Hope: The Legend of a Warrior

Two men. I’m good with men, my father always said.

It was early in the morning, dawn as a little girl would imagine it: a sky full of creamy clouds and a gentle breeze that rustled the leaves. The sun was rising, and it was warm enough for me to leave off my cloak. The village was still asleep, and even the birds were quiet; I could hear a few dogs barking off in the distance but nothing else. The two men were perched on top of a nearby cottage. They’d been there for hours, smoking their pipes and watching the village with heavy-lidded eyes.

I approached them slowly, tapping my sword against my shield to make noise so they wouldn’t be startled. When I was almost underneath them, they noticed me, but it took a few seconds before they had their hands on their weapons. I jumped up and grabbed the leg of one of them, using his surprise to swing around him like we were dancing. My shield knocked him out while my sword plunged itself into his throat, blood spurting everywhere in pretty patterns that made me smile to myself. The second man ran towards me but tripped over his dead friend’s body, giving me time to jump down and slit his throat too.

The deed done, I wiped off my sword on the grass, then put it away and picked up both men’s daggers before running back to my horse. I left the village behind; I never liked people much anyway. Besides, this job had been easy, and I hoped to find more work soon. The money from the last hunt had been used up quickly, and I needed more if I wanted to buy dinner at the tavern tonight. Maybe someone would give me some work at the inn? If not, I might have to do something audacious to get their attention; after all, what did an old woman like her have left to lose?

My horse whinnied when he saw his master approach; he wasn’t used to being tied up for so long, so he had wandered away from the post purely out of boredom. He rubbed his head against mine when he noticed the daggers clutched between my gloved fingers, snorting with satisfaction when he realized that he was finally going to get a well-deserved rest after such a long day hunting bandits! As soon as he was untied from the fence, we galloped past the village gates and down the dirt road towards town. There were many villages along this road, but only one had an inn that served a decent dinner every evening: ‘The Golden Goose’ was its name, and it was owned by Nickolai from Stuttgart (an empire city). He always said nice things about us whenever we visited him, which made us feel good because we didn’t like our other neighbors very much at all (especially Jani and Rudi, who would steal our apples when we weren’t looking!).

Stuttgart sat within a vast plain surrounded by forests, hills, and mountains (our village lay at the base of one of these mountains). It was huge: a big city that almost always had something interesting going on (the King himself sometimes came here once or twice a year!). Since there were so many people living together here, it seemed like everything was happening at once: something amusing going on down by the river one day, something frightening happening up by the forest another day… But what about today?

I stopped for a moment outside of town, wondering what would happen if I went into town now – maybe there would be trouble brewing? That usually meant money for heroes such as myself!