Outlaws. Part I

     “Faster, faster!” the boy blurted as he ran barefoot downhill, vaulting over rocks and fallen branches upon the leaf-coated slope. A brown bear was chasing after him. “Faster, man!”

But the man at his side was panting heavily. He was ten steps behind the boy, his knee-high boots barely dodging the obstacles in their path, weary under the weight of the sack he was carrying on one shoulder.

     “Drop it, man, let it go,” the boy prompted, his black brow frowning.

But the man's grip tightened upon the mouth of the sack instead, and his head shook in dismissal. At the foot of the hill he stopped, crouching with his hands propped against his knees to draw breath. He breathed in and out a few times, ran a hand over his long thick moustache in a nervous overwrought gesture and, then, as if reaching a conclusion, he rushed to open his sack. He took out a fine flintlock musket of Austrian making, leaving the bag open beside him to reveal perhaps a dozen other firearms, pistols and a couple of muskets.

The runaway man took stance behind a leaf-covered mound with musket in hand, two pistols shining in the high girdle around his waist and the handle of a Turkish hanger¹ sword, fashioned in antler and with brass cross-guard and pummel and tucked in a leather scabbard, visible amid the fur-trimmed margins of his coat. Not prying his gaze from the spine of the musket held before his green eyes, the man grunted shortly:

     “Run.” But then, he added: “Wait. The sack. Take it with you. On the banks of the river Jiu, down towards Caracal, there is a camp...”

The boy scoffed:

“How can you trust I'll take it there? Why would I even carry it such a long way? All those firearms, I could sell them anywhere.”

     “Then sell them,” the man swallowed. “Sell them to the honest people, but don't let them fall in the hands of the potera², or the Ottomans and the Phanariots, nor the Russians or the Habsburgs. Sell them to our people, the Romanian peasants. Or else it was all in vain. Now go, boy. Run!”

But the boy made no move. His keen black eyes peered hawkishly somewhere in the distance, towards the clearing where his bear had rushed. Then he lay his hand upon the spine of the man's flintlock:

     “No. Come with me.” At the runaway's confused frown, he forced his gun blandly downward and uttered: “Trust me.”
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