There is a street wedged in between the houses that is not there to access anything. It is there largely because that is where the houses end and not of any decision it made for itself. It does not lead anywhere, it does not go anywhere, merely winding through some houses to come to a stop at the back of another one. It is a back street, an alley, a path scratched out from the main road beyond it. The street is not used by most people, those who live in houses along it see it as a convenient place to keep their rubbish. Occasionally a child or lost tourist will wander down it only to find it does not go anywhere. There is nothing important in the alley. Only a man, and the man knows he is not very important.

Wedged at the very back of the alley, between two houses in a grimy spot that neither will admit they own, is an old tattered mattress, likely full of mold and grime. There are old tattered bed clothes and likely old tattered bugs hidden away somewhere. There is a roof over the spot but it still gets damp in the rain. But the beggar has nowhere else to sleep.

During the day he takes his old mug, the only thing he has left really, out to the real street and hopes someone will toss him a coin out of pity. Sometimes they do and he goes down to old Enger who’ll sell him something for cheap, and sometimes they don’t and he goes back to his bed hungry after rooting through the rubbish bins of his street. He has lived this life for a long time and he does not see it improving any time soon. He has given up on ever escaping his little spot and mainly spends his time thinking dark and outdated thoughts on the world that left him there.

The beggar’s name is Ulger and this is his story.

The story begins with a coronation. A new king is crowned, one far harsher and more energetic than the old one. The king orders the dishevelled and ruined areas of the city cleaned up, cleansed he puts it. Ulger is hard to find but since he does not run it is not hard for him to be cleansed. When most of the thieves and whores and orphaned beggars have been evicted a guard wanders down Ulger’s street and sees him sulking in his corner. He has been unable to beg for days and is growing sick from living off only rubbish. The guard yanks him from his spot and he does not resist. He holds in shivering hands his mug, that is all he has left. The guard shouts at him and he mumbles something back. Then he is marched to the edge of the city and told rudely to never come back.

He stands there on shivering legs and looks back at the city that has always been his home. He looks at the people walking happily through the houses, happy to have filth like him gone. He looks at guards in their clean armour patrolling the walls and streets. He looks at the banners of the new king flying high above the castle. He thinks his dark thoughts. He thinks them for a long time.

As the sun sets and darkness comes on he finds a new spot to live out in the forest beyond the city. There are few places to find now with so many evicted people trying to eke out a living. Eventually he finds a nice thicket under a cliff, atop the cliff is the castle and as he falls asleep he watches the banners above him flap idly in the wind.

Things are difficult in the forest. Far more difficult than they were in the city. There is no rubbish to feed on, no people to beg to, no life for those not willing to work, and Ulger has always had trouble finding the will to work when work has never gained him anything. But work he does. With shaking legs and hazy sight he staggers through the forest looking for berries. He finds different berries and tries them, hoping they will not be poisoned. Although if they are perhaps that would not be so bad he thinks. It becomes another dark thought swimming through his mind. The berries do not kill him but they make him sick, much sicker than he’d been before. He spends the night retching outside his thicket. The next day he decides he needs to work out which type of berries are safe so he only tries one type of berry, it does not make him sick. He repeats this until he determines which are safe and which are not. At the end of this process his body and mind are ruined and it is difficult to get to his shaking feet every morning. But he manages it, he has always managed it.

The berries do not make him sick but they do not make him healthy either. Living off nothing but berries begins to leave a raw pit in his stomach, a raw pit he knows only too well. And he is starting to run out of berries. He tries catching rabbits but they are too quick for him and he knows neither how to make a snare nor what he would need to make it so he gives up on that idea. He tries catching fowl, the big fat forest fowl that burst into the air whenever he approaches but they are too quick as well. All the animals of the forest are hard to catch for a sick man with only his hands. He considers stealing but he does not know how to steal. There are farms with lots of food but they are guarded by dogs and sometimes men. There is the city with markets and storehouses but they are guarded even better. There is the castle towering over him but he lacks the strength to climb it and it is guarded best of all. So he sits in his thicket and starves. And starves and starves.

