The two boys looked around and found that the wagon had been left just inside of a mid-size encampment. From their current position, they had a clear view of the line of tree trunks that had been lashed together and driven into the ground to form the wall surrounding the area. Looking around at the base within those walls, Myles observed that the architecture seemed to be made up entirely of simple wooden platforms and cloth walls that hung down to separate different spaces. Overall, the place was surprisingly primitive.

  Myles was surprised he didn’t see anyone in their immediate vicinity, especially after the racket the boy had raised while breaking down the wagon door. It seemed as though someone should be paying more attention to them considering the effort they had gone through to bring them here.

  In fact, Myles had only been taking in his surroundings for a moment before he realized even his new acquaintance had disappeared from his side. He spun in a circle, wondering how the kid could have vanished so quickly. He realized he didn't even have a name to call out to ask where he'd gone.

  When the telltale sounds of other people caught his attention from deeper in the camp, Myles ignored common sense to walk towards them.

  It only took a moment before he heard a familiar voice calling out to him. "Blue! Over here! The food is great!"

  Myles didn't see anyone else with blue hair, so he figured the stranger was addressing him. He got closer to see that low and behold, the same guy who had traveled here in the back of a prison wagon with him, was sitting with a bunch of bandits around a bonfire, laughing and eating. And right now the boy was staring at him, waving him over.

  Myles scowled. Did he not understand the situation at all? This was ridiculous. The smart thing to do was to get out of here.

  The boy had already gotten up to move towards him. Without so much as a chance to protest, Myles found himself holding a drink in one hand and a drumstick of some kind of meat in the other.

  He felt his stomach speak up and scowled harder, though his irritation didn't stop him from sipping the cheap booze or taking a bite of the food. He hadn't eaten anything all day after all.

  The kid tried to drag him to sit down on a log near the fire, but Myles crossed his arms and refused to move from his position around the edge of the group. That didn't faze the boy who just went right back to the middle of everything, eating and making himself at home as if he was one of them.

  That was until a shout went up from the entrance of the camp and the crew quieted down. It took Myles a minute to understand what was being called out, not that he was surprised in the slightest. "The prisoners! The new prisoners have escaped!"

  A commotion started up until someone yelled, "FIND THEM," and everyone pulled out their weapons to jump into action.

  Myles felt resigned when one of the men turned to him with the words, "Wait a second, who the hell are you?"

  In the time it took for him to blink, Myles was surrounded by bandits now pointing their swords directly at him. Myles had already known they would turn on him immediately. He wasn't exactly inconspicuous. A chorus of voices started chiming in with their own comments.

  "I've never seen him before.” "He's not part of the crew!" "This has got to be him." Their words ran together.

  Myles was screwed. His only thought was that maybe at least the other boy could escape and leave him here. No one seemed to have noticed that he was a stranger as well. He could easily take advantage of that fact and sneak away.

  "Hey! WAIT!" Every head turned to the young man standing up on a log next to the fire. He gestured to Myles. "Don't worry about him. He's cool. He's my friend! We came here in the back of that cart together." He pointed towards the edge of the camp where the prison wagon was parked.

  A moment later, the boy was treated to his own circle of weapons threatening him.

  It was official, Myles thought. The kid was a complete and utter idiot. Why in the hell was he sticking up for him anyway? Friend? They weren't friends. The kid didn't even know his name.

  "Grab them already!” One of the bandits called out. “The boss won't be happy if he finds out about this!"

  "Oh, so you want to fight?" Myles could hardly believe the words coming out of the boy’s mouth now. There were at least thirty bandits around them, and he was just one scrawny kid. What did he think he could do against all of these guys?

  The boy lowered his face and his hair shadowed his eyes. "Hey, Blue Hair, I told you I was going to bust you out of here. You ready?"

  Myles caught a hint of a grin on the stranger's face before he launched himself off of the log and into the air. He watched as he slammed his fist into the bandit in front of him and sent him crashing to the ground. He didn't stop there either, letting the momentum carry him up and over the fallen man and into striking distance of the next person with his feet.

  After that, Myles didn't have time to watch because there were weapons swinging towards him. It was only his instincts that had him dodging away in time.

  Before his conscious mind could catch up with his actions, Myles had grabbed a spear aimed at him, yanked it towards himself to throw the attacker off balance, and then slammed the butt back into the man's face. He crumpled to the ground, but Myles didn’t have time to stop and watch.

  In one fluid movement, he flipped the spear around to use the wooden end, knocked aside a staff, crouched low to avoid several attempts to grab at him from above, and swept the feet out from under the two bandits who were closest to him. The break in their ranks was immediate as the men he had sent off balance fell into each other and scrambled to recover their positions. It bought him a moment to take a couple of quick breaths.

  Unfortunately, what the men lacked in skill, they made up for in numbers. Myles used the shaft of the spear to block a sword slamming down towards his head. There was a cracking sound as the wood splintered under the force and broke in two.

