Chapter 1: A new adventure begins
Damian Artois was not an idiot, on the contrary, he was someone far above average in terms of intelligence. At 19 he graduated with a double degree in mechanical engineering and naval engineering, soon got a job at one of the best naval companies in France and rose through the ranks like a rising plane but just as he was about to reach the top he himself cut his own wings.
At 25 years of age, within weeks of being promoted to COO of the company, Damian resigned; something for which he was labeled an idiot by all of his friends. The young Artois never gave his reasons for leaving his job, in fact he never spoke about it. Just two months after he resigned, the yacht in which the CEO of the company, accompanied by a dozen top executives, sank in the middle of the Mediterranean. Apparently the yacht had a manufacturing defect.
At the news Damian shrugged, when his friends told him how lucky he is (since if he hadn't resigned his boss would have expected him to attend that party since all the top dogs of the company were invited) he only said that even If he were to be still working at the company, he would not have attended cause he never liked company parties. His friends accepted his answer and they all went on with their lives.
The subject did not come up again until two years later when the terrible news was discovered: that company was part of a human trafficking network. Those same friends couldn't discuss that news with Damian as he had already been dead for a few weeks by then.
Damian's death was a mystery in itself because although he died when lost control over his car and crashed into the sea, his body was never found and the strangest of all was the location of the incident: Alexandria, Egypt. No one knew what Damian was doing in Egypt or how a man who was known to be a very cautious driver ended up crashing his car.
Years later, after careful investigation, it was discovered that the human trafficking group the company was a part of is the same group that kidnapped and later murdered Elysia Artois, Damian's little sister. That group had its headquarters in Alexandria and the same day Damien died their headquarters were blown by a bomb, all the members who had not been in the headquarters were found murdered in different parts of the city. Many had been shot, others stabbed, and some beaten to death.
The threads were connected and the puzzle solved. The questions that remained were: How did he do it? Was he working alone? Is he truly dead?
Those questions remained unanswered, since the only one who could answer them is no longer in this world.
Where is Damian you ask? Nowhere, for he is dead and from his ashes a new life was born.
***
"Achoo!" A five-year-old boy sneezes.
The boy has short curly red hair, some say his hair looks as if someone had taken the still-smoldering flames of a hearthfire and spun them by hand.
("A blessing from the Smith" his mother said)
"Are you alright boy?" Asked a man in his mid twenties.
"Yes, father." The boy looked at his father with his bright blue eyes and nodded.
"Alright, make sure you bundle up. Spring has just started but the nights are still cold, I don't want you to catch a cold." His father ruffles his hair and turns to the field.
Father and son are in a green meadow surrounded by forests on some sides and a stream with some remains of ice not yet thawed running through the middle and to the forest.
"The Lord wants us to transform this meadow into fields of crops before Smith`s Day"
Smith`s Day is a holiday celebrated in honor of the Smith on the first day of the sixth Moon of the year.
"That is only 4 Moons away!" The boy looks around the field calculating the size of it. "It's impossible for the two of us to do it. Just tilling the land would take us at least two years! We also have to cut down the groves and clear the land."
In some areas of the meadow there are small groups of trees, shrubs and other weeds.
"We also have to build a bridge over the stream." His father thoughtfully rubs his chin.
"Lord Roxton is mad if he thinks we can turn this meadow into fields of crops ourselves in less than half a year." The boy crosses his arms and kicks the ground.
"Don't talk about our Lord like that, boy." His father grabs him by the ear.
"Ouch!"
"If any of Lord Roxton's men heard you call him a madman they would do more than pull your ear." His father scolds him firmly.
"Fine! Fine!" The boy raises his hands in surrender and after giving him a warning look his father lets go of his ear. The boy takes two steps away from his father and rubs his reddened ear, muttering to himself.
"What was that, boy?" The man frowns at his son.
"Nothing, father."
"Good." The father turns to the field. "Lord Roxton has ordered every man in the village to work to turn this meadow into fields of crops."
"Even with everyone working together it's still an almost impossible task."
"Almost, son. Almost impossible, if we work from dawn to dusk as the Father dictates the gods will be kind to us and we will meet the deadline." The father places his hand on his son's head and ruffles his curly hair. "Come on, Gawain, we have to get back to the village. We have to organize the men and start working as soon as possible."
