Who can explain the mysteries of chance and serendipity?

Numerous taverns and inns served the visitors to the city of Paradise, and several dozen of them opened their doors and shutters to the streets of the Port District.

Welby’s tavern, named The Wayfarer’s Rest, was a good one, but not automatically the obvious choice for a new arrival.

Yet one night, Craig was there, seeking some relaxation after his most recent incursion into the interior. Aidan and Phelan arrived after a long day of testing and contracting new recruits into Aidan’s company. And Sebastian joined them within an hour after their arrival, after returning from Khartras on a ship large enough to hold his new bodyguards. His father had maintained a fiction of neutrality for a while longer by sending the MacLeod Clan Guardians with him, rather than a regular detachment from the legions of Khartras.

Then, in the swirl of socializing and sizing-up of other patrons, came the amusing exchange in which Aidan and Craig tried to recruit each other into their respective companies.

Even their realization that one was from Ravenwood and one from the Tiberian Empire, both now locked in a bloody struggle, did not derail the smooth passage from strangers to acquaintances with many affinities. But the transition to new friendship required something more.

And Welby’s weekly sparring competition provided the extra ingredient. Each week, Welby collected two silver pennies from anyone who wanted to compete in a first-touch tournament, using wooden training swords. The quick progression of matches occurred in the large courtyard beside the inn and the inn’s stable. The winner’s prize was free drinks for his table for that night.

Twenty-eight men entered the competition on that day, and the bouts led to no shortage of startling good exhibitions of skill. Enthusiastic but underexperienced young fighters lost to experienced combat veterans, and the field winnowed steadily until Aidan faced Craig and Phelan faced Sebastian in the semifinal round. Then, Aidan and Sebastian faced each other in the final and put on the type of display they were known for, albeit not to most of these men, at the Academy of War.

After Aidan finally scored his touch, one of the younger watching mercenaries blurted out, “I’d pay again to see that fight,” whereupon Welby sensed his opportunity.

“No need!” He called out to the courtyard. “Two free rounds for every person who competed today!”

With happy cheers, the fighters marched back inside the inn, and the night’s serious drinking commenced.  

Late into the night the four men talked about their training and their experience with fighting, and, to Phelan’s surprise, Aidan even was open about his identity. Craig, realizing the risk of that honesty, reciprocated with the details of his own exile from the Tiberian Empire.

“A toast!” Phelan roared. He lurched to his feet, with his large ale cups grasped firmly in one hand. “To the Four Companions!”

The other three men arose from their seats, laughing, reaching for their own cups, and then pausing to tease Sebastian as he struggled to fill his cup from the great flagon on their table.

But eventually four cups clashed together, and four voices roared “To the Four Companions!”

Then, in an instant, the mood shifted into seriousness, as they met each other’s eyes. Similar thoughts ran through each man’s head, thoughts like I respect these men and their capabilities, I enjoy their company, I trust them, and I believe that with friends like these ones, you could change the world.

As was so often the case, now and in the future, Aidan was the one who found some appropriate words to add into the private bubble of silence around them.

“Mess around with us,” Aidan said, “and you will find out.”

They all drank again, sat down, and started joking about who deserved the largest portion of the remainder of the cheese wheel on the serving platter.

But the bond was forged.

Sometimes a group of people, thrown together randomly by circumstances and shared interests, tempered by the pressure and heat of some great undertaking or the crucible of battle, become something more than the sum of their individual merit.

More times than not, lives change for the better due to those bonds. And, sometimes, perhaps not in rare cases but in ones so obvious that no attentive person can fail to notice, such people change the world. They place the unfolding of history onto a new road.

See The Restoration War for the beginning of that story.