The Renegade Saga

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley, laying waste to the fields and seizing all the wealth they could wrap their talons around,” the radical called out to the crowd of eager listeners gathered before him, a trace of desperate fervour in his voice. Dangerous words, Mae thought to herself as she strolled past the young agitator on her dapple grey steed, Nymph. Dangerous words.

“There weren’t always snakes hiding in the grasses, nor rats under every floorboard, nor a craven king on the throne!” cried the short, wiry radical, his ocean blue eyes alive with zeal. “It’s coming to pass! I can see my once free and prosperous nation falling apart at the seams! The morals that our nation once stood for are fading! None of us work for our own liberty anymore! Whether it be in blistering sunshine or vicious rain, we slave away all the dread days that are given us just to fill our bellies with slop and put poor excuses of roofs over our heads. Yet, no matter how hard we struggle, no matter how close we come to buckling under the strain of our toils, our lives still depend on the fragile wages and extortionate rents of this fell city! Our nation teeters on a knife’s edge between bankruptcy and starvation and we, the common people, are the pawns who suffer for the mistakes of our leaders!”

As the flaxen-haired agitator delivered his sermon from his podium of crates in the centre of the road, he threw his arms into the air, making balls with his fists one moment and clasping his palms in exasperation the next. There must’ve been well over one-hundred commoners gathered before him, packed in between the wattle-and-daub shops and derelict slum houses of Lotus Street. Faces gaunt, clothes filthy and tattered, eyes long devoid of any life, the members of the crowd ate up the agitator’s words like a flock of gulls feasting upon a discarded piece of bread. They were desperate people in such dire need of a hero that they’d look anywhere to find one. “Hear, hear!” the crowd cried out in harmony, their clamour so raucous and impassioned that it caused a group of starlings on a nearby rooftop to take flight.

Although she wanted to spend as little time as possible among this seditious congregation, the thickly pressed crowd forced Mae to slow Nymph to a walk. Speaking of anger towards the establishment was foolery, especially in broad daylight. If the Royal Guard were to catch the agitator, they’d charge him with treason, hang him without a trial then head to the nearest tavern to congratulate themselves as though he’d been no more than a swatted fly.

Purposefully weaving her steed through the throng, Mae returned her attention to the twenty-something revolutionary whose words of anger and dissent were captivating the crowd on that hot, cloudless day.

“I’ve seen parents sell their daughters for less than a month’s pay! I’ve seen promising, bright-eyed children waste away until they’re grey flesh taut over bone, so feeble they can’t move more than a few feet without collapsing from exhaustion!”

Again, the assembly of citizens cheered in support of his words - no one in that crowd was a stranger to the horrors of poverty. Their minds were fixated upon him, so much so that they seemed not to notice the afternoon’s scorching heat or the cloaked and hooded redhead riding in between them.

Voice rough and edged with ire, the revolutionary continued; “I want to run through green fields and swim in the ocean again but I can’t! I’m trapped in this city, a slave in all but name! Why do we do this to ourselves!? We give up all our strength so that we have none left to laugh or smile with! But why, I ask you? I’ll tell you! The only purpose of our struggles is to satisfy the insatiable greed of those who rule us! So that they can build marble palaces in the name of vanity, bedeck themselves in silk and pearls and dine off golden plates whilst we starve! I don’t think our overlords will be satisfied until they’ve taken everything from us! The only way to liberate ourselves is through blood! Only the Renegades can save us! Order is oppression, chaos is freedom!” The crowd roared one last time.

Thankful for having passed through the crowd’s thickest press, Mae kept her head down and sped Nymph along Lotus Street to distance herself from the restless congregation.

The radical had spoken in support of the renegades, a covert rebel organisation aiming to end monarchistic rule and replace it with democracy, but the man was no renegade himself - he drew far too much attention to himself. Real renegades drew as little unwanted attention to themselves as possible and, to a renegade, all attention was unwanted. How did Mae know this? Because she was one herself, of course.

