Winter wore on and Rick and his mother joined the band she had told him about. As spring came, the snow began to melt and the green began to blossom. They were still living in the forest as it began to glow with new growth. Rick had turned fifteen over that winter, his birth date being sometime in midwinter. The group determined he was old enough to wield a sword, and he was excited.
His mother hated the idea, and tried to fight it, which led to her death. She attacked the leader of the band, attempting to smash rocks into him as she shrieked that she wouldn't let her son risk his life at such a young age. But the leader stabbed his sword through her, snarling out, "You asked for our help, and you must help in return."
And there she fell, leaving Rick with the band of outcasts to live among. They trained Rick to fight, to hunt, to live off of the wild. They taught him how to kill, and how to survive. When Rick neared the age of seventeen, he watched the band raid a farm, in which housed a young woman who had to be around fifteen, her sister who was eight, and her parents.
They burned the house, murdered the parents, and dragged the girls off with them. Many of the men that night discussed what they wanted to do with her, but all Rick could feel was disgust. Disgust that the men he called family would consider some of the things to bring to two innocent girls. Watching them kill men and raid farms didn't seem to affect Rick too much, but it was the look in the woman's eyes. The fear and plain wish for escape that made him melt down.
As the night wore on, the men in the band drank and then passed out in a drunken slumber. Rick, however, was the only one who didn't drown himself in the beer and passed out. Instead he slipped away from the camp around the fire to where the two girls were tied up. There he cut their bounds, and hushed them from screaming. He then led the two girls, who were considerably smaller than the large young man, away from the camp of brigands and towards the nearest town.
Rick found that the girls had no other parents, and Rick hadn't taken any money when he left. So when the three went to the local tavern to ask for help, they were instead sent to the back streets to an alley filled with beggars. It was only about three weeks of living there that Margaret's youngest sister disappeared. Which was the last time either of them saw the youngest sister.
After awhile, Rick met an older man who would hire Rick to work on his farm for food and housing. That was when he moved Margaret up the hill to a small farmhouse. Over the time the two married and gave birth to their child, Seble.
