The Progenitors

Chapter 9

My word-count is abysmal and my plot is stuttering - time for a burst of writerly enthusiasm! Onwards! With all of the speed of a speeding bullet, and the typos of a 4-year old!

(Seriously though, the typos will probably be there until I revise at some further point. I'm NOT going to let my wordcount stay 7k words behind. *Lets out a war-cry and starts writing quantity rather than quality*

I'm essentially saying that part of my slow writing may have been because I knew my book was gong to be read - I hope that my writing doesn't degenerate terribly, but know that Chapter 9 onwards will be heavily revised after NaNoWriMo. Volume will come first... >.<)

--------------------------------------------------

Hallen wasn't sure why he was still alive.

The city hadn't been destroyed, the peasants hadn't revolted yet, and as far as he could tell, life was going on as normal. Why nobody responded to the death of hundreds of innocent civilians he wasn't quite certain, but as long as he was alive, he really didn't care. He was going to extricate himself from this mess once and for all by leaving at the crack of dawn the next day - once he was out of the city, he could reasonably assume that he was going to survive the whole encounter started by saving Mordecai.

Mordecai could go and do this all by himself - Hallen really wasn't even necessary.

The streets had remained quiet since the massacre as well. The peasants had never come back after they fled the streets, and that left Wilhelm with an aura of abandonment. Instead of fighting the nobles, most of the peasants appeared to have chosen ot ignore them instead. A commendable, smart, and safe practice if Hallen had ever seen one.

The occasional group still passed by, but they appeared to be talking among themselves and Hallen wasn't all that interested in what they had to say. Most of them seemed more depressed than angry, so he assumed they were talking about their lives rather than the revolution. He was surprised that Mordecai didn't capitalize on the lull, however. Now would be the perfect time to stir the masses into a frenzy and initiate his plan - all he would have had to have done was remind the peasants that they had all lost friends, family, and loved ones in the slaughter ordered by Lord Dule the night before.

Hallen watched another group of chatting peasants pass by where he was hidden. This was the fifth one this morning. They were even more common now than they had been the night of the killings, and they all seemed to be heading in the same direction. This was the first time that it had struck Hallen as odd though - until now, he had thought it was just a coincidence.

If they were planning something, the greatest chance of surviving was to know where he could be to avoid it. Maybe following them was a good idea after all.

The groups seemed to walk back to where the event of the night before had transpired - a good place for a rally if ever there was one. Maybe Mordecai was actually going to take advantage of the occurrence after all - Hallen hadn't given him enough credit. He had gotten all of this started, after all, even if he had almost died in the process.

When they reached the square, however, Hallen couldn't see Mordecai anywhere. Maybe Hallen had accidentally overestimated him, instead.

Rather than Mordecai, the speaker on the small stage was a street-urchin - the boy couldn't be more than 13 years old. He wasn't even as loud as Mordecai, to hear anything Hallen would have to get closer.

After another round of pushing and shoving, he reached the center of the mob where he could hear the words that were being said:

"... died last night. Caught and killed by his own father, Lord Dule. He didn't even renounce his claims at the end - he continued lecturing the Lord up to the moment his head fell from his shoulders! That's what we should all emulate! Never stop working until he kills every last one of us." Some various nods and murmurs of agreement followed. Crap. What Mordecai had just done probably meant more than anything he had done in his life. Rather than giving this movement a plain figurehead as he had planned, instead he had given it a martyr. Hallen's chances of survival appeared to be dropping again.