The Nameless

Chapter One: "A Lone Traveller"

It rained on the lone traveller, and if it went on for much longer, it would soak through his heavy, green cloak that was pulled close to his body. The rain had been unceasing for three days now, and the lone traveller had taken note of it. There was little of which he did not take note. Being observant was one of his survival skills, perhaps his most important. Though the rain had kept up for days, the bout was nothing more than a blip in the journey he had taken. For seven years he had travelled alone on the road, searching.

He had become attuned to the changing of the seasons, not those of the land, but of the heart. When times were good, he was treated with kindness and welcomed wherever he went, but when times were bad, a lone stranger was not looked upon as an opportunity for news from abroad but as a nuisance or potential for crime. The lone traveller knew that human hospitality rested on circumstance more than any other living beings. He was not upset, nor did he judge his own kind for what they were; like most things, this the lone traveller accepted for what it was and took it in stride. He did not rely on humans except when it was absolutely necessary. He had other friends who were more reliable.

The lone traveller drew near a town. Which town he knew not, but from miles off he could hear the unnatural sounds of human habitation: clinking, clattering, and laughing that could only be from his kind. He would reach the town by sundown, or what would have been sundown if the sun had taken the liberty of showing itself in the last few days.

The lone traveller walked along the road, now winding through a small copse of old trees that had escaped the farmer's plow, fully aware of what awaited him not far ahead. Even if he had not been extraordinarily observant, it would not have been a feat for him to predict thieves in the copse. The road had long been in the open, and common thieves are cowards who require the cover of darkness to do their work.

He was calm as they came out of the trees to block the road. They were drier than he, having spent the rain underneath the canopy, but far dirtier, and perhaps would have done well with a good washing from the sky. The knives they brandished were not old, but were poorly conceived, chipped and rusting, though menacing enough to the commoner. The lone traveller was not a common man.

"Let's see what's underneath the cloak now," one of the two said, showing his gummy stumps behind his lips. "Nice and slow."

"I would recommend that you let me pass."

"He would recommend," the second thief repeated. "That we let him pass."

Both men laughed the hoarse laughs of men who have lived too hard and known too little the softness of feather mattresses. This the lone traveller noticed too, and did not judge them unfairly for it. He did not blame them for becoming thieves, nor did he doubt they were likely not entirely to blame for their condition. His offer to them was genuine. It was advice freely offered.

"Now don't dally. Off with it," the first said.

The lone traveller did not take off his cloak, but he let his hood fall to his shoulders to reveal his face. It was a handsome face, though not uncommonly so. It was angular, road-weary, and his hair had the grease of long travel upon it. His eyes were a dark shade of green, almost black, nearly indistinguishable from the darker corners of the copse in which the three men stood.

"You would be wise to let me pass," he repeated.

"That's enough out of you," the first man growled, moving forward, knife-tip first.

As he made his move towards the traveller, a funny thing happened. He was stopped. The thief found that he could not lift his foot from the ground. It was struck, frozen most unnaturally. When he looked down, he found that it was in fact the most natural thing in the world that prevented his motion. It was the grass. Thin blades of grass grew up rapidly from the road, intertwining themselves, becoming a latticed rope and wrapping around his legs so that he was unable to move. A single blade of grass is easily snapped, but thousands woven together are stronger than steel, and the thief was rooted to the spot. He watched in horror as the grass continued up his torso, to his chest. In a panic, he turned to see his partner suffering the same fate. The second thief was hacking at the encroaching grass, but the dull blade was no match for the thickly woven grass, eventually falling from his hand and to the road.