The Villager
The short, black haired recruiting sergeant looked up from his paperwork to examine the next lad in line. A tall, wild blond headed lad, the sergeant thought to himself that he had never seen such an unlikely youth for the army. Still, the army needed men.
“Name?” He asked.
Drendin Barker,” the lad replied, with a cheerful voice.
“Age?”
“Sixteen last summer.”
“Class?”
“Villager.”
The sergeant stared. He had never heard of such a class. Nor imagined he ever would .
“And you wish to join the army?”
“Yes, Sir. Left my village to see the world some. Then I’ll go back, find a likely lass… unless I find one here… and go back and raise a parcel of kids.”
If he didn’t die first. Well, he wouldn’t do for the front lines, no doubt, but there were other jobs.
“Do you swear to follow the lawful orders of those set over you during your term of enlistment?” he asked.
“Sorry,” the lad said, “What terms?”
“For two years, unless we should be in battle at that time.”
“Oh, that’s all right then,” Drendin said, and the golden glow of a successful oath settled on the two of them. For the dozenth time for the sergeant, but the lad looked curiously at himself when in happened. He didn’t even know about oaths?
“Report to the quartermaster,” the sergeant said. “He’ll get you settled in.’
—
The next time the sergeant saw the lad, he was walking alongside a wagon loaded with supplies.
“How is he doing?” he asked the sergent of logistics.
“Who, Drendin? Naive, cheerful, ignorant, but very willing. No problems. The other men make fun of him a bit.”
“Why just a bit?”
“Cause he’s so blame helpful. I think they’re all worried that he’ll cut one of them out. He gets run ragged with helping here and there, not his own duties. Not that he ever looks ragged, though.”
—
The next time the sergeant saw Drendin was at the end of their first battle. The enemy had ambushed them, coming out of the wood-line as they marched through. The troops had rallied well enough, which was always a worry with so many new ones, and they had at least held their own.
But then the sargent had remembered the supply wagons and rode off, his heart in his throat. If those wagons were destroyed, there would be hell to pay. But when he had gotten there he had found a half dozen of the roustabouts dead, another half dozen wounded, and Drendin standing, whistling cheerfully, his clothes tattered by seeming uninjured, with a dozen bodies in front of him. A couple of which were still moving.
Two of the roustabout’s sons, who had been picking through the bodies for coins and other useful loot, ran away when the sargent rode up. “What happened here?” the sergeant shouted.
“Well,” Drendin said. “These here men came out of those woods, and tried to burn the wagons. Or maybe steal from them, I don’t actually know.”
“But… you killed them?”
“I shouted at them first, told them to stop, but they just came on.”
“But… but how did you do it?”
“Oh, I took a spear away from the first one. Likely implement, spear.”
“You killed all these with a spear that you took from an enemy?”
“Well, I killed the first one with my hands, and a couple of the others ain’t dead yet. But, other than that, yes.’
“But how? All those soldiers. Why weren’t you killed?”
“I’m sure I told you my class, that first day,” Drendin said. “Nobody else has even asked.”
“You said, ‘villager’!”
“Aye, that’s right. Have you never asked yourself how we villagers make out, way out there, with all the wild beasts and raiders and all? Good class, ‘villager’. We pretty much all have it.”
“What does it do?”
“Well, each villager, you can’t kill one of us unless you bring enough at him to kill all of us. And when one of us gets a skill, like spear, any of us can use it. Not education or magic or anything, just basic physical skills. Woodworking, axe work… I would have liked to have had an axe, actually. That’s my favourite.”
“But… with those skills you could take over the world!”
Drendin chuckled. “It’s called ‘villager’. It doesn’t work if you move to the city… you get yourself a new class. It’s why I asked how long the enlistment was. I can only stay out about three years, or I’ll lose it. And no girl back home will want to marry a city feller.”
This is just a fun, LITRPG idea that came to me one day. In so many of the stories, the people living in the villages are all weak, low class. And I always ask myself how the author thinks they survive.
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Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:
The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid
and
As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.
Arthur also has a substack, and a website.
Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von