A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

The merchants were no better. They looked as worn down as Beam had seen Greeves, fighting with the constant threat of soldiers trying to work them over for better prices.

The villagers kept a clear distance from the soldiers. The soldiers, for their part, tended to group together. Though there were only a handful in the square – since Lombard couldn't afford to put too many on break at the same time – they usually stook together in groups of threes. Though there were still some that were confident enough to stay by themselves.

One such stood right in front of them, leaning out of over the wooden counter of a butcher's stall, a brazen look on his face as he flashed a slimy smile and attempted to wheedle all he could out of the butcher.

"C'mon, what's the harm? Just let me put it on the tab. Or better yet, we can consider it a gift, just between you and me," the soldier said.

"But you still haven't paid for the other things on your tab," the butcher murmured weakly, clearly afraid to put up too much resistance.

"What? Are you saying that you don't trust me? That I wonder you pay you back?" The soldier said, his voice dropping into a threat.

"No, I wouldn't say that, but not having the money on hand for stock puts me in a difficult spot, what with winter being so close," the butcher said, in a voice that was barely above a murmur. It was a pretty pitiful sight.

The butcher was a reasonably large man, with thick arms extending out of his rolled-up sleeves, even on a day as cold as it was, where one could see their breath misting up in front of them. There was a cleaver hammered into the wood threateningly, and blood stained his hands from the meat that he had been processing. Normally the man would make for quite an intimidating sight.

The soldier, in comparison, was small, and had a wiry look about him, only matched by the impetuous look that covered his face.

"Ah, I suppose if it's that much trouble for you, we'll just consider it a gift then," the soldier, flashing the butcher a wide smile.

Beam could see the butcher's soldiers shift in a giant sigh, but he moved to get meat from the pile anyway, apparently accustomed to being bullied into submission by the soldiers at this point. Beam shared a look with Judas and Nila.

Nila in particular was looking rather cross.

"You know him?" Beam asked in a quiet voice.

"Yeah… He's been kind to me," she said through gritted teeth, barely holding back her anger.

With her bow slung over her shoulder, and a quiver of arrows at her back – despite not needing them for hunting – she could have readily dealt with him.

In that sense, the trio – armed as they were, with Judas and his thick baton at his waist, and Beam his sword and Nila her bow – made for an even more intimidating sight.

They watched from a short distance away, with their arms folded, clearly radiating unpleasantness as they watched the proceedings. The severity of their discontent was enough to alert the people around them, and more than one villager spared them a curious glance as they passed by, as though they wondered what was going on.

The soldier's back was to them, as he continued to lean against the countertop, that false smile plastered on his face, waiting for his meat to get cut. He still hadn't noticed them. It was the butcher who glanced at them first.

His cleaver paused midswing, as he narrowed his eyes, trying to process the odd grouping. There was the girl with the fiery red hair that he was accustomed to dealing with – that he even had a soft spot for.

Then beside her, was a man that he knew better than any to treat with caution – Judas. He was already frowning at that pairing. What was a good-hearted little cub like Nila doing with such a violent man? And then there was the last member of their group, an unimpressive-looking boy, at least in stature.

But there were those scars on his cheeks, and that look about his eyes, and the sword at his hip. Somehow, impossibly, in that dangerous little group, filled with what he knew to be two fiery personalities, both of them were looking towards this boy for direction.

He'd heard rumours about him. A mix between good and bad, but he'd never interacted with him personally – and now here he was, the same boy, glaring at him, as though about to cut him down.

After a moment's pause, however, the butcher soon realized it was not him they were glaring at. His eyes followed their gaze to the soldier, perched languidly with his elbows on the countertop. They were eyeing him like tigers eyeing a calf.

The butcher felt a sudden shiver. He glanced tentatively at the soldier in front of him. The man still hadn't realized, it seemed.

The man's heart was pounding as he looked between his meat, and the intimidating trio a short distance away. Whatever was about to happen, he wanted no part in it.

The boy moved first, with such confidence that it even took the butcher aback, especially when he saw who he was approaching. It wasn't like the boy's movements were exaggerated or anything of that sort, or that there was a swagger in his step. Indeed, the way he stepped was perfectly balanced, as though he was preparing for an attack at all times.

But there was a resoluteness to those movements, a certainty, and an unflinching expression on his face that bespoke of a man that had pulled things back from the hottest of fires.

"Excuse me," Beam said, laying a hand on the soldier's shoulder to spin him around. The man moved so easily that it was almost worrying.

The soldier felt it himself. One moment he was enjoying himself, like a cat on a window-sill and the next, he was off balance, with a pair of vicious-looking eyes staring at him.

For a moment, the soldier didn't have a word to say. He merely scrambled in startled shock as he struggled to take in his surroundings. Who'd dared to put hands on him? He would have assumed it to be a member of at least the serving class, or even the nobility, what with the confidence that he did it with, but the more he looked, the more certain he was that it was merely a peasant boy.