Stephan learned several things very quickly. The boys had gotten some weapons skills, so they were at least Sentries. Next, he lacked finesse in hand to ax combat when the opponent attacked him with everything they had. This resulted in them sprawled on the ground, bloody after a single blow, much like the townsfolk that had assaulted him in the temple, which felt like it had happened years ago rather than days.
And lastly, the Saintess gathered warmth when she healed them. At least she had, until Stephan decided to help her gain levels by beating up the youths with a bit more force than explicitly required to defeat them, at which point it stopped.
“Sorry about that.” Stephan offered Alfred a hand after Grace’s treatment.
“It’s fine.” The youth pulled himself up. “I felt the warmth you mentioned.”
Stephan examined him closely, but couldn’t tell a thing.
“Does anyone here know how to read?” All he got were head-shakes from everyone who heard his question. He turned to ask Muriel if she could help, but she was still crouching and talking to the old man, consoling him the best she could, or perhaps discussing survival strategies for his poisoning.
“Grace,” Stephan turned towards the young woman, “how do you know you’re a Saintess?”
“The gods told me so. I can heal and perform small miracles for now.”
“Can you see others’ blessings? Or could you ask them to teach you how to read?”
Grace closed her eyes. After a heartbeat, she opened them. “I’m sorry. Insight is still beyond me, and she said reading requires a bit of work and worship, not divine intervention.”
“She?”
Grace bobbed her head. “Knowledge answered my question. She also said not to listen to anyone blindly and to think for myself. Especially you.”
She blushed at that and lowered her gaze. “She said you lack knowledge on anything but war, but that you’re still young and willing to learn, and that’s the important thing.”
Stephan caught the double meaning of the words, and it made him feel strange.
Is she trying to say I should focus more on learning things now while ignoring the plight of others? Or that I should squeeze in as much study as I can while helping people? Or perhaps the goddess of Knowledge is biased towards studying…
“And what do they say? What should we do now?”
Grace closed her eyes, and kept them shut for a handful of breaths before opening them in confusion. “The question can’t seem to reach them. I tried others, but I know none of them reached their ears.”
“Perhaps you can only commune with them a certain number of times per day, or it costs spirit and you don’t have enough,” Stephan mused, and Grace gave him a blank look.
“I’ll explain everything. Can you find us a place to stay?” He glanced at Muriel, who was just getting up after talking with the old man.
“You can stay in our barn.” Muriel opened her mouth, ready to shout at Grace’s offer, but Stephan held out a hand.
“A barn would do fine, thank you.” Then he turned to Muriel. “We can continue our lessons later. There should be a wealth of prints, new and old, around here.”
“Whatever you say, Steve, should we go now?”
For some reason, Stephan started hearing ‘Sir’ whenever Muriel said Steve. And he wondered how she could fit so much reproach into a name.
“Not yet. Grace, where’s your family?”
“Out in the field, working.”
Now that Stephan thought about it, the only three able-bodied men were the village chief and the two youths. The rest were the elderly, or women preparing supper.
“Do you want us to go with you and find them?”
“I’ll take you to them—”
“No,” Muriel interrupted the Saintess. “You will lead the way to your home, and Stephan can then track them to their field.”
She is using Steve to cover up saying Sir…
The village of Thornsedge was a small settlement of twenty-ish wood-and-mud houses and a number of sheds, barns, and other buildings built in a similar style, with chickens clucking and ducks wading around cabbages and leeks.
Grace stopped before an unassuming house. “Here we are.”
Muriel scanned the ground and nodded, but said nothing.
The prints in the dirt were numerous, and while the village’s field was obvious, making out people half a mile away wasn’t. Worse, some of them were rushing back. They were still hundreds of yards away, but the most eager ones were approaching fast.
“I guess the ones running are your family, and these tracks are too easy to follow, even if there’s a lot of them.”
Muriel flashed a silent smile while Grace ran towards her parents. “Mum! Pa!”
Stephan had conflicting feelings about the sight, but decided to be happy for them.
“What is your intention?” Muriel whispered once they were alone at last.
“The gods want me to change this place. Perhaps join it with our kingdom, or to make a proper one. They left the how to me, and I guess diplomacy won’t be a way to do it. You may go back home.” Stephan gave her an apologetic smile. “This is more than you agreed to, and if it’s any consolation, it’s not what I had planned.”
Stephan’s original idea was scouting out the enemy and their lands, but if he could conquer them and learn about the south that way, that was fine too. If youths kept getting better classes wherever he went, he would soon have an army no number of commoners could stop.
Then he remembered Cliffort. A hundred to one or even ten to one odds would still crush us. Don’t get complacent.
And he wouldn’t be drafting experienced, hardened men. While the boys were just barely adults, Stephan still thought them too soft of stomach to handle a real battle. Beheading or spilling someone’s innards sounded fine in bards’ ballads, but was an entirely different horror when the gore splattered you.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Muriel straightened. “There’s no way to cross the Desertcutter. In case you forgot, river dragons destroyed our boat.”
She laughed at Stephan’s awkward face. “Not that I would have left you behind unless ordered, Steve.”
She grew more serious. “When are you going to tell them? Because sooner or later, they are going to figure it out.”
“Will they?” Stephan asked, unsure whether he was deceiving himself. “They don’t live in the kingdom—.”
“With all due respect, they are exiles and runaways. While they might not know what’s happening back home, they do know about classes and unique classes. Paladin in particular, since there was a war the second Paladin, Godwin the Gracious, had waged in the south.” She was silent for a moment before continuing. “A local uprising might pass beneath the self-proclaimed king’s notice, but the presence of the Paladin wouldn’t. Perhaps staying hidden is the best approach, though he may still make a move after discovering the Saintess has appeared and is spreading a miraculous wave of better classes.”
There was no way they could keep that information secret, not for long. Even if they could hide the miracle in Thornsedge, Stephan had a feeling it would happen again and again, as that would be the basis for their uprising.
The gods bestow classes that are needed, where they are needed. And for a very long time, everyone here was getting nothing but the Commoner class.
Stephan reckoned the gods owed the people of the south quite a few good classes and blessings.
“I agree with you. Once the word of Grace’s class and the extraordinary wave of new, more powerful classes rising around her spreads, I’ll reveal my true identity too.” If I can keep it a secret that long.
Stephan had decided to play the role of the knight to Grace’s Saintess. Hopefully, in a dire situation, he would only have to use his healing abilities in front of her while telling everyone else that she was the one who healed whoever was injured.
It sounded like a sound plan, and if Stephan’s experience told him anything about sound plans, it was that they would fail because of something you didn’t anticipate.
“Any thoughts about what we should do with this baron?” he asked.
“We should go and scout his fortress, enter if we can, and see what kind of force he has. Usually, the small-time thugs have thirty to forty brutes to terrorize their villages, collect tribute, and sometimes even cross the border on raids. If any of them are outlaws and not just descendants of ones, then they might have better classes than Commoner.”
Just as Muriel painted a bleak picture, she eased Stephan’s mind. “But they will be low level, fifteen at most, and I doubt he has more than one Sentry. Perhaps the baron himself has a better class or a higher level.”
“Basically, we go there and check what’s happening?”
Muriel’s attention shifted from Stephan to something behind his back.
“That or the baron sends six enforcers in leather armor armed with swords right at us.”
“Where’s the wench who killed our brothers!” Stephan turned around and saw the men Muriel had just described.
Apparently, the baron was in a rush and couldn’t wait an extra day.