old Chet asked.
“And. And. And-” Justinian said. His voice broken and blurted and loud. “You’re friends with Sylas the quick! And Kal the Mountain. And Obrick the Bulwark. And you, you’re Virgil the firestarter. That’s four! Four heroes.”
“I-is that so?” I said.
This was a first. This kind of admiration, you know? It was new to me, even. All the famous people I’d known in my past life, and all the things I’d done. All the partying and the spending, it’d never gotten me…admiration. It’d gotten me worship and maybe they were so close you might call them the same, but I wouldn’t. ‘Cause seeing this kids glowing eyes was something else. It was the type of thing money or clout or title ship could not earn you, this look of absolute surrender Justinian gave me. It was something I was even afraid of owning. It felt like responsibility just looking at this kid.
“Are you sure you want to join us?” I asked.
“No one else would take us-” Lowell said. Edwin elbowed his sides.
“Yes. I’m sure!” Justinian said.
Old Chet grabbed my pants and tugged. When I turned to look, he smiled.
“Take ‘em kid, you can do it. Lord knows that bum Sylas won’t.”
“Alright.” I breathed in heavy. “You’re in.”
“Just like that?” Edwin asked.
“Just like that.” I walked past them.
Justinian stayed there, a little open mouthed. The other two nodded their heads. And I walked up, in front of the wagon where the sleeping driver shook his head up against the morning light, a multi-colored bloom that flared and exaggerated the tall, scaly building tops of Windhelm. The bloom subsided. The shadows of the dead trees expanded, leered over and around me. Hanging dead rags of vines and foliage like nooses. I pushed them away with the back of my hand and came to the edge of a rounded mountain side t he carts traveled down to.
Down center the city a clocktower rung mornings come; the rotary of life at it’s natural end and start, black and white, and me at the elbows against the pressing wood, hanging over the ledge and looking down a grotto of death and the messengers behind me and the horses behind me and the bellring behind me now too, running fast each to put their stuff in the hazard against each, to see who prevails against who.
And who am I? I was am and will be the man measuring all.
