The sun had just risen over the snow-capped peak of the mountains in the distance. The beautiful pink, orange, and yellow light filtered in through the window where a thick curtain had been drawn. A few roosters had taken up their morning posts around the farmyard and threw back their heads and let out their morning crows. In the room a sliver of light danced across her face as her blue eyes opened and looked to the curtains. It was sunrise and that meant it was time to get up and work.
 
Before pulling back the curtains, she stepped to the washing basin and removed her nightdress. She took a sponge and cloth and mixed it with soap and ran across her dirty body. Lunar wiped clean and dried herself before putting on a cream peasant dress with a brown apron, patched and sewn in places, and tied it over the dress. She slipped on some hearty linen shoes before pulling back the curtains to let the full light of the morning flood in through the window. It illuminated the simple room with its small bed as she straightened and folded down the covers and fluffed the pillows. There was one small wardrobe, a desk, and a bedside table with a blown out candle.
 
Lunar came down the stairs. She lived in the farm house with the older couple who actually owned the farm and its sprawling acres. When she happened upon this land she had nothing in the way of currency or clothes or any supplies. She was lucky to happen upon this farm and this kind couple. They agreed to let her sleep there if she worked and they would also compensate her work if she did enough to more than pay for her board. At first she had simply slept in the barn until she earned their trust and now they had let her take up the spare room in the house.
 
Downstairs in the kitchen she put wood and coal in to stoke a fire in the fireplace and hung a pot of water over the blazing fire. As was customary every day, she put tea leaves in two porcelain teacups and poured them full of boiling water. On the tray with them she set out sliced bread with homemade jam on them. Strawberry was their favorite. She would leave it here and the tea would be amply steeped by the time they got up and had come downstairs.
 

She grabbed a satchel of feed by the door as she walked outside. Lunar cupped her apron like a sling and filled it with feed. She walked out into some small fencing where the chickens and their coop with eggs were being kept. She had a knife in her pocket for any chicken snakes she might run across. As she walked, she spread out the feed across the ground and the chickens pecked furiously at the food. When she was done she let the remaining pieces fall out to the ground.  For a moment she stopped and sighed, looking around at the place bathed in morning light. It truly wasn’t a bad place to live, especially when you were running from such demons.

It has been a long journey south for the Highlander, one where he was harried every step of the way by the men sent by a Northern chieftain to exact revenge. Galin had killed a man in a fair fight but the relatives of the dead man were powers in the North and they sent their men and hired blades to take his head. After his hall was burned and his livestock was stolen and slaughtered, Galin knew that he would be next. So in the dark of the night he made his way to the standing stones that marked the edge of his property and dug up a small iron-bound chest with whatever silver he had left. It was enough to replace the arms he had lost to the flames of his burning hall and to buy provisions for a few days. So, penniless and hunted, Galin turned south, trusting that his blades would see him through as he traveled to rejoin his companions from the War. His shield-brothers would welcome him, he thought, and the idea of being welcome was a balm in those first days, but even that hope began to sour as the miles stretched on.

He had been unable to find a horse, as he kept to the mountain tracks and away from the fertile valleys where the beasts were pastured, so he was forced to pick his way through the paths on foot, slowing him and sapping his resolve. Once he made it through the mountains and the stinking hell of the rainforest, he found himself on the veldt of the Bohari plain. Farms dotted the sea of grass and Galin made for the nearest one, eyes always watching for the feared, mounted tribesmen that wheeled in great herds about the plains. The farm was a better prospect, he thought, where he could find food at least. His provisions were running low, even after he had gathered more in the rainforest. He left the coin purse on his belt swing nearly effortlessly with every step and he knew that he would need to find some silver before long as well. So all through the evening he crept around the boundaries of the farmstead, looking at the small outbuildings and the main house to see if there were occupants that might thwart his ambitions. An old couple and a younger woman, he decided, would not be a worry to a trained warrior. So during the night, as the farm slept, he sharpened his blades and secured the straps of his shield before dozing in a copse of trees behind the farm’s main building. He would, he decided, come with the dawn.

As the first rays of light began to spill over the horizon, he pulled his boiled leather cuirass over his head and belted his long and short blades around his waist. Slipping his arms through the loops of his shield, he scanned the farmstead and it just began to stir, with cockerels crowing to greet the dawn. Satisfied that nothing had changed, he grabbed the ash shaft of his spear and set off at a jog for the farm, staying out of sight behind the barn as he approached. Once the young woman was in the yard, feeding the chickens, he struck hard and fast. Lowering his shoulder, he slammed through the rear entrance to the home, his spear low by his side as the light wooden door gave way under his weight. Staggering slightly, he recovered and moved into the kitchen where the elderly farmer and his wife had just sat for their meal. “Do not even think it, old man,” Galin growled as he saw the farmer’s eyes glanced at the wood axe near the hearth. “You’ll be dead before your fingers touch the haft, and then who will stop me from butchering your wife and… daughter, I assume? Be smart, old man.” The farmer nodded slowly, his shoulders slumping as he accepted defeat, and grasped his wife’s hand in his old, gnarled one.

“I need food. A mount if you have one, and silver. And if you try and plead, I will take your hands off with that axe and then take what I want. Do we understand each other? Good. Now call the girl in, and if you value your life and hers, don’t spook her.”

After feeding the chickens, Lunar headed out to the barn- not far from the house proper- where she scooped hay into the feeding troughs of the cows and hay and oats into the troughs of the horses. They had about three horses and twice as many cows. Clean wooden buckets lined the wall for her to milk and she had just grabbed her stool and an empty pale before she heard the soft voice of the old man calling for her to come back to the house. It struck her as odd, because he never interrupted her work on the farm.
 
