Alfwald wiped his hand across his face, smearing blood and bits of brain matter across his brow, and immediately vomited. He stood up, after, looking across the desolate town, hoping to find someone moving, but none did. Smoke plumed from multiple sources across the ruined little village, the only things alive were sheep in the distance, bleating loudly as they made their way away from the fires. With no one to keep them, they would roam wild. And it wasn't like he was going to go back to mucking their stalls in an empty town, anyway.

  Chapter 1

  The quest of heaping piles

  The stalls were piled up with mounds of sheep shit, piled in the corners, on the walls, covering every inch, even the feet of the sheep that pressed him out of the way as they slid in and out of the stalls, pushing him against the aforementioned disgusting walls. He turned his body awkwardly, trying to avoid anything his body could come into contact with.

  "Aren't there at least gloves?" he asked the shepherd, gritting his teeth while he tried to hold his breath from the smell

  "Wouldn't waste gloves on you, you'd just get them stuck. The blacksmith says you're useless, boy. You should be glad I’m giving you this shovel, it's my best one, freshly sharpened so don’t you dull it up you hear?”

  It was true, he'd nearly burned down the entire ferrier's building. He resigned himself with a sigh and picked up the shovel, piling the mounds slowly onto a small wheelbarrow. He had dreamed of glory, of being a king or even a squire at the worst. Instead he was mucking sheep in a town of less than fifty people, and of those fifty people, he was the most useless. He was surprised they didn't just make him go off into the moors to pass away, but someone had to do the work nobody else wanted to do.

  At twenty four years old, Alfwald was unmarried due to his unstable employment and general reputation of falling, burning things down, breaking things, and being a complete fuckup. He had apprenticed with everyone in town, and each had ended in total disaster. He was here now because the blacksmith banned him from touching anything or speaking to him for the next year. He’d tried to apprentice under the shepherd first, but apparently losing sheep was also a fire-able offence. So he mucked sheep shit, piling it into the areas around the expansive green fields where the workers side-eyed him, worried he would accidentally pile it onto plants and break them. He’d only made that mistake once or twice before the shepherd came into the stalls to scream at him for a second time. The shepherd was a tall man, and thick, not thick like Alfwald, who was round at the shoulders and slumped, but broad and strong like Alfwald wanted to be. Maybe a few years behind the shovel would build his shoulders and legs, making him a more suitable mate for women in the city. So far, he had instead had to learn to sew and launder, cook and make his home by himself. He had a small house he’d inherited from his father as a youth that had one room but looked out onto a particularly beautiful spot on the moors. He spent hours cleaning, mending, and washing, dreaming of someone to share his quaint little home. He hoped that if he did the chores of both partners, a woman would take him just to be able to read and nap all day instead of the grueling labor usually required of them.

  He zoned out into his thought of a lazy wife, but could not imagine one that also did not treat him as the villagers did. Not that he would mind, of course, a pretty woman being unkind to you was actually quite nice if she still kept you around. Sadly, the women in the village were all either married or looked at him like he was covered in sheep dung, which would now at least be proper, since he was actually quite covered at this point.

  The shoveling was actually quite grueling work, and his fingers had splinters and little raw bumps by the first two hours. He sweated through his linen shirt until it stuck to him, which would have made an attractive view if not for his bright red face and gasping breaths, he had given up on not breathing in the smell, accepting that it would follow him home anyway. He wiped sweat from his face and gagged, running for a rag to wipe off the dung he’d smeared across himself from his gloveless hands.

  A scream outside interrupted his gagging, diverting his attention from the disgust he felt to a disturbance outside the sheep pens. The air outside, while normally clean and crisp, was tinged with soot, evidence of something burning. The shepherd ran past him, gathering tools and carrying a large bag that was leaking bits of grain as he hurried. He unhooked the pen locks and let the sheep go forward, but in their stupidity, they were following him instead, eating the grain from the bag’s leaking side. He rushed them away with yells, not of anger like he yelled at Alfwald, but of fear. The man was terrified, and he rushed to Alfwald, putting his hands on his shoulders.

