freedom seires: book 1: the savior chp 2

Chapter 2
“Hey buddy. Wake up.” The boy gently shook Drake, trying to wake him. The sun had risen a few hours ago, and Drake still wasn’t up. “Come on Drake, wake up!” Again, the boy shook him, only to see Drake turn over and face the wall, sighing. The boy stood, and walked over to the small indent in the cave wall, where the only two pans the boys had were kept, and raised them up, about to clash them together over Drake’s head, when he heard him say something. He put down the pans as quietly as possible, and knelt down on his knees, leaning in. “I’m sorry.” Drake whispered, “I needed to save Scarlet.” Drake sighed, and said in his next breath, “I’m sorry I betrayed you.”  Drake sighed again, and whispered Scarlet’s name again.
The boy sat there for a moment, confused, and thought of what Drake had just said. Who was Scarlet? Why did he have to save her? And most importantly, who did Drake betray? He stood, picking up the pans and walked over to the fire, thinking about how little he knew about Drake’s life. Yeah, they had lived together for almost 5 years, but the past seemed like an ancient taboo, something both of them had never talked about, a silent agreement between them.
But it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t like the past could come back to hunt them, right?
Shaking his head, he began to cook breakfast with there meager supplies of food. He decided to wake Drake once the food was cooked. He reached for a small stick and placed the pan with the two cracked eggs in it over the fire, and began to poke them. He sat there; prodding those eggs, but couldn’t shake off that weird feeling like something was going to happen. Something bad.
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         The boys sat on two tree trunks around the small fire at the opening of the cave, talking. “So,” the boy said, “I can’t go into town for a while. Some soldiers caught me stealing your medicine.” Drake’s eyes widened, and said, with a mouth full of eggs, “Was old Slummy there?” The boy smiled, remembering the fat soldier who had called the other men chickens when they wouldn’t go into the woods, but refused to go in himself, and nodded. “Wow”, said Drake, shaking his head as the boy told him. “You’d think he’d have quit or something by now but no…” the boy nodded, and stared off into the distance, outside of the cave, and watched the waves from the ocean, hundreds of feet below them, crashing into the rock, remembering.
****
         The boy had been walking though the street, next to the east castle. He had been traveling for a few years now, and knew every ally-way of the whole kingdom, from the north castle with its snow covered towers, to the south rim of the forest. He went to the middle castle too, and spent a brief time in jail before escaping, and ran all the way to the west of the kingdom, and saw the slaves working, lifting heavy stone blocks, setting the foundation to the beginnings of the west castle.
         After a while of traveling, the boy had ended up in the east part of the kingdom, and found that he liked the hustle and bustle of the busy capital. He realized that not only did he go virtually undetected, but it was very easy to steal food and other items from the stalls along the castle walls. He had been there almost for two months, the longest he had ever stayed in one place, save for the wolf’s den.
         The boy had been living just outside the castle walls, sleeping in high trees, and under the carts filled with fruits when it rained. Every day he saw prisoners being dragged down to the gallows on both sides of the castle, in full view of everyone.  It made the boy sick to his stomach to see those mostly innocent people being killed for stealing a piece of bread. One day, the boy had woken up rather early, for it had rained last night, and if the men saw you sleeping under their carts, they would wave around a knife, yelling and screaming about cutting off his hand if they found him there again.
         The boy crawled out from under the cart, and reached up to the sky, and yawned. He hadn’t eaten in two days, and was dead tired. He was just about to go looking for some food to take (he was always carful who he stole from, always passing over the poor farmers and thieving from the richly clad merchants) and glanced at the castle gates, and saw that they were opening. Two soldiers were holding a boy with dark, dark brown hair and deep blue eyes. He was shirtless, and even from the distance, the boy could see that his back was open and bleeding. He was fighting off the soldiers, kicking and biting, trying to get away, screaming, “I’m sorry! Please, forgive me!!!” the soldiers just shook their heads and dragged him towards the gallows. The poor little boy, he couldn’t have been more then 11 and he was being sentenced to death. What could that little boy have done to deserve a punishment that severe? 
         Anger welled up in the boy as he saw the two soldiers lowering the noose around the boy’s head. He ran towards the gates just as they were closing, and rolled threw. He dashed over to the two men and grabbed on to one of their swords. He lifted the gleaming metal over his head and brought it down on the man’s wrist, not even looking to see the stump of the man’s hand hit the ground with a thud. He screamed in pain and grabbed his arm, looking at the ruby red fountain of blood pouring from his arm. The boy wasted no time and leapt up, arching over the boy, who was turning blue, and swiftly cut the rope, landing on the other side, facing the other man. The boy’s ran towards the soldier together, knocking him to the ground.  They both looked at each other, knowing that they had mere seconds to escape before someone had realized what they had done.
         “This way!” the rescued boy shouted, and pointed to a small hole in the wall that led out into the slums of the city. Together, the two boys ran towards the broken down homes, though the crumbling archways, on the rocky dirt road, and then into the shelter of the leafy green forest. They ran together, away from the soldiers, away from civilization, and away from a threat they didn’t even know existed at the time.
They ran for what seemed for hours until they made to the boy’s home in the shadows of the jagged mountain tops that marked the end of king Zarek’s kingdom and the beginning of the unknown land. It was there in that cave that the boy met his lifelong brother in all but blood, Drake. Drake told how he was taking from his camp with the elves and brought to the middle castle and met the king himself. He was sentenced to death, for treason, and was spent three months in the dungeons of the middle castle, only surviving on the food brought to him by a girl with fiery red hair who was under the king’s spell, but still helped Drake. After being beating and whipped, they brought him to the east castle to hang him, where, of course, he was rescued by the boy.
In those few short hours of escaping and those few minuets of Drake’s story, the two boys had already begun a friendship that would last them though anything, whether it is those close calls when the boys have been captured and escaped, or those small fights they would have over whose turn it was to get food in the winter. Their friendship could survive anything. Well, almost everything.