By Chance & Misadventure

"Four pints of lager please." Said the young man at the bar. This was the second round of drinks he had bought for his three friends and he, and Sam the landlord was a bit concerned that if they carried on drinking at this rate they might get a bit too rowdy for his liking. However looking at the four men in front of him he decided that telling them to leave might be easier said than done.

The lad who had just ordered the round was not particularly tall, standing just short of six feet, but he was heavily built with a thick barrel chest and arms as thick as Sam's legs. Matt, he had heard his friends call him. His loud and friendly demeanour, which was a theme throughout the group, made a good mask for the brooding and edgy awareness that Sam could see in his dark green eyes. This was clearly a man who was intimate with trouble and although not looking for it seemed always ready to react to it.

His friends painted a similarly mixed picture to Sam. The first of them a man called Pete was very similar to Matt in his build and stature, if anything he was maybe an inch shorter. But where as Matt was fair with green eyes, Pete was dark with blue eyes. To Sam, Pete seemed the most genuine of the group in his loud exuberance, however last night when trouble had nearly started in the bar with some of the locals, Sam had seen a gleeful madness come into those eyes at the first sniff of trouble. It was as if the threat of physical violence was another entertaining distraction that he could throw himself into, with the same abandon as he now drank his beer. This touch of madness, mixed with his build and an unusual tribal tattoo, that snaked it's way from his left wrist, round his left arm and up to stop on the side of his neck; gave Pete a very imposing presence.

The third member of the group was called Jon and although he was as loud and outgoing as his two friends that was where the similarity ended. He was shorter than the other two at about five feet eight inches, with dark hair and eyes and although solidly built nowhere near their size. He seemed to be able to handle his ale less than his two friends, and it had been his drunken antics that had nearly caused the trouble last night.

The three had started drinking as soon as they had checked in to the inn yesterday afternoon, apparently they were in New Abbey visiting a friend of theirs', a local lad called Lee. Sam had known Lee nearly all the lad's life, ever since his family had moved up from Manchester when he was only four. Since arriving twenty years ago, Lee had failed to bond with the local children who had mocked him for his strange accent and shy behaviour. Although the mocking had eventually stopped, Lee had never really forgiven his peers and always kept them at arms length.

Lee had started to come out of his shell and build his self-confidence when he returned from a Karate competition in Manchester where he had first met Matt. Lee had spent most of his life practising Martial Arts, but no one in the village had known until he got in a fight with a man from one of the local farms, about four years ago.