Chapter 10: Why I Follow Him
Armored Dragon Calendar Year 413 – Charles, Age 19
[Charles POV]
I was twelve when the slavers took me.
They came at night, moving through our village with the practiced efficiency of men who had done this many times before.
Torches flickered between the houses, throwing shadows that made everything seem unreal.
The screams started moments after the first door was kicked in and they didn't stop for what felt like hours.
My father died trying to fight them.
He had been a carpenter, a man who built things rather than destroyed them.
He had never held a weapon in anger his entire life.
But when they came for his family, he grabbed the first thing he could find, a hammer from his workbench, and threw himself at men who had been killing since before he was born.
They cut him down in seconds.
I watched it happen from behind the table where my mother had pushed me, her hands clamped over my mouth to keep me from screaming.
It didn't matter. They found us anyway.
My mother disappeared into one of the caged wagons. I never saw her again.
I don't know if she's alive or dead. I've stopped hoping for either.
Some uncertainties are easier to carry than confirmed loss.
I spent three years in chains.
Moving from market to market, owner to owner, each new master finding new ways to remind me that I was property rather than person.
The scars on my back told the story of those years, a map of cruelty written in raised tissue and faded welts.
The scars on my mind ran deeper.
The first master had been casual in his cruelty, striking when it suited him with the thoughtlessness of a man swatting flies.
The second had been methodical, using pain as a tool of conditioning, teaching me to associate disobedience with suffering until my body learned to flinch before my mind could think.
The third had been the worst. Not because of what he did to me, but because of what he made me do to others.
He trained slaves to break other slaves and resistance meant watching friends suffer for your defiance.
I learned to survive. Learned to hide what I was thinking behind blank eyes and compliant posture.
Learned to eat whatever they gave me, sleep whenever they allowed it, work until my body screamed and then work some more.
And I learned to hate.
The hatred was the only thing they couldn't take from me.
It burned in my chest like a coal that refused to die, feeding on every indignity and every moment of helplessness.
I nursed that hatred carefully, keeping it hidden from masters who would have punished any sign of defiance.
When I finally escaped, crawling through a drainage ditch with the stench of waste clinging to my skin, I had nothing.
No family, no home, no reason to keep living except the stubborn refusal to let them win.
I wandered for months. Starving, sick, waiting to die in some forgotten corner of the world.
The freedom I dreamed of in captivity turned out empty.
What good was freedom when you had no one to share it with?
When every face belonged to a stranger and they looked right through you?
When meals were stolen or begged for and nights were spent shivering under shelter?
I collapsed near a trade road, too weak to walk anymore.
The fever had been building for days and my body had finally given out.
I lay in the undergrowth, watching leaves drift overhead, and waited for death to claim me.
That was when Claude found me.
He was seven years old.
A child who should have been playing in the village square, not walking alone through the forest at the edge of the trade roads.
But there he was, standing over my collapsed body with an expression that belonged to someone far older.
His eyes were what caught my attention first.
They weren't the eyes of a child.
"You're dying," he said. Not a question.
"Yes," I croaked. My throat was raw from thirst and the word came out as little more than a whisper. "Leave me."
He didn't leave. He knelt beside me, his small hands strong as he helped me sit.
I was twice his size, wasted though my body was, and he shouldn't have been able to move me at all.
But he managed it with a competence that seemed utterly natural.
Then he did something that made no sense at all. He apologized.
"I'm sorry I couldn't find you sooner," he said, and there was genuine regret in his voice. "The network is still too small. We're missing too many."
I didn't understand what he was talking about. Didn't have the strength to ask.
He half-carried me to a hidden camp deeper in the forest where other people waited.
Other survivors, I would learn later. Former slaves who had been rescued the same way I was being rescued.
They nursed me back to health.
Fed me broth when my stomach couldn't handle anything solid.
Gave me clean water and herbs to fight the fever.
Sat with me during the nightmares, speaking soft words that reminded me I wasn't still in chains.
It took weeks before I could stand on my own. Weeks more before I could walk without assistance.
The fever had nearly killed me and the years of malnutrition and abuse had left my body a wreck that required careful rebuilding.
But I survived. And when I was strong enough to stand, they brought me to Claude again.
The camp had a structure I hadn't noticed during my recovery.
People moved with purpose, carrying out tasks that seemed coordinated by some invisible hand.
Supplies were organized. Watches were maintained, and it was more like a military outpost than a refugee camp.
Claude was at the center of it, giving orders and receiving reports with the casual authority of a commander who had been doing this for years rather than months.
"I'm building something," he told me. "An organization to protect people from what happened to you, to all of us."
He met my eyes with a directness that made me forget he was a child.
"I need people who understand. Who won't hesitate when hesitation means letting others suffer."
"Why me?"
"Because you survived. Because you escaped, because you didn't give up when giving up would have been easier."
He tilted his head, studying me with those strange old eyes.
"And because I can see you're angry. Angry at the people who took everything from you. Angry at a world that let it happen."
He was right. The anger was always there, burning in my chest like a coal that refused to die.
<<<<<<< HEAD
Three years of careful hiding had made it invisible from the outside.
But it hadn't gone away. If anything, freedom had made it stronger.
