The Progenitors

Chapter 5

Hallen was doing his best to ignore Mordecai.

The man was capable of spewing forth his monologue at speeds that no human should be capable of. And he was able to do it non-stop, never ceasing to even draw air long enough to let someone interrupt him. The easiest way to deal with the man was to pretend that he didn't exist unless you had something that you absolutely had to tell him. Until you needed him, he may as well be a rock.

A talkative, annoying rock with an inflated opinion of himself.

The walk back to town wasn't truly all that long, even though they had both set out in the evening they could probably make it to the town before night-fall. Then Hallen would use some of the reward money that he would obtain to sleep in an inn for the night, and then be on his way. It would all be simple, low-risk, and high reward: the best type of plan.

How the noble had even been caught was beyond Hallen's understanding. Most noblemen rode horses, and chances were that Mordecai had been riding his when he had been mugged. The only way that could have been accomplished was if the thieves were on horseback, which seemed unlikely. Only the richest of the rich could afford horses, and the chances that there were unknown thieves rich enough to buy the valuable commodity were slim. Was it a roving band then? A group that travelled from town to town, generally to avoid angered lords and peasantry after successful heists?

Hallen supposed it was possible, but it still seemed unlikely. Mordecai really didn't have much about him that made him look rich - besides the horse he had been riding. For an average person, that would have been enough to prompt the theft. For the truly rich, however, there would have been more enticing targets. None of the events that he had encountered made sense - and that made Hallen nervous.

Logic always prevails. If things don't make sense, it means there's something you don't know about, and not knowing about things was probably the number one way to die in Rhal.

The town's gates were luckily still open when the duo arrived; the journey had taken longer than Hallen anticipated and it was nearing complete darkness - when the town's gates would be shut for the safety of the citizens inside. The gates were actually shut for the noblemen inside the town, but it made all of the townspeople feel a little better about their lives and put up with a bit more abuse if they thought that the walls were actually made to protect them. Besides - the walls were yet another excuse to tax the merchants who came. The more protected the city, Lord Dule claimed, the more you should have to pay to sell your wares in it. Hallen scoffed at this reasoning - the only thing you had to fear in this city would be the criminal element hired by Lord Dule himself to rob the richest traders, and larger walls weren't going to save you from that.

The guards knew Hallen by face and were quick enough to realize that the man behind him was noble. One of them nodded apologetically at him, apparently thinking that Hallen had been caught for some crime and was off to receive punishment. Hallen was deeply insulted - not at the thought that he committed a crime, but the thought that he had been caught doing it! He was smarter than that, as Guardsman Oros should very well know. Unless he hadn't deduced who had stolen his purse twice - it was probably best not to bring that up in a conversation.

 The town was fairly empty, with most of the townspeople inside to avoid any unsavory characters that came out in the night. This was generally a good practice, one that Hallen was disregarding and thus putting himself at risk. But even some reward that the Dule family believed was a pittance would be worth all of the trouble that he had put himself through to get Mordecai back to the mansion. Why the man had even tried leaving in the first place was a mystery to Hallen - but, he supposed, the idiots of the world didn't really need reasons for what they did, did they? The inability to think ahead or reason properly was part of the definition of the word.