The Reluctant Bard

He doesn't enjoy this, he thinks, as he pulls mournfully at the strings of his mandola and it sings sotto voce to the crowd of gathering tavern-goers eager to forsake drink and chatter to bend an ear. They keep the drinks though.
No, he doesn't enjoy this much at all, but his party needs the money to afford room here and they don't know how much he dislikes this. They only know how good he is at it.
His voice follows the soft address of his mandola, even quieter and so much sweeter.
He sings in a language he doesn't know, a song he was forced to learn in a tongue he's never cared for. For most of the men, women, and people in the crowd, it is the most beautiful thing they've ever heard.
For Thierry, the lyrics burn his throat. He gets bored of the song halfway through, mind wandering back to the adventure of a younger day, when he and his friends drove away a nest of trolls that had taken up residence just outside a hamlet. To his audience, he grows contemplative, the words holding a meaning none of them will ever be lucky enough to know.
The song ends to rapturous silence and then a wild burst of applause and cheering, coins showering into the case he had laid at his feet.
Thierry smiles a pained smile to his new fans. He sighs, and begins another song, mind wandering this time back to endless days of forced practice, to bruises and bleeding anywhere but his hands or his face; for he needed his hands to play and he needed his mouth to sing.
When he returns to his lodgings he breaks down, crying into the arms of the person he loves more than anything, them whispering assurances that he'd never have to play again. Whispering that they were sorry, that they hadn't known.
And for three years he didn't, he fought and he loved and his mandola never left its case, his laughter was the only melody that left his mouth.
His partner was killed; and there was no more laughter, no more adventure, no more love.
So he removed his forlorn instrument from its grave and he did the only thing he ever truly knew how to do. He sang. Sang of his love and the tyrant King that slaughtered them.
It was the only song he ever played that he felt anything more than distaste for. This song was rage and vengeance and grief. This song was rebellion.
And rebellion it became, verses shouted in drinking halls and whispered in defiance. Thierry watched it all, singing the whole way.
Or so the story goes at least. But that was a long time ago, and words, songs especially, have a way of warping with time.