4 Asking For Help

Two horsemen reached the top of the quiet hill and looked out over the territory that opened up before them, an extensive valley of fields and properties, captured by some modest huts, something that could be called a village.

  "It can't be," said the first traveler.

  "The comrade back there at the inn said he was," commented the other.

  "Eight miles just down the road in the east, and you'll see it when you reach the top of the Hill.

  "If you own a cavalryman's property. If you've been here, we would see, believe me." They saw a man alone down there, pushing a small number of plots into which the territory was divided.

  "Let's ask him." They rode down the rocky slope carefully to avoid rocks and slippery parts. Many sections of the interior of Albaran were monitors and pleasant to ride; this was not one of them.

  A wrong start on the ground could mean a horse's broken ankle and perhaps the horse's broken neck. When you reach the bottom of the valley, gallop to the man who works in the field, opening a deep ditch on land with a plow. Founded with heavy iron, it seemed more suitable to be pulled by a horse, but the man either pushed without help, as if he knew no other way.

  The two mounted men exchanged amused looks. Farm helpers who were not known for their intellect, but who did not even know how such a basic tool? The surprises never end.

  The peasant had his back to a hill and, consumed by his arduous task, seemed indifferent to the horsemen who had just arrived behind him, even when the horses snorted loudly.

  "Hey! You over there! The plow stopped.

  The peasant turned and raised his hands up to protect his eyes from the sun, like cleaning or dirtying what is being carried. He looked like an especially uncivilized type, or a dirty face. Long hair in a fibrous, tousled tangle.

  "What," he asked. The two horsemen exchanged another look, this time not amused, but irritated. Doesn't that peasant recognize the uniforms? A royal insignia on the tunics? Which, he said was the first rider.

  "Is that kind of a commoner addressing two of the king's men?" The peasant took a step forward, towards a sunshine forum. Get you to see them better

  "Ah. There you are"

  The knights expected some gesture of respect or humility to follow the perception of who they were, but none of this happened. The peasant just stood there, closing his eyes to them, as if an original question was still paired in the air. Well, and that was at that moment, or the second horseman spoke.

  "Did you know that the plow is to be pulled by a horse?"

  "Of course, I'm not an idiot," said the peasant. "My water is sick. Belly pain."

  The first rider was getting impatient. "We are looking for someone"

  "I must know that those carrots were suspect."

  "Stop talking. Where is Sir Baltazar's property?" The peasant laughed to himself. "I wouldn't call it property."

  "So, you know the man" turned and pointed to the far side of the field where he worked. Underwater smoke from a modest farmhouse, like the village banks ahead.

  The two horsemen look at a farm and are perplexed, with the first spore or the rider to approach, looking to the side of the impatient, "We are not to be trifled with, friend."

  "No kidding. That is his home."

  Then the second horseman spoke again. "That house is too withered to be home to any member of the cavalry."

  "Well, to be honest, Baltazar also owns this field, and this one over there, and the one over there," said the peasant, altered

  "Everything is rich land, has crops. If I ask what I think, it's not bad."

  "Sir Baltazar, peasant!" Scolded the first horseman. "Pay attention when referring to a Kingdom Knight."

  "And not just any knight," added the second.

  "The greatest of all knights" Yes, I heard it as stories, "he said or said, who looked tired too.

  "Great exaggeration for the most part." The first rider finally left. He dismounted and marched towards the man, starting to look threatening.

  "Now, pay attention, codes. I've heard too much ..." The sun, still moving over a hill, now shines its light on a golden pendant, worked in the shape of a snake, hanging from a leather cord around the peasant neck. Its design was simple, but familiar to every man and boy sworn in the king's service. That same medallion to be seen by all who pass through the army houses in Libra, in a painting that hung in its main hall. It was pictured hanging from the neck of Mr. Baltazar the Savage.

  Knight of all knights. The man who saved King Afonso's life and changed course at the Battle of Galileo, and with that the whole war against the southerners.