He knows he must leave. He must move off and find some better place to live but he lacks the strength to move. He watches the banners flap everyday and the sun rise and fall and all the while he grows weaker and weaker. Willing himself to move, willing himself to leave this cursed thicket. To stand, to stretch, to kick, to move even a small part of himself. But he just lies there, weighed down by his sickness and hunger and dark dark thoughts. He knows he will die here. He knows he is an unimportant man destined to die an unimportant death. He stares up and the banners and curses the king who put him there. Then he closes his eyes.

But he does not die. For there is still life left in him even if he lacks the strength of will to use it.

Two men walk past, guards in service to the king. They are patrolling the forest, searching for brigands or thieves or beggars. Ulger watches them approach and fear sets in. He has feared the guards all his life and he does not stop fearing them now. He edges back in the thicket. Burying himself in the dirt and leaves and branches. Edging back slowly so as to make no noise. The thicket goes further back than he thought and as they draw closer he clears out a path behind him, through branches and dirt that comes away easily in his hands. There is a hole in the ground it seems, a hole the thicket has grown over. He quickly excavates the hole, it will be a good place to hide. A good place to die.

He turns back to look at the guards. They are a good way off, it seems they have moved past him now and there is no danger anymore. But as he looks his hands clear away the last bit of dirt and he falls. For what he thought was a small furrow in the ground was actually a pit, a pit leading into a dark cave. He crashes through, clearing a path through the years and years of thicket that had grown there and slams into the cold hard stone at the bottom. Dirt cascading around him.

The fall sends adrenaline through him, wakes up muscles that had resigned themselves to their fate. He stands, for the first time in a long time he stands. He is not in a cave, he is in a passage. A passage built beneath the cliff, beneath the castle. It is an old passage, so old that the wall has all but rotted away, opening up the hole he fell through. The passage is dark and the only light comes from the hole but he is used to the dark. He has lived in dark places for a long time.

The passage is blocked in one direction, some sort of cave in, he is not sure. So he goes down the other direction. It is a long passage, and it has stairs, he takes the stairs and climbs up and up and up into the cliff. His thicket was at the bottom of the cliff that the castle sat on. He has some idea of where this passage might go.

His legs have not climbed stairs in a long time, they have not walked in a long time so he is very tired when he eventually reaches the top. But reach the top he does, he will not allow himself to die now, when he is so close to the castle. He does not know what he will do when he reaches the castle, he is not sure he will even be able to get in. But the king lives in the castle and he has many dark thoughts about the king.

The passage comes to a door with a winch to open it. Winding the winch is hard with his starved arms but the door is built well. Built to support its own weight on strong hinges. The hinges are old and covered in dust, but they still open the door smoothly. It slides to the side and he sees torchlight beyond. Opening the door just a crack so as to avoid giving away his secret as best he can he peeks through.

He sees the castle storeroom and it is filled with food. So much food of all different kinds. So much food that they could not possibly know if a little bit went missing. His mouth waters as he looks at the food. But the room is not empty. There are no guards this far back into the storeroom but there is a girl. A cute little girl hiding behind one of the shelves of food. She is peering out as well, looking at the spiral staircase that leads into the storeroom from the castle.

Ulger watches her. He does not know very much about cute little girls. She fidgets and giggles, twisting and turning on her feet. Seemingly waiting for something. Then a cute little boy wanders down the staircase and she sees him and jerks back behind her hiding spot. The boy looks for her, looking up and down between shelves and crates. The girl can barely contain herself, she is smiling so much and giggling.

Ulger closes his door so they don’t see him but he listens. Eventually the boy finds the girl and she laughs uncontrollably, impressed with her clever hiding spot. The boy says he doesn’t think it was that clever but the girl is not convinced. They leave and wander up the staircase and Ulger listens to them go. He sneaks out of the chamber, grabs as much food as he can carry and disappears back to his thicket, closing the secret door behind him. For once as he watches the banners in the night he does not think dark thoughts.

