Chapter 4

Lugard's weathered face was unusually panicked.

"Hide here," he whispered urgently, prying the old floorboard loose with his strong hands. Kerchen glanced into the dark, dank hole with fear.

"It's dark, I don't want to-what's down there?" he stuttered, only able to make out handfuls of cobweb in the slight moonlight. Kerchen had only seen Lugard use it to store some pickling jars or dried meats in the winter, and couldn't imagine why he was being put down there-was this punishment? What did he do wrong?

"Anything's better than up here, my boy," Lugard said firmly, and before Kerchen could protest any further, threw him down into the wretched hole. "Stay quiet, Kerchen, and don't move."

Before he could say anything else, the door to the house smashed in, and throaty, barbaric howls of glee filled the house. Lugard slammed the floorboard back into place, and Kerchen could hear his footsteps pacing off.

Bandits. He was only seven, but he understood what was happening. His feet seemed glued in place, his knees completely useless, and his hands busy keeping his mouth from whimpering. He could hear Lugard from the other room.

"Take what you want," he heard, "take anything in this house." There was a pause, and then a low chuckle.

"Oh? Well don't mind if I do," an amused bass voice replied. It was a charming voice that exuded virility, marred only by its lack of warmth. Right after, Kerchen heard a dull thud, and a choked gasp that told him that sound was Lugard being thrown to the floor-

Kerchen jolted up from his restless slumber, sweating from head to toe. That dream-he had it often enough, but so vividly-

It must be because I'm staying with Grandma Magdee, he thought, referring to her by her preferred title. Yes, her good humor, her readiness to forgive any mistake, her open laugh that shook her whole body, it had all reminded him terribly of Lugard. Lugard. A wound that Kerchen thought had finally begun to heal was ripped back open, and he couldn't stop himself from completing the nightmare.

"I suppose your life is fair game, eh? Old man, you thought we came here just to rob you?" A chorus of laughter. The voice was coming closer, and the sounds of struggling as well. Kerchen didn't even dare to breathe. "For what, a few coppers? If we could get that much out of you, I'd say you were richer than I'd thought! We came to have fun, old man. Though we can't get much outta you, but we were passing by and, well, why not?" There was a deep chuckle, as though he was acting on this whim with relative indifference, and that none of this actually meant a thing to him.

They hit him, again, and again-they lifted him up and threw him back down with a sickening crack, right above the hiding place. The gasps of pain were so close, and only terror stopped the boy from screaming. He felt Lugard's warm blood seeping through the floorboard onto his knees-he shut his eyes, waiting for the nightmare to be over, waiting to wake up but there was no reprieve. Another thud-

Kerchen bolted right out of his bed as he heard a sound in the next room. Without thinking, he dashed out of the room as fast as his weak legs could carry him and slammed open the door-

He saw the elderly woman, Grandma Magdee, eyeing him with surprise, bent over a dropped basket of clothes. Her face puckered questioningly.

"Little one, you look like you've seen a ghost!" Kerchen willed his heart to stop pounding and tried weakly to explain.

"A b-bad dream it was," he stammered, flushing. A boy his age running about in fear from a nightmare seemed silly, even if the nightmare was Lugard's death. He wasn't even sure why he had run in the first place. "Alright you are-I am, I mean-" Kerchen tried to reassure Grandma Magdee that he was perfectly fine and sane, but he could tell he wasn't being particularly convincing.

"It looks like more than a bad dream, little one. Come, sit here," she gestured, pulling out a wooden chair from the dinner table. Kerchen took it obediently as she gathered items for something of an after supper tea. After setting a covered pot of water over the fire, she sat herself down next to Kerchen, regarding him with a tenderness Kerchen supposed was what one meant by the word motherly. There was a long pause.

"Little one, when I first took you in, I was a bit-skeptical," she said, without any of her usual hand gesturing. "I don't take in kids all the time-otherwise I'd be knee deep in the little runts!" Kerchen figured this was supposed this was to lighten the mood, and tried his best to pretend like her ploy had worked. "And I suspected you for a good time. Kerchen, little one, the reason why I took you in was because you seemed scared and lost, and your whole body was covered in scars-a mother like me couldn't possibly ignore a child so obviously abused." She looked at him earnestly, and her open expression seemed to pry at Kerchen's heart. "Little one, what has scared you?"

