Chapter 4

Martin woke up with a splitting headache.  His eyelids fluttered open, not entirely ready for the light that came flooding in.  He blinked his vision into focus and took stock of his new surroundings.  He was in the forest.  He thought he vaguely recognized the trees from being the ones from the woods surrounding his boarding school. 

In the distance, he heard the low chiming of bells.  As reality caught up with fantasy, his brilliant plan of escaping did not seem so brilliant anymore.  He had to get back to the school.  As he picked through the bramble trying to find his way back, his feet dropped into a ditch, causing him to topple over and roll down the steep incline.

When he finally hit the bottom, he found that he was, in fact, sitting in the middle of a road.  This road didn’t appear to be any of the pavement roads that would take him to the school.  Instead of asphalt, it was packed dirt, rutted and grooved and covered in horse tracks.  Maybe this was the “nature trail” that the school website boasted about.  Martin wasn’t very impressed.

In any case, all roads around here led to Carlton if you stayed on them long enough.  So Martin walked forward along the path.  The road bed was sunken into the ground, and the earth on either side rose up to Martin’s shoulders.  Martin was reaching for his backpack to retrieve his apple when he realized that it was no longer on his back.

If you have ever gone on an adventure without a pack of any sort, you will know precisely how unsettling of a venture it is.  Martin paused, thoroughly unsettled and trying to decide if he should go back to retrieve it.  He was eyeing the road bed, looking for a way to climb it, when he felt the ground begin to shake under his feet.  Martin looked over his shoulder down the path, wondering what could be making such a ruckus.  Martin opened his mouth to call out, but what he was going to say is now lost to time.

Before he could utter a syllable, no less than twenty horsemen thundered around the corner and barreled down the road.  Martin tucked himself into the eaves of the roadbed, scared of being trampled.  As the distance between them was cut ever closer, the rider in the front of the group pulled up on his reigns, holding out his hand to signal a halt. 

The man looked at Martin quizzically and dismounted.  Martin could not help noticing how strangely dressed the man was.  The man removed a brown leather tricorne from his head, allowing lock auburn blonde locks to careen down to his shoulders.  He had a week’s growth of stubble on his chin, and dirt stained into the cracks around his eyes.  His face was weathered but youthful, head unbowed.  He wore a burnt orange tabard bearing the sigil of a silver bee over a once-white fencing shirt now stained with dust, sweat, and blood.  On his shoulders were brass guards embossed with the same bee as his tabard.  He looked down at Martin with the look of an adult with no patience for children. 

“Good day to you, young sir.  Whence come you, and how did you end up on the Queen’s Road?”

Martin was thoroughly perplexed.  Adults typically didn’t have this sort of imagination.  He looked at the other men in the company.  They were all dressed similarly to the man standing before him. 

“Who are you?  Are you some sort of Renaissance Fair actor?”

The man scowled down at Martin.  He shifted his sash, and for the first time Martin noticed the glint of metal.  Attached to his loose belt was a beautiful steel rapier, whose hilt spiraled back in a neat hand guard.  Also sticking up from his sash was the grip of a flintlock pistol. 

“My name is Avery of Wolf’s Pond, Captain in the Queen’s Guard.  It is my duty to protect Her Imperial Majesty and keep her roads clear of…rats.”  The man paused and rested one of his hands ever so menacingly on the hilt of his sword. 

“So I ask you again, boy.  Whence come you, and what brings you here?”

Still bewildered at the man’s strange answer, Martin responded.  “My name is Martin Chatsworth.  I’m from the boarding school just down the road.  Carlton Academy?  I just got lost in the woods and can’t find my way back.”

The captain looked back at his men for a second before returning his attention to Martin.

“That’s a likely enough story, Martin.  Every boy pickpocket I’ve ever met on this road has just lost his way from somewhere.  And this school you’re talking about.  The closest Academy is in Farreach, three days’ ride from here.  Plus I know no schoolboys who where silk neckerchiefs and knickers.”  The captain unsheathed his sword slowly as he walked towards Martin, leaves crackling like flame under his calfskin boots. 

“What is a more likely story, boy, is that you are some spectacle in a local gypsy party used for distracting innocent travelers while your companions pick their pockets from behind.”  A few of the horsemen looked over their shoulders, as if half expecting a gypsy to be in their saddlebags right then.

Martin looked up at the man, now truly afraid and tired of playing this game.  “Honestly, sir.  I have no idea what you’re talking about.  I’ve never seen a gypsy before in my life.  I’m not even sure what Farreach is….”  Avery cut the boy off.

“Well now I know you’re lying.  Everyone on the continent knows Farreach is the capital of the Greater Percivallian Empire.”

Recognition flooded through Martin.  “Impossible,” he murmured to himself as his hands shot into his pockets.  In his left pocket his hand closed around something he had not expected.  He pulled a piece of folded cloth out and opened it.  It was a map.  He read the name Farreach and forgot to breathe.  It was impossible, wasn’t it?  Was he really in the Empire?  All he could remember was being in the library, opening the book, and then…he was here.

Captain Avery snatched the map from his hands.  He studied it closely.  After a few moments of silence, he closed the gap to Martin in a single stride, grabbing the boy’s arm and squeezing.

“What is the meaning of this,” he shouted angrily.  “Where did a gypsy boy get this kind of map?” Avery’s blade flicked faster than lightning to the nape of Martin’s neck.  “We have to take him back to Farreach.  He needs to be questioned.”

Martin had always wanted to go on an adventure.  But they don’t tell you that going on adventures often leads to rather unpleasant circumstances, such as standing in mud on the side of the road with an angry captain pointing a sword at your neck, accusing you of being a gypsy.

The next thing Martin saw was a flash of light as Avery brought the hilt of his sword crashing into his skull.