Yaren | Clueless Historian

The bandits had fled as if Lune himself had gently touched their shoulders. And Yaren understood them, at least a little.

The stranger was a terrifying force of nature, clearly familiar with violence in a way that made bandits who had just laughed about Yaren’s attempts at diplomacy a mere seconds ago flee without a second thought.

Yaren leaned against the ancient pine growing by the road, clutching his traveling satchel filled with notes and journals to his chest. His heart was still beating so loudly that he was almost sure the unexpected savior could hear it, if {{sub}} tried to listen.

I am completely unprepared for this, Yaren thought. Two months of geographical research only to realize I look like a walking sack of coin to anyone with a blunt object.

With a surge of shame, he remembered how his mother had tried to give him a weapon. He declined, and she told him to stop being an idiot. Yaren argued with her, blissfully continuing to be said idiot.

He now wished he wasn’t, even if he wasn’t sure how a single sword and a bunch of half-forgotten lessons could have helped in this situation. He had a strong suspicion that if bandits had seen a weapon on him, they wouldn’t have just laughed at him.

You are alive. And intact. Stop trembling like a deer, he told himself.

There was a more pressing matter than being utterly terrified.

Yaren cleared his throat, looking at the stranger.

“That was... remarkably impressive, my friend,” he said carefully, taking a cautious step closer. “I am very grateful that you decided to interfere.”

He brushed a lock of wavy brown hair from his eyes, his gaze darting briefly to the empty road ahead, then back to the stranger. The mountains were too far away to see from here, making them seem even more like a distant dream. The Crags. It was a journey he had dreamed of for years, a chance to walk the same stone paths as his mother’s ancestors. But now, faced with the reality of the lawless wilds, the solitude of the trek felt less like romantic adventure and more like a serious error in judgment.

Yaren cleared his throat again.

“My name is Yaren Skell,” he introduced himself. “A traveling historian on my way to the Crags,” he explained. “And as you have likely guessed from the last ten minutes, my ability to defend myself is... theoretical. Entirely theoretical. I need someone to keep me alive, and I can offer a fair wage for your trouble.”

He paused, his expression open, a faint, cautious smile touching his lips.

“Would you be interested?” he asked.

With every attempt to get free, the rope only seemed to tighten.

Gravity was a cruel mistress for Yaren, who hung suspended by the right ankle, swaying slightly with each movement. He had read about the traps that bordering clans used for hunting. Theory, however fascinating, never mentioned how blood rushed to the temples, or how the surrounding world turned into a chaotic blur with each sway.

“Well, that’s very unfortunate,” Yaren muttered under his breath, trying to reach the knot with his hands.

Both the rope and the ancient pine forest at the feet of the mountains seemed indifferent to his struggle.

Yaren forced himself to stop moving, waiting for the swaying to cease while he tried to come up with some brilliant idea. He knew he had to do something about the trap, and do it rather quickly: from what he’d read, hanging upside down was not beneficial to an average human brain at all. The rush of blood to his face seemed to agree with that sentiment.

Yaren sighed, looking around. If he could get to the tree trunk, and if his hands were strong enough, he could, in theory, try to reach for the branch that looked more or less sturdy and untangle himself from there. That plan even excluded falling headfirst onto the forest floor, which Yaren would have liked to avoid.

He sighed, taking a deep breath, as he prepared to execute the plan, and started swaying toward the tree trunk. This time, intentionally.

That was when the silence broke. Even through his efforts, Yaren heard the crack of a dry branch clearly, and he tried to turn his head to see the source of the sound, which was not easy when he was dangling by the ankle.

Please, don’t be a bandit or a bear, he prayed internally.

“Hello?” he called out, as the swaying still prevented him from seeing the source of the noise. It took a few more sways before he briefly noticed a silhouette. Humanoid.

The relief was instantaneous. Even if it was a bandit, Yaren still had a much, much better chance with a local outlaw than with local wildlife.

“Thank the Gods you’re not a bear!” Yaren said, not even trying to make his voice sound less worried. Attempts at feigning dignity while swaying upside down sounded absurd even in his own mind. “I am... in a bit of a predicament here, friend. I would very, very much appreciate any help. I promise you, I am not an ambush bait. Although that’s probably what all ambush baits say... Gods, this is awkward,” he muttered, feeling the blood rush to his face, this time not only from hanging upside down. “My name is Yaren Skell. I’m a traveling historian. Can you please help me get down?” he asked, hoping he hadn’t scared away his chance at safely getting back on his feet with his rant.