  “Run boy, you’ll be the first to go! You’re not made to fight, get on your feet and run!”

  But Alfwald stood as stupidly as the sheep, unaware of why every person in his sight was suddenly running in every direction, gathering all their things, and fleeing the town haphazardly. The blue sky was getting darker from the fire in town, and nobody was heading there to put it out, though there were plenty of screams and sounds of metal in the distance. In his sheltered life, Alfwald had never seen or heard a skirmish beyond school level bullying, and he’d only gone to school long enough to learn to read basic forms and know his days and seasons, so that violence, though hurtful, was long past. He looked around, watching the other run into the high grasses, their feet sinking in mud, slowing them.

  That's when the arrows came.

  With fire at their ends, they rained from the sky onto the innocent villagers, and though Alfwald has animosity towards a few for their treatment of him, he felt horror watching their forms fall into the high grasses, disappearing as though already buried. They fell one by one as he watched, dumfounded, before finally realizing it was his turn to run or hide. He snuck around the side of the squat, thatched roof little building, hoping another flaming arrow wouldn't loose onto it and destroy him before he had a chance to really live. In this moment he realized how little he had truly done in his life. No job, no prospects, no family, maybe he was a waste of space. He couldn’t even help those around him.

  While he was stuck hating himself, the shepherd was hit with an arrow in the thigh, he crawled towards Alfwald, who inwardly was upset that his hiding place might be found because of the injured man. Pushing this down, he reached out to drag the shepherd towards him, but another arrow took the light from the poor man’s eyes and he went limp in Alfwald’s hand.

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  Sinking back into himself, Alfwald stared at the corpse that had just been a man and wrapped his arms around his own chest tightly. There’s no way that a man who had so recently been running, yelling, as there dead in front of him.

  “This isn't real” he thought

  “Just another nightmare”

  But when he opened his eyes, nothing had gotten better. Actually, it had gotten much, much worse. The top of the thatched roof had caught, and he groaned in fear. There was nowhere else to hide but the tall grass and it was a full minute running sprint to get there. His house was on the other side of town and he had no time to get anything he would need to survive even a single night away. The sounds of metal and smells of smoke were much closer now. Little pieces of flame and spark were cascading down from the roof like bright snowflakes, the fire breathing on them with the wind that had been blowing all day, right in his direction.

  As the sounds approached, it became more and more obvious that it was the sounds of fighting. This was a raid, and there were not enough swordsmen in the town to keep off even a small group of raiders. He tucked his head around the corner to see a hulking man in full armor, surrounded by simple raiders, who would have looked far less intimidating next to the huge beast of an armored man, had they not been stabbing and shooting his neighbors.

  The large one was shining in the little bit of sun that was left and something about that shine called to him. He stared for longer than he should have with his face around the corner, his head out and a perfect target for an arrow. Realizing this, he gasped and ducked back, hiding himself again, then putting just the very tip of his head out so he could watch more. He couldn't pull his eyes away from the man in armor, the way it shined in the light peeking through the billowing black clouds of smoke, the way it moved almost without the person inside moving it. It seemed unnatural.

  “Hey! You there!”

  He was spotted.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid Alfwald, stupid as a sheep and half as useful.” he thought, smacking his hand against his forehead.

  There was nowhere to run, so he pulled the shovel he’d abandoned earlier to him like a child would hold a small stuffed animal for security. The armored man walked closer, stepping heavily so that Alfwald could hear every step booming in his head, along with the booming of his heart. The steps came closer and closer, directly towards him, the crunching of the grasses and thudding metal sounds becoming all he could hear.

  Nothing had ever terrified him the way this did.

  He was incredibly thankful when the steps went in another direction, towards the next building, which was also burning. Every building he could see nearby was burning at this point, making the area around him hot and choking him. He could even hear the bandits, who had gotten dangerously close, choking on the fumes too.

