Free The Book of Deacon by Joseph Lallo Page A

his
transparent excuse, Myranda was shaking her head.
    "I couldn't take your money. You have already
done so much for me. It just wouldn't be right," she said.
    "Well, if you say so," he said, placing a
hand on her shoulder. "Until we meet again."
    With that he turned to the woods, quickening
into a sprint that no man could match. Myranda watched as her
unexpected friend disappeared over the hill and into the forest.
Almost immediately, the loneliness closed in around her. She sighed
heavily and pulled her hood up into place, the long goodbye leaving
her ears badly stinging from the cold.
    The sigh turned to a startled gasp as she
felt a trio of ice-cold objects creep down her back. After
frantically tracking them down with her hands, she retrieved the
culprits. Three large silver coins, worth fifty coppers each. Leo
must have slipped them into her hood just before he left.
     
    Myranda placed the sneaky gift into the one
pocket that had not been worn through by overuse. With no company
to occupy her mind, Myranda focused on the unfamiliar jingling of
money in her pocket to distract her from the long road ahead. Not
unlike the rest of this war-torn land, the coins had a rather
troubled past.
    There had been a time, long before her own,
when the three kingdoms that had become the Northern Alliance were
still separate. Each had coins of their own. There were different
sizes, designs, and names. Then came the war. The reason for the
conflict between the vast southern kingdom of Tressor and the small
mining kingdom Vulcrest was lost to the ages, but hostilities soon
became such that Vulcrest could not hope to face the mighty foe
alone. The sister kingdoms of Kenvard and Ulvard were called upon
for aid. Before long, any distinction between the three kingdoms
was lost--as with nearly all aspects of life, the money was
stripped of its individuality for the sake of unity.
    Gone were the colorful, cultural names like
Dellics, Glints, and Ouns. Instead there were the four types that
remained today: copper pieces, half silvers, silver pieces, and
gold pieces. The likeness of kings and queens of the past were
hammered away, leaving the coins as plain and faceless as the
people who spent them.
    The aimless wandering of her mind had done
its job at least as well as the wandering of her feet. Before she
knew it, she was approaching a shoddy wooden wall around an equally
shoddy little town. Both were likely a remnant of the bygone age
when the three kingdoms were separate. In those days, forts such as
these dotted the landscape along the borders. Now most were left to
rot, and some were made into trading posts. Such was the case
here.
    A weathered and faded sign proclaimed the
frosty place to be Fort Wick. A few steps more took her past the
decrepit gate that had once held doors heavy enough to turn away a
battering ram. Now one was wholly missing, burnt during a
particularly harsh winter, no doubt. The other had dropped from its
massive hinge and buried its corner in the earth, never to close
again. The buildings, what few there were to speak of, were in
slightly better condition.
    At the town's center was a large building
surrounded by a handful of smaller ones. Here and there, the
ancient gray wood of the walls gave way to the brown and yellow of
new wood where the old had been replaced. Where once had been the
cots of dedicated soldiers now stood shelves of poorly-made tools.
A former armory held the flimsy wares of a leather smith. Most
importantly, in what had been a stable in the years past could be
found a market marked by a carving of crossed swords. Perhaps
inside she could relieve herself of the burdensome sword and gain
the means to reduce her burden further.
    Myranda hurried to the door and pulled it
open. Inside, a simple, smoky oil lamp cast its sallow light on
case after case of weapons of various types. An elderly man sat
behind the counter, lazily shaving pieces off of a wooden stake.
Judging from the mound of shavings on