The Progenitors

Chapter 8

Hallen woke up to complete silence. That was probably a good thing - it meant that any revolt that would be occurring hadn't taken place yet.

He scrambled out of his makeshift bed composed of bags of grain and other such items and cautiously checked the lower floor for occupants before he left. The fact that it was late in the morning and no one was here seemed to suggest that the original owners of the shop may have been in that square last night.

On the bright side, they had been spared the knowledge that their shop had been broken into last night. Best to always look for the silver lining in things like this, Hallen had learned. Doing otherwise invited a cocktail of insanity, depression, and hopelessness on yourself - and that wasn't generally healthy. Robbers liked targeting the dejected travellers, as they were the least likely to fight back while drowning in their own sorrow.

The square was quiet too. Most of the blood and remnants of the gathering had been cleared, though there was still a fair amount of gore and mysterious substance coating the walls and gutters of the surrounding area. The soldiers had all departed as well, most likely carrying the bodies of the peasantry that had been slain. There was no purpose in leaving the bodies out and around where they could be used to start the revolution that currently seemed likely, after all.

The gate out was located on the opposite end of Wilhelm, so he had some walking to do. Hopefully, all of the nobles involved in trying to kill him would be busy making sure that their own group of peasants didn't revolt - rather than staying busy making sure that they took Hallen down with them.

He spared a fleeting thought for Mordecai - the man didn't deserve execution just for talking about laws, though he could be executed for any number of other reasons - but decided that the noble had probably made it out all right. He had left early enough to escape the guards that killed the remaining peasants at the gathering; Hallen was pretty certain that he would've heard Mordecai giving a lecture on the improprietary nature of the execution if the man had been caught by the trap.

The streets of Wilhelm were completely empty, devoid of all signs of life. All of the nobles were off in their manors hiding or trying to pretend that they had no knowledge of what happened last night, and all of the peasants were off doing who knew what. Preparing to kill the nobles, he supposed. The creepy atmosphere that permeated the town did nothing to allay his fears of being captured, so he continued to keep a watch for anyone that looked suspicious - the "I'm going to go and catch Hallen, torture him, and then brutally execute him" suspicious, not the "I just stole everything that noble had" suspicious. Without that distinction, most people would have looked suspicious.

If there had been any people, that was.

At the first sign of noise, Hallen ducked behind a stack of crates. Having survived all of the events of the days past, he was determined not to let himself get done in by carelessness. The men that passed by seemed to be guards of one noble family or another - but they wore no identifying crests to indicate their allegiance. Still, the fact that soldiers were patrolling the empty streets meant that the search for Hallen may still be going on; he would have to proceed even more carefully than he had before. The process of getting to the gate was going to take him all day, but he was fine with that as long as he made it out in one piece.

Throughout his sneaking, he ran into more groups of guards like the first. Most of them weren't paying attention to their surroundings, and were easy to dodge as long as he payed attention. There were a few roving bands of peasantry as well, but they seemed to barely notice where they were headed, let alone things that didn't concern them. Most of the people in the city seemed to be walking around in a daze after the events of the night - most of the people probably couldn't think that such a horrendous thing had happened, even at the hands of the nobles.