“Did you think I had forgiven you?” he heard the deer say as he was falling.
Somehow Roderick grabbed a stone and stopped his fall. He had avoided his death, but the hill was shifting farther. Roderick stood on the stone shaft, then sprinted towards the moving side of the canyon.
He caught another stone of the other side.
Taking a breath of relief, he climbed to the top of the canyon and began searching for those twenty men. The hill looked untouched by any other than those twenty men. He had seen no house till he saw a hut.
This must be their house. Roderick thought and went inside the house.
There were some old men in there. Old as time itself.
“Are you those twenty men?” Roderick asked and hoped they would say no.
“Now we are nineteen.” One old man said.
“But you are old.”
“Time doesn’t show mercy on anyone.” Old man said.
“How can such old men like you be legendary warriors?”
“So you have heard of our legacy?”
“Yes.”
“Who told you about it? Your father, grandfather, uncle-“
“Queen.” Roderick interrupted.
“You heard it from a young woman. We fought for her father. We helped him win many wars.”
“Can you win the Queen another war?”
“No, we have got no strength left in us. What is left of us now is just the legacy.”
He heard a noise from outside. Before he could make sense of the sound, some people ran in the house through the fragile walls. Roderick knew things had got serious when more men ran in there.
He recognized who they were in a second.
Those were the same people whom he had fed the deer’s fawn. If he knew this was going to happen, then he would never have wasted the innocent fawn’s life on such people. For some reason everyone of them looked to be in very good physical form.
They robbed sacks of rice, fruits and other edible things. Roderick took his sword out and began swinging it madly in the air, hoping to slice one’s head off.
He lost it when one of them was about to take an old man with him. Roderick roared and hacked them. He scared them to their limit when he cleaved two of them in half.
Those intruders picked up their dead companions and ran from there.
Once the chaos was over, Roderick took some time to breathe. He counted those people. He was glad to find out nobody was missing. None of them were hurt either.
“You can go now! We don’t want to have any word with you.” Old men threw their temper – tantrum at him.
He didn’t argue with them and left the desolated hut.
