The Progenitors

Chapter 6

The banquet was filled with opulence and splendor - and Hallen hated every minute of it with a passion.

This sentiment wasn;t really unreasonable - every second he sat at a table doing nothing but eating, he could feel his chances of survival slowly trickling away. By now, a servant had probably told a stable boy about the reward, and that stable boy had told his friend, who told his father, who told the beggar, and the gossip would continue to spread.

And then Hallen would walk out in the morning and get brutally mugged for everything he owned; and for once, everything he owned was quite a hefty sum.

Add to that the misery caused by being seated between Lord Dule and Mordecai, and he was virtually dead just an hour into the affair. Luckily, neither the lord nor his son needed any encouragement to keep talking, so Hallen seriously doubted that either of them noticed that he had been ignoring them since five minutes into the feast.

The food was the only up-side to the event - Hallen had never had more than one serving of meat at a time in his life, the fact that it was available in such quantities to noblemen was astounding. Maybe the reward wasn't a malicious attempt to get him stabbed in the back; extreme wealth could certainly cause the belief that 30 crowns was a pittance.

He spent most of the dinner focusing on the food before him and taking as much of it in as possible. He didn't really care about table manners or courtesy, as chances to eat this well came along once in a lifetime for a man like Hallen. He didn't really care if he wasn't hungry enough for the good either - the noblemen could do without the extra sustenance, he was sure. He might not even need to buy breakfast the next day.

Assuming he survived long enough to eat breakfast, he self-corrected.

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Hallen had never known that feasts were such long, protracted, tedious affairs! How in the world could a nobleman talk non-stop for 3 hours about the bees on his estate?! He quickly realized that rather than being on the extreme end of the spectrum, Mordecai was fairly succinct when compared to his peers in the aristocracy. How anything ever got done was beyond him, if they talked like this all of the time.

Eventually though, the talking began to fade away and the festivities wound down, leading Hallen to believe that the night was at a close. It was about time too!

Once all of the chatter had finished, all of the nobles looked up at the head table where Hallen was sitting expectantly. Hopefully they didn't expect something from him as the guest of honor, or something odd like that. If so, Hallen wasn't going to oblige. This was a banquet in his honor, after all - he wasn't going to do anything he didn't want to, and all the noblemen could go and jump in a lake if they didn't like it.

But the focus shifted away from it when Mordecai stood up to speak - apparently they had speeches at this affair - and Lord Dule slid his chair back slightly to give his son the stage. Hallen did the same; it was probably best not to stand out at an event where every person present outranked you by far.

"I speak to all of you noble supporters of Wilhelm today on behalf of our city - a city that needs food to survive - food we obtain from animals such as the pheasants and honeybees that surround our town. These vital birds and bees are being over hunted, and as such, I propose a vote on a law to limit such practices until the -" Hallen nearly fell over snickering, and got a temporary frown from Lord Dule as his son continued his speech.

"I'm sorry... I couldn't help but... he's... talking about the birds and the bees for goodness sake! How do you not ... find that funny?" Hallen choked out between fits of laughter. Lord Dule remained passive throughout the explanation, and pointedly turned his head back to the speaker of the hour. Remembering his policy on not offending people, Hallen regained his composure a few seconds later.