  As the knight's legs faltered, and for a moment, he thought they might give in completely. Instead, he dropped to one knee on the floor, leaning his head in front of the face of the dirty face.

  "Sir Baltazar, please accept my humble apologies.

  "Ah, shit," exclaimed the second knight through his teeth. He quickly dismounted and knelt beside his colleague.

"This camp is too forbidden to help," said Baltazar, who, despite the post, is never comfortable with the sight of one man overwhelming himself in front of another. All men were equal in the eyes of the Divine, so why not in the eyes of men too?

  "Get up."

  And they stand up, looking at that dirty peasant with the kind of reverent admiration normally used in cases and situations, "I apologize," said Baltazar as he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the dirt from his hands.

  "But long days in the countryside can get tedious, and I have to find my fun where I can. Now, what does Afonso want?" Baltazar left the field without air and headed for home when the horsemen set out on the way they came.

  It was still early and there was a lot of land to sow now. As a rule, he had little time for the orders of kings, but Afonso was more of a king than a friend, and another father for Baltazar than he could repay. And so, Baltazar, despite hating the idea of ​​capturing weapons again, and that was certainly Afonso's only goal or summoning, knew that he could not be refused.

  As a young man, Baltazar was an apprentice blacksmith, instructed to forge a sword and leave the fort, but not to wield one. This was for others.

  The mere thought of violence causes your stomach to turn over like a fish squirming in your belly. Like all Albaran, for creators like Eternals, but his father had also encouraged Baltazar to think for himself, and thus take the sacred teachings or the services. Do what you knew from the Heavenly Scriptures, a single verse will always speak in Baltazar more than any other: Love all living beings, as you would love yourself.

  It is not desirable for any man to have his hand raised as he does not raise his hand against another man. However, even the southerners arrived. He had been brought up in his hometown, a village called Frangoforte. Bruma is just a few miles from the southwest and it was there, when Baltazar was fifteen, the southern plunderers hit, tearing down large murals that the ancients used before, recovering a city for themselves, killing anyone who hasn't finished or common sense to escape.

  Baltazar still managed to remember the displaced and wounded people crossing Frangoforte, horribly burned, with whole limbs missing, mothers still carrying the bodies of their babies who were trampled or thrown against walls by southerners who passed across the sea.

  Baltazar refused to protect these views. I wanted to see although I didn't understand the suffering I witnessed, I knew that I saw it as a back, try the finger that was not real it would be somewhat irresponsible. And I knew that those horrors can be easily affected. I just didn't realize what it would be like soon. The Southerners arrived in Frangoforte the following week. An assault group sent to capture those who fled the found city or village of Baltazar on the way and, as its nature was to destroy everything that was seen ahead, they set it on fire. Baltazar barely made it out alive, passing through an open window at his mother's insistence while Southern thugs there hammered on the door. Escape a moment before they burst into the house.

  It corresponds to a forest or a faster capture. without looking back. Therefore, he did not see the fate of his mother and father, nor his four younger brothers, too small to run. But his imagination did well in the service, and even years later he was unable to think about it, except when old memories came spontaneously, in nightmares.

  After escaping the destruction of his village, Baltazar clandestinely hitchhiked a merchant's car, until he was discovered and expelled. After that, he walked. There was no destination in mind, nowhere to go.

  Where the southerners were not, they were already good for him. You lost count of the weeks you traveled alone, sleeping by the side of the road, eating anything you could find in the forest or, on a good day, anything that fell - or had a helping hand to fall - from a passing wagon. One day, I asked a passenger who was there and found that he was walking to Wilts.

  Followed by a small town and, after demonstrating his skills with hammer and tongs, it was opened by the local blacksmith. He went on to earn a living by making agricultural tools and horseshoes for horses, and, as time passed, an increasing number of swords.

  Afonso's war against the southerners was not going so well, so they said, and there was a need for weapons to equip men from all counties, under pressure to join the army.

