Despite the cold northern climate, the city of Ilentown was protected from the cold wind blowing in from the sea, the line of cliffs to the south of the city, the two twin massifs that divided the coast into three, and the small but beautiful castle of the Nolak gave Ilentown a picturesque air.
Although the city had seen better times, a past grandeur, from when the lords of those lands were still counts, and had not been relegated to simple barons by royal edict, it was not a small town. Fishing, trade and a safe harbor to take shelter from storms made it a prosperous enough place for the population not to leave.
In the courtyard of the castle a nurse frantically chased a child of barely five years old who ran away from her...
"Mr. Gael!!! Come back here, it's time for your bath!"
With his blond hair, the boy dodged servants and soldiers while his nurse chased him. A horse stood in his way, but without thinking, the boy created a layer of ice and slipped under the horse's legs.
But the layer of ice had been very short, too short, and when he came out on the other side, his hard boots scraped against the stone floor again. With the brake and the inertia that the boy had, he ended up spinning around the ground until he crashed into the horses' trough.
The nurse, who at first thought that she would not be able to catch the boy, surrounded the horse as soon as the boy stopped suddenly. She was about to catch the boy when he turned around and pointed his finger at the nurse and said...
"Sderanver"
The young beech girl fell asleep immediately, falling like a piece of furniture into the trough, but not even the cold water woke her up. A boy ran to get her out of the water before she drowned while the boy ran away.
Several pages tried to stop him, they were faster and bigger, but that boy was a demon in person, a poor boy who tried to throw himself at him tripped on a stone that had magically risen from the pavement, another backed away before a small flame burned his entire hair.
The chase continued with more and more participants, the scoundrel was beginning to climb the wall of the stable, when a shrill voice was heard shouting on the other side of the yard.
"Mom!!! Run!!! Gael has put Nanny Cándida to sleep again!"
At that very moment, the castle gate opened, and an armed group entered the courtyard. One of the knights who entered galloped up to the stable wall and with a large hand caught the child who was left floating and struggling, trying to kick while uttering curses, some magical and others invented. But the knight seemed trained, he would not fall to the magic of a child.
A voice was heard from under the helmet...
"May I know what you have done again, Gael?"
"Duriam, is that your brother?... that evil witch wanted me to bathe again... and I already did it on Monday... it is not time for me to bathe yet..."
"Gael, it is Friday... you smell like a pig taken from a pigsty..."
"It is not true..."
The boy began to cry while the knight threw the reins to a groom and jumped to the ground with his crying brother holding on to his clothes. At that moment his father and mother, well his stepmother although for the young knight she was the one who had raised him, came out through one of the doors of the noble area of the castle to the courtyard.
"May I know what all this mess is about? Son, you're back, how was the hunt?"
"Hello father, I'm afraid not very well, something has the beasts hidden in the forests of the north, we've done several hunts, but we haven't found anything... Although well, it seems I've caught a little pig..."
"Sob... sob... it's not true... sob... sob... I don't smell like a pig... You're bad and cruel..."
"That I'm bad and cruel? You're going to know what evil is..."
With a well-aimed throw the boy ended up falling fully into the horses' trough... A head with red curls was laughing behind his mother's skirts...
"Hahaha, he deserves it... and it's not a good punishment for bewitching poor beech... Mom, you have to punish Gael so he learns"
"Lizi, you're a snob, idiot, snitch, bad sister..."
The boy came out of the wet trough, but he went to his sister who was barely two years older than him with his fists raised ready to start a fight. However, the girl, seeing the boy's bellicose intentions, manipulated the water in the trough, grabbing the boy by the arms and legs and putting him back in the trough.
Everyone started to laugh, even the Baron, deep down he enjoyed the games of those rebellious and untamable children.
"Let's go inside, we'll have to organize a bigger hunting party, I don't want the vassals to complain if a beast attacks the flocks again, we've had too many requests for help so far this year..."
Little Gael was coming out of the watering hole again when he noticed a hand grabbing him by the neck, when he looked up the angry face of the naive nurse was smiling cruelly, in the other hand she had a bar of soap.
She didn't take him to a tub, she didn't give him a chance, right there in the castle courtyard she took off the boy's clothes by force and rubbed him until he stopped smelling like a stable and was shiny again as expected of a young nobleman.
But that wasn't the only punishment the boy would receive that day, when his father learned of the list of misdeeds the boy had committed that afternoon, he decided to teach his son a lesson. Gael's ass hurt so much from the punishment his father had given him that he could barely sit up. Luckily, the boy had his own life force to ease the pain.
During dinner Baron and Baroness Nolak were with their two young sons and their middle son Duriam, Major Malbus was in compulsory service in the kingdom's army, and the one before little Lizi, Merts, had not yet returned from his fourth year at knight school, there was a month left for the course to end. It was just another day in the domains of a minor baron from the north.