No change could come from mere words; the sound of fear would drown them out.

Mae, on the other hand, was on a mission, one that had the potential to alter the course of history and enrich millions of lives. Or end in defeat and death for all those involved. Her quest had seen her travel over a thousand miles to Sidia Proper, the island capital of the Kingdom of Sidia, to meet with her commanders and discuss her plan to raise an army and incite the common folk into revolution. No doubt the conclave would end as all the others had. They’d call her naive, foolish, a mad woman hell bent on a quasi-glorious suicide mission, a pied piper leading her comrades off a cliff because she couldn’t get it through her thick skull that her scheme could never succeed. And who could blame them? Rob the largest, most secure bank in the world and use the proceeds to fund a war to bring the establishment to its knees? To any sane man, it sounded absurd.

Is there anywhere more bleak than this? Mae wondered as she passed through Barrowtown, the poorest district in the capital. Now she understood why the congregation had seemed so desperate; a disease clung to Sidia Proper and it didn't come from the open drains or cattle markets. It was the stench of stagnation, decay. Impossible to see but nonetheless present in every facet of that society, from the great red palace atop the King’s Hill to the lowliest wine bar.

The houses lining Lotus Street had been thrown together with rotting wood and cheap plaster and leaned to one side or the other, ready to collapse and bury their inhabitants at any moment. Dozens would be crammed into a space so tightly they could barely breathe. The white paint flaked, the thatched roofs were holey and all the doors and windows were as crooked as a barrel of fish hooks. The road itself was churned up mud, turned hard in the fiery spring sunshine. Despite it being early afternoon, all the taverns were full. The bakers, cobblers, smiths and other businesses that had once brought energy and industry to this district had long been boarded up, empty shells of the places they’d once been, holes for beggars to hide in come sundown. Markets that should’ve been teeming with life were desolate graveyards, deserted save for pigeons pecking at the ground, hoping to find a speck of sustenance that hadn’t been devoured by the ravenous populace. At every public fountain a queue of fifty waited in line for a bucket of water but the wells ran dry.

Mae returned her thoughts to the present moment. Feeling alone in this unfamiliar city, she spotted a young girl in a stained frock and decided to ask for bearings; “How much further to the Rabbit Hole?”

The scrawny girl, only a few years younger than Mae, stopped ogling passers-by and eyed the woman on the horse beadily.

Riding on a stunning grey mare, cloaked and hooded, ginger locks plastered to her sweaty face, Mae couldn’t blame the girl for giving her odd looks. The twenty-four year-old made quite an unusual sight. It wasn’t often that Sidians saw a woman in male clothing; Mae wore a white lace up tunic, riding trousers, leather boots and a dusty green travelling cloak. With fair skin, delicate features and kind blue eyes, Mae had been called beautiful many times before, though she’d never believed this herself. All in all, she stuck out like a fox in a henhouse. That concerned her; she was not, for any reason, to be stopped or questioned on the way to her destination, else her mission would be in grave peril.

“You’re not from round ‘ere, are you?” The girl spoke with a commoner’s lilt but her voice lacked the youthful melodiousness that every girl her age should have.

“No,” Mae replied gracefully.

“You should leave this place. I don’t know what business you have in this city but it ain’t worth it, I promise. Put as many miles between yourself and Sidia Proper as you can.”

The warning chilled Mae to her core. If only I could. I’ve come here for a reason and I don’t intend to leave until my mission is complete. “I would if I had any other choice,” she replied. “But I need to find the Rabbit Hole.”

“Fine, have it your way. This city’ll be the end of you, I promise. Rabbit Hole’s no more than a quarter mile down there,” grunted the girl before pointing down Lotus Street.

Mae followed the directions she’d been given and went back to observing the city’s sights. Citizens trudged through the streets like living corpses, their faces expressionless, their olive skin turned red and splotchy, their eyes dead. Vagrants huddled by the side of the road, drinking wine until they passed out. Lifeless, pox-marked victims of the plague were piled in carts like bales of hay, their limp limbs hanging over the sides, ready to be taken away from the city and burned, their memories forgotten. A couple of mangy mongrels tussled over a dead rat lying on the cobbles. Armed youths lurked around every corner, gangsters who terrorised the common folk in the name of Sidia Proper’s resident crime lord, Gianni Winters.