  It was a blacksmith's job to check the weight and balance of each sword while it cooled the forge, but Baltazar always invented an excuse to pass this task on to other apprentices. Even holding a sword; the thought of crossing a man with one of these things or making him sick. Try to say this to the king's recruiters, when reached in the city to gather all the men physically able to find, but all he got was saved in the ear and requested the display as barracks in Chippe over the weekend or to be marked as a deserter. Baltazar considered the options and thought for a moment about running away.

  But he knew about the persecutions, including the armed forces that defy the king's summons, and are not encouraged to face another long flight, much less the punishment if captured. And so he arrived at Chippe on the last day before he was declared a deserter. He was given a uniform and a wooden sword for training and running - not allowed in simulated combat.

  In times of peace, their training may have followed a less pressured pace, but southerners were advancing on all fronts, and there was little time for anything else, with no new shorts being released in the midst of the skirmish and hoping they could follow or learn to develop it in a short time.

  Even a fake sword looks horrible in your hand, but Baltazar found that, although he had no desire to fight, it certainly had the same meaning. More than one way - an instinct. On the first day on the training ground, he went straight to the weapons master, a bearded soldier with a barrel chest and more years of experience in fighting what Baltazar had life on the face of the earth.

  Armed only with a blind wooden sword, fighting the ferocity that the teacher ended up falling on his back, surprising. The other recruits cheered and shouted, but Baltazar was more surprised than everyone else, it was as if some people had captured the arm of the sword, from his entire body, propelling him forward. In those few seconds, he becomes someone else, someone horrible, brutal and independent. In other words, exactly the type of person your superiors were looking for.

  Although there was little artistic talent on the way to Baltazar to fight, there was a savage purity about him. He fought more like a southerner than like an albaran, a fact that over time would freeze or blood both. The Southerners had a name for men like Baltazar, men who fought and killed without fear, mercy or grace. Berserker.

  The nickname soon caught on. In all ranks of Chippe he became known as Baltazar the Savage. Baltazar hated the nickname, but neither did the respect that went with it. No one else gave them any soups. Instead, from there, Baltazar was observed close to his coaches, marked as one of the few to have something special that could be used as a great advantage on the field. When a time of battle comes, and it will inevitably come to him and others as he keeps him close to the king to offer greater protection.

  The battle came earlier than expected, without the deep cold of May winter, and on Kings night, no less Baltazar and other captains were eating the rest of their Christmas rations on the night the southerners burst through Chippe's walls. Alarm alarms went off, pulling soldiers out of bed: there, with openings etched in the murals and tearing down the gates of Albaran fortress. Officers were rushing to the barracks room for the maximum movement of men who entered the world, a sergeant who knows Baltazar or security by the collar sent-direction of his young comrades.

  That was when someone sent and saw a personal guard, where Afonso's people and a troop of heavily armed men were taking the king to safety outside the first time that Baltazar had seen Afonso, although he thought they had only seen him once before. looking at the pair of parapet drills. But there were no mistakes this time, Baltazar was just a few meters from the king when the man was removed from his sessions, having been awakened from his sleep with a liquid of cold water.

  "Baltazar, come on, boy" Baltazar's weapons master, and the man who attacked and dropped his back on the first day of training, waved at him urgently. When Baltazar feels like the strings of a sword hilt open against his hand.

  It looked very heavy that like fake wooden swords they were practicing with. He looked down and saw a metal touch up an image of the torches. The first real sword he ever held with a soldier.

  "Stay with the king! Stay with the king!", Roared the master of arms and pushed Baltazar along with the rest of Afonso's company while pressing the king down the corridor.

  Everything was happening so fast. Outside, you could hear the children of battle - the crack of metal with metal, the crackle of fires, the screams of wounded and dying. Children that Baltazar had not heard of since fleeing his village three years earlier. It was there that Baltazar killed the first man.

