Chapter 1: Uninvited Guests

[Kale]

(Solo)

The early morning air was crisp and cool, with a slow breeze blowing in from the east, bringing an edge to the air that bordered on the verge of being uncomfortable. The star spotted sky twinkled faintly in the cloudless, deep blue gray sky, while the glowing waning quarter moon cast the landscape in a dreary white haze. The song birds, still tightly encased in their warm nests, would soon be stirring, to hail the new morning that was sure to be cool and bright. A distant rooster, stirred to wakefulness by some deeply ingrained instinct, gave a single, drawn out cry, the only sound echoing for miles.

A lonely farm house, nestled quietly in a shallow valley between two low hills, was dark and silent, its inhabitants still snuggled beneath their thick wool blankets, warm and content. The house groaned occasionally, still settling as the new and worn old wood used in its construction warped and twisted itself against its own weight, giving those who were unfamiliar to the sensation a deep, all encompassing fear that it would suddenly, and with very little warning, collapse into a heap. The sleeping occupants however, hardly ever heard to groans while cocooned in the peaceful arms of sleep, as they had lived in the building for most of their lives. All perhaps, save one.

Sel Kale, a name he had given himself at the age of sixteen and one that he had used ever since, stared silently at the dark wood plank ceiling above him, listening to the occasional groaning with only half an ear. He had built the house after all, and with the careful advice of some army engineer friends of his, he had very few worries of the construction failing. This wasn’t, unfortunately, the reason he had been stirred to wakefulness however, and it certainly wasn’t the far off sound of that run away rooster of his either. His mouth drew down in a frown as he brooded the reason and after a moment, it came to him.

Instinct. The thought hovered for a moment at the surface of his sleepy consciousness and then sank once more into the pool of other wanton thoughts that flitted and skittered just below conscious level. Instinct. Ingrained over a twenty long year career of almost constant sleepless nights and enough hair raising near misses on his life to fill six lifetimes and still have plenty left to spare. Not to mention many a sleepless night as a child and then adolescent adult before he finally ran away. His mouth twisted into a scowl at those thoughts and he pushed them firmly aside, concentrating on considerably happier thoughts, but none that many would consider as such.

The notion of his being awake by instinct alone gnawed at his mind, wearing down the hastily erected protections he had put in place when he gave up the life of the army. He sighed and shifted his back, positioning it off a rather pesky piece of straw jutting up from the cloth mattress. It‘s been six years Kale, give it up. You‘ve given up that life. He rolled his head slowly to his left to gaze at the sleeping form of his wife, Kara, slightly grayed silhouette in the heavy darkness of the bedroom. You have a new one now. One of peace. He reached up from beneath the covers to slowly draw the back of his heavy hand across her soft cheek. She shifted, moaning softly and snuggled closer to the warmth of his body. A small smile spread on her face and her breath was hot against his skin. A small smile crept across his lips to, as he twisted slightly to plant a soft kiss on her forehead. Peace.

The moment passed quickly, the feeling that he needed to be awake passing as his bodies need for sleep once again took hold. His eyes slowly slid closed and he felt himself start to slowly drift back into the dreamless void of a soldiers sleep. He surrendered completely, but not before a bubble popped and the feeling returned once more, quiet, discreet but there all the same. The void swallowed him before he could think to react.

[Kale]

A sliver thin shaft of sunlight woke him with a start, blinding him for a moment as he tried to orient himself. His arm stretched to his left and feeling a void beside him, he twisted sleepily to investigate it. Kara was already up, the bed covers thrown aside and the sheets rumpled in the spot where she had rolled from the bed. After a moment of blinking and rubbing the sleep from his eyes he could hear the distant clink and tink of her working in the kitchen, as well as the distant laughter of his two children, playing in the yard. A massive yawn railed his senses then and he stretched monstrously before laying still a moment longer, having to force himself to move before his eyes slid closed and deposited him back into the sleeping void behind their lids.

Rolling with a grunt from the straw stuffed bed, cursing himself for getting old, Kale popped his aging hips and back as he straightened, grabbing a hold of his white woolen shirt as he did so. Throwing it casually around his wide, thickly muscled shoulders, he made his way out of the room and down the narrow wooden stairs just beyond the door. The smells of his wife’s cooking permeated the air, nearly lifting him off his toes as he inhaled deeply through his nose. He walked into the kitchen with a wide smile on his face, finding her with her back turned, and proceeded to wrap himself around her curvaceous frame.

