I left home three nights ago. I left home walking because the world away from Cloomb was new to me. For the first day I took in the beauty of nature, the birds, the sky, the song of the cicada, the majesty of the hunting wolf, even the annoying chattering of disturbed chipmunks was new and wonderful, as these were not familiar chipmunks but new ones. It was day two I decided to jog. I was walking towards the capital, as I had heard all my life that we never had to worry about war in Cloomb because the Dread Empire was on the far side of the capital, even farther east than the Holy City itself. I had been walking east, a fact confirmed by the rising and setting of the sun, and by the occasional mile marker which noted how far it was to the city.

I had been noting that the numbers were going down, which was good. Then I started paying attention to the numbers. The one I camped by last night said 215. Down from the 240 of Cloomb, but not by a lot. I had some food from Mom, but at the rate of walking, I would be out of food long before I got to the city. So I began to jog.

About nine, assuming the sun behaved the same here as at home, I noticed a dust cloud from the road ahead. That was reasonably encouraging, as it meant that I was indeed on the road someplace. I had assumed that the road must lead to the Holy City, as the capital seemed to be the place everyone thought was important, and we only had the one road in the village. I had assumed it went to the Holy City, but it isn’t like I really knew. The dust cloud ahead was large, indicating it was a group of horses and wagons, possibly a caravan. They would be going someplace important, and the Holy City was someplace important. This wasn’t a lot of information to base my hope on, but I was headed east, on a road, to someplace important. The only place I knew that was east, important, and I knew had roads going to it was the capital.

I began to jog faster, this was a good day already!

----Dwarven trade caravan Ryklos, Western Trade Road.

“I’m telling you boss, it isn’t a horse. There is a guy running after us, and he’s been gaining for about two hours and shows no sign of stopping.” The dwarven wagon guard handed his spy glass to the Caravan Master who grunted and focused on the gleam of sunlight on bronze.

“He’s armed. Bronze by the colour. A goblin?” Ryklos, the Caravan Master asked.

His guard grunted. “Too tall, I measured him against the stump I took a piss on after the break, and he is taller. Over five feet, not quite six.”

Ryklos panned the glass to either side.

“He’s too short for an oger, too tall for a goblin, and no goblin ever born would come at a dwarf caravan alone. He’s got a spear, shield, hide armour, and some sort of helmet.”

"Sweet mithril veins but he just doesn't stop. Even the horses take breaks. No way that is a normal Hobgoblin." Ryklos whispered.

The guard and caravan master looked at each other and shuddered. There was only one possibility left. A Hobgoblin champion. Maybe he was just a really strong Hobgoblin Warrior, but even then, a single one wouldn’t go after a dwarven caravan this size. That means it’s a Hobgoblin General. A new one who hasn’t attracted a following. Looking to make a big slaughter and use it to recruit a horde. A goblin any idiot with a crossbow or decent axe could handle. A Hobgoblin was something you either needed a full squad of fighters to deal with, or a professional adventurer. A Hobgoblin General was the sort of thing you hired a whole team of adventurers, or a whole squadron of Holy Knights to go take down>

Ryklos felt his hands shaking on the glass. It had made such sense. He could double his profit by only using his own drovers and warehouse guards, and not hiring professional mercenaries from the Adventurer’s Guild. I mean he was on the far side of the Holy City. These were the lands where every serf in the fields, every cow, and every barn was the personal property of a Holy Knight. This was the breadbasket of the Kingdom, the personal wealth of the freaking Holy Knights. There were no bandits, there were no monsters. The knights who oversaw the territories were so bored even the hint of a bandit or goblin would have fifty of them fighting for the chance to catch it first. He didn’t need to pay for mercenaries! He was a genius!

“I am an idiot.” Ryklos said out loud. “Call the halt, circle the wagons and mass the crossbowmen at the back. We will shoot together when he comes in sight. I wish I had brought extra bows, then at least we could get a couple of shots off each before he gets to us. I guess we just have to hope we get lucky. If not, I will be right with you.”

The guard wanted to scream at Ryklos, but dwarves all tried to squeeze each coin for its last use before spending it. If they were going to die because Ryklos cut corners on safety trusting the human sun worshipping horse idiots could at least keep their own home towns safe, then at least he would die with them.

The figure was jogging closer. It was terrifying to watch it run towards them. Slowly getting larger, running tirelessly as if he was some sort of messenger, but that huge dwarf killing spear and heavy shield argued otherwise. That odd helmet looked to be made of tusks. Did this Hobgoblin General grow so powerful by killing orcs, and so arrogant he wore their tusks as trophies? They were all going to die. Damnit. At least the death bonus was held in escrow, and Hobgoblin’s left the inedible parts of the corpses behind, so they would at least be identified.

