I woke up with a bearded man standing over me. I was inside with what looked like the Daunderfell home. I looked back at the man, who was patting down my forehead. The contact that my forehead made with the wet rag made it explode in pain. It must have been the wound I got on my head when I hit the ground when I was yanked off of the ground.
“Hold still, runt,” the bearded man said. His dark, olive clothing made him almost disappear in the darkness of the room. It looked as if he had his hood taken off. But I focused less on that and more on him making fun of me.
“Don’t call me ru- agh!” I tried to say before he pressed the wound with the rag. It felt like he was trying to hurt me on purpose. “Agh! Okay! I’ll hold still! Just stop!”
“Good, now hold still,” he said. He put aside the rag and grabbed a needle and some thread. He was trying to close the wound, from what it looked like. It hurt when poked the needle through a couple of times, but the tip of it felt hot, allowing it poke through better. Still, it hurt a lot.
When he was done, he got up and left the room. I didn’t even get his name. A second later, another man came in. I knew this one, however, as it was Orin Daunderfell. He came up to me where I lay.
“Hage, what were you doing?” he asked. His face and tone were serious. Very serious. In fact, sometimes he would hit me when I did something wrong. I didn’t hate him for it, it was something he needed to do, but it wasn’t something I looked forward to. But he did not look like he was going to hit me. “One of the townsfolk found you in the middle of alley by yourself. What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. In all honesty, I didn’t. “I got caught in some kind of trap or something. I was following a messenger, he was saying that the king- ”
“That the king is dead,” he said, finishing my words for me. “Yes, he had arrived not too long ago before heading out. Why were you following him? Shouldn’t you have been working the stables today?”
“I wanted to find out what he had to say,” I said in my defense. I always to do something more than be a stablehand, but I couldn’t tell him that. He had granted me the job in the first place. I would appear ungrateful if I said that in front of him. But I couldn’t keep it to myself. “I wanted to be more than a stablehand. More than an orphan. I want to go on an adventure.”
Orin Daunderfell showed a sad look on his face. I had never seen him like that, except when I asked my parents. He never said anything about them, except that he never knew them. I was ironically left abandoned in a stable, laying wrapped up on top of a pile of hay. It was fitting, I guess that I was to become a stablehand for the rest of my life. But I didn’t want that. I wanted to be so much more. I wanted to become a legend. I wanted kids to tell stories about me, our men to gather around fires and speak of me.
I didn’t want to be a nobody. I wanted to be Hage of Andurovia, legend of Nagesh. But I was a stablehand. I was Hage. I was a nobody.
It took awhile for him to respond. His tone continued to show sadness.
“We all have our parts in this world, Hage,” the royal advisor said, his tone still very sad. But then he knelt down beside where I lay. “Some greater than others. And I know... that one day, you will be something everyone will be proud of.”
The next day, I was at the stables as usual. The stable owner was upset that I “borrowed” one of the horses yesterday. So I ended up getting hit by him a couple of times. Unlike Orin Daunderfell, I hated him for that. He may have allowed me to work at the stables, but that didn’t mean I had to like him.
“I need you to go run an errand, boy,” the stable owner said. He handed me a pile of hay, the kind we use to feed the horses. “Mr. Daunderfell has a guest whose horse needs to be fed. And you’re going to provide the feed.”