She was slightly taller than him, with a head of soft, wavy brown hair that fell to just past her shoulders and framed a face that was neither stern nor sad. Her thick lips were a soft shade of pink, full and almost always looking to be on the verge of a pout. It was this striking feature that had drawn him to her when that had first met and he was quick to discover that her smile was what really made her beautiful. Her dark brown eyes, looking like two orbs of sweet chocolate, always held a twinkle and smiled almost as quickly as her pouting lips, which was to say, almost constantly. It was almost like she was trying to make up for the natural downward turn of her mouth, always trying to pull it up in a smile. He smiled ever wider and, after depositing a soft kiss on the exposed flesh of her soft neck, he slowly rubbed her slightly bulged stomach with his hands. He could almost feel the churning forces of nature brewing beneath his finger tips, the fountain of life welling up from within this beautiful woman that had proclaimed herself to be his. It brought unimaginable joy to him every time he laid eyes on her.

“What did I ever do to deserve a beauty such as yourself?” Kale asked as he wrapped his thick arm around her waist, squeezing just gently enough to cause her to squeak. He planted a kiss into her hair as she leaned her head back onto his broad shoulder. In response to his question she answered with only a sigh, rolling her eyes to gaze up into his, smiling brightly in the early morning sunlight.

“Oh I don’t know,” she said softly, with a slow smile on her lips. “Nothing really, except sweep me off my feet like I was a prized trophy and then treat me like a queen.” Her smile took on a playful line and she squeezed her eyes shut while she stuck out her tongue like a child of five. Kale, seeing an opportunity, quickly reached out to grab a hold of the tongue with his teeth and sucked it quickly into his mouth. She gasped in surprise as he did and, after pausing only long enough to drop the cooking utensils she had been using, twisted around to wrap her arms around his neck, engaging him in a passionate, albeit quick kiss to win it back. She giggled lightly as she pulled her face away from his and slapped him gently across the cheek, the tell tale twinkle in her eye glinting brightly.

“Kale,” she said with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “Not in front of the children.” He could only chuckled in response.

[Kale]

Half an hour later, after Kale had left her to her cooking and gone out to entertain his two children, Sel Junior and Catherine, the small family gathered around the table for their morning meal. A moment of silence settled on the family as they thanked the gods for the food and peace they had provided, then, with a practiced hand, they dug in. Freshly baked bread, Kara must have risen sooner than Kale had originally thought, fresh eggs, ripe tomatoes and lettuce leaves from the garden, a whole stick of butter and glasses of cooled milk from the ice chest rounded off the morning meal and the family set about devouring it whole, lest it spoil. A light conversation about the wood shed was sprung between Kale and Sel Junior, while Kara and Catherine began discussing what sewing projects they were going to start, and finish that day.

“So, Sel,” Kale asked around a mouthful of buttered bread and egg. “Did you fix those loose boards in back of the wood shed like I asked yesterday?” At the same time: “Catherine, what do you think we should do today?”

Sel, a guarded flicker in his eyes, glanced up from his food and mumbled in response. “Yes, sir.” In the same instant, a very hyper Catherine piped up. “Oh! Ummmm, Dolly still needs to have her seams fixed and I think Scruffy lost his nose.”

Kale, catching the guarded look in Sel’s eye, leaned in, a hooded glare forming on his brow. “Sel, I don’t want to have to ask you again. If you need help, then ask.” Kara shot him a small scowl, she hated when Kale glared. Kale caught the glance and lifted an eyebrow, but the two said nothing. Kara instead wiped the scowl from her face and responded in an equally eager voice to Catherine. “Dolly? Well, certainly we can fix her seams. And Scruffy lost his nose? My my, well, we’ll just have to take a look at that.”

Sel, his gaze still guarded and latched firmly to his food, shuffled a piece of egg around with his fork and shrugged dejectedly. “I tried Pa, but you were busy and those boards are stuck tight, I can’t lift ‘em.” He sighed and Kale couldn’t help but smirk, the glare vanishing from his face. He was just about to say something when Catherine piped in loudly, pulling her hands from beneath the table, the small fingers clutching something crafted of spun wool and stuffed with straw. “See! He’s missing his nose!” That stuffed something was her puppy, Scruffy, who was, indeed, missing his black wool nose. It looked to have been chewed off. Kara gasped, feigning surprise, as this happened on an almost regular basis, Catherine having developed an almost chronic chewing habit, and placed her fragile looking hand against her heart. “Oh Catherine, that poor puppy. Well, I think I know just the thing for him.” The two of them beamed at one another from across the table and Kale quietly rolled his eyes as he returned his attention to Sel.

