by Eric Smith
As the sun sank below the horizon Booth crept through the underbrush, bow in hand, arrow nocked. Next week would mark his thirty fourth winter. He hoped that God would smile on him today and give him a fat doe for his table.
The forest here was thick here, with trees wider at the base than a man’s arm span and hundreds of feet tall. There were spots of the forest that Booth could easily believe no man had ever seen or set foot in.
Whenever possible, Booth chose his Sunday mornings as the time to go hunting. There were no other men from the village in the forest at that time that would scare away the deer or happen upon him and ruin his solitude. This was cause for contention with the village priest. In a village of about two hundred people it was easy to tell who was not in church. He was not a religious man, his wife described him as spiritual, but Booth never bothered to put much thought into it. When he was stalking a deer, miles from his village, he felt at that moment how the truly religious felt kneeling before a church altar, but again, he never really thought about it in those terms. For him, it just was.
A few hours later, with the doe he so wanted over his shoulders he made his way through the woods back towards the village. The temperature was dropping fast and he thought there might be more snow yet tonight.
He crested a hill about two miles from his village and that was when he saw the smoke through the trees. Far too much smoke to be from the chimney. Panic grabbed him and he dumped the deer off of his shoulders and was running as it hit the ground. He was in good shape from working outside and hunting far into the forest year round and his legs ate up the ground as fast as he could push them. Coming down the hill he leaped the small creek at the base, landed badly, falling and rolling back to his feet without ever really stopping.
He came out of the woods into the clearing which held his home to behold a nightmare. The house was in flames, there was no saving it. In a panic he ran forward looking for his wife and their six year old daughter. There were no neighbor’s who lived near but surely someone would have seen the flames from the village, they didn’t live that far away.
The house was still several hundred yards away and as Booth ran forward he could see other figures on the far side of the clearing. Maybe his wife, maybe neighbors who came to help. Booth ran on, as fast as his legs would carry him. Normally surefooted and agile in the most difficult terrain of the forest, he nonetheless tripped in his haste as the ground dipped and sprawled onto his face in the grass.
Booth began to lift himself from the ground and saw through the fire and smoke that the figures were not his neighbors at all; they were soldiers, church soldiers known as the Hand of God. They were unmistakable in their white cloaks and chain mail, with the black cross emblazoned on field of white upon their shields.
Booth raised himself to his feet and found his bow on the ground beside him. Drawing three arrows and sticking them into the ground in front of him, he drew a fourth and nocked it to his bow taking aim at the closest man in white. The broad arrow heads used to drop a buck should be able to punch through chain mail at this distance.
December, 1279 of the Salecian Calendar
Dresda, Capital City of Salecia