When Mae’s destination loomed into sight before her she breathed a sigh of relief. All renegade agents were trained in wordcraft so she had no trouble reading the sign above the inn’s slanted door - the Rabbit Hole. Built of cobbled sandstone with a rust-coloured terracotta tile roof, the three-storey structure was nothing exceptional for a Sidian inn. Its wooden framework was rotting and countless obscene, poorly spelt words had been carved into the brickwork by drunkards over the years. The glass windows were grimy and covered in cobwebs, the roof had been painted white with pigeon excrement and an old man lay unconscious in the gutter out the front, surrounded by a suspicious yellow puddle. The puddle formed a small stream and trickled down into a nearby drain. Charming. Nevertheless, the tavern represented a welcome respite for Mae, albeit a shabby one. Here she’d wait to be contacted by a fellow renegade agent before the meeting could commence.

Taking care not to wake the sleeping drunk, she tethered Nymph out the front, entered the dimly lit common room, made a beeline for the bar and promptly ordered a tall glass of wine.

As Mae sipped her wine, she examined the inn’s common room. It was as underwhelming as the exterior; dark, dull, caked in dust, quiet. Thankfully it was much cooler inside than out. A few sailors jested in a corner, some rowdy youths played dice in a boothe and several old sots were dotted around the inn, drinking alone. Despite it smelling of mildew and piss, the Rabbit Hole was the perfect place to start a rebellion - hiding in plain sight.

She failed to notice the bearded old man who slinked onto the stool on her left. He wore a simple tunic under a brown travelling cloak and possessed a statue-like aura, as though he’d been on that stool for a thousand years and would still be there in a thousand years' time. “You made the wrong choice,” he said to Mae, jogging her from her musings.

“Erm… I made the wrong choice?” she asked, a little taken aback.

“That wine. It’s foul. You should’ve gone for the ale,” the stranger replied raspily.

“I doubt anything in this city tastes good,” Mae replied warily.

“Indeed. This city’s a wicked place and there’s nowhere in this city that's wickeder than Barrowtown. I wonder, do you come here often?”

Mae’s eyes lit up with a flash of recognition. She’d been given a specific phrase to listen out for when arrived at the bar and a specific response to reply with, so that the agent knew she was part of the underground movement. At a second glance, Mae saw that there was more to this bedraggled man than met the eye. He might’ve been grey-haired and dirty but he had a kind green gaze and a warm smile. This must be him.

She responded; “Only when the sun shines at night and the leaves fall in spring.”

“Come with me.”

The stranger took Mae by the hand, led her to a door at the back of the common room and, just like that, her conspiracy had begun. A few wonky staircases later, she was in a landing at the top of the building, equally as dusty and neglected as the rest of the tavern. The old man nodded to a closed wooden door at the end of the hallway, “Go through there,” before scurrying back the way he came, leaving Mae all alone.

She inched towards the door, her stomach abuzz with butterflies and her mind a tempest. She couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t being sent into a trap. For all I know, there could be a dozen Royal Guards through that door, waiting to seize me and throw me in a dungeon. She edged closer to the door, the only sound in the room the creaking of the floorboards and her heavy breathing. I’ve come this far, I can’t turn back now. She tentatively raised a hand and placed it on the iron knob. Dear Gods, you haven’t ever been kind to me but please, show me mercy, just this once.

She swung the door open and entered the shabby room, furnished with a single desk, a chair and closed blackout curtains. A flickering candle, almost burned to a nub, illuminated the bespectacled face of a man sat behind the desk. Hearing the door slam shut behind her, Mae unsheathed her dagger and whirled round to face the noise. Hidden mere seconds before, a strapping man in a brown trench coat now stood in front of her with his arms crossed. Mae almost plunged her knife into this intruder's stomach before she recognised his gleaming white smirk and familiar, condescending expression.

