Able Kennicot

This is a quick scribble of a disgruntled traveller called Able Kennicot. I'm thinking it would be an idea for a character in longer works, but this is just a draft. Criticism welcomed with open arms! Amaris.

Able Kennicot

With the dew from the meadow grass beneath him soaking into the back of his breeches, Able sat cross legged watching his meal. A large rat cooked far too slowly over his meagre camp fire for his groaning stomach to cope with.

He drew his cloak further around him, shivering, the water sloshing in the toes of his boots with every move he made. His legs ached, his rump sore from riding the most stubborn mare in all of Wyke and his black eye and fat lip a painful reminder of why he’d had to leave civilisation and a decent meal.

Stupid horse. If it hadn’t been for his mare none of this would have happened. Can’t just trot happily by can she? He looked up from the pitiful fire in the ring of stones to glare at the backside of his sable mount.

Two weeks previous, Able had bought Drayda from a non-too trustworthy horse dealer in Fenrith for more than the lazy beast was worth. At first there was a spring in her step, she was easy to command as all good horses should be.

After the first day she began chomping at the bit, turning her head to nip at Able’s legs and refusing to wear her saddle by sticking her gut out. As the week progressed she began ignoring him, moving only when she chose too, and heaven help him if she happened across a patch of buttercups along the roadside.

Then, yesterday evening, as they approached the gates of Atherton- a town already on edge from raids and merciless attacks from Grogans across the border- they had to pass a camp of hired mercenaries. But Drayda, an ex-performing horse, thinking it was a fair, galloped straight through the encampment to the space before the Sutlery rearing, whinnying and arching her fine neck like a warrior’s charger. Of course the mercenaries thought Able was some lunatic Grogan with his fair hair and green eyes and came to challenge him, spears steady and swords drawn.

Able, struggling to be heard over the jeering of the soldiers, the racket his horse was making and holding on to the reins for dear life at the same time, nearly had a heart attack when Drayda decided she was ‘dead’. Having been ‘killed’ by a spear that had come within two feet of her chest, she flopped onto her side. She almost crushed Able’s left leg with her bulk and she had laid there while two soldiers dragged Able to his feet, one now numb, shouting obscenities about circus fools keeping control of their beasts. They had punctuated this with blows and a razor sharp table dagger pressed against his throat before Drayda decided to get up.

It was only when a captain of these men ordered the soldiers to throw Able and his prancing pony out of the camp that they relented their assault. Fearing for his life – for he knew the soldiers were likely to be in the town as the sun went down- Able had dragged Drayda out of the camp, through the knee deep river that cut through the centre of Atherton and on past the grubby walls to the farmland beyond, half riding half leading her, until the watery sun peeked over the mountains in the distance.

So here he was, in the middle of a meadow, eating rat because he had been unable to replenish his stores in Atherton, cold, wet, bruised and grumpy. On top of that, he was already three days behind schedule. He returned his gaze to the flames and willed them to grow stronger and cook his breakfast quicker. Not that it helped, he was no mage after all.