  You resumed Afonso's protective group when you left the corridor to the cold of the courtyard. Baltazar's first thought was how cold or how intense and how he wished he had time to capture warmer music before being dragged into a room.

  Then he heard a battle cry that made his blood clot and he turned to see the southern giant advancing on him, his face hidden behind a long braided beard and a battered metal helmet. The warrior was undoubtedly twice the size of Baltazar, and looked more like a "bear" who had learned to walk on two legs.

  But that was all the observation that there is time to do before Sulisra is on him, striking with an advanced hammer that was the most unlikely weapon of war that Baltazar had ever seen - and he was often forged. Baltazar jumped back, avoided the first attack, but was more southern than the suggested size, and the second blow came too quickly for Baltazar to anticipate.

  This time, he only managed to dodge halfway before the hammer hit him on the shoulder and knocked him to the floor. He looked up, dizzy, to see the great bear-man advance, menacingly, hammering over his head, preparing him for the killing blow. But Baltazar had not let go of the sword. He struck low, cutting deep into the southerner's ankle.

  The Southerner lost and dropped to one knee, dropping the hammer. He pulled a knife from his belt, but at this moment it was Baltazar who surprised him with his speed. He jumped to his feet and struck with a sword in the air, like a farmer cutting wheat with a scythe. Activate or southern at the base of the neck and bury the bottom right in the throat.

  When the giant blood splashes on the cobblestones, Time has stopped slowing down, and Baltazar shows that he was curious as black blood, not red, in the pale moonlight. Then time returned to normal speed and Baltazar pulled the sword back. The movement dug up a necklace from the southerner and took it to the ground. Baltazar stepped back to prevent the blood from running out of his boots.

  The pooled liquid slid in the direction. Then he ran to catch up with King Alfonso and his men. The "bear" was the first man Baltazar murdered in battle and was far from being the last. Many more came in the following months.

  Afonso and his company, along with the rest of those who managed to escape the disaster at Chippe, recommended for the island of Athel, in the south, near Somer. The islet offers a bottleneck that protects the type of frontal attack suffered by Chippe and gave Afonso time to regroup his men. Not that there were many left to regroup; most had been killed or captured, and a small force that remained was barely able to defend itself, let alone a counterattack. But Afonso refused the execution, even after a crushing defeat and with few resources at his disposal. He sent a message to all the villages and towns nearby, ordering that the men organize themselves according to their standard. And so it did. After several months, rebuilding his army, Afonso took back a camp and faced the full power of the Southern horde in Galileo.

  It was supposed to be a bloody morning, not least for the young Baltazar, who, from the first blood arranged in the battle against the "bear", discovered that he had not only a talent for killing, but also felt pleasure. After Chippe's downfall, the southerners pursued the army in Afonso's retreat for half the Wilt until finally stopping the hunt. Along the way, there were several bloody skirmishes, in which Baltazar demands more southern heads.

  With each battle, it was as if some intimate savage who remained asleep in general, followed and took control until a fight was over. After all his maturity, Baltazar was unable to feel anything but remorse for the lives he had taken. But when he was in the middle of the fight, a bloody sword in his hand, it was as if he had been born to do that, nothing more.

  No one who fights with him, who witnesses this transformation, could disagree. And, as time went by, or with the nickname of Baltazar, given as a joke back there, the last day in the training yard, he started to look like comrades in arms fully authorized. But that day, in Galileo, they saw something completely different. Baltazar had already killed at least twenty southerners in battle - a real sign on his board has now completely disappeared under a thick layer of southern blood - when he realized that King Afonso was nowhere to be seen.

  Lost in the furor of the massacre, he had broken a rule his weapons master had given him: Stay with the king!

  Examine a battle, striking any unfortunate southerner who has lost the reach of his sword, until he sees or reigns over his horse. Even fifteen meters away, Baltazar managed to realize that Afonso was encrypted. The Southerners were gathering in their position, taking down a personal guard, getting closer and closer to the man Baltazar had sworn to protect.

