05 - A Desperate Chase

“Damn it! Get the hell out of my way,” the guard roared as he trampled his way through the plaza. That little shit who sprinted out the doorway had gotten a head start, but he was still just a kid, unlike the guard who had undergone rigorous training. In fact, he almost made it into the Kalýteros branch of the Military Academy, but some noble kid ended up buying his way in, taking his spot.

However, Nazarius also had a few advantages in this situation. First of all, being small allowed him to weave through the pedestrians a lot easier than the guard who had to force his way through the crowd. And while the guard's spear could be sheathed, his shield couldn’t be, so he had to lug it around with him. The added weight from his armor also didn’t help.

Another advantage Nazarius had was his familiarity with his surroundings. He had been walking around this city for his whole life while the guard had moved here just a few days ago.

Making sure the medicine was okay, Nazarius swerved to the right of a woman into a relatively open area of the marketplace before getting swallowed by the sea of people once more.

“Move it,” the guard snarled as he shoved one man after another out of his way. He was getting more agitated by the second as the brat kept getting farther and farther away. Soon enough, if he didn’t do something, the kid would dissolve into the crowd. If that happened, he would be lucky if all his boss did was fire him.

Thinking of a solution, the guard raged through the crowd until he eventually thought of something.

The marketplace filled with hazards and obstacles was a place where the kid held the advantage, but what about places such as the residential area? They would be much easier for him to navigate as there weren’t as many people and the houses confined the boy to a straight line. The only problem was getting the kid to the residential area at this rate, the kid would keep running circles around the marketplace until he lost him. But, if he pretended to go check the residential area before hiding on the roof, he could get a good view of him and find the optimal time to strike.

The guard took a deep breath in to quell his rage before acting very mad. “Shit! Did he run off to the residential area,” he said, running down the Main Street and taking a right off of the nearest residential road.

“Dolos, don’t fail me now,” the guard sighed before vanishing into thin air.

…

“Did I lose him? I think he went into the residential area,” Nazarius muttered in relief. The only problem now was that three— no, four people saw his face. Nazarius looked down sadly as he reflected on the events that had just transpired. Why had Kakó betrayed him? Did he ever do something to upset him?

Nazarius contemplated before thinking of the only answer he could. ‘No way… This couldn’t have been about Korítsi, right? There’s just no way,” Nazarius thought bitterly as he tried to deny it. However, he couldn’t think of anything else he had done. All sorts of negative emotions started festering inside of Nazarius’s heart. One of his one and only friends had betrayed him and it was for something that wasn’t even his fault.

Holding back tears, Nazarius looked around to make sure that no one was chasing him. Weaving through the crowd, Nazarius began the longest walk he had taken in his entire life.

…

“Hm… he should have recognized I had left by now… perhaps he is taking precautions? Oh wait, there he is,” the guard chuckled as he saw Nazarius step out of the crowd, “When should I strike? Should I do it as soon as there are no obstacles around, or…” The guard thought of something before a sinister smirk appeared on his face. “Should I wait until he gets home so I can arrest his entire family?”

Shifting down the roof, the guard started cackling softly as to not alert anyone of his presence. Breathing in to stop his fit of laughter, the guard looked down upon the kid as he sauntered his way to his demise.

…But, after a while of watching the kid and shuffling along rooftops, the guard noticed that something was off. The kid had walked down the same street three times, looping around more blocks each time.

‘Was he an orphan,’ the guard asked himself. No, that wasn’t possible. First of all, his clothes were way too nice for him to have been from the streets. Plus, there was no way an orphan would get tricked that easily… well, unless the other kid had betrayed him in hopes of gaining favor from the lord, which wasn’t impossible. Still, the kid didn’t have the air of an orphan, which only led to one possibility… he knew he was being followed.

“Well shit. I guess I’ve been found out,” the guard snickered, undoing his invisibility. “Well, it wouldn’t have been fun to beat the living hell out of a kid one sidedly,” the guard said, jumping down from the rooftops and landing on the street with a bang.

