The drenched would-be savior of the tavern brawl, Dupree Carpenter, was bemoaning the “mere student” status that was no doubt the only thing that prevented him from personally defeating an entire tavernful of drunken brawlers armed with a wooden stick carved into the shape of a sword as Nan, Reed, and Lord Spaulding were looking for any excuse to be well away from the scene of their nonadventure and on to more interesting pastures, hopefully well away from Cago. “Master March would be so disappointed,” he moaned.
“So, you have a trainer?” inquired the ever-chatty Spaulding.
“Aye, the best! We travel from village to village, training the locals to defend themselves. There are ever so many brigands about these days, and the people need us. I would be with them now, if the Master hadn’t been so generous as to allow me a few days’ leave to see the city. If only I had done this…” he said, as he hopped on one foot while thrusting his wooden sword downward in a strange maneuver that left him looking more like a tipsy stork than a budding armsman. Catching himself as he fell, he glanced as Spaulding’s armaments. “My lord, you too know the way of the broadsword?”
Until this moment, Lord Spaulding was fully aligned with the desires of his comrades to leave this sorry bumpkin behind and get on with the serious business of hero-ing about the lands. But… “Why yes, young man… did you say Master March?”
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The scene opened at a middling-sized stable in Cago, the capital city of the region. Lord Geoffrey Spaulding, recent heir to a very minor noble house and would-be swashbuckling adventurer, has decided that it would be best for him to get out of town before he gets sucked back into the dreary, drudgery-filled world of fashionable balls, gourmet dinners, and parades of hot chambermaids that is his accursed birthright. Accompanied by his valet Sam Waits, his all-but-unnoticeable menial servant Tookie the aged grunty, and Nan, a young and headstrong Ess girl who has abandoned her diplomatic apprenticeship out of sheer boredom, Lord Spaulding is seeking to procure some fine destriers on which to ride into his storybook-worthy future. Assigning the humdrum task of purchasing a brace of chargers to his valet who, knowing nothing of horses, has his initial clumsy questions about “some horses or something, preferably heroic horses, I guess,” redirected to the stableboy.
The stableboy was Reed Groom, a youth who is also desperate to get out of Cago despite his comfortable life of shoveling manure, reeking horsesweat, and hauling feed buckets. After ascertaining the nature of the order (four tired saddle horses and a couple of pack mules, which is approximately the entire inventory of the stable at the moment), Reed dared to approach the Lord, who was then engaged in an awkward conversation about “just where one would find ‘adventure’” with the Ess.
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