The Lowborn's Rise

**Author's Note: Thanks for taking the time. As you know, I'm just an amateur writer. I have trouble trying to get this story out, out of my own nitpicking and procrastinations. No sex scenes just yet on this chapter. Although I am setting up another. I wanted to press on when I started this series out. Trying get the chapters out of my head. But instead got bogged down by my own doubts and editing. This chapter is almost 2,000 words long. Again, thank you for reading my work.

Will's blood rushed over him, making him feel fidgety.

He had the whole night to himself. He only hoped that he would be able to last long enough and not embarrass himself as a man. He reflected on what he had done before with his time with the washerwoman, Maygan. The possibilities that he hadn't even thought of, at nineteen years, finally experiencing the touch of a woman. He realized how much he had squandered the opportunity and wished to rectify that. The young soldier had just rounded the corner of some ramshackle buildings, dodging past the lines upon lines of hanging cloth, when he was confronted by the now familiar figure of their overseer, domineering but with a paunching gut silhouetted beneath the looming structure of the shack. The overseer's voice boomed against the feeble wood, calling out men and corralling them towards the directions of the barracks.

"Move! Move, you ungrateful sacks of dung! We have our orders!" He easily pushed the ungainly crowd of men, who were unceremoniously interrupted in their leisure time with the washerwomen. Finally noticed young Will himself, the look of dismay etched in Will's face. The young man sighed and joined his companions back to their barracks. The overseer noticed his lack of enthusiasm He was suddenly grabbed by the scruff in one hand and unceremoniously dragged the opposite direction.

"Sir? What are our orders sir?" Will asked, voice low.

"We need some soldiers with their wits about. You'd be guarding some settlements on the Highlands. Some trouble with some unearthly beasts that's causing mishaps with the supply lines," The huge man answered gruffly as a matter of fact.

Will wanted to protest but did not want to challenge his authority, for the overseer was a man who was privy to use the back of his hand for further encouragement. He sighed to himself and got whatever meager belonging he had. He had but the very clothes on his back, a spear with a rusted tip along with a small axe that had seen better days. The men gathered whatever it was that the overseer demanded for the journey.

The sun had moved a quarter of the way, he reckoned it just past noon when everything seemed to be in order. They were but a meager collection of fifty men with varying state of equipment. A dozen overseer lorded over the levied men and once all were gathered, sounded a horn to begin their march outwards.

Will cast one last look back at the structures of the washerwomen, and noticed some of the men did the same. It seems he wasn't the only one who wished to have some time with the ladies there.

There were no ceremony of any such as they began their journey. The overseers rode on horses while the levied walked alongside the carts, never on them. Between the fifty men, they had but four carts drawn by oxen. From here the men got to talking what was it they even fighting about. And it was here that Will got acquainted with the other serfs, conscripts and levies of the army

Each out of their own element but were coping for as best as they can to army life.

As they talked they had come to learn of the High Lord in command of this host, the one with such intricate webs to touch so many lives, have vied of positions to curry favor to the king. Whatever powers might be that prompted the lord to have done so in the farthest reaches of the realm, simple Will knows not. Whispers of outmaneuvering rivals and some such notions that was beyond the ken of a simple lowborn as Will and his fellows.

He only wished to live a life bereft of worry or danger. A life that he can call his own.

For five days and five nights, Will and his company journeyed as farther than he ever had in his nineteen years of life. Ever going higher and higher, the land slowly coming to a steep incline, exchanging the flat grasslands to sloping hillsides, the looming figure of the glens and highlands ever coming closer, and surrounding the men as they trudged onwards

The overseers rode the men hard. Their feet ached and in some cases, worn the leather of their soles to the point that it bled their foot against the hard earth.

It did not help that the nights were cold and unforgiving. The men were not equipped for such colds, the overseers fared little better, with meat in their meals and fur in their backs, but they too griped about their predicament. Perhaps a bit too loudly, the Levied troops learned to voice such concerns to a whisper.

The winds grew ever colder and biting with each distance they make. And there was the telltale presence, that feeling of sensation at the back of Will's neck. The feeling of watchfulness, in a land so bare of civilization, as if eyes were cast on them in some far off distance.

Their journey was cold and there seemed to be something moving under the cover of darkness. He barely got any sleep gripping his spear with each passing night.

In the small hours of the sixth day, they have arrived on their destination. For most of them at least.