  Well that’s a bummer, Myles thought as he tossed the pieces away.

  When a bandit charged his left side, Myles grabbed him and spun him around, kicking him back towards his comrades to buy himself some space. He grabbed the baton from the man's belt as he did so and brandished it against the mob. He felt it then, his heart rate picking up.

  He wielded the baton like a bat and swung his way through the next two opponents who stepped up to challenge him. One of them let out a yelp as Myles landed a good hit to his shoulder.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man move to cock a pistol. Not good, he thought, and with nothing else to use, he threw the baton.

  It hit its mark, or close enough, Myles thought, as it struck the man straight in the collarbone. The man cried out, and the gun fell right out of his hands.

  Myles moved to block another blow, but there were too many of them and only one of him. He barely turned his head in time to see that there was a saber coming towards him too quickly.

  Maybe once he could have moved fast enough to dodge the swing from his current position. As he was now, he was simply too slow. For a moment, he wondered if he was done for, and thought that at least he could die knowing that he had gone out fighting.

  At the last second, it was the boy jumping in from above to slam a fist into the man's face that threw the attack off course. Myles met the gaze of the stranger again, just for a moment. Even completely surrounded and weaponless, his yellow eyes were bright and his toothy grin was wicked.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  "Let's finish this and get out of here.” He said to Myles. “Can you handle that side?"

  The boy turned around to face away from him and backed up just close enough that they were covering each other. Myles felt something in his chest he couldn't really describe and almost felt the urge to let out an empty laugh. Of all people, this kid trusted Myles to watch his back?

  Myles supposed the kid had already established that he wasn't the brightest out there. And his choices for allies were pretty slim. But he still couldn't help but feel a small flicker of a fire that had once burned brightly within him as he faced forward at the mob once again. Maybe they would fight their way out, or maybe not, but if that idiot was going to hold the line, he sure as hell wasn't going to be the one break first. "Can you handle your own?" He clapped back.

  Myles leapt back into the fight with the same style he had started it with. He used his opponents as shields and then took their weapons to fight with them until they broke. He kicked the sword one bandit was holding out of the man's hands and then used an ax he’d ended up with to knock down several others.

  The process repeated for several rounds, until he found himself with a moment to catch his breath. As he waited for more bandits to take the place of the ones he had just taken down, he couldn't help but glance back and watch his unexpected ally fight at his back.

  Myles’ eyes widened when the first thing he saw was the boy taking a hard hit directly to the face. Before he could even be concerned, the kid used the momentum he built as he got back up to send a punch of his own and knock the other man flying.

  The boy never stopped moving. Myles watched him run at a second bandit who was brandishing a club. Instead of going for an attack, he seemed to treat him more like an obstacle. He jumped straight over the club as it swung at him from the right, kicked off the man’s chest, and threw himself up in the air. While the man was still off balance and stumbling from the unexpected move, the boy finished the combination by using the face of a third man as a stepping stone to jump and dive down hard into a fourth bandit fist first.

  Myles cringed as the kid crashed into the ground, but only a moment later he watched him bounce right back to his feet. The bandit he’d landed on didn’t get up.

  His fighting strategy was utterly reckless and ridiculous. Myles knew that he had to be taking a lot of damage. Nevertheless, that wicked grin made another appearance, and several of the bandits seemed to be either keeping their distance or outright trying to run away from the man.

  Myles faced forward again to continue his own fight as the next wave of bandits charged in. For a brief moment the two of them found themselves standing back to back, but then they were both rushing forward to fight.

  Before long the bandits who were left weren't moving towards them anymore; they were running away.

  Myles found himself breathing heavily as he watched the criminals flee. The adrenaline was still rushing through him and it felt good. Maybe there was still some fight left in him after all, he thought.

  Myles met the eyes of the boy who had just fought at his back and felt his own lips turn up just a tiny bit at the wild smile on his face. The boy's hair was a mess and Myles could see red marks on his skin where bruises from the harder hits he had taken were already starting to form.

  "That was awesome!” The boy declared. “I knew I picked a good person to join my team. You can really fight! Now, come on, let's go explore this place." With that, the boy started striding away towards the tents without a second glance.

  The scowl returned to Myles' face. What was that supposed to mean? Myles opened his mouth to shout after him that he hadn’t agreed to being a team or allies or anything else, but the idiot hadn't even waited around to listen to him. Did he seriously expect him to just follow? Myles didn't take orders from anyone. He marched after him to give him a piece of his mind.

  He was quickly distracted from that mission when he heard voices calling for help. He ran to try to figure out where they were coming from and found at least twelve people in a wooden cage. Someone had created it by stripping down the trunks of smaller trees and nailing them together.