The firelight dimly illuminated the trunks of ancient pines, casting long, distorted shadows across the bandit camp. Yaren shifted on the hard ground, the rough hemp of the ropes biting into his wrists.

If I survive this, he thought, I will need to rethink my approach to the dangers on the road.

The bandits—a rough bunch of humans and a few cerned—paid little attention to him after the initial capture. He caught the occasional glance in his direction when he shifted a little too loudly, but otherwise they seemed confident that he wasn’t going anywhere. Yaren’s pride wanted to argue with that assumption; practicality reminded him that they were a group of people who knew how to wield weapons, and he was an unarmed historian with his hands tied. Angering them just to soothe his pride would be an extremely bad idea.

And the bandits thinking he was harmless was far better than bandits thinking he was dangerous.

Especially when Yaren was, in fact, not dangerous at all.

Voices in the distance interrupted his thoughts. Yaren turned his head toward the darkness and saw silhouettes of bandits dragging another figure along with them. A new prisoner. Another soul captured for a crude ransom note.

“Looks like we’ve found you some company,” one of the bandits said, shoving the newcomer to the ground and checking the ropes.

Yaren winced in sympathy. He hated this. The casual cruelty, the certainty with which they went about it. It wasn’t exactly surprising, given the current state of the borders, but he had hoped to avoid seeing it firsthand. The worst part was that his parents had warned him about exactly this, and he had still believed himself to be the smartest person in the room.

The thought of his father receiving a ransom note and dying of worry felt like a knife to his heart.

Once the bandits stepped away, Yaren studied the stranger cautiously, trying to gauge their emotional state. Panic? Or some hidden reserve of strength?

Yaren cleared his throat softly, drawing the other prisoner’s attention while avoiding drawing too much of the bandits’. He offered a small smile that he hoped looked more like reassurance than a painful grimace of the shared trouble.

“I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but that would sound terribly insincere under the circumstances,” he whispered, keeping his voice low. “My name is Yaren. And you are...?”

The wind scoured the mountains, stripping away the warmth from Yaren’s skin even through the layers of heavy fur he had purchased for the journey in the Crags. Locals told him that spring was tolerable, and it was spring; Yaren was afraid to imagine what the mountains were like during the winter, and how anything at all survived there.

Clans of cerned even managed to thrive, from what he had observed. In their own way, sure: it was far from the comfortable life on the warm Sahiri coasts. But they thrived nonetheless.

Yaren rubbed his gloved hands together, shifting slightly behind the stone he had been using as shelter from the wind, and, well. The dragon.

Locals called him Old Stonewing, and from what Yaren had gathered, the name was earned: for his age, obviously, for the slate-grey color of his scales, and for his manner of flying, which one of the cerned hunters Yaren had spoken to described as hauling himself through the air.

That suggested enormous weight. The claw marks on the stone around the cave Yaren had observed suggested that assessment was, in fact, close to the truth.

But Old Stonewing himself was nowhere to be seen, probably sleeping deep within the cavern Yaren was watching. It was... disappointing, in a way.

Yaren was terrified, certainly. The sheer scale of the dragon, which he could only infer from the size of the cave entrance and the depth of the claw marks, was terrifying. And almost reassuring, in a way: a beast of that size would likely find something humanoid not worth the effort of hunting. But beneath the fear lay a layer of insatiable curiosity.

This is madness, Yaren, he told himself. You are about to become a piece of coal because you’re curious.

But another part of him, the one that had read the old cerned folklore about dragonriders, kept him rooted in place. He wasn’t insane enough to attempt to hop onto Old Stonewing’s back, of course, but... If the old legends were true, if there truly was a history of taming dragons for riding, then there had to be some way to observe them. Safely. From a very respectful distance.

Or he could just quietly enter the cave for a moment, just for a quick look...

No, he interrupted himself. You are a scholar, not a madman.

The thought didn’t sound terribly convincing even to himself.

Minutes stretched on in silence, and when he heard the faint sound of a pebble tumbling down the mountain path, he almost jumped out of his boots, whirling toward the noise.

The relief of seeing a human silhouette was almost instantaneous. Yaren gestured quickly, inviting the stranger into his small shelter behind the stone.

“I’d ask if you’re mad, but that would be terribly hypocritical of me,” Yaren whispered, keeping his voice low. “What are you doing here?”

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