Many days pass with Ulger sneaking down into the castle to raid food from the storeroom. He usually goes at night and is never caught. There are guards for the storeroom but they only guard the entrance, not the very back of it where he goes. Since he goes at night he never sees the girl and the boy again. He mostly forgets about them, just some children who live in the castle.

He builds up much greater strength with the food from the storerooms and manages to explore the forest around him as well. It seems all the other thieves and whores and beggars who tried to hide in the forest were found by the guards and sent even further away. But they never found him. He always has his secret passage to hide in if they ever come looking. So he has the whole forest to himself. Some of the dark thoughts begin to fade from his mind.

The army does not attack from the cliffside of the castle where he is so he does not see them coming. He hears them though. He hears the fighting and the shouting and the screaming of horses. He leaves his thicket and his forest to investigate, watching the battle from afar. An army, a huge army has arrived outside the city and they are making war with the guards inside it. There are arrows flying everywhere and siege engines and so much shouting and noise and blood. He is reminded of all the red berries he had to eat before he found his secret passage.

The guards inside the city take heavy casualties but it seems they are winning. Their defenses too good for the attackers to breach. Ulger goes back to his thicket and thinks about the battle.

At first he does not particularly care about it. He thinks that even if the attackers take the castle and the banners change the storeroom will still be there for him to raid. He does not much care about a change of banners. But then he thinks back to when he was kicked out of his home in the city. Back to when he almost starved to death in the thicket because of the king’s grand decree. The king who’s banners fly above him now. He watches those banners and the dark thoughts return.

The next day he goes to the army. They are camped outside the city with defenses set up around their camp so they see him coming. Luckily they do not shoot him on sight and take him inside where he tries to talk. He does not expect this to be difficult but he has not really had to talk for so long, it seems he has almost forgotten how.

“I can... I can... I can get you inside...” he stammers, trying to get the words out.

“Who are you?” one of the guards asks him. He looks much the same as the guard who kicked him out of the city all those months ago.

“Ul... Ulger... a b- b- beggar.”

“How can you get us inside?”

“I know a secret passage... A way into the castle...” As he talks it is getting easier.

The guard does not look so sure.

“A- a- way into the storerooms... A secret way... A hidden way... Nobody knows but me...”

The guard is tempted to run him through with his sword. He smells terrible and is sickly and shivering. He does not realise Ulger has looked much much worse.

“You can talk to Sarta,” he says leading the way to the leader’s tent. Sarta can deal with this beggar, he thinks. Then he can go back to guard duty.

Ulger follows the guard to the biggest and fanciest tent in the camp. The guard explains to some other guards what is going on and Ulger is led inside. The tent is like nothing Ulger has seen in a long time. There are plump cushions and fur rugs spread across the grass. Chairs made of soft foldable cloth are dotted about the room. A hugely fat man sits in one of the chairs, his plump hand idly stuffing fruit into his mouth while he watches a thin woman with few clothes dance for him.

Ulger feels very out of place. The man looks at him curiously and the woman stops dancing.

“I’m told you can get my men into the castle,” the fat man says.

Ulger nods slowly. “Y- y- yes... I know a secret passage...”

“What is it you want in return?” the fat man asks. Eating another grape.

Ulger pauses, he has never thought about what he wanted in return. He has always resigned himself to what he has and his dark dark thoughts. He looks around the lavish tent. There are a few ideas there of what he might want in return.

Ulger watches the castle fall from the camp with Sarta and his entourage. There are screams and fire and shouting. Some people try to flee but only escape to the camp itself where more soldiers are waiting to kill them. The slaughter goes on long into the night. Somewhere in the battle there is a particularly high pitched scream. One that means nothing and could come from anyone but it reminds Ulger of a day long ago. A day in the secret passage listening to a cute little girl giggling as she hid from a cute little boy. Ulger tries not to think about them. Tries to forget them like he had before the battle had begun. But he can’t.

Over the years he tries so very hard to forget. He tries drink and food and women, he tries everything he can buy with the money Sarta gave him. But he is never happy. He is not sure he ever will be. Even with everything he could ever want he is weighed down with dark dark thoughts.