Twelve shaking dwarves loaded and cranked their crossbows, and lay upon the freight wagons, ready to take their one shot to stop the Hobgoblin General.

-----Clover POV

The caravan seems to have stopped. That was awesome. I could make sure this road really was running to the Holy City. Maybe I could even find out if there were any towns between here and the Holy City. The merchants that came to Cloomb seemed to talk about other towns, but I had been running for days and hadn’t seen anything other than forest and farm fields. Not one actual village.

Someone in the caravan is waving, good. Maybe I can see if the coins Mom gave me from the bad Knight would be enough to buy a map. The world turns out to be bigger than I thought it was. The guy on the wagon sure is short, thick too. Kind of like a really big man someone squished down to three quarter height. He still has his hand up. I guess I should salute back. I raise my spear to answer his wave and shout.

“Good day to you merchant!” I shout, but his reply makes no sense.

“Loose for Durin’s sake, loose!” The stubby man on the wagon screams.

Then I felt the impacts.

Something made of fire burned right through my left arm, something slammed into my head hard enough to snap my head right around. Two heavy impacts, like someone through a rock as hard as they could glanced off my greaves and my shield slammed back into me like I had missed a charging boar. I felt the familiar burning pain as several somethings punched into my chest armour, and into my flesh. The hardening I had undergone from the last few months had spared me getting punched through the ribs and seriously hurt, but looking down I realized what had hit my shins, what had hit my head, what was through my shield and through the arm holding the shield. The same things that had punched my shield back enough to poke the heads through my armour and into my chest.

I had been shot.

A lot.

By the stubby little merchant men. I said good day, and they tried to kill me!

“You sheep futtering, goat raping, chicken molesting BASTARDS. You shot me. You shot me half a dozen times. Who even does that? I am so kicking your asses!” I may have been yelling. I wanted to drop my shield, but it was nailed to my arm. Running hurt, my head was bleeding from where the tusks broke under the crossbow bolt that hit my head, my chest was bleeding under my armour. Not as bad as the spear I took from the Knight’s men, but it hurt. My left arm was nailed to my shield with an iron bolt sticking right between the bones. That freaking hurt. I was about to share the feeling.

----Ryklos POV

“You sheep futtering, goat raping, chicken molesting BASTARDS. You shot me. You shot me half a dozen times. Who even does that? I am so kicking your asses!” A voice rang out, after being hit with half a dozen crossbow bolts. A human voice.
The helmet that had hidden half his face was knocked off and what Ryklos could see was a human boy, so young he was beardless! Not a Hobgoblin, certainly not a Hobgoblin General, and they had shot him! Worse, they had put six crossbow bolts into him and just made him mad.

“Oh shit!” Ryklos swore, his mind trying to decide whether his career or life were in greater jeopardy.

“He’s human, no more shooting!” Ryklos shouted at his fellow dwarves.

“Tell him that! It takes almost a minute to rewind these things and that long-and-bald is going to murder us before we can.” One of the other drivers shouted, and Ryklos felt a small mountain brush the side of his head, and he found himself lying on the road, wondering when the world went silent, and what was the important thing he was supposed to do? Perhaps he will nap.

----Clover POV

It wasn’t a stubby little man, it was a dwarf. It was a dozen dwarves with crossbows and belt knives. I was almost mad with rage when I hit the first one, the one that screamed something about me being human and not to shoot me. I am human, and they already shot me, so this late statement earned him no meat pies from me, and less mercy. I knocked him from the wagon with the shaft of my spear, but as he did scream something about not shooting me, I changed from my initial plan to ram my spear through his beard and right through his dwarven neck.

I spun in a circle, and cleared six of the dwarves, who flew through the air with grace, and landed like hay bales on the dirt of the road. I turned to face the dwarves on the other wagon when they tossed their crossbows away and shouted out.

“We surrender boss, we surrender. We thought you were a Hobgoblin General come to kill us all. We swear by the beard of the Durin we didn’t know you were human or we wouldn’t have shot at you.!” The grey bearded dwarf looked like he was about ready to have a heart attack. He didn’t look like a bandit, or a murderer. He looked like a shop keeper being robbed. By me. Ah poop.

Mom and I talked about this. The world is a big complicated place, and sometimes you have to do things that you never would have expected to keep yourself or others safe. Some bad things were okay if you needed to do them. You could lie if it kept people from getting hurt. You could kill if it meant keeping yourself or others safe, but you couldn’t rob anyone, nor rape anyone, because those were always bad.

“Ah, poop.” I said out loud. Sitting down on the wagon.

“No surrendering. No one is surrendering to anyone. Just stop attacking okay? I just wanted to find out if I was going the right way to the Holy City. I wasn’t trying to rob anyone, wasn’t looking to kill anyone. Just, you shot me a whole bunch of times, ruined my shield, my helmet and my armour. I have things stuck through my arm. I got a little mad, okay?”