Gawain followed his father distractedly, he is still calculating how long this project will take.
`With the tools available in this world it will take at least five months. The plow drawn by oxen is slower than a snail, if I built one of steel- No. Don't be stupid Damian, in this world if a child showed a fraction of my knowledge he would end up being branded as a devil or witchcraft.`
Damian Artois was reborn as Gawain of Greenwood in the year 252 AC in the north of the Reach.
`A song of Ice and Fire, a Song of Misery and Madness would be more appropriate. Why couldn't I have been born in a more modern world? I would have settled for the world of the Witcher, of course they have monsters and such but they also have magic and a society at least 4 centuries more advanced than the Westerosi. I might have learned magic, and even gained the ability to travel to other worlds! Instead I am a peasant in a world that will be overrun by ice zombies in less than half a century. Grand, just grand.`
Gawain is taken from his thoughts by his father, who picks him up to cross the stream.
"Father! I'm not a baby! I can cross by myself." He protests with a pout.
"Aye, aye." His father ignores him and jumps from one stone to another, carefully avoiding the still half-frozen areas. "The last thing I want is for you to fall into the water, or worse, hit one of the rocks."
His father is a strict but fair and protective man, much better than his old father - who barely gave him a glance after leaving his job. Apparently wealth was more important than morality, the old Mr. Artois would have preferred his son to work for a company full of monsters than to be "a good for nothing unemployed millennial" (his words).
Gawain absently wonders how his father would have reacted if he knew that the company was part of the group that took little Elysia from them.
He quickly dismisses those thoughts before a familiar anger flares up in his heart again.
`They say that revenge does not heal wounds, and they are right, but damn it felt good.`
***
Greenwood is a village of almost three hundred inhabitants, it is located on the banks of a river with a forest surrounding it. On the other side of the river there used to be another forest but the locals turned the forest into fields of crops several centuries ago.
Most of the buildings are built of wood with a stone foundation, upon entering the village the smell of fish fills Gawain's nostrils. The river is always teeming with fish and the local fishermen make the most of that, setting up fishing nets in various places and flooding the market every day with fresh fish.
Father and son walk down the main street of the village towards the mayor's house. The street is somewhat muddy from regular use and on either side are various shops and stalls. More than one person greets them when they see them go by, father and son return the greeting but do not stop to talk.
"Gawain, go home. I'll talk to old Eric by myself."
Gawain thinks of protesting, wanting to be part of the discussion but quickly remembers that to the world he is just a five year old, one quite smart but a child nonetheless.
Not wanting to risk his peaceful life, he nods and says goodbye to his father who continues towards the mayor's house; Eric lives in a house at the end of the main street overlooking the river, in the southeast part of the village.
Gawain turns around and begins to head home, his house is north of the village almost on the outskirts of it, near the blacksmith and sawmill.
As he passes in front of the sawmill that is located on the river bank (using the river current to function) he stops and greets Ralof, owner of the sawmill and his great-uncle on his paternal side.
The sawmill is a large building with no walls, with stone and wooden pillars supporting a blue tiled roof. There are two conveyors carrying huge logs ready to be made into boards or whatever else customers have paid for.
"Gawain, my boy. What are you doing here alone? Didn't you go with your father to inspect that meadow?" Ralof looks at him with blue eyes almost identical to his own.
"Yes, father went to talk to the mayor."
"Gareth went to talk to old Eric?" Ralof snorts. "I wonder how that will go."
"Eh?" Gawain looks at him confused.
"You do not know?" Ralof gestures for him to come closer and crouches down next to him. "You see, my boy, your father was supposed to marry Eric's girl once."
"Father was engaged to Genna?"
"Aye."
"What happened?"
"Your mother, my boy. Marian moved to Greenwood and from the first time he met her, your father couldn't take his eyes off her," Ralof laughs. "A real beauty that Marian, she had all the lads following her around like puppies. Your father was the lucky one to get her attention."
Gawain agrees with his great-uncle, his mother is a true beauty with her fiery red hair and emerald green eyes that always shine with warmth and love.
His father could not be called the most handsome man in the world but he is quite attractive and in very good physical shape, according to his mother his eyes are his best feature (bright blue eyes that he inherited).
"I didn't know".