“Adrian Barclay?” asked Mae, pleasantly surprised.

“Mae Blossom,” Adrian Barclay replied. He reached out to shake Mae’s hand but she wrapped her arms around him instead. It felt good to squeeze his broad chest and hear the rhythmic beating of his heart.

A few moments later she remembered that she was speaking to one of the highest ranking officers in the Renegade Order and ended the embrace, slightly abashed. “I’m, ahem, sorry,” she said. “It’s just been so long since I’ve seen a familiar face. I’m glad to be amongst friends again.”

Adrian chuckled, showing off pearly teeth and boyish dimples. “That’s quite alright, Mae. I know better than anyone how lonely it can be on the open road.. How was the journey from Lodaine?”

Mae hesitated a few moments before answering, giving herself time to appreciate the relief that washed over her. I’m safe, at last. I don’t have to be on my guard anymore. She’d been on the road for well over a month and hadn’t had a moment of peace since she’d set out. Between the roaming bandits, patrols of soldiers, packs of wolves and swarms of mosquitoes, her trip had been an arduous one.

Mae examined the handsome, well-built specimen of a man before her. His clean-shaven face, tanned skin, curly black hair and chiselled features made him attractive but it was his captivating smile and self-assuredness that made him charismatic. Adrian was infamous, a daring guerilla soldier who was never afraid to stand up to the oppressors and fight for the rights of the small folk, winning skirmish after skirmish in the face of insurmountable odds. He was the enemy of the rich and the saviour of the poor. Not only was he the most wanted man in seven nations, Adrian Barclay was the Chief Ambassador of the Renegades, meaning that he travelled between the organisation’s different hideouts and relayed messages from head command. He turned the hundreds of renegade divisions into one single entity with one mind and one plan. Adrian turned five fingers into a fist, he turned a hundred bees into a hive, he turned a thousand rebels into an army.

“All went smoothly,” Mae said to Adrian. “I travelled at night to avoid being seen but I encountered more wolves and bandits than I should’ve.”

“Very good,” Adrian chuckled.

“What did you sense on your ride from Lodaine to Sidia Proper?” said a croaky voice behind Mae. She’d completely forgotten about the wizened old man who’d been sitting at the desk when she’d entered the room. She turned to face him.

“What did I sense?”

“I mean what did you see beyond your physical surroundings? Did you sense the mood of the people?”

Mae had never seen the man at the desk before, such was the secret nature of the renegades. Bookish and bespectacled, the frail elder must’ve been at least sixty. His pale skin was wrinkled, his grey hair scruffy and his face beardless. He wore a faded cotton shirt and a creased green waistcoat. His eyes, enlarged by the glasses he wore, looked tired, depleted, as though the hardship of spending an entire lifetime running and hiding was finally catching up to him.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” said Mae, holding her open palm out in greeting.

The elder looked at it curiously, as though he’d never been offered a handshake before, but grasped it anyway. His hands felt dry and scratchy.

“I’m Colton, the r-renegade chief of intelligence,” he stuttered. The chief of intelligence coordinated the Renegades’ extensive network of spies, one of the most prestigious and high-ranking roles in the entire organisation. Colton continued; “We may never have met but I’ve heard much about you, the b-bold young woman with the plan to rob the banking federation. I’m mightily impressed. Whilst you were journeying here to Sidia Proper, I’ve been striving to arrange our little conspiracy.”

“It’s an honour, Colton,” Mae said sweetly and curtsied out of respect for the prominent renegade. “The mood of the Kingdom of Sidia is… depressed. The citizens are despondent; many are starving with no hope of ever making their way out of poverty. The ones who aren’t starving have turned to lives of crime, stealing what they need to survive, killing if they have to.”

“Dire times,” Adrian commented.

