The Road Vagabond

What they don’t tell you about the road life is how utterly boring it is. Sure the bards sing of high adventures, the muses sigh of grandeur, and the stories verse romantic tales about the ‘enlightening’ experiences of braving the dangerous unknown – all lies. You walk muddy countryside for months on end and pray your shoes stay dry enough for the thousandth inn you’ll derail yourself to – and that’s assuming you can even afford a space on the floor.
Oh that’s right – dungeons filled with riches? Ruins crusted with gold? Ha! Try carrying fleas for a month, or walking miles with wet soppy clothes (and I ain’t talking about rain either). Being a vagabond means a life of bread crusts for back breaking work. Worse still when you’re only seventeen years old, so most farmhands don’t really take you seriously enough to sow fields.
Good luck getting a job for that stone-cold, beer-spilt corner by the grungy side of the inn! Oh and I sure hope you keep your purse somewhere safe! Heavens! Sure would be a shame if some wise guy or two frisks your pockets while you dream of those ‘golden better days’.
Not that I had anything to look back to. My father left the homestead before I was born, my mother died of an illness, then the mayor of my town banished me because I apparently looked at his daughter funny. Hasn’t my life just been a hoot?
So, picking up what I could carry – I left for the road and never looked back. Been four years since I’ve trudged the dirt trail, now just stayin’ alive for as long as I can. Walk, eat, pray, sleep, walk, eat, pray, sleep; doesn’t get any more complicated than that.
Do I have bigger ambitions or dreams to aspire? Not really. Unless making money counts as a dream. I mean what else is there to life but making money, then spending it on whatever pleases you? Need food? Money. Need a roof? Money. Need pretty girls? Money. Money makes the whole world round, and don’t let those quasi-intellectual ‘philosophers’ and ‘poets’ tell you any differently. There is no deeper meaning to life than making it to the next day. That’s it. Then when it’s all over, just hope you prayed enough to the Watcher in your current life so you don’t burn in hell in the next.
Though I have to admit, there are some days when that gap to the Final Judgement seem just a neck hair’s tingle closer than what I’m usually comfortable with. Take for instance in my last job; when I had to cut Puff Shrooms for a plantation owner from the Brail Bog. There was never a day when the crocs didn’t come sniffing up from under the water to find my delectable bare-open legs just a nose-inch’s distance of a full chomp. Many close calls, let’me tell ya. Many close calls... Oh and the payment was abysmal. But it wasn’t like I had a choice either. Jobs are scarcest in the cold season.
But with the winter subsiding; job opportunities will start coming back, so I suppose I’m not as desperate for drakes as I’d usually be, in fact I often take it easier with some low-brow work to make it till the summer harvest. Now that’s when the real money begins piling up, assuming you’ve got the backbone for field work.
Through the spring however, I usually go out hunting, best time to rustle some critters is after their hibernation – gotta go out and make up for that big sleep after all! And the weather eventually settles down to a crisp in-between of winter and summer; not too cold and not too hot. But just comfy enough for the hunt and the hunted.
When such needs to be done I make contact with this old hunting lodge in the small town of Bakersfield just a mile north from the local Caster Academy. Magorum’s I think it’s called, but who knows – wizarding folk are complete nutters. I’ve met a lot of stiff-necked guys in my lifetime: Knights, Nobles, Scribes, Poets, but no one eats the honey-coated pavlova cake messier - than dam sodding casters. Hopefully my next hunt doesn’t place me even a mile from that obnoxious place… But who knows? Fate is a fickle mistress.
“Ah, Ollieboy!” Old William booms from behind the reception desk. The wall of trophies sneering me from behind him. It has certainly grown wider since I last saw it (as if the few taxidermies before weren’t unsettling enough). “Good to see you m’lad!” He rushes to embrace me. For a guy so adept at hunting bears, he can certainly hug like one.
“How was the Brail, Olster?” Says Gillard sitting by the fireplace, polishing his musket. “Them crocs didn’t bite too hard did they?”
I struggle to squirm from Old William’s grip enough to look at him, and when I do; I lift up my left leg from the carpeted stone; a boot dangled with the sole ripped off.
“They bit hard alright, but slow.” I smile, “Never caught the main course meal I’m afraid. Appetizers all winter.”
“Give’em a chance next year then!” He chuckles.
“Ha!” I scoff. “The contractor can stuff himself into the bog if he thinks I’ll be working for that swindling cheapskate again!”
Old William finally releases me. A big jolly smile on his face, his hand still slapping my back. “How have ya been lad?  What news on the road?”
“Well what’s to tell?” I say, scratching my head. “Snow’s melting, spring’s coming, sky is blue, the Glhams hate the Frays, the Empire’s evil, and the Watcher sits alone in heaven sipping bitterly to his failed creation, what else is new?”
Old William laughs and returns to his desk. Prepping up some new papers for me from the looks of it. “You come here for a job?”
“Well what else would I come here for?” I say. “I go wherever money’s to be made.”
“That’s m’boy!” He cheers, then points me to Gillard. “See that, Gill? A true entrepreneurial spirt this one!”
Gillard grins then returns to his polishing “Giv’im a week in a well-off tavern; and you’ll see that ‘entrepreneurship’ get to work alright…”  he whispers to himself, hiding a giggle.
“You want work?” Old William returns to me. “Well we got something recently that might just suit your level.” He withdraws a scroll from his drawers and hands it to me.
My eyes skim it quick. “A pest control job?” I say, a little uncertain.
“Easy enough, eh?” He says, “Just go in there and thin the rabbit population a bit till they’re no longer a bugger on the crops. Should be just right up your alley.”
I turn up to look at him. “I’m a hunter, William, not an exterminator.”
“What’s the difference?” He smirks. “It’s still technically a hunt - just on a smaller scale.”
My eyes slither further down the page, and then I see it…
“You want me to go to the Caster Academy?!” My voice squealed from the pitch. Dam puberty. I see Gillard over there just bursting tears over it. I wish his rocking chair would tumble over one of these days. “Hey! Shut up!” I cry.
“A hundred drakes” Old William interrupts, then stamps the contract. “A hundred drakes for a month’s work. The request is from the groundskeeper who needs a capable lad to patrol the outer perimeter of the Academy grounds. Just thin the rabbits till they think twice about breaking into the school’s greenhouses. The old git should have more details when you arrive.” He hovers the scroll in front of me. “Do I have your signature or not?”
 Now usually I would reject such a deal, considering it entailed more than one target – in fact we’re looking at possible thousands here. Then there is the matter of the hunting grounds being at the Caster Academy itself. But I suppose I don’t have to talk to the little curse-flingers if the work is outside the perimeter, right?
And then of course that one hundred drakes doesn’t sound like a bad offer either…
I let out a hasty breath. “Got any more contracts I could-“
“None” He says. “The other lads got here earlier than you and took the best ones. We got nothing else till next month.”
Damn.
“So unless you want to sleep countryside for the next four weeks…” He dangles the contract like a bait on a hook. “I’d suggest you take it.”
I sneer him. “Well what’s the point if I’ll be waiting a month for the payment anyway-“
“Lodging included.” He smiles.
“Done”