"You are still young, Gawain. You will have time to catch up on all the gossip of the village, I assure you that for such a small place we have plenty." The man with hair that is more gray than black throws his head back and lets out a loud laugh.
"Stop gossiping like a blushing girl and get to work, old man." The voice of Gertha, Ralof's wife, interrupts them.
She walks towards them with a frown.
"I was just talking to the boy, wife." Ralof stands up and straightens his back.
"Yes, yes. You're talking to Gawain today, Tobias yesterday, Gareth the day before, and so on. You slack at the slightest opportunity." Gertha scolds him viciously and Ralof deflates like a burst balloon.
"I'm sorry my boy, if I don't get to work that damn bear will eat me alive." Ralof whispers to Gawain, but unfortunately for him it's not low enough.
"Bear?! Is that what you call your wife, the woman who washes your smallclothes and cooks your food every day?"
Gawain quickly backs away so as not to get caught in the line of fire, his great-aunt has a fiery temper and once the fire inside her ignites, it will devour everything around her and he doesn't want to become collateral damage.
The boy still remembers the time he was stupid enough to challenge the bear and shudders at the memory of his punishment.
`Nothing is more humiliating than being spanked`
Gawain hears the song of the metal before he even sees the smithy: an open-air building just north of the sawmill, right next to the river. Next to the forge is the house of Willem the blacksmith, Willem seeing him go by leaves the hammer and greets him briefly before continuing to work on a horseshoe.
Willem rarely gets a chance to work on anything other than farm tools because no knights live in the village and being so small they don't have guards either. If danger approaches, they will have to send a messenger to the nearest lord and pray for help to arrive soon, or deal with the danger themselves. The second option is the most viable, since if they wait without doing anything it will be too late by the time help arrives (if it does, lords have ignored them before).
Gawain heard the story of how the men of the village drove off a group of bandits and saved the village from being raided. He heard that story many times because his father was the one who led the youth of Greenwood against the criminals, which earned him a lot of fame (with the smallfolk of the area).
`That's why people tend to go to my father before the mayor when something happens, even Roxton's messenger went to my father.`
Turning into the woods, following a path surrounded by brush, he advances for two minutes and in a clearing he sees his house. His house is a fairly simple log cabin, next to it is a barn slightly larger than the house and a chicken coop. Something further from the house is the pigsty. On the other side of the house is a shed attached to another smaller barn.
His family has two dairy cows, a horse, 7 pigs and about twenty chickens. And of course 2 dogs and 3 cats.
Gawain sees his mother feeding the chickens, on her back strapped with a blanket is a one-year-old baby, Galahad (when his parents were discussing baby names Gawain added some names and they liked how Galahad sounded).
"Gawain!" His mother smiles brightly at him, her eyes glowing with a warmth that could rival the sun.
Gawain can't help but smile back.
"Mama," He wraps his arms around her waist as soon as he gets to her side.
Marian puts the bucket with the chicken feed on the floor and picks up her son in her arms and covers his face with kisses.
"Mama! I am not a baby!" Gawain tries to get away from her, being careful not to harm his mother or loosen the makeshift baby restraint.
"Where's your father?" Marian looks down the path leading to their home and sees no one.
"Father has gone to speak to the mayor about the meadow. Lord Roxton expects us to turn it into fields before Smith`s Day! That is too little time and too much work!" To his embarrassment his voice takes on a whimpering tone and Gawain quickly clears his throat.
"The gods are not cruel, my child, I'm sure all will be well. And even if we can't meet the deadline, Lord Roxton is an understanding lord and there will be no repercussions." Her tone is very reassuring but Gawain sees something lurking in his mother's eyes, something that alarms him.
He understands that missing the deadline is not an option.
`To Lord Roxton peasants are equivalent to cattle, if your horse does not go fast enough you whip it. I don't want to think what the punishment will be for Greenwood, for my family, if we fail. We have to meet that unreasonable deadline, we have no choice!`
Damian Artois' new life is not missing its challenges, and this is the first of many to come.
***
NOTE: This is the story of a man who just wanted to live his life, someone who had no great ambitions. Damian didn't want to start a revolution; he would have been content with a quiet life in Greenwood. But the world -they- destroyed his peace and a bloody revolutionary was born.
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