“There seems to be even less hope here in the city,” said Mae before reeling back slightly. She felt lightheaded, exhausted, perhaps because of her gruelling journey or perhaps because of the hopeless feeling that slithered through her veins and nested in her mind. It felt so at home there.

“You seem shaky, dear. Please, take my seat,” said Colton before vacating his chair. Mae refused the offer, Colton insisted she sit down, and Mae relented.

She focused on a swirling dust mote illuminated by a slit of light poking through the closed curtain. The sound of a rat scurrying underneath the floorboards snapped her back to reality and she proceeded with the conversation; “The renegades are needed now more than ever. Colton, you spoke of the work you did to further our mission of robbing the banking federation’s headquarters, Fort Chyrosi.”

“You’re not still going on about that, are you?” Adrian barked. “Your idea is utter-”

“Don’t bother finishing that sentence,” Mae snapped back, surprised at her own audacity, “because you’ll say the same thing you said to me the last time we met, and the time before that. I’ve heard it all before.”

Adrian narrowed his eyes. “Very well, Mae. But don’t direct your frustration at me - I’m not the one calling you a mad woman behind your back. But let Colton relay to you the precious little progress we’ve made.”

Colton pushed his spectacles up his nose and began; “Fort Chyrosi is the most secure building on the continent. Any robbery of the fort would require two stages. The first would be to acquire the key to the Grand Vault. This comes in the form of a ring, kept on the banking director’s person at all times. No small feat to remove his most prized possession from his finger without him noticing. The second stage would be breaking into the fortress itself, making your way to the Grand Vault, and breaking out again.”

“How can we possibly steal this ring if it’s always on the director’s finger?” Mae asked, starting to doubt her plan’s potential.

“Not quite, Mae, not quite,” Colton interrupted, his eyes gleaming mischievously. “This key isn’t permanently on his finger. He takes it off once a day, every day, when he b-bathes at his villa in Regale Park. Our spies have managed to recruit one of the director’s personal attendants, a servant named Robin A’lavelli, to engage in this affair with us. When the director bathes, our man Robin will steal the ring and bring it to you so that you can proceed to the vaults.”

Mae’s heart fluttered inside her chest, a starling all too eager to be flying free. “That’s brilliant news, Colton,” she said. “If it’s possible, I’d like to be one of the agents to break into the vaults.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged. Yes, it’s f-fitting that you execute the plan since it was you who originally devised it,” said Colton. “And yes, it is brilliant news.”

Adrian interjected before the other two could get swept away by their delusions; “Mae, this plan of yours has many of the high command feverish with excitement, Colton included. Stealing from the bank would give us a better chance at a rebellion than we’ve ever had. But this enthusiasm is clouding their judgement. I’m not so easily convinced that this scheme will go ahead. Even if it does, it will fail.”

“Why so cynical, Barclay?” asked Mae, frustrated.

“Firstly, this Robin A’lavelli is no thief, I can promise you that. He’s cowardly, easily spooked. Secondly, even if this gigantic hen plucks up the courage to steal the ring, that’s only half the battle because we still need to find a way inside the stronghold. Fort Chyrosi is impregnable. Our agents have been canvassing it for months now, searching for a crack or crevice that they could slip through, to no avail. The western side is surrounded by walls fifty-feet high and patrolled by guards every hour of the day. The eastern side sits atop a cliff hundreds of feet tall, surrounded by treacherous waters patrolled by galleys crammed full of archers ready to shoot a thousand holes into anyone trying to break in. Even if we concocted a way to bypass these considerable security measures, you’d most likely never make it to the Grand Vault. The underground tunnels leading to the vault run for miles and were designed to be too complex for an intruder to navigate. It’s a maze down there, a hideous mess of intertwined passages with no light and no waypoints. Any agents who made it into the tunnels would have to know the exact route to the Grand Vault, else risk losing themselves and never finding their way out, their only form of escape being dehydration, starvation or discovery by the bank’s guards. And yet you think this robbery is a brilliant idea, Mae?”

