On rusted rooftops rain danced as a sad lullaby. the-Dust-Hill so called because of the hue of its dried highways was bathed in tempest and stillness, many a league out of the busy cities of knights and mages and stories to be passed along. It was a lost village on the edge of civilization where adventurers made only a quick pit stop or dump dead bodies.
Kael Varain gripped his homemade sword, a crooked piece of metal that he had taken off a fence that had come down, under the orphanage attic. It also rang when it damaged the straw-stuffed dummy nailed on a rafter. Repeated and again. The palms of his hands bled with repetition and yet his concentration never relented.
Strike. Reset. Breathe.
Strike. Reset. Breathe.
He did the routine cycle until his arms were shouting and his body shook.
Through a crack in the roof rain was streaming in and soaking his dark, patched, tunic. The attic was full of mould and the smell of rat urine and rotting wood and to Kael it meant heaven.
The other boys would be quarrelling downstairs, with their tongues thickened with the cheap ale stolen out of the village alehouse. The matron would care but. Years ago she had cared.
Kael did not care. He did not have any friends. No family relation. No recollections of a smile of a mother or of a hand of a father. Nothing but their names and a dream that stupid to be dangerous.
He sank down to the dusty floor chest heaving in irregular jerks. his fingers, still gripped convulsively about the rod, writhed as though they did not choose to cease their activity. Slowly he turned to look out on the little wooden crate against the wall of the attic.
Inside there was a book - his book.
Dented, ripped, and covered in decayed black leather, the Memoirs of a Forgotten Blade was his bible since his childhood. He had taken it whilst in a plague winter when a traveling peddler found his death. It was the best thing that he had.
Kael flipped the book to a page which was charred along its edges. The ink was lost, but there was a line of it written into his heart:
Between the heavens and the abyss he stood, and his sword was broken, and his limbs were broken. The wing that felled off one angel. One of the horns is broken off a demon. The world bated its breath. Kneel down he did not.
He was known as the Nameless Hero.
Others considered him as a legend. Others added that he also betrayed Heaven and Hell fifty years ago in the Great Eradication War. The majority did not care.
Kael did.
He spent his life on that legend.
He muttered, and touched the MANUScript, "I shall come to you." I will get out of this muck. Alex, one of the days the world will know my name just like they know yours."
His dinner snarled in him, and he remembered the dry bark bread he had secreted between two loose boards. He had kept it out all the day, and would not have it stolen away as before, till he could get the others asleep.
Then when he picked up the board the bread was missing.
So had been the little knife which as he had put it by its side.
---
Gregor.
Kael drifted down the twisted stairs gasping. On the second floor thunder cracked. There in the upper room before the wavering oil lamp was Gregor oldest boy in the orphanage. As big as Kael was two times is size. Hateful eyes and knuckles which had smashed more than teeth.
Gregor was perched on the cot which belonged to Kael, chews the stuff of the bark bread slowly and casts Kael dagger about in one hand as though it were a toy.
Gregor gave him a punch which stunned him, driving the breath out of his lungs. Kael huddled and hacked on the verge of crying.
I pair the dagger," said Gregor, "and you are not fit so much as to hold it."
---
Much later, when he returned to the attic which now featured him, Kael curled against the wall and gripped the Memoirs as a survival kit. He had sore ribs. His lip was caked with blood. However his eyes were dry.
Tomorrow, I will go away, "he said.
He had a hoarse voice, however, which was firm.
Enough botching around. It is all dreaming over. I shall be like they dread."
---
In the morning Kael had disappeared.
---
By the morning the rain had not ceased entirely, but the world smelled of wet earth and manure. Moving through the outskirts of the village, Kael did his best to pass guards and traders. On his back he could carry no more than a shabby satchel, leaves and Memoirs, and an old poacher-knife that he had stolen back off Gregor the night he fell asleep.
Dust Hill was receding behind him like an ill dream.
By noon he had reached the southern road, where the actual travellers overhauled poachers and smugglers and black market explorers. Among them one group attracted him especially: six men, in tattered cloaks, with weapons on their backs, and stains of blood on their boots.
They were encamped about a bent signpost, and were pledged and salivating.
Kael crept up to them.
Said the boss, a scraggy sort of a man, with bush eyebrows and hooked nose, a pensive twin to a certain mean grin, such as is worn by scavengers: he raised a brow. You failed the boy?
I would like to share your hunt, Kael, said.
The gunmen jeered. One coughed so he spit ale.
Kael did not balk.
The smile went off the leader. Have you got a death wish runt? This is not a God damn tavern game. Into the Forest of Beasts we go. Unless one learns to kill, one does not come back there.
I shall keep pace.
Have you got money?"
"No."
"Food?"
"No."
"Experience?"
Kael gave him an eye to eye look. I do not have anything to lose.
That last did make the poacher hesitate.
To his men he turned. "Bring him. He is able to take our kills. No one will miss him, in case he dies.
Kael was not smiling.
He did follow though.
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End of Chapter 1
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