A wasted knight – part three – back story to a Raevac begins

The knight didn't move for a long time, and neither did the Raevac. They both watched each other but didn't pay any attention to the other. As the day drew the hot wind blew up the dark valley and made the situation very uncomfortable. The Raevac pulled a wine pouch out and moved over to the knight.

"Drink"

The knight just looked at it and said "why do you bother to keep me tired up like this, why don't you just kill me, or let me fall on my sword"

"In time I will let you be, but currently you are wounded and in no shape to look after yourself" said the Raevac, "Now drink"

The knight just looked at the wine and did nothing. This slightly frustrated the Raevac. Lurching forward, the Raevac grabed the knights helment and stuffed the end of the wine punch into the knights mouth. The prince bit down and closed his mouth refusing to drink. The Raevac grabed the Kight under the chin and forced two fingers into the checks of the knight. This resulted in the knight having to open his mouth, and the wine poured down his throat. When the wine was almost all gone, the Raevac pulled the pouch out and drank the remains.

The knight began to feel a little better, until this point he had not eaten or drank anything since the encounter with the princes almost two days ago. As his thoughts began to clear, the young prince started to realise just who it was that he was now a prisoner of. A cold chill ran down him as he began to think that this could be a Raevac that had captured him.

"No, it cant be" he thought, prayed. "No please let it be anything but a Raevac" he begged his brain to find another answer to the question of who this stranger was. But his mind came back with no other answer. This must certainly be a Raevac.

You see the problem with this being a Raevac is this; Raevacs' are a fierce group of people, if you can call them a group. They travel alone and live as they please. No one ever meets a Raevac and lives to tell the story. The closest you may ever come to a Raevac and live, is to come upon a scene of destruction and death only moments after a Raevac has been there. Or when you lie in a thicket to rest and think you see a shadow move in the bush, you look around and decide that it was just a branch. But actually you have come as close to a Raevac as any living person has. Having said this, like all things there is a certain amount of Myth that is bound to a Raevac, and separating the stories that are spoken in hushed whispers in the taverns is no easy task. Yet the simple truth is that to encounter a Raevac is a rare experience and few have ever told of such an encounter.

The knight pushed himself around to face the Raevac. "Sir, if I may be so bold, are you a Raevac"?

The Raevac sprang to life and the knight kicked himself for having asked the question. The Raevac flew from the felled pillar and landed next to the knight, grabbed him by his good shoulder and threw him up on a broken section of wall.

"Why would you think that?"

"Well" began the prince "I have never seen someone such as you before, yet you are well equipped and seem very capable of looking after yourself, so my assumption is that you travel alone and take no prisoners with you. This would seem to be true of the Raevacs I hear stories about"

The Raevac glared at him "don't listen to every story you hear in a tavern lad."

The knight looked at the Raevac and in a moment or gusto, or perhaps stupidity said

"I've know people like you, gutless, cold killers that travel the world and have what ever you want with out concern for life or love"

The Raevacs eyes flared with such passion that they alone could have light the valley on fire, but the rest of the Raevac stayed still and strangely calm.

"Contray to the rumours, Raevacs are peaceful characters. I understand how you could think such things about me. But often the people who start such rumours know little of the wider story which has brought about many unfortunate situations in their eyes. Do you know what the word Raevac means prince"?

The young knight was startled as no one knew he was a prince in this land. While he wore fine armour, that didn't make him a prince or give away any indication of such a thing. He had made sure of that before embarking on the adventure for fear of being treated unequally on his path.

"No, I know nothing of the Raevacs apart from what my men report back to me"

The Raevac sat back on a rock and began "Raevac means 'Guardian' its an old term that comes from ancient lands and has its grounding the idea of a guardian angle. A long time ago all we were all Diplomatic guardians for a King in another land. We were assigned foreign diplomats to protect for the entire length of time they were in the Kings service. But things change and we were no longer able to continue."

"How did you become a Raevac? What things changed? Please tell me as if I am miss informed about the Raevacs, I wish to be promulgating the truth about you rather than enforcing lies" asked the prince

"I will tell you the whole story if you wish; you aren't going anywhere soon so you may as well hear it"

And so the Raevac began to tell a story that was not secret but had still never been told to anyone in the histroy of the world...