Once again Mae’s eyesight blurred and she felt herself go faint. I need some water. In a few moments, Adrian Barclay had crushed her dreams like they were gnats. Over a year of planning and praying had been for nothing. I had no idea the fort was so secure. Why did I ever think that we could take on the bank and win? Nightmarish visions filled her mind, her comrades lying dead on some stone floor, drenched in blood. Adrian Barclay, the beloved hero, tortured in some Sidian dungeon. Colton hung by a noose in Cassius’ Square whilst royal guardsmen laughed at him from below. All because of me and my stupid plan.

Perhaps Mae was the maniac that everyone believed her to be because she refused to back down; “I know it might seem ludicrous bu-”

“It is ludicrous, Mae!” Adrian retorted, assuming a grim expression.

“But it’s worth a try, even if it costs us our lives! I am not content to live as a slave in hiding!”

“This is about more than your life!”

Why must he be so doubtful, so discouraging? Can’t he have a little faith for once? Mae asked herself.

“Besides,” Adrian continued, “even if we solved all those problems, we’d still need to escape the city and flee north with the King’s soldiers hot on our tails. But, if the robbery did succeed…” His eyes glazed over for a moment, his mind trying to grasp what a chest full of gems could do for the Renegade Order. “We could gather our troops from across the continent to our base in the north, organise them into a proper, regimented army and march on the south. We could use the remaining wealth to buy horses, armaments, supplies...”

“Exactly, Adrian,” said Mae. “Once we march south into the Kingdom of Sidia, tens of thousands of commoners will rise up and join us! This robbery gives us the best chance at democracy we’ve ever had, or likely ever will. I know it’s ludicrous, nigh on impossible, but we have to give it everything we’ve got because the alternative is worse. The alternative is to live in suffering for the rest of our lives, the alternative is an age of misery and ruin. I will gladly give my life for this mission if it sees us one step closer to freedom.”

Adrian, Mae and Colton went silent for some time. Feeling more hopeful now, Mae stood up from the chair Colton had given her and walked towards the window. She peeled open the curtain, making a gap just large enough to peek through, and found her breath taken away by the stunning view. The entire city was spread out before her, a bustling, colourful masterpiece of human engineering. She could see it all, from the mighty spires and statues peeking over the rooftops in the Temple District to the blossoming trees of Regale Park. Gulls cawed, pigs squealed, children screamed with delight as they ran through the muddy streets. The Ruby Palace dominated the landscape from atop the King’s Hill, a fantastic metropolis of great white domes, red marble towers and huge halls full of knights and lords and royal servants. Somewhere in there, the King would be dining on oysters and roast peacock and sweet spiced meats, fearing for the future of his nation. A mile or so east of the palace stood Fort Chyrosi, the international headquarters of the banking federation and target of the coming robbery. The twin gothic towers situated atop the fort loomed above the city and cast all below them in shadow, a reminder as to who truly ruled Sidia Proper.

As Mae marvelled at the sights, she and the commanders fantasised of a world where they didn’t have to live in fear, a world where a man’s fate could be decided by his deeds, not by his birth or the depth of his pockets. It seemed too good to be true. Perhaps it was but that didn’t matter. They were renegades, all of them, and when they’d enlisted they’d sworn an oath. An oath to surrender a life of ease and comfort, to give up starting a family or finding love, to put the greater good above all their own worldly desires. It had taken its toll on each of them. They’d spent their lives running, hiding, constantly looking behind themselves for fear of discovery and death. Life as an outcast had nearly killed them many times but none of them had ever regretted swearing their oath. To each of them, the thought of betraying that promise and giving up on the millions who needed them was inconceivable. Maybe, just maybe, in that tired old room in that tired old inn, the three of them had just made history. Perhaps, one day, their infantile dream of peace and prosperity for all would no longer be a silly notion but a reality. We may just be able to pull this off, Mae mused, struggling to believe it herself. All there is to do now is find a way into the fort, steal all we can carry, raise an army and overthrow the entire Sidian establishment. We better get to work.