The Thief (Tom) I

A young boy looked ahead towards his goal. His hair was jet black, and his eyes a dark brown. He was thin in frame, and small for his age of fourteen. He hardy knew the parents he once had, lost to the Green Sickness of 754AF, nine years ago. He had a new family now, though. And he needed to care for them by whatever means necessary, even if that meant crime.   The road ahead was clear. The merchants and shopkeepers walked around frantically, he could see. Desperate to organise their goods for the upcoming sales. Desperate to bring home coin to their families. Families...   His target was entering the town through the wooden gates. A cart full of fruit and vegetables of all sorts, but more importantly, there was lots and lots of gold there. Enough to buy a horse or two! Tom'Azolin had the oppurtunity of a lifetime! As long as he got the right timing. The gates were now closing. The town of Soruis had walls with stone gargoyles on each side of its great doors, shaped in the form of a Great Octogriff, the largest animal to fly in the skies. Tom had never seen one before, but he had heard from the other boys in the orphanage that they only came occasionally when it got too hot in the summers, and only in the plains of eastern Tzunar where the peoples of the plains lived sparsely. The gargoyles were at most a third of the size of the real thing, according to his childhood love Muria. One day, he hoped to see something as majestic as that, and ride one together with his love into the sunset.   But first, he needed that money, regaining his focus. Living as an orphan on the streets of Evergnon was a tough life, but he needed to be strong in his time. The Soruis brotherhood needed as much money as it could to feed the orphanage, as the supposed patron Levii Cunzilli, brother of the town's mayor, had spent all the money on feasts to fill his horse sized belly. Tom had been hesitant at first to break the law, but now it was his job.   And here was his biggest target yet. The cart jolted up as it went over the carcass of a dead goat, having been discarded by its owner. It was no wonder the aristocrats from the capital wouldn't dare lay their foot in here. It was a stinking pisshole of a town besides the centre. As Tom looked around for a chance, he snuck between the bushes between the wooden houses of the townsfolk and the Temple to Majestare, chief God of the Evergno pantheon. He now saw that there was not just one cart, but three! One of them tumbled to the floor as a wheel came loose! The vegetables all fell loose, as did chests of gold. Even the servant inside fell on his face underneath all of the goods.   Tom saw his chance. And he took it. He rushed with his knees crouched towards the open opportunity, as many, including the guards were too distracted to notice him. The vegetables were the primary concern of the guards. That left the cart with golden goods vulnerable. Looking from side to side, his mop of black hair obscured his vision to his right, but he pressed on.   Now it was there. He started picking up the various coins destined for the town centre. They came from the capital itself, by the look of the mint, which bore the royal insignia of King Alvir the Third, well known for his iconic braided beard, shaped like a trident. He grabbed them and stuffed them into his pockets. These would sell for quite a price, he thought. The orphanage could do much with these. If only-   He felt a rough but strong hand grab his arm. No   "I don't think so, boy!" The voice clearly didn't sound happy with him. Tom was yanked from his position and all the coins he had fell to the floor, only for the staff to start cleaning them up again. All except one, which had slid into his pocket. You can't be serious!   He cried out. "No! You can't! We need this! We-" he didn't feel there was a point in continuing it, though. He knew the price for trying to steal from supplies, especially ones coming straight from the capital. He lowered his hands. Here it comes, he thought. Tom had failed the only family he had left. Surely, they would never let him into their ranks again after this.   "Yes, that's right, boy! We'll take you to the town's Justice to see what to do with a little thief like you!" The man's face looked twisted and disfigured, as only a mother could love. He pulled Tom along by the hand. Tom looked back and saw the other guards restoring order in the mess of the crash, then turned back in fascination to the man who had him. "If you're done gawking at my face, I survived being doused in boiling oil by a mad lord! Can you say the same, little shrimp?" He of course referred to Tom's height, which was small even for a boy of his age. He sneered. "To think you could have stolen a shipment from the capital!" He let out a small laugh, which made Tom wince, before returning to his normal face of what appeared to be some suppressed agony. Leaving behind the fallen vegetables and coin, Tom said goodbye to freedom silently.   The office in which the town's Justice was held was already busy with a couple of men and a woman in the queue for some other crimes, of which Tom did not know or care. The guard with the blotched face-Blotchface!- he smirked to himself as he went past the others. Now the smiles died again, for what crime he had committed clearly exceeded the others of the day. Stealing from a cart sent from the capital had consequences. He had known that, but his brothers and sisters at the orphanage, and among the poor of Soruis, needed it. If he died today, he would at least have died trying to protect those he loved.   Blotchface through Tom to his knees in front of the desk. He scarcely dared to look up, but he could see the outline of an old man with a long nose like a crow's beak, whithered and scrawny in his build, wearing black robes like some reaper. How appropriate, he thought. To the man's side were two guardsmen, dressed in cloth and chainmail, carrying swords in their holster. The man moved in his seat.   "Well, what is the case for this boy?" asked the old man to Blotchface. "Or against, I should say." He clearly wasn't too passionate about his job, bored senseless from the petty cases that no doubt made up his career in a town in the rural west.   "This is no ordinary crime, good sir!" His captor said. "This little wretch tried to steal from a caravan sent from the capital! Almost succeeded to, if it hadn't been for me! That's surely a grave mistake if any!" He looked at Tom directly. "You could lose your hands for that, if I recall..."   The man got up. "Perhaps he will. But there is a better use for the boy. His determination and brush with success show promise. I think-"   Blotchface got somewhat angry, but the bodyguards of the old man got him to pipen down.   "The Evergno army is in need of new soldiers, even young boys like him. Now more than ever given what we are up against. It was humiliating enough selling land to the Dominion, we needn't risk our very kingdom to those barbarians in the north! This boy, this...Tom-Azolin..." he seems to have known Tom's name from the village archives-"would be better at use fighting our battles on the fronts so you can guard the towns!" The man grinned. “Why not let him be a squire for one of those ‘knights’ or whatever you youth call them?” Blotchface seemed annoyed with the Justice, but Tom was glad he had a possibility to live, and to not be spoon fed for the rest of his life. Now there was the further matter of what to do when he joined the army! “Uh...th...thank you, good sir!” He managed to choke out. It was true, being alive and whole was better than being a cripple on the streets. People like that didn’t tend to live long or happily at all. Now he at least had a chance to learn some new craft. Maybe one day, he would come back a ‘knight and lift the orphanage out of the dirt here! Or come back as bones. Or not at all...he was too worried about this dark future. He almost wanted to faint.   But he could not. Blotchface would not let him got one, the other was that he needed to move. As the man took him by the hand, he let go, and the guards pushed him towards the carriage leading criminals to their fates. The army was a profession one never truly got out of, he had seen what it did to men. Now he at least hoped he could do right by those he loved. Hopefully, it would only be against bandits or a rebellious lord, and not against the dreadful Jazyart to the north. But what else did Tom have right now, besides the future ahead of him?