Sarah's Story Chapter 023 - Guard Duty Begins

Sarah walked back home holding her Adventurer’s License and a sheet of paper with her new schedule on it in her hands. She was an Adventurer now! She couldn’t hold back a grin the entire walk home.

She stepped through the gate in the low fence surrounding the small yard in front of the inn she shared with her mother, and Helen poked her head out one of the front windows, from the kitchen.

“Welcome back dear! I’m helping out with preparing supper. I’ll talk to you in a bit!”

And just like that, she was gone again.

Sarah washed up, changed out of her training clothes and into a long skirt and blouse, and then headed down to the inn’s dining room. Soon enough, her mother came out with two plates of roast beef, potatoes, and a heaping pile of vegetables, thick with steam and piping hot.

Helen set their plates down, and then sat across from Sarah. “Okay, so, how did it go? Tell me everything!”

Over dinner, Sarah explained how her registration had gone, the results of her combat assessment, and her new schedule at the Guildhall: five days of the basic education course from morning to noon, then guard work from afternoon to closing, and then on Saturdays helping out with sparring.

Helen nodded as she chewed. “That’s great, dear; the sparring will definitely help you get some more Skills. But what about that training you were going to ask for?”

“Tiffany said that could start after finishing the basic education course,” Sarah answered.

Helen put a hand to her cheek, concerned. “Will you be able to get enough sleep if you’re that busy?”

Sarah frowned, not sure herself now that she thought about it. But Helen continued before she could respond.

“Well, if it proves too much, you can just stop the guard work and focus on training.”

“But Mom, how will I pay for the training, then?” Sarah asked.

“Huh?” Helen tilted her head in confusion.

“Yeah, the training costs money. Not the basic education course, but the Scout training costs five silver, and the Bounty Hunter training costs twenty-five silver, and right now it’s on a tab with the Guild. But I need to pay it off.”

Helen blinked. “Training’s… that expensive?” she asked.

Sarah nodded.

Helen sat still for a moment before smiling brightly and reaching across the table to put her hands on Sarah’s shoulders. “I believe in you, Sarah!”

After that, Helen gave Sarah some advice about dealing with stopping brawls, which it turned out was quite different from just normal brawling, and Sarah found herself with nothing to do with the rest of her evening. Her mother insisted on taking care of all the chores, and after years of combat training and her own household chores, Sarah wasn’t sure what to do with her free time. Lacking any better ideas, she went to sleep early, knowing she had an early morning and a long day on the morrow.

She woke to her mother gently shaking her shoulder. “Sarah, wake up, it’s nearly dawn.”

Sarah stretched, then dressed and braided her hair. When she headed downstairs, her mother had a plate of scrambled eggs and pancakes ready for her, as well as a wrapped bundle twice as large as her lunch had been yesterday.

“I packed you a lunch and a supper today, since you’ll be at the Guildhall all day.”

“Thanks Mom,” Sarah mumbled around a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

Helen smiled. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, dear.”

Sarah swallowed. “Yes Mom,” she said more clearly.

Dawn was just about to break when she walked through the gate and down the streets to the Guildhall. The city was quiet, with only a few people here and there sweeping the street in front of their shops or quietly leaving their homes to head to work. The Guildhall, by contrast, was open and the more enterprising Adventurers were heading in to snap up the day’s best jobs before anyone else.

Sarah entered and put her bundle of food in an empty cubby among all the racks and clothing hooks and reported for the basic education course. After a morning of learning Guild rules and laws and far too much about numbers, there was a break for lunch, and then Mr. Tenns arrived to get her started with guard work.

“Well met, Brawler Sarah,” he called out, hand raised as he emerged from the door leading upstairs.

“Good day, Mr. Tenns,” she replied, mirroring his gesture.

“Ready for your first job?” he asked, but didn’t wait for a response before he launched directly into an explanation of things like where to stand, when to intervene to break up a fight, and generally just what to look out for in the evenings when Adventurers piled in to report their completed jobs for the day and take advantage of the Guildhall’s cheap ale.

“But really,” he said, lowering his voice as he got down to why Sarah was really there, “you need to look out for the Dragon’s Flame and the Nightwatch.”

“Huh?” Sarah grunted.

“Oh, that’s the names of the parties that are feuding: the Dragon’s Flame and the Nightwatch,” he explained. They were both parties of five. The Dragon’s Flame had two Swordsmen, a Spearman, an Archer, and a Scout and their party was Rank D. The Nightwatch had one Spearman, two Mages, a Warrior, and a Scout, and their party was also Rank D, but had only just been promoted from Rank E.

“There was some kind of dispute in the Ynthill Dungeon, but it’s impossible to know exactly what happened. Normally, we’d throw the hotheads in the sparring ring and let ‘em wear themselves out under supervision, but we can’t just do that with the Nightwatch’s Mages.”

“Why not?” Sarah asked.

Mr. Tenns raised an eyebrow. “’Cause they’re Mages. If you put ‘em up against anyone in the Dragon’s Flame one on one, they’d get taken down right away before they could cast a spell or defend themselves. If we have them spar in a group, they’ll do too much damage. One of them is a Dark Mage, but the other is a Fire Mage. We can’t be having him go wild and set the building on fire in the middle of the capital, or cripple another adventurer.”

Sarah nodded. That made sense.

Mr. Tenns continued, “So your job is to step in if things get too heated, by which I mean if anyone draws a weapon or starts to cast a spell. Just knock ‘em out real quick, I know you have the speed for it, and have one of the bar maids go grab one of the City Guard to take him away.”

Sarah nodded. Sounded easy enough. She didn’t know what casting a spell looked like, but if she saw any fire, she could just step in then.

“Honestly, the best outcome would be that just having you there as a guard will keep things calm. Just try to look stern and serious and only the biggest idiots won’t keep their cool.”

“Stern and serious, got it,” Sarah replied.

And so it came to be that Sarah was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, gazing more longingly and less sternly at the Adventurers celebrating another day of success or drowning their sorrows from the day’s failures in cheap ale.

Neither the Dragon’s Flame nor the Nightwatch showed up that night.