…

Gods dammit.

Looking around, Nazarius realized he had no idea where he was. He must have drifted off while he was lost in thought. Besides his own, Nazarius hadn’t really checked out any other residential areas since Aunt Gyn told him that a bunch of thugs would take everything he owned if they saw him.

“Wait, this courtyard looks familiar,” Nazarius muttered “Have I been walking in circles this entire time?”

Despite being poor, the city of Ftochós actually had a somewhat large number of people living there. The main reason for this is because the town is quite far from any other settlement and paying to travel would cost a month’s worth of food, but this was besides the point.

“How hard is it to find Main Street,” he said, irritated.

Suddenly, a loud bang echoed from behind Nazarius. Turning around clumsily, Nazarius started to panic. It was the guard.

“Heh, so you noticed my presence? That’s pretty impressive for a shit your size. So tell me, how’d you do it? You don’t look old enough to even have a blessing, but even if you did have one, there’s no way you’d be able to use it yet. Did someone who’s been through the academy teach you somehow? No, there’s no way anyone below the age of 9 could see any form of exousía… Hey kid, you wouldn’t happen to be involved with ‘them,’ would you?”

The guard's expression turned grave as he asked the last question. Unfortunately, Nazarius had no idea what he was talking about. Afraid that any answer he could provide would not be suitable for the guard, Nazarius decided to keep quiet. However, the guard took his silence as an answer.

“I see,” the guard uttered ominously before grabbing his spear off of his back. Seeing this, Nazarius decided that staying there any longer would be dangerous. In an open space such as this, Nazarius had no hope of out running the guard, so he decided to go with a different tactic.

“Heeup,” Nazarius groaned as he threw himself behind the pillars of a nearby house.

Author's note: some Greek houses had a few pillars at their front door that held up a small roof that covered the front of their houses.

“I see… You know you are incapable of outrunning me, so you have decided to attempt outmaneuvering me instead,” the guard said as he started rushing forward, following Nazarius’s every move.

“However,” the guard murmured while taking a big step. Suddenly, the guard appeared right behind Nazarius, swiping his spear. The wooden pillars Nazarius was weaving through suddenly collapsed, causing the roof to fall right where he was standing. “I’m afraid that won’t work,” the guard finished.

…

“Ypirétis, I demand you go and catch that bastard immediately,” Dysosmos pitifully proclaimed. “My lord, the guard we hired was the best we could find on the market. If he somehow loses a mere child, we could have him hanged for conspiring with a criminal,” Ypirétis announced a little too calmly. “There’s also the matter of… that,” Ypirétis said, leaning in so only Dysosmos could hear. He was looking at the child on the other side of the counter when he said this.

“Shouldn’t we hang him as well,” Dysosmos proposed. “But my lord, without his assistance, then the scoundrel would have definitely gotten away with our medicine. Wouldn’t it be more logical to reward him than to kill him?”

Hearing the conversation, Kakó became very concerned and a bit frightened. Execution for petty theft was a little extreme, wasn’t it? Kakó didn’t want Nazarius to die, despite how much he disliked him. Deciding he needed to step in, Kakó piped up.

“Sirs, I know this is presumptuous of me, but may I ask that you spare me and my friend’s life? You see, the only reason he did this is because his brother contracted a rare disease that only your store held the cure for. Unfortunately, his family is quite poor, so theft was the only solution he could think of,” Kakó stated in the politest way he could.

“Family? So the brat wasn’t an orphan?” Dysosmos wore a crooked smile that would even give a god shivers. “You, peasant. You have been dismissed. If you appear before me again, be prepared to face the consequences.”

Seeing this, Kakó realized he had made a grave mistake. “Ypirétis,” Dysosmos said menacingly, “get the carriage.” “But my lord,” Ypirétis tried protesting before seeing the look on his master's face. “Yes sir,” he eventually murmured.

