Chapter Five

The next few years were some of the happiest Ben Cromwell would ever experience. Living from his loft he attended the hall almost every day, teaching the art he had come to love. He even managed to have real conversations with young Catherine DeVir, having finally asked her for her name. Somehow through the few meetings they had the two became good friends.

Good to his word he and his former fencing master were soon training each other more than the older teaching the younger. Together they took on a great many more students than the Hall had known before and managed to make it a lot more profitable, if only by initially using Ben's title to attract more noble, and therefore rich, students. And every so often that short, mysterious, silent student would return and one or the other of the masters would train them late into the evening.

Nor did the young Cromwell content himself with the one art, whenever tourneys were held within reach Ben would take a break and attend. As time went by, even after his beginner's luck ran out, he was winning far more than he was losing. The reputation gained from such wins did the hall no damage at all.

Not that this success showed very much in the man himself, Ben hoarded his winnings with all the possessiveness of any man who had known poverty. After an initial splurge he saved the lot, making even a dwarven banker look like a rake.

This attitude, so far from what was normal, made him very few friends indeed. As he had predicted soon the invitations dried up, even those that used to follow his tourney wins soon faded away. One of the largest catalysts for this was the proclamation that came form home.

It came through his friend. One day Jacques was collecting a due debt from the master of heraldry when he chanced upon a letter on the man's desk. It was a copy of a letter from the armorial college in Ostermark, the Cromwell family had ceased to exist.

"Ben" Jacques DeVir told his friend, "Your father has disinherited you."

"What?" Ben demanded.

"Read this" Jacques said, passing the younger man a letter he had 'borrowed' form the armorial college. Ben looked at the letter his heart sinking. In it his father renounced the Cromwell name, taking, surprise surprise, his wife's maiden name, and renounced Ben. There in black and white was his father's words, claiming that his mother had been unfaithful and that Ben was little better than a whoreson. Anger swelled up in his breast.

"Ben?" Jacques asked, extending an arm.

"It's okay" Ben replied, "I always knew she would try and squeeze me out, I just never thought at she would get him to renounce his own name too! Bitch!"

"What are you going to do about it?" DeVir asked.

"Nothing" Ben replied

"Nothing?" DeVir queried

"Nothing" Ben repeated, "it's his right, and not my place to argue."

So life went on, and it was god. Even without the title the nobles kept coming and kept paying. Strangely enough defaulting on a debt to a school for duellists was a remarkably rare occurrence.

Ben Even found time to finally 'graduate' from the Academy and the time to gloat about it to a certain crooked nosed student whose father would not let him return home until he had a letter from his professor. One that the professor would not give until the snob in question actually learnt something. The fact that daddy dearest kept cutting the young man in question's allowance certainly didn't help either.

One of the few blips in young Cromwell's life that was of his own making came when a former friend came to him, begging his aid in getting him out of a jam. The man in question had wooed the wrong damsel and now found himself facing the real prospect of a duel with a professional soldier. Ben applied a bit of pressure, the matter was dropped and he thought that would be the end of it. Only it wasn't soon other college 'friends' and 'friends of friends' were coming to him requesting help with similar issues. Because of the man he was he tried to help those who seemed to deserve it and took gifts for his services only reluctantly. Nevertheless, or perhaps even as a result of this attitude his name was creeping up into higher and higher circles as someone trustworthy to go to for help.

Then things changed again. A few days after his twenty first birthday Ben got news from home. That the Marquis sponsored anti-orc patrols had stopped came as little surprise, what did come as a surprise was that other raids on the greenskins had been banned too in the interest of 'keeping the peace'. Sure enough the eventual result had been a whole tribe of displaced orcs moving into the farmlands of the march and settling the area so recently deserted by their lunch. His home was in very real danger of turning back into another orc-infested wilderness.

"I'm sorry Jaques" he explained, "I have to go."

"You don't owe them anything" the master had argued, a statement his daughter backed up wholeheartedly.

"That's not how I see it" Ben replied, "duty's duty and my duty is to defend that land."

"Even after all-"

"Even after," Ben asserted, "I will return as soon as I can."

"Fine" Catherine replied, sounding anything but, an attitude that thoroughly confused Ben.

"You will be missed" Jacques asserted, adding a pointed look at his daughter, a look that Ben missed entirely. "When do you go?" he continued, resisting the impulse to roll his eyes at the young man's ignorance.

"As soon as I can arrange the company I want" he replied.

That spring Ben Cromwell rode to war and he would never know the same peace again.

0