  Baltazar moved forward in fury and reached or not at the moment when a powerful southerner followed him with furs and chain mail dropped Afonso from the mount. With the king defenseless on the ground, the Southerner raised or ax, preparing the fatal blow. That was when Baltazar entered the fray, piercing an opponent's chain mail with a sword. The Southerner slid from Baltazar, dead, while three more moved to finish the job he had started.

  Baltazar, panting, took a defensive position between the Nordics and their king. The first man to attack quickly: Baltazar deflected the sword from the Norseman and cut him like the enemy's back with his sword. The second and third launched against Baltazar, seeking to improve his chances. What happened, but not very well. Baltazar crossed the sword through the open mouth of one of them, but when the blade got stuck behind the man's skull and he didn't want to let go, he left and advanced unarmed on another opponent. The man carries a rustic rustic, little more than a heavy piece of wood with inlaid iron tips, but deadly or quite, mainly at the distance of a weapon. Baltazar, driven by the warrior spirit that owns the battle, knew that his best chance was to get closer.

  He hopes that Southern thug prefers a big, heavy blow, dodged under him, and then jumped on the man, knocking him over. The Southerner was even stronger and undoubtedly prevailed in a hand-to-hand fight, but Baltazar would not let that go. He pulled a small dagger from his boot and entered the barbarian's right eye, deep or enough to pin the man's head to the ground. Baltazar fell backward, exhausted.

  More of Afonso's soldiers are now gathering beside the king, surrounding him. Two men helped Afonso to his feet. None did the same for Baltazar. He did not experience the encounter; for them, he was just another ordinary man in his childhood, unworthy of his concern.

  But someone had noticed Afonso. When escorted to a safe spot, the king does not take his eyes off Baltazar, the young man who has just saved his life, Afonso goes on until a great victory in Galileo, and a war has turned after that.

  The king tracked the southern horde and chased the surviving crowd to Chippe, where the other southerners were stationed. With King Sulista Belial isolated inside, Afonso saw a chance to bring them down once and for all. So, with his entire strength spread across Chippe's walls, he began a slow siege. After two weeks, the southerners were starving, their desire to resist a problem. In desperation, Belial pleaded for peace and Afonso offers the terms that would bring the war to an end.

  After the triumphal return home, the first order of the day was sent to the young infantryman who saved his life in Galileo. Baltazar had no idea why he qualified for the cut, and was surprised when he said to help. Then, I felt the difficulty of touching Afonso's sword first touching one shoulder, then or the other.

  "Get up, Mr. Baltazar," said the king. And the young man, who in the past had sworn never to raise a sword, looked like a knight.

  Baltazar was an ordinary man with no noble heritage. Explain that all knights must have a coat of arms to identify their home. With few heraldic precedents that inspire, Baltazar selects a childhood memory as a symbol of his home. Her father or daughter, as a boy, identifies all species of beetles, insects and curious snakes, and the favorite of the Baltazar era or a small snake with red and blue scales without poison. His father explained that his scales become strong and resistant to all kinds of hostile conditions Baltazar, who knew the hard life of a year, liked this and also liked to know what the snake's favorite pastime was collecting manure. And that was how, years later, pondering the fact that he was not just another commoner, but a knight of the kingdom, he thought of the perfect way to remember the first modest ones. Who could be more humble than a snake that spends its days buried in half shit?

  As soon as Baltazar got a coat of arms for which his house can be known, everything needed for an Afonso house. He granted the opportunity to choose castles and land across the kingdom, but Baltazar did not accept any of them. Instead, select whether a house and a clod of earth where you can grow turnips and carrots, and perhaps find a woman to marry and make a family and God so desirable, maybe even see how you can raise a child or a mother daughter but Baltazar did not ask for anything that is not yet deserving. In his mind, everything that was done to kill men in battle and he saw no reason to be rewarded for it.