“Well, then I guess that means that we’ll both have to work on it then, together. I’ve always told you, two heads work better than one.” Sel, unconvinced about the idea, stared at his food a moment longer before mechanically going about eating it. Kale smirked at the boy, he was young yet, but he’d learn, eventually. Learn all those things his father had failed to teach him as a boy. Unpleasant memories began surfacing and he quickly stuffed them back under.

[Kale]

Breakfast passed quickly, the conversation kept to a minimum as the family finished eating. The clean up afterward was equally quiet, each member doing his or her part to aid in the cleaning and sorting of the dishes. After a brief conversation with Catherine, who was all up in a sorts about her puppy needing a new nose and needing it now, Kale gathered his work vest and belt and, with a grumpy Sel in tow, headed off toward the afore-discussed wood shed.

The most recent thunderstorm had done a real number on the sturdy wood shed, the high winds and pounding rains causing enough damage so as to give the shed a distinct leftward lean to it. The warped pieces of wood along the left most facing wall and corresponding corners were the root of the problem and as such, needed to be replaced. Kale, having been busy up until that day re digging the southern fields irrigation trenches because of that storm, had given the job of starting the project to young Sel, knowing well enough that the boy had neither the intellect, nor the skill required to perform the job. It wasn’t his aim to humble the boy, only instill in him the necessary mind set that not everything could be accomplished by ones self, that sometimes, a little outside help was what was needed to get the job done. Sel, ever the grump now a days, hadn’t grasped the concept and as such, had nearly torn himself to pieces with guilt when he couldn’t do what his father had asked of him. The boy absolutely adored Kale, something that Kale had most certainly lacked when dealing with his own father, and as such the boy usually went out of his way to try and prove his worth. It had, in most recent times, had only ended with him getting hurt and his father being disappointed. Kale saw the pattern and tried to act accordingly but more often than not was forced to act with swift strictness and a firm hand, lest the boy become complacent and unruly. It broke his heart to have to do that to his boy, but his long years in the army had proven his methods to be sound and he was equally assured by his sons responses that it was taken to heart and had no harmful repercussions.

As they walked out to the wood shed in the early morning light, Kale took that time to question his son on what he had tried to accomplish with what time he had the day before. “Which tools did you use?” He asked as he shouldered his vest and belted his buckle onto his waist in one fluid, long practiced motion.

“The wood saw and crow bar,” Sel answered without hesitation. “I tried to find the hammer, but I couldn’t remember where I saw it last so I found a rock instead.”

Kale quirked an eyebrow down at the boy and he reached up to scratch the stubble on his chin. “Hammer? Why would you need a hammer?”

“Just in case I pulled boards loose that didn’t need to be pulled free. I didn’t want to have to do more work that necessary.”

Kale chuckled and patted him on the back. “Good thinking, but I’m afraid that with the way this is leaning, we might have to pull the whole facing wall and a good portion of the front and back apart to fix it.”

Sel drooped his shoulders and sighed heavily. Kale almost laughed a loud at his sons plight but instead just shook his head and gazed off toward the shed, gauging what was needed and what wasn’t. Finally, he dropped his hand onto the boys shoulder and beckoned him with the other hand. “Come on, let’s go get some boards.”

Sel looked up at his father, confused. “Boards? What for?”

“Well, if we’re gonna be taking apart a whole wall, don’t you think we’ll have to find someway to hold it up?”

Understanding dawned on the boys face and he hurried along beside his father, eager to begin working on the project that had so disappointed him just the day before.

[Kale]

It was laborious work and for the next five or so hours, the two of them grunted and strained, hammering, kicking and shoving the long, heavy support boards up against the woodshed, forcibly shifting the shed back into its original position. Kale did most of the work, as the young Sel simply wasn’t matured enough to assist but that did little to deter the young lads ferocity at seeing the job through to the end. He heaved and hammered and pushed just as hard, perhaps a little more so, than his father did, his face pinched with the effort and his small boy muscles straining to keep up. By lunch that had what boards they needed in place and the shed properly reinforced so they both took a pleasant break sitting beneath a close by oak, relaxing in the shade and munching on some dried meat, bread and cheese.

“Pa?”

Kale, his eyes closed as he lay beneath the shade of the massive tree, grunted softly. “Yeah,” he said after a moment.

