Cont. from Word document as of 27/10/10
There wasn't much the farmer or his son could tell them about the bandits, save that they had come out of the forest and had left the same way; neither had much idea of numbers, or of anything more than that their barn had burnt to the ground after it had been emptied of grain, and that their house had been ransacked for anything of value, the man's wife held with a knife at her throat until they had retrieved their meagre supply of coin from its hiding place on a small ledge inside the chimney. After that they had been left to try and round up the livestock with no dogs - cut down by the bandits as they rode in - and to ride doubled up the one horse they could catch on the only saddle whose girth had only been half slashed through.
Felix could feel the thunder of his suppressed anger rolling in the back of his throat as he gave orders to the men who had already assembled, equipped and ready to ride; his whole body felt hot, his skin tingling with pins and needles. In his hand the leather that wrapped the hilt of his sword creaked as his fingers tightened into a fist around it, itching to draw. There were around twenty men to go - likely plenty enough to deal with whatever they might find, unlikely as it was that they would find the men still waiting at the farm. More likely they were long gone by now, blast it. "Mount up, and keep sharp. If we catch these vermin there is to be no mercy. Men who live like ticks die like ticks - on the end of a sharp stick."
The worst part of it was that once they were out in the countryside, riding out along the long jagged line of the cliffs to their left until the town disappeared behind the hills, Felix found he was enjoying himself, out in the open air and breezes of the borderland, away from the noise and the smell of people. Bonnea was not a large town compared to, say, the capital, but it was larger than the town he had grown up in, and sometimes he felt like a caged animal, trapped inside the castle working all the time instead of out in his element. His horse, Arrow, was glad of the exercise too, by the way he jostled and nipped for position when any other horses got too close, a skip in his usually efficient step. He was probably not being ridden enough, Felix thought, and felt guilty.
It was wild land, in its way, too far from most of civilisation to have been tamed into tedium; here the grass grew long and wild, studded with yellow-flowered gorse and the sharp grey of rocks flecked with shine protruding from the landscape at odd angles, as though they had been flung there. The land undulated beneath their feet as they rode across it, like ocean
There wasn't much the farmer or his son could tell them about the bandits, save that they had come out of the forest and had left the same way; neither had much idea of numbers, or of anything more than that their barn had burnt to the ground after it had been emptied of grain, and that their house had been ransacked for anything of value, the man's wife held with a knife at her throat until they had retrieved their meagre supply of coin from its hiding place on a small ledge inside the chimney. After that they had been left to try and round up the livestock with no dogs - cut down by the bandits as they rode in - and to ride doubled up the one horse they could catch on the only saddle whose girth had only been half slashed through.
Felix could feel the thunder of his suppressed anger rolling in the back of his throat as he gave orders to the men who had already assembled, equipped and ready to ride; his whole body felt hot, his skin tingling with pins and needles. In his hand the leather that wrapped the hilt of his sword creaked as his fingers tightened into a fist around it, itching to draw. There were around twenty men to go - likely plenty enough to deal with whatever they might find, unlikely as it was that they would find the men still waiting at the farm. More likely they were long gone by now, blast it. "Mount up, and keep sharp. If we catch these vermin there is to be no mercy. Men who live like ticks die like ticks - on the end of a sharp stick."
The worst part of it was that once they were out in the countryside, riding out along the long jagged line of the cliffs to their left until the town disappeared behind the hills, Felix found he was enjoying himself, out in the open air and breezes of the borderland, away from the noise and the smell of people. Bonnea was not a large town compared to, say, the capital, but it was larger than the town he had grown up in, and sometimes he felt like a caged animal, trapped inside the castle working all the time instead of out in his element. His horse, Arrow, was glad of the exercise too, by the way he jostled and nipped for position when any other horses got too close, a skip in his usually efficient step. He was probably not being ridden enough, Felix thought, and felt guilty.
It was wild land, in its way, too far from most of civilisation to have been tamed into tedium; here the grass grew long and wild, studded with yellow-flowered gorse and the sharp grey of rocks flecked with shine protruding from the landscape at odd angles, as though they had been flung there. The land undulated beneath their feet as they rode across it, like ocean