I heard one of the dwarves, this one a female from her obvious boobs and finer features poke out from behind the one who was trying to surrender to me. She squinted.

“Sweet Durin’s beard, I think that’s a child! We shot a child! He hasn’t shaved off his beard, the boy hasn’t even grown one!” She pointed her finger at me in horror, as if I had just grown horns. I touched my head, and it came away bloody. No horns, but a huge headache, and the blood loss was making me thirsty.

“Just, no more anyone attacking anyone, okay?”

The female dwarf was called Rosalie, and she was not anyone’s wife thank you kindly, but a professional wagon driver and “share holder” in caravan Rkylos lead to the Holy City. They carried fine metal work from the Undercity of Gron to the Holy City because the Holy City can’t shoe a horse without dwarven help, and can’t make a spoon that can lift soup without aid. I am not sure how much of that I believe, but I will say that Rosalie was better at extracting crossbow bolts from arms than I would have expected anyone to be. Maybe skill at taking pointy metal bits out of human teenagers was as normal for dwarven women as the beards. Either way, she was good at it.

Would you like a healing potion lad?" She asked, taking a blue vial out of a small cask locked under the wagon bench.

I shook my head. "Nothing is free. If you heal with that, you will be just as easy to hurt the next time. I will heal my way. I will grow stronger in the broken places, and next time I won't get hurt as much."

Rosalie looked sad for some reason, but locked the potion back up.

Ryklos turns out to be a pretty decent boss, even if he is a worse fighter than I am, and I really only do boars with any skill at all. He spent a lot of time as soon as he was conscious again, apologizing to all of his freight haulers for getting them into the fight, then losing it. He went to apologize to me when Rosalie started shouting at him in what I assume was dwarvish. He came and stared at my chin, which Rosalie turned this way and that, a fact which hurt enough to remind me that being hit in the head with a heavy crossbow bolt was bad for your neck, even if my boar’s tusk helmet did save my life.

Ryklos gripped his beard and asked me gently. “Um, lad, just out of curiosity, how long ago since you last shaved. I mean your cheeks are pretty smooth…..”

I had a headache, and my chest hurt. My body was starting to heal me, and I was desperately hungry. I felt tears welling up in my eyes as my beautiful day was now in the outhouse with the other poop. I bit into the last of Mom’s sausage rolls, out of food, without armour, and still no clue if I am even on the right road. My voice was shaking again as I tried to hold back my anger, but today was really just a big shovel full of cow pies, and almost everything I had in the world was just ruined.

“I have never shaved. I had to leave home before I got old enough to shave, to seek training in the Dread Empire so I can learn how to keep my Mom and I safe from people who keep trying to hurt us for NO FUCKING REASON!” I was screaming there at the end, and my tears were flowing. This wasn’t the worst day in my life. I killed a bunch of people three days ago and said goodbye to my home and the only one in the world who ever cared about me. This was the second worst day in my life, and it promised to be the first of many similar days.

Now all the dwarves were holding their beards and looking ashamed. They alternated between looking at me and looking at Ryklos.

“Well fuck me for a Frost Giant, I stepped in it this time. I shot a child.” The voice was low, and soft. It was Ryklos.

“Gods of my father’s, I swear I did not know, but now that I do know, I will act. I shot a child.” Ryklos was the one shouting now, and my head was hurting too much to follow whatever line of thought he was on about. The dwarf turned to me and this time his voice was strong and even, each word ringing like a hammer on anvil.

“I am Ryklos, son of Deimos, son of Altair of the House of Angarak. I have wronged you, and I will balance the scales between us. I have wounded you, so I will heal you. I have destroyed what was yours, so I will replace it, I have struck at you without warning, so now I ask what can the House of Angarak do to balance the scales between us.” Ryklos spoke with the kind of honesty that you could not fake. He deserved the same.

“I am Clover, son of a very fit gentleman that brought flowers. I just want a map to get to the Dread Empire so I can learn how to protect my Mom and I.” I said simply.

“Shit.” Said one dwarf.
“Fuck” Said another.
“No beard, no family, no house?” Said a third.
“The poor thing!” Said Rosalie.

Now everyone was looking at Ryklos.

“Ah. Well. It could be that we can make a run to the Empire after the Holy City. You know they have quite the appetite for spice there, and the Holy City won’t do business with them directly. We would need guards though, as that side of the Holy City can be a bit dangerous. We could replace the equipment we broke, give you good dwarven steel so you don’t get mistaken for some sort of Hobgoblin. Then we could hire you, as a guard. I’m sure when we hire more guards at the Holy City, we could even get them to help you learn whatever it is that you long-and-bald’s, er, I mean humans, need to know about soldiering and stuff.”

That would be how I came to be in the employ of the House of Angarak as a guard, and how I entered the Holy City.