“What did you do before you met mom?”

Oh dear, Kale thought as he opened one eye to lazily gaze at the curious boy. So it begins. He coughed, clearing his throat and shifted his body to face Sel, propping himself up on one arm as he did so. “Well,” he began slowly, picking at a piece of grass with his right hand. “Before I met your mom, I was a soldier in the kings army.” A simple answer, one that left room for a thousand questions that only a young boy would ask.

His eyes brightened at the answer, he hadn't expected it. Kale couldn’t help but smile inwardly at the lad, he had often seen the boy gazing in wonder up at the weapons he had displayed in the family room of the house. Sel had about a dozen wooden swords, hidden in various parts of the house, within easy reach whenever he felt the urge to wander off into his vast, young imagination. He was just about to open his mouth when a call came from the house. It was Kara, she needed his help with something. No doubt getting something from the storage space in the peaked roof of the house.

Kale smiled at Sel, the boy closing his mouth disappointingly at the interruption. He pushed himself to his knees and reached out to ruffle the boys hair. “You just hold that thought and we’ll go see what your mother is all up in a fluff about.”

Sel brightened and they both gathered their things and started back toward the house, Kara still calling out to Kale.

[Kale]

As it turned out, it had nothing to do with Kara needing help getting something. It became more and more evident as the two of them drew closer to the house that it was in fact, something far more serious. Kale, suddenly finding his heart racing in fear, sent Sel running toward the woodshed, instructing him in no uncertain terms that he was to stay there and stay out of sight until his father came and told him otherwise. The boy understood immediately, thanks on no small part by his fathers very stern tone, and took off at a dead run for the shed, sending confused looks toward his home the whole way. Kale, keeping one eye on the boy as he ran and one eye on the house ahead of him, checked to see if his knife was still in its sheath on his belt and took off at a ground eating lope toward the house, his mind spinning itself into full alert, readying himself for anything.

He rounded the corner at a dead run, his powerfully built legs carrying him forward at a break neck speed and his pale blue eyes took in the situation in an instant. Five horses, three empty, stood placidly in the front yard, kicking their hooves in boredom as their ears and tails flicked at flies that buzzed around them. The occupied horses held two massive, powerfully built men, with long greasy brown hair and cold calculating eyes that immediately found the running Kale, massive hands instinctively reaching toward a multitude of vicious looking weapons belted all across them. Kale ignored them the instant he saw them, they were too far away to cause a problem and they had no throwing weapons on their persons, he was more concerned with the three empty horses and where their occupants were. Kara called out his name again and he bolted up the front steps, bursting through the front door of the house and into the room beyond.

Two men, almost exact copies of the other two except these two had blonde hair instead of brown, sat in chairs by the table, looking for all the word like they owned the place and they both glanced over from their fixated study of his wife to watch him charge in the house. One had a meaty hand gripped around the hilt of a long sword, the other casually played with a long thin bladed knife, and after a moment they returned to their study of the beautiful woman before them. After all, what harm could a farmer with a knife do? Kale ignored them, if only for the reason that he had no idea where his wife was, or what was happening, not because they were dangerous looking. And looking was all that they were.

He walked into the kitchen, deciding that perhaps running in wouldn’t be the best move, and found himself face to face with a well dressed man in his middle years, armed with only a sword and wearing a flowing red cloak. His wife, his eyes seeking her out the instant he stepped foot into the room, was backed against the far counter, one hand hidden behind her back, no doubt gripping the long bladed cooking knife that Kale noticed was missing from its board, while the other hugged Catherine close to her waist, burying her face into her skirt.

“Kale,” she said with a smile that told him that she was deathly afraid for her life. “These kind gentlemen here wanted to speak with you.”

Kale, his gaze flickering back and forth between the three men and her, the fellow in the red cloak had a arrogant smirk on his lips, nodded once as he took the situation in. He didn’t know who these men were, where they came from and why they were here. They were armed to the teeth and had the look of soldiers about them, but there weren’t with any army he knew of. And he knew of quite a few. Perhaps they were part of some new one, just recently formed. He had been out of the game for about six years, anything could have happened. He fixated his gaze on the red cloaked fellow and relaxed his grip on his knife, dropping into a loose stance that for all intensive purposes, looked like he had let his guard down. The trick worked and the two at the table returned their attention to Kara, ignoring Kale. The red cloak man smirked a little broader and lifted a rolled piece of paper to his chest.

“Taxman, come to collect.”

Ah hell.