Boiled barley and beans. That is the fare that they served me from the huge back-iron cauldron in the commonhall. A great injustice I deem it, this food and board I found waiting for me in the prosperous village of Hanun. Yes, a handful of moldy beans, was the reward I received for starving, robbing and stealing my way through the winter laden hills and valleys of Eastern Calradria to this fly speckled village hugging the northern slopes of the mountains.
One would think these wretches would be grateful; another skilled sword to hold the line in their hour of need. But that is the life of a sellsword in times like these, men of little alleigence are worth just that: little alleigence, a silver penny, a place at table, and a pallet of old straw. I spied a score or more of men like me, recognizable by the wandering eyes of one new-come to a place, by the ravenous way they shovel food into their mouths.
I am sure many and more, if you cared to ask, would share with you the same tale of woe and horror. A wife raped and murdered, a son dead, a home burnt and a life ruined. I am sure also, that half and more of what they told you would be a lie, maybe something to help you think a little better of them in hopes of a warm bed and a meal. It matters naught, the truth or the lie, what matters is the steel and the blood, the standing fast and the dieing. No man will stop to ask them where they came from and who they owe alleigence to when you have a foot or more of steel sicking out their bellys.
As for me, I was a carpenters apprentice, then a husband, and later a father, in the fine village of Fisdnar. A horn in the night, a torch or two hurled by uncaring hands and I was nothing, a widower, a refugee one of many. I fled to the humble village of Kwynn to start anew, and for a time I was content. Kwynn it seemed at least was spared from the ravages of war and destruction that engulfed the greater part of the realm. I built, I fucked, I feasted, it was a new life for one who had lost his old one. But the gods are cruel and perhaps they sought fit to punish me for grieving too little for my slain wife and child, for a band of outlaws descended on Kwynn and slew every man woman and child in it, save me.
I escaped by feigning dead, lying still as death itself amidst the bodies until the bandits left with what wealth they could carry and all the screaming young girls of breeding age they might use for their pleasure along the road to the next reaving.
Of what horrors I witnessed, how I debased myself to survive the road to hanun I will not say, but when I arrived, travelworn weary and half starved, all I found was misery, for the wars had reached Hanun ahead of me.
They say the battle was glorious, that we defeated twice our number of bestial inhuman westermen who stood 9 feet tall and breathed fire. I couldn't say myself, when the horn sounded for the advance, an arrow struck my shield and I used that as an excuse to collapse and feign injury. I did not rise again till the screams of the dying and dead abated, and I looked up to see a field of dead westermen being stripped and looted, a task better suited to my talents than fighting them.
If they come again so bravely I might just cut off enough rings and purses to buy myself a good fine gelding and ride far enough away to leave the sorrows and terrors of calradria behind me.....