As soon as she hit the doorway she saw the man in his armor with his shield born on one arm and a blade in the other. They never really worried for raids where they were. The Northern folk mostly left them alone and also took care of the orcs and any other unsavory creatures that roamed through the plains. Her lips curved into frown as she examined him. He looked to be from the North but judging from his ragged and harried appearance he had to be running from something. If he was running from the North her stomach turned at what he most of done to earn their scorn. They were a fairly rough people.
 
Lunar looked to the elder man, Walter, and his wife Margaery. They both looked terrified and it made her blood boil. It made her think of her bow she had hidden in the wood pile and how she might shoot him as he left before he got too far. As if he could read her mind, the old man piped up. “Lunar, now don’t go doing anything foolish. This fellow means business. Now first gather up some food he could eat on the road.”
 
For a moment she stood and glared daggers into the Northern man before she went to the counters. In a cloth napkin she wrapped an entire loaf of bread, a chunk of meat dried and cut into slices, and some fruit. Tying it up she brought it over to him and shoved it roughly into his pack. “We would have helped you if you just asked. There was no need to scare them half to death and steal!” She screamed perhaps a bit louder than she intended. “Lunar-“ She waved her hand at him. “No, Walter! He should learn some manners. Look at poor Miss Margaery she is shaking!”
 

“Alright dear, he needs some silver. You know where I keep it in my desk.” Storming off, she went into the living area where there was an old desk. She pulled open one of the drawers and dumped about half the silver out of the pouch. She was not leaving the family penniless for some thief. When she brought it back she dumped it in whatever looked like a silver pouch to her. “Now bring him a horse.” Lunar glared towards him. “Why don’t you leave them alone and come with me to the barn and you can pick your horse so you know I am not giving you the oldest and worn horse we have.”

“Welcome to our little gathering.”

As the young woman entered the building, Galin shifted a little, keeping his spear steady but moving his shield so, if she had a mind to attack him, she would have to come all the way around the table toward his shield side. Her look when she saw him spoke of disgust and possible danger, so he was not about to take a chance. He had traveled too far to get a dagger in the back from a slip of a girl on some Bohari farmstead. “And if I were you,” he continued, his voice steely, “I would do what the old man says. He knows I am not about to start slaughtering for the sake of it or he’d already been split from crotch to crown. So unless you fancy that, just do like he says, give me what I need, and I’ll not darken your doorstep a moment longer.”

She seemed to comply, moving to the sideboard to gather some provisions, but his eyes never left her hands. She could have tried to secret a knife in his apron while she was there and do something rash and Galin did not want to have to beat her bloody as a result. He dropped his shield a fraction so she could put the food into his pack and as she shouted at him, he turned to her with a sardonic smile. “You say that but you see, this way I am sure I get what I need. Asking gives them a chance to say no. This,” he continued, lifting his spear a fraction, “tends to prevent that sort of reply.” He turned back to the couple. “And if she keeps going on about my manners, you might do well to remind your lass here that it’s terribly poor manners to make a stranger have to pin her to the wall with a spear for being an insolent pain in the arse.”

Now with food in his pack and silver in his purse, he felt more at ease, but the woman was still causing problems. He shifted his weigh to his right foot, half planning to just stab the spear into her throat and be done with it, but there was no sense in killing her. They had no idea who he was or where he was headed and this was not a proper raid. But it would have been satisfying, he thought to himself, as he relaxed a fraction. “I say we all go,” Galin countered, “so I don’t leave this fine couple with idle time to start thinking of burying that axe in the back of my skull. All respect of course, sir, since I think you’ve got strength enough left in you to do me some harm. So, lead the way.” And with a barking laugh, the warrior turned fugitive ushered them out toward the barn, already planning his journey further south.

Lunar was no fighter but of course she was not dumb enough to pull the dirk from her robe apron and go after him. Especially the way he was positioned she would have to go to his shield side and a little short dagger stood a snowball’s chance in hell against a hefty wooden shield. Still she preferred to keep it a secret that she even had the knife stowed there and so she did. Instead of cutting up fruit or slicing breads or meat she simply ripped them up with her hands as if  it was her only means of doing so.
 
 When he replied to her shouting at him, she rolled her eyes and had half the mind to smack him upside the head with the bag of goods he was stealing from them. “How honorable you must feel scaring the life out of these elderly folk. I came here not knowing where I was with nothing but the dress on my back and these people helped me. They are kind people. Why don’t you take a chance on that sometime and maybe you’ll get a bit of kindness back.” Like perhaps had he asked instead of demanded and threatened then she might have filled one of his flasks with a fire whiskey the old man had down in the cellar.
 
Then he insisted they all go to the stable. It foiled Lunar’s plan, which was only that Walter and Margaery might get to a safe hiding spot away from the farm. She could handle this man, after all he seemed to only want the goods he came for and not truly to harm anyone else he’d have done so already. She took the lady’s hands to help her uneasy steps as they walked out to the stable. The horses were enjoying their fresh hay and morning oats.
 
The first horse they came to she paused. It was a dapple gray mare she was quite fond of. “That one is Clementine. As you can see she is one of our older horses and a mare.” Though the horse’s natural coat was gray dappled with white you could see the increase in gray around her black muzzle. They walked to the second of three. A tall black thing that kicked at the stall door and the sides when they came close. “They just call him Spitfire. He is young and not entirely properly broken yet and can be a bit more than something to handle.” At last they came upon a calm, tall, and chestnut horse with a black mane and tail. His tail swooshed and he chomped at his breakfast without a care in the world. “Darien here is seasoned but not old and he is well broken and loyal.”
 

With a sigh she continued. “You know if you changed your attitude you could stay for dinner and have a good sleep out here in the rafters of the stable.”