System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 1
“Have you heard, Old Mole’s boy was struck by a horse.”
“Poor lad. If I recall right he’s only thirteen this year, he’ll be lying in bed the rest of his life.”
“You’re talking about what happened a few days back. New news is Roy’s awake now, but his head seems wrong; he stands in the yard all day, staring.”
A few farmers leaned on the ridge, whispering. Behind them, a broad-shouldered man in middle age quietly set down his hoe, clenched his fists, his face a hard map of anger and despair.
He was the man they called Old Mole, a lowly peasant like the others. Half his life had been spent minding the fields, plain-featured, no skill, no land, no coin; only at twenty-three did a woman who would not spurn him take him as husband.
They did not have a child until they were twenty-five. In this world, in that time, many were parents at fifteen or sixteen, they were, without doubt, late parents, and they guarded the boy as if he were something fragile, never letting him go down to the fields.
Their son Roy was obedient, born quiet and gentle, not one for fighting or mischief, always wearing a shy smile; nothing like the little scamps that ran wild in the village.
“What a well-behaved child...”
The thought made Old Mole’s pain worse. Good times do not last. Four days ago a woman rode hard through the village, her mount brushed poor Roy, and he collapsed then and there.
The village’s clumsy herbalist could find no broken bones, and stranger still, the boy lay unconscious a day and then woke as if nothing had happened, yet he was changed; his eyes were blank, he would not speak or answer, only stare up at the sky.
Like a fool.
“Ah...” Old Mole’s worry for his son tightened in his chest; seeing the hour grown late, he shouldered his hoe and ran home in a hurry.
The houses in the village were of thatch and wood, crude and battered, as if a strong wind could sweep them away. The whole place was small, scarcely a hundred households.
Old Mole’s cottage sat at the far west edge. It was high noon, the sun at its fiercest. A small figure stood facing that glare, eyes unblinking, like a puppet with no soul.
In the yard beside him, a woman with rough hands bent to feed the chickens.
“Watching the sun like that, what if you ruin your eyes? Susan! I told you to keep an eye on him, look what he’s doing!”
Old Mole rushed into the weed-choked yard, seized the boy about the waist and set him down on the threshold, ran his hand over the cropped hair, and a softness crossed his sunburned face.
“Little Roy, listen to your old man, don’t do such stupid things again.”
“Huh? Old man...” A short while after waking, Roy had ignored Old Mole’s words. Today, however, the pale, delicate face stirred; his muddled eyes cleared, his lips moved and he muttered,
“Roy ... right, I am Roy now.”
“Can the child speak?” The farmer thrust his ear close to his son’s mouth in delight.
At last he was sure the boy who had not spoken for three days and nights had not become mute.
“Susan, come quick, our son spoke, stop fussing with the stock!”
At the shout, the woman hurried in from outside.
The two of them took Roy, one on each side, and he called both their names; their eyes filled with tears.
Roy looked them over with a gravity that belied his age — Mole and Susan. Their faces were ordinary, their linen clothes worn, skin coarse, bodies thinned by labor, every inch of them the honest, earthy sort of country folk.
“These are my parents.”
Roy’s eyes pricked, something inside him was struck; he slipped his arms around their shoulders.
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