  When Baltazar passed his wife's door, Gwen surprised the oven where she was cooking soup.

  "Came back early," she said. "Did you forget anything?"

  My God, what a nice smell or that soup, Baltazar thought when the aroma was reached. Of all the reasons for choosing Gwen as a wife, her culinary skills are only in second place. Well, maybe third, think with yourself.

  "What is it" Gwen or realized that she wanted to hear something.

  "I forgot, just for a moment, that I will never pay my debt to Afonso"

  Gwen didn't seem to like anything related to the phrase because her hands on her waist and she frowned.

  "Please don't make that face," said Baltazar as he sat down.

  "Can you give me some soup?"

  "It's not ready yet," said Gwen, without relieving it. What do you mean?

  "Those horsemen I saw on the hill, were the king's men"

  "He summoned me to Libra."

  "And you, of course, said no"

  "I couldn't say that. Not after everything he did for me. I should at least go over there and see what he wants."

  Gwen came around the kitchen table. It was getting bigger with the growing child being born in just a few months. So Baltazar was outside, without a plow, despite the water being sick. When his son was not born in any way, Baltazar knew that he was a boy who did not want the food to be lacking, none of the things that Baltazar lacked as a child. He would be the son of a knight.

  Perhaps Baltazar would ask Afonso for that castle, after all, so that his son could grow up in it.

  "You took a step back," said Gwen seriously.

  "Always take a step back. Afonso is in debt, not the other way around. He died dead if it weren't for you"

  "I just did what I had sworn to do," replied Baltazar.

  "What any soldier determined in my position. But Afonso had no one to give me the title of knight, nor did he prove me a lifetime the way he did. See everything I have, more than I ever dreamed. My home, my land "

  He created the table and took his wife's hand.

  "My wife, one of the most beautiful in the world"

  "Save your flattery," said Gwen, although the faintest hint of a suggested smile is praise will have an effect,

  "I'm sure Afonso didn't give it to you."

  "True, but I have no way of winning a horse."

  "I didn't even know you're a knight when you accept me"

  "If I weren't, I would never have the courage to propose, he said, close enough to kiss her. And then he kissed her.

  They kissed and made love, and later Baltazar got a soup, and they sang together by the fireplace

  "Don't think ...", began Gwen, looking up from the bowl, "... that some nice words and a quick lying can be bought. You won't disappear in any campaign. I want you here when the baby is born, Need to you here. "

  "Who said anything about the campaign?" Asked Baltazar.

  "Do you think I'm a fool? Why else does Afonso send for him? Hear rumors about the king in Nortumbias. They say he's almost dead, and that southerners can rise again at the hands of a new warlord."

  "There are so many rumors," said Baltazar. But Gwen either knew well enough to know that, while perhaps she wished it were true, she did not believe it. She made a hand and took her husband.

  "Baltazar, look at me. If you are a friend, but your wife and son are here." She landed in another hand on her bulging stomach.

  "I want me to promise, here and now, that I won't allow them to dispatch to a new war against the southerners."

  Baltazar opens her hand tightly, looking into her eyes. "I promise. Satisfied." Gwen smiled and went back to the soup.

  "I'm sure there is nothing at all," he said.

  "Maybe Afonso burned another batch of cakes and wanted to borrow to be a new chef." Gwen laughed and kissed him on the forehead, standing up to get another bowl of soup for the two of them.

  Early the next morning, Baltazar left the house with a saddle and provisions on his shoulder for a long day of riding. He opened a stable door and his Polly water opened to a gloom inside.

  "How are you today, old woman?" He asked. Polly did not react until Baltazar took a saddle off his shoulders and fitted it on the animal's back. She hit a hoof and snorted, unhappy.

  "Ah, stop complaining," said Baltazar as he ate a handful of oats.

  "He already had his day off yesterday. Today, with a stomachache or not, we are going to ride. We are going to see the king. And it looks like his carrots are better than ours."