After what seemed like days, the boy finally pried open the floorboard with shaking hands. The dawn had finally arrived, and the golden rays of the sun slowly creeped into the house, its fingers searching further and further but finding only blood. Kerchen pulled himself out of the hole, not daring to look at where he knew Lugard to be until he was solidly on the floor. If he did, he would surely fall right back into the hole and decide never to come out again-

Kerchen wanted to tell her a half truth, that he had received many scars from the Holderkin, but his conscience clutched at his throat. How could he mislead this woman, who took him in for no reason other than that she was worried about him? How could he lie to a woman that so resembled the man who was as important to him as the Sunlord-

"I was brought up by a man named Lugard," Kerchen started, slowly. Everything seemed to spill out. He told her about how kind he was, how he taught Kerchen his living but wished the boy to become a greater man than he, how he laughed with joy at everything the little Kerchen did to please him, whether it worked or was a disaster, and, when finally Kerchen exhausted the things he loved most about Lugard, how the great-hearted man had died. He could feel tears trying to burst out with every word but held them back as much as he could-Kerchen realized that somehow, between when he had been taken in by Sunpriest Goroch and now, that he had attributed deep shame to crying. The Karsite boy could see Magdee trying to soothe him, trying to tell him to "let it all out," but she gave up those abortive efforts when it seemed that he was getting better without having to sob rivers.

"Your father was a wonderful man," she said quietly. Yes, Lugard was his father-his only father, and he was more wonderful than Kerchen, the cowardly boy that hid in the floor, deserved. Kerchen could only take pride in the fact that ever since, he had never done anything that a coward would have.

There was a long moment of silence, and the boy felt odd, having burst out his worst nightmare to this Valdemaran woman. It was something like letting loose a deep secret that was actually rather irrelevant, and now wondering what thread of conversation should be picked up instead. It was only after Grandma Magdee served them both tea that the silence was broken.

"You know," she said, with a lighter tone, "that does explain why you have such an interestin' accent. So you're Karsite, then!" Kerchen tensed, realizing he had let that fact slip during his tale. Even though he'd consciously omitted how devout Lugard was- "And then to have ended up with the Holderkin. Little one, you didn't have any luck at all! There isn't much on this side of the border worse than those folk." She chuckled, and sipped her tea. Something about the last sentence struck him as odd, but he ignored it, following suit with his own cup. Grandma Magdee was terribly fond of herbal teas and seemed to brew some every chance she got. "Don't worry, little one, your secret is safe with me-not many people up here would know a Karsite accent, I reckon." From his nightly prowls of the city, Kerchen had had that impression too, but to hear it confirmed was reassuring all the same.

"So you thought Holderkin I wasn't from the beginning," he said, and she laughed.

"Why, little one, there isn't anywhere in Valdemar that would put verbs at the end of a sentence!" she said, as if no one in the world would do that either. "In truth, you kept pretty good control of that in it the beginnin', but your accent surely was a foreign one as well." Then he must have seemed very suspicious after he opened his mouth, scars or no! Kerchen regarded Grandma Magdee with an inquisitive look, and the elderly woman seemed to interpret his look correctly this time. "Oh little one, but that hardly mattered. The first thing you used your mouth for was to stop a thief. Why, you even lectured him like a stern old woman-" and she paused there to laugh. "Oh, and your face when you said stealing was wrong-" And she finished that with laughter too. Kerchen was still unable to see the humor in this. Unfortunately, his uncomprehending expression only made matters worse.

"You know, little one," she said, checking her tea leaves with a smile still on her face, "before you came along, I was thinkin' about takin' in that weekly thief since I needed a second pair of hands, but he'd surely rob me blind!" She eyed him, who was still a little ruffled from her previous gale of laughter. "Though I suppose all I needed was a kid to thrash around!" She chuckled again, but there was a subdued tone underneath. It occurred to Kerchen that Grandma Magdee, who lived with neither husband nor children for decades, must have been very lonely, and he wondered if this, too, was something Magdee and Lugard had in common.

With shaking hands that were numb from strain, the boy finally placed Lugard into the fresh grave. The boy had tried his best to clean the body up, making it look more like the strong, whole man that the shepherd had been. But he had failed; the man's abused body resembled at best an orderly assortment of broken branches. He took a final look at the face he had loved. It was weathered, as it had always been, but the signs of pain seemed to be deeply etched into the olive brown surface. The devout and benevolent man had spent his last moments in agony-and yet, as he committed Lugard's face to memory one last time, Kerchen discovered that the man had died with a smile on his face, and that it would forever be a mystery why.

Hey all!

So I figured you might be sick of seeing these hey all and thanks guys at the top of each chapter so I put it down here for a change of pace. Sorry I was a bit late in updating this time. I had actually written the whole chapter in Magdee's POV, but it just didn't work as well.. the flashback was also supposed to be half as long so I could fit the next part in, but uh that didn't happen either.

It also occurred to me that the synopsis gives the impression that this story is about a more mature sellsword who's already infiltrated and is grudgingly agreeing with Valdemarans. Instead I delivered a story about an emotionally vulnerable teenager who was sent on a wild goose chase (or as Misty would say, chasing a hare). Sorry to anyone who was disappointed in this development, I'll think about what I should do with that synopsis...

Thanks again for reading this everyone, and any comments are welcome!