  “We done got everybody by now, I bet” One of them with a bow in hand called out over the sound of the whooshing and rushing flames

  “Yeah lets get out of here before this fire takes us with it” a shorter man with a sword agreed.

  “Not yet, there’s someone out there, I can feel it” said a voice inside the helmet of the armor, but oddly, it didn’t feel like it fit the hulking man, it was small, almost girlish.

  Alfwald started to cough and held it, hard, turning his already hot, red face nearly purple.

  “Alfwald the idiot” he thought to himself, in the voice of the ferrier. “Useless”

  He tried to breath through the cough, without making a sound, and failed. It came out in a hard huff, then a retch, and the coughing didn’t stop. He had to take this opportunity to run before they found him, but he knew they already had.

  His coughing sounds were audible even in the fire, and the sound of the footsteps came closer once again.

  “Probably a sheep” the swordsman piped up, anxiously

  “What sheep you know coughs like a man?” the bowman retorted, slapping his back.

  “Here little sheep, sweet soft sheep, come for shearing” the voice came again from the hulking man, singsong and light.

  Sheer terror brought Alfwald to his feet, and he held the shovel at his chest, not even out like a real warrior or fighter, light a scared little boy.

  A giant hand wrapped in metal dug its clawlike fingers into the side of the building, cracking the wood, and behind it followed a metal face that peered at him through a slit.

  “There you are little sheep”

  The eyes inside the slits were wide, almost scared, but the voice was calm, firm.

  “Good boy, you’re going to feel so much better in a moment” the voice promised, which made his mind finally break. He fled, foot over foot, and the man in the armor followed, slamming its feet down behind him, catching up faster than he could run. It caught him up in a second, pulling him by the front of his linen shirt against the chest of the armor.

  “Sweet little sheep, so soft” it mocked him, running a metal finger across his face in a farce of gentleness “bleat for me little sheep”

  It was that moment that Alfwald started to pass out. If something this terrible was going to happen to him, he damn well wasn't going to be there for it. In the process of passing out, however, he began to cough and retch again, gagging up onto the fabric of the side of the armor.

  The man pulled away from him in disgust, tripping backwards, directly onto the shovel that the shepherd, thank his bones, had so recently sharpened. The head of the armor came off, head still inside, and rolled away. It took a moment for the rest of the body to go with it, as though it didn’t believe what was happening. Or as though the armor could stand on its own.

  As soon as the body began to fall, however, a heaviness overtook Alfwald. It was as though his body fell with the armour, taking on its weight.

  “Oh god, please don’t be passing out” he said to himself, aloud, as he fell slowly, slumping against the corpse. The corpse? He was confused. There was armor on this man before. Big, grotesque armor with spaulders made of metal.

  He put his hands out to the body, reaching to see if it was real, and when he looked down at his hands, they were clawlike, covered in metal, encased with the armour from the bandit.

  “Edgar? Get your ass out here, there’s all these sheep to round up, aren’t you hungry you big ape?”

  The corpse did not reply.

  Alfwald stood slowly, without his own will moving his body, as though controlled by an outside force. He always assumed armor would be heavy, but it felt like the armor was lifting him, instead of him lifting himself inside of it.

  “Oh little sheep, the game isn’t over just yet” came from inside the helmet, the same small, silky calm voice he’d heard before.

  “If I’m stuck with you, we might as well have fun. Who knew Edgar would die from tripping on a shovel, you can’t be much worse than that dumb ugly oaf, even if you do seem a little dull.”

  Then his body moved. Impossibly fast, too fast for him to catch up, it jerked forward and held the head of the bowman, crushing it with a sickening crack and crunch that made him feel…well, sick. The armor made its way to the second bandit and before he could stop it, it had crushed a second head. It seemed to enjoy that, a small satisfied grunt came from inside the helmet.

  “Now let’s go get the rest of them” it giggled, which of all the things he had heard today, may have upset Alfwald the most.