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"I'm offering you a purpose for that anger," Claude continued. "Help me build something that matters. Help me save the people we couldn't save before."
I said yes.
That was two years ago. I was nineteen and the organization had grown beyond anything I'd imagined.
We had twenty-three members scattered across three territories.
Freed slaves like myself, but also informants, merchants, adventurers who shared our goals.
Mira ran our network, her tracking skills making her invaluable for identifying slaver movements.
Tobias led the combat teams, his massive frame and gentle heart both assets in their own ways.
The organization had become my family.
The people who moved through these caves, who risked their lives on missions Claude planned, who spent their nights watching trade roads for signs of slaver caravans, they were my brothers and sisters now.
Bound not by blood but by shared purpose.
And at the center of it all, directing everything with a strategic mind that seemed impossible for his age, was Claude.
I watched him now as he reviewed reports in our hidden headquarters, a cave system we had converted into a functional base of operations.
Torches lined the walls, casting steady light across chambers that served different purposes, storage here, sleeping quarters there, a training area deeper in where new members learned the skills they would need.
Nine years old and he commanded adults twice his age with an authority that brooked no argument.
"The northern route is compromised," he said, studying a map covered in coded annotations.
The symbols were his invention, a shorthand that allowed us to communicate critical information in ways that couldn't be deciphered by outsiders.
"They're rerouting through the mountain passes. We'll need to adjust."
"I can send Mira to scout," I offered.
"Do it. But tell her not to engage, observation only."
His fingers traced a path on the map.
"If they're changing routes, someone is feeding them information. We need to find the leak before we can act."
The clinical precision in his voice reminded me of the moments when he became someone else entirely.
I had seen it happen during combat, watched his body move with skills no child should possess.
His eyes would go cold, his movements would become precise and deadly, and the child would disappear entirely.
And sometimes, during conversations like this one, I could almost hear a different quality in his voice.
A depth of knowledge that shouldn't exist. A certainty that came from somewhere beyond mere intelligence.
I didn't ask. None of us did.
Whatever Claude was, whatever lived inside him, it was fighting for the same things we were.
That was enough.
<<<<<<< HEAD
"There's something else," I said, hesitating before continuing. "Some of the newer members are asking questions about you."
=======
"There's something else," I said, hesitating before continuing. "Some of the newer members are asking questions. About you."
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"What kind of questions?"
"How you know so much. Why you're so..." I searched for the right word. "Different."
The newer members hadn't been with us long enough to stop questioning.
They saw a nine-year-old boy giving orders to adults, demonstrating combat skills that rivaled trained warriors, and they wanted explanations.
The veterans had learned not to ask. Had learned that some mysteries were better left unsolved.
Claude was quiet for a moment.
When he spoke, his voice was tired in a way that had nothing to do with physical exhaustion.
"What do you tell them?"
"That some people are born for extraordinary things. That age doesn't determine capability."
I met his eyes steadily.
"That you saved my life and gave me a reason to keep living, and that's enough for me."
His expression shifted. Gratitude, maybe, or sadness. Hard to tell with him.
"It won't be enough forever," he said. "Eventually, people will want answers I can't give."
<<<<<<< HEAD
"Then we'll deal with that when it comes.For now, they follow because you've earned their loyalty. Because you've never asked them to risk anything you wouldn't risk yourself. Because you treat them like people, not tools."
=======
"Then we'll deal with that when it comes. For now, they follow because you've earned their loyalty. Because you've never asked them to risk anything you wouldn't risk yourself. Because you treat them like people, not tools."
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That last part was important.
I had known commanders before, the slavers who organized caravans, the guards who kept their captives in line.
They had all seen the people under their command as assets to be used, resources to be spent when necessary.
Claude was different.
He remembered every name, asked about injuries and illnesses, ensured that no one went without food or shelter, even when resources were scarce.
He planned operations with an obsessive attention to minimizing risk and every casualty, every injury, every close call weighed on him visibly.
He cared, in a way that seemed almost painful to witness sometimes.
Claude nodded slowly, turning back to the map. But I had seen what he was trying to hide.
Whatever burden he carried showed in the set of his shoulders, the shadows beneath his eyes.
He was carrying something enormous.
Something that would break a normal person. And he was doing it alone.
"The people in the organization," I said quietly, "we're not just following orders. We believe in what we're building, in what you're building."
"What am I building, Charles?"
The question caught me off guard. It sounded genuine, as though he truly didn't know.
"A future," I said after a moment.
"A world where what happened to us doesn't happen to others. Where children don't get taken in the night. Where families don't get torn apart by people who see human beings as commodities."
Claude was silent for a long time.
The torchlight flickered across his face, casting shadows that made him look older, more tired.
"I hope you're right," he said finally. "I hope that's what this becomes."
I didn't understand what he meant by that. Didn't understand the fear that lurked beneath his words.
But I didn't need to understand. I only needed to follow.
Because Claude had found me dying in the forest and chosen to save me.
Had given me purpose when I had none. Had trusted me with responsibilities that mattered.
He was nine and the most capable leader I had ever known.
Whatever secrets he carried, whatever voices spoke through him in moments of crisis, I would stand beside him.
Until the end. Whatever end that turned out to be.
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