  "Please, have you come to rescue us?” The voice came from a young woman with blonde hair kneeling on the ground. She looked like at some point she had been crying. “Are you soldiers? Please let us out! We just want to go home!" Myles felt himself grow angry. Had these bandits just been going around picking up defenseless civilians? He tried the door, but it was locked.

  "Where do they keep the keys?" He asked the woman.

  She looked ready to cry. "One of the men has them."

  Myles swore. He hoped it wasn't one of the people who had just fled. "I'll find them."

  Had he really just wrecked his chance of getting these people free by fighting off those men and scaring them away? Why did everything good he tried to do end this way? For some reason, he noticed that both this woman and the little girl from before had blue eyes.

  Before Myles could get too far in his head, the boy was back and standing next to him. The kid didn’t even say anything. He took one look around and started winding up the same way he had in the back of the wagon. With a cry, he aimed and drove his fist straight into the wood.

  For some reason, Myles still expected his fist to bounce right off. Perhaps he should have known better by the look in the boy's eyes. Unlike when they had been fighting, there was nothing light about his expression now. The wood cracked slightly under his fist where he struck it.

  The boy hit it a second time, and a third, but while it did give, it didn't break. Myles watched as blood ran down his hands, his knuckles split much worse than they had been before. It didn’t stop him from trying again. Myles found himself putting a hand on the boy's shoulder to force him to stop. The boy gave him a blank look, but he let him push him to the side.

  Myles stepped back a few feet to make some space for a running start and then drove his shoulder into the spot where the boy had weakened the beam. It took two more tries, and with each one the cage shook. The grunt he let out as he finally broke through came straight from his chest.

  When he took a step back, the people inside rushed to squeeze out the small gap. Myles looked over them to meet the eyes of the kid once more, and found that he was already looking right at him. Myles wasn’t quite sure what to make of the expression he was wearing, but he almost felt as if the boy looked proud.

  Myles turned and addressed the others who were now standing there. "There were wagons near the south gate. If they are still there, you all can take them to ride back to town. I'd hurry. The other bandits who were here ran off, but I don't know if there are more or if they'll come back."

  Most of the people wasted no time running in that direction. Only the girl who had spoken to Myles stopped to wait for a moment.

  "Thank you," she said. "You saved us." She bowed to the two of them. "My name is Sasha. Will you come with us? You are soldiers, right? To be able to fight like that? You're here to protect us?"

  Myles was surprised to hear that she had been able to see the fight at all, but glancing back towards the fire he realized that from the right angle, they would have had a view of the whole thing.

  Myles didn't know what to say. He had no plans of going with them. He wasn't sure where that decision left him, but he realized right then that he had no interest in returning back to the village.

  Before he could decide on a response, it was the kid who spoke for him. "Nope. We're not soldiers. Don't worry about us though, we're adventurers! And we're not done exploring this place yet. You better go after your friends before they take off without you!"

  The girl gave them a confused look before she bowed and thanked them again. After that, she took off hesitantly before running towards the gate.

  Myles glared at the boy. "There's no we. Shouldn't you be leaving with them too?"

  "Why would I go with them when you’re not gonna? You're my friend. And I already told you. I could use a great fighter like you working for me on my team!"

  Myles’ eyebrows lowered and his glare grew more intense at the familiarity the boy was using to speak with him.

  "Look,” he said. “We're not friends. You don't even know my name. I'm not interested in playing adventurers with you or joining any sort of team. It's for the best if we just leave it here."

  "Oh! Sorry." In contrast to the reaction Myles had expected following his words the boy looked surprised and pleased. He put out a hand for him to shake as if it hadn’t occurred to him to do before. "My name's Devlin!" He introduced himself.

  The boy bulldozed past all of the other statements that Myles had just made and continued speaking.

  "With the way that we just fought together, I think we were meant to meet here. And I'm pretty sure you owe me for busting you out. So, what do you say, will you join up with me and come on an adventure that's going to take the world by storm?"

  It was one of the most ridiculous and childish declarations that Myles had ever heard, and his answer was obvious.

  The boy looked up at him with wide excited eyes. A hint of that same wicked grin he had worn while fighting against the mob of bandits was there on his face too. It reminded Myles of the feeling that had struck him as they had fought together earlier.

  It took Myles a second to recognize what it was. It felt good to fight again. Not some brawl against some drunken tavern patron that he let himself fall into to feel something. A real fight.

  But there was a reason Myles didn't work with other people. He didn't need a 'friend' or someone else to be responsible for. He certainly wasn't going to work for this kid. He had made a decision years ago that he would never serve under anyone again.

  "Sorry, Devlin. It was good meeting you." Myles didn't shake his hand, but he did try to soften his expression. The kid hadn't done anything to him. "I'm not interested, but I wish you the best of luck."

  "Wait!” Devlin stopped him. “You have to tell me your name because I told you mine."

  That was fair enough, he supposed. "It's Myles.”

  With that, he turned and walked away.