The Militia's Count

Cassidy Darkstar took up his road again in Westfall, and the first name it gave him was Demont's Place. He was a druid of the Kaldorei, far from the woods of his own people, carrying an errand that belonged to other folk and other fields. Yet he carried it as though it were his own. The errand was called The People's Militia, and it asked a plain and heavy thing of whoever would take it up: that the Defias, who had grown bold in that country, be met and thinned, so that those who worked the land might have some little peace. Such tasks are often given and seldom finished, but Cassidy had set his hand to this one, and he did not mean to put it down half done.

At Demont's Place the count was finished. The last of five Defias Pathstalkers fell before him, and that part of the errand was done. How the fighting went no tale now tells, and this one will not make it up. It is enough to say that the number was reached. Soon afterwards the second count was also met: five Defias Knuckledusters, the last of them brought down, and the second charge of the militia's errand was complete. Two counts were kept and both were filled. Small as such numbers seem when they are written down, each stood for a road made a little safer and a farmstead a little less afraid. It may be that Cassidy felt the quiet satisfaction of a task finished cleanly, the kind that needs no witness.

From there he went on and came to The Dagger Hills, also in Westfall. He had not set foot there before, and it was the second place of his journey. The name was a hard one, as names in that country often are, and he took it as he found it. He did not stay to learn more of it. The errand of the militia was not yet fully told, for the counts were done but no reward had been asked for or given. So he passed into the Dagger Hills with the work of his hands behind him and its reckoning still ahead.

So it was a short stretch of the long road, and a quiet one: no new strength won, no companion at his side, no treasure taken up. There were only two counts kept faithfully and two names added to the map of his wandering. But long roads are made mostly of such stretches, and Cassidy Darkstar was no worse for walking this one alone. He stood at last among the Dagger Hills, the errand finished in deed if not yet in word, and the road ran on before him as it always had.