The Wrath Of Mool

Chapter 1 - The Beginning

Simon was a fair lad. He was fair of face, fair of hair and form, and fair in nature. The girls in his village school certainly approved of all this fairness - and Simon's lovely blue eyes, because they never missed an opportunity to bat their own eyelashes in his direction. Not that he noticed much; Simon always seemed to have his head in the clouds.

"My son is a dreamer!" Declared Simon's father, a robust and generous merchant of the tiny town. But he didn't really complain all that much, for he loved his son and watched as Simon stopped to pick a white rose from their neighbour's flowering bushes. He just sighed and said, "It is good that we are well off and Simon doesn't have to worry about where his next meal is coming from." And with that comment, Simon's father turned to toss a few coins to the children of a poor family that were making their way up the lane.

There were more and more of these poor people coming through the town lately. Rumours of war had been trickling from mouth to mouth, but no one seemed to be taking them very seriously. Even Simon's father, complacent in his rich red robes and red velvet cap with its jaunty green feather, felt there was very little chance that strife could reach their prosperous little corner of the land. If refugees took the trouble to plod all the way here, however, then the least he could do would be to share a little of his wealth and good fortune with them.

How soon was the good man to regret his attitude, for that very night, while the townspeople slept, an invading army approached. In the early morning light, the marauders entered the town like a tidal wave and commenced looting everything of value they could lay their hands on. Anyone who resisted the metal-clad bullies were cut down unmercilessly. Women grabbed their children and ran to hide with them in root cellars, closets and cubby-holes. Not all were successful and those who were unlucky enough to be caught in the open soon wished they had never been born.

Simon's mother was one of those women who rushed about trying to gather her children and belongings. After she had dragged him into their dusty wine cellar and bade him crawl beneath the great barrels she entreated him not to come out again until she returned with his older sister, who, Simon recalled, had been screaming from an upper-storey window when the soldiers had first begun vandalizing the town in the early light of dawn.

Simon, not wishing to incur his mother's formidible wrath, complied with her demands and gingerly crawled on his hands and knees to the murky space at the back wall of the cellar. There was a slot there behind the wine-tuns where the great barrels did not quite come flush against the wall. There he sat amidst the dust and the cob-webs, his back against the dank stone, listening to the faint sounds of tumult that drifted down into his dim refuge. He hoped his mother would come soon, for misery loves company and he was alone and afraid. Where was his father? Perhaps that good gentleman was even now attempting to negotiate a peace with the army's general; Simon's father was known far and wide as a master bargainer and negotiator of fair trade and business contracts. He was an elder on the town council and most likely this group of worthy gentlemen were even now deep in discussion over settlements and peace treaties.

Simon waited. Things grew quiet after awhile and he was tempted to crawl out and see what was going on. He was cold and stiff from sitting in the damp, but his mother's warning still rang in his head. She was not a woman to be crossed lightly. Just as he was considering going against her will anyway, there came a crash from the stairwell. The thumping of heavy boots sounded on the boards overhead as many feet ran across it.

Simon shrank back against the hard stones of the wall, trying to make himself as small as possible. Whatever was happening above, it was certainly not peaceful negotiations.

Involuntarily, he jumped and scraped the back of his hand on the nearest wine tun as the door to the cellar crashed open, splintering wood from its heavy iron hinges. Tentative steps on the stairs quickly turned into hurried thumping as the owner of the boots discovered the wine barrels lining the walls of the cellar. A rough man's voice shouted, "Hey, hey, hey! Look what we have here!"

"What have you found, Cedric?" Called another deep male voice from above, "Is it another wench hiding in the basement?"

"Something almost as good," Said Cedric to his friend as the other thumped down the wooden stairs in his heavy studded boots, "Maybe even better! Look!"

The other man whistled through his teeth as he gazed at the huge cache of wine. Some of the wine was in bottles, but most was in the large barrels that lined the stone walls, for Simon's father was the local wine merchant and the cellar held his inventory.

<em>And where is father?</em> Simon wondered worriedly. He dare not crawl out now, for his commonsense, which people perpetually told him he had none of, told him that these men were dangerous and not to be trusted. Simon knew that now they had discovered his father's wine cellar, things would only get worse, because like the foolish men at local tavern, they would drink the wine and get drunk. Simon knew that drunk men <em>liked</em> to fight. They liked to drink and drink wine until they fell into things and acted stupidly, eventually passing into a drunken stupor.

As he sat shrinking behind the big wooden barrels, more and more men thumped down the cellar stairs to investigate. He couldn't help jumping every time one of the men knocked the neck of a wine bottle off against a beam in order to slosh the contents down his throat.

Simon was scared out of his wits, but soon he began to form a plan: He would wait until the men were drunk and snoring. Then he would quietly crawl out from beneath the great barrels and sneak away to find his family.