Before the rooster could herald the coming of dawn, when everything was still in darkness, the company of half a hundred came upon the first true mark of civilization in these primitive pocket of the land. Highland folks, like their flatland counterparts, wake up early. A fair number of people were up and about but there was still that silence that permeates that they were still wary of their sleeping neighbors.

It was a decently sized town, even with a well-made, stonewalls that encircled the entire settlement.

The guards atop the walls gave them little trouble upon their entry, as they were ushered in. Will and others caught large gaping claw marks in the outer walls. They were led to the barracks of the town and it was here that Will saw a dozen forms covered in bloodstained cloth. Two dozen more lay beneath makeshift holdings scattered about the yard. Their occupants injured one way or another. A bleeding gauze wrapped across half their face, a limp in their step or nursing a massive gash across their torso. Their injuries were varied from one person to the next.

The overseers were in hushed discussion with the leader of the garrison but when everything was all said and done, thirty-five of their number stayed behind to reinforce the troops here.

Fifteen men remained, Accompanied by two overseers, as they head on out of the walls and into, a smaller settlement some hours away from here as the levied men were told. Three hours would pass when they came up on said settlement. The sun had fully risen and people were up and about. No walls protected this small hamlet but it was situated atop a small hill surrounded by leagues of smaller hillscape. As Will waited for his orders, his eyes would discreetly settle on the women of the village. He felt like a swine but seeing little else nothing to do, here he was, ogling the women folk tactfully. He didn't really knew how to talk to a woman. Or to be more specific he didn't know how to charm one. To court and all that followed afterwards. Will wondered how long he would be here in the rough country of the highlands, for he so sorely missed the company of the washerwomen. His mind would go back to the moment of him feeling the touch of a woman for the first time. Will doubt there were any women to be found in these prudent highland folk that exchanged such....."intimate" services for money.

Will had half expected to be stationed here waiting to go to the local barracks as the overseer came to fetch the men. He was somewhat concerned when told that was not to be so. Even higher and farther still, lies a secluded village of sorts, that was in dire need of fresh "young" troops to be reinforced with.

The overseer declared himself that he would deliver three fresh troops to such place, namely Will and two others. The overseer would be staying at such station however. The surroundings here were so quiet and so remote that it was somewhat a solace to be around people. Will was dire to be stationed at such a remote holding but kept his mouth shut. Will's final leg of the journey had to be done by foot. The path was a rough patch of road that barely sees any traffic from outsiders such as them.

The silence of the highland wilderness permeated all about them. Not a sound from birds or bugs sounded, save for the gentle whispers of the highland winds. A few littering clusters of wood can be found here and there, thought they were few in numbers. These trees felt old in the eyes of Will. As if they stood here long before the time of the realm.

At last they came upon the village. But even as they eyed them from the distant, it too felt quiet.

With such a loose collection of mudhuts, thatched buildings. Numbering in twice a dozen or so. The folk that resided here wore much fur clothing, though a few wore woven clothes although tattered varying among the inhabitants.

The overseer talked with the head soldier leading the place. The white of his hair and the wrinkle of his face put him somewhere past sixty about his presence spoke a wild hardened killer. As sharp and strong as the wicked looking knife he wielded.

The guard here numbered a good dozen, added by their recent arrival that strength went up to fifteen. The garrison, some distance away from main village itself, provided a decent enough lookout form a high mound it was built atop of. The malnourished ill-fitted men, only four it seems to be of any real use.

It was a small tightknit community almost identical to the one he was from.

He sighed, wondering was it always to be like this? To be shipped from to and other battlefields?

There were monsters roaming the land. Especially at night. The offerings and tributes made by this little village was sent up to the Highlord that commandeered the entirety of the army. He had also come to known that a percentage of the wages from this place had also taken if, depending on the bounty from the crops of the farmers.

The men were either too frightened or lazy, not even risking a patrol, save for the few grizzled veterans venturing out.

After the grueling journey, he can at least console himself that after nearly a week of trudging he can finally sleep beneath the shelter of a roof. Will looked forward to sleeping at a bed again. The night was full of creaking, as if something stalked the walls outside. It was cold, for the winds drift past the poor workmanship of the feeble barracks walls of barely kept together twigs and wood.

It was in these harsh cold that he yearned for a woman's warmth, even as Will lost himself to sleep.