Only as the duo walked out of the store had Kakó truly understood what he had done.

…

“Gah!”

Nazarius had managed to escape being encased in the wreckage, but not unscathed. His right calf had a diagonal cut about an inch long down it and his elbows were scraped. The guard's spear had also grazed his left shoulder. As he ran, blood dripped onto the street from his wounds.

“Oh? That didn’t stop you? Wow, honestly I’m impressed kid,” the guard said with an oddly earnest tone. His attitude had done a complete 180 compared to how it was earlier.

“Well, it’s too bad that this is the end,” he said, with a bizarre look on his face. To Nazarius, the guard’s personality was an enigma.

As the guard approached, Nazarius snapped out of his stupor as he clumsily stood up and tried to run away. However, before he could take a second step, a nauseating feeling spread throughout his body, causing him to slip and fall back to the ground.

“Yep, definitely wasn’t exousía. Which means…” the guards face darkened as a fierce aura surrounded him. Suddenly, the sickly feeling inflicting Nazarius vanished. Noticing the opportunity, Nazarius fled as fast as he could.

“Where do you think you’re going you little bastard,” Nazarius heard from behind him. Looking back, Nazarius could see that the guard was preparing to use that move again. Anticipating the attack, Nazarius looked around for any alleys to take cover in. In the end, all he could find was a small crevice between two houses,

Diving into the crack, Nazarius heard something behind him. As he turned around, he saw a spear that had carved its way into the mud bricks of a house. “Dammit,” the guard cursed as Nazarius shuffled to the other side of the crevice.

Removing his spear from the rubble that now guarded the crevice Nazarius had run down, the guard looked up, seeing the roof as his only option. But before the guard could do anything, a bunch of people started poking out of their houses to see what the commotion was.

Not wanting to stay around to answer questions, the guard swiftly hopped up onto the roof and down to the street on the other side of the houses. However, as he looked around, the guard noticed that the kid was already gone.

“You damn traitor,” the outraged guard screamed as he frantically looked around for any trace of the now missing kid.

…

“Ugh.”

Walking down Main Street was Nazarius, who had crawled through another crevice that sat in between two houses. The street he ended up on just so happened to empty into Main Street, freeing Nazarius from any more frantic scrambling away from the guard.

“What am I gonna tell Aunt Gyn? I slipped and fell, causing a big tear to appear in the back of my tunic? Well, that doesn’t matter. As long as Fíle is fine, everything will be fine.”

Pulling out the medicine from his pocket, Nazarius looked around to make sure that no one was following him. As he confirmed that the medicine had not been damaged, Nazarius looked around for his street, excited that things would soon return to normal.

As he stashed the medicine back into his pocket, the street suddenly started violently shaking. It was so bad that a good portion of people fell down or stumbled. As the ground shook, a few of the more unstable houses collapsed, falling onto other houses nearby. In about twenty seconds, more than a dozen houses had been destroyed by either the earthquake or other falling houses.

Earthquakes of this magnitude weren’t super rare around the coastline of Greece, but for Ftochós, which was located in western Macedonia, earthquakes were practically unheard of. That is, unless they were caused by something.

Author's note: Macedonia was the northernmost part of Greece that cut through about half of the peninsula. If that didn’t make much sense, look up a map of Ancient Greece.

“No way…” “It can’t be…” “It was just a normal earthquake right?” “No, not here…” “So does that mean that it was a trypa?” “But I don’t see one, so is it really?”

As the crowd gossiped, another rumbling noise was heard. This time however, the origin of the noise was a carriage that was swiftly driving down the street.

As the carriage passed, it started slowing down, until it was a few meters in front of Nazarius. Curious as to who it was, Nazarius peeked inside of the window before terror overtook is body.

Inside of the carriage was the shopkeeper he just robbed; Dysosmos.