L'appel Du Vide [Call Of The Void]

[8]

The men were dressed like peasants, but one look at their haughty bearings said otherwise.

The second he caught their eye, they looked away in haste, embarrassment apparent on their faces. Another dead give-away.

No self-respecting peasant would look the other way; he would ogle back challengingly. The habit had got Philippe into some trouble with superiors in the Army for his first year. He had then realized that he would have to learn to curb it if he wanted to rise within the ranks.

As he made his way from Maurice's house, Marie d'Aramitz's warning about the men from Bordeaux came to his mind.

Panic surged through him and his hand went to his coat's pocket reflexively, feeling for the hilt of the dagger. However, the cool metal did little to calm him when he noticed that the men's hands too lingered at their waists. They probably had swords tucked into their trousers. His tongue grew dry as the enormity of the situation dawned upon him.

He would stand a pitiful chance against the five men and their swords, if any at all, with only the dagger to help him defend himself. They would butcher him like a pig.

He strode away from Maurice's house as casually as his nervousness would allow, his eyes straying to the men behind him every time he took a step. The second he'd turned his back, their eyes were on him again. However, they did not move from their positions. They merely stared at him, looking away whenever he caught their eyes.

When he made it to the bend of the road, he took one last look at them. The shortest one of them—a brown-haired man with a face Philippe thought was strangely familiar met his eyes. He looked a little out-of-place among the four other men, who seemed as close as brothers. This man was a stranger amongst them, Philippe realized as he turned away.

With his hand still on his dagger and his heart running a marathon in his ribcage, he quickened his pace. He had to get home as soon as possible—they couldn't possibly enter the house without attracting the neighbors' attention.

Philippe navigated through the crowded streets, throwing an occasional glance behind him to make sure that the men weren't following him. Maurice's house was right next to a marketplace, and Philippe thanked his stars for that.

He pushed and shoved past customers bargaining ruthlessly with vendors, beggar boys trying to steal whatever they could to satiate their rumbling stomachs and what seemed like a battle for an ounce of sugar. The deafening noise in the market seemed like nothing but the annoying buzz of a bee as the sense of urgency enveloped Philippe in a cocoon of ringing silence. His eyes played merciless tricks on him, catching flashes of what could be those men in the marketplace. Left hand clinging to his dagger with a vice-like grip, he emerged from the marketplace into an area where the crowd was considerably thinner.

Philippe was fairly confident that he had lost the men, but he wished that there were more people to camouflage him just in case. He knew that he would have to pass some empty streets on his way home, but hoped that taking some detours would help him lose them if he already hadn't.

He nudged past streets so narrow that he barely fit and faked some turns until he was convinced that there was absolutely no chance of them still being on his trail. Considerably less nervous after all that trouble he had gone through, he stopped next to an abandoned fruit cart and took a deep breath.

The street was empty save for three women at one end, but they didn't pay any attention to him. They talked amongst themselves lightly, their high pitched giggles irritatingly shrill and frequent.

He glanced at the mud soaked trouser in his hand, the one he had stolen from Maurice. It had appealed to him back at Helene's house, but now it just left a bitter taste in his mouth. He wondered if he should discard them, but decided against it because he could never be sure when his family would run out of money.