Chapter 2 - Useless
Ivander had never seen so many spears pointed in the same direction.
The legion camp sprawled along the border like a metal bruise. Rows of tents in perfect lines, ditches cut with obsessive care, wooden palisades, watchtowers with bronze glinting in the morning light. Beyond it, further inland, the first low walls of the capital smudged the horizon.
The Empire's edge.
His mother's world.
Not his.
He stepped out of the wagon with joints that still remembered ash and ruined wood. The air here smelled of leather, sweat, horse dung and sour wine. No chickens clucking between huts. No children shrieking with laughter. Everything was movement, order, shouted commands.
"Stay close," his mother said.
Her voice wasn't soft. It never had been. She wore her armour like a second skin, cuirass scuffed but well kept, cloak pinned with the bronze badge of a cohort commander. Men straightened when she passed, eyes flicking to the mark on her shoulder before skittering away.
She rested a hand on Eric's head as they walked.
Not on his.
Ivander told himself he didn't care.
He lied.
They passed a training yard: half-armoured men with shields and spears in tight ranks, a centurion bellowing as they slammed forward in formation. The crash of wood on wood made his teeth rattle. Off to one side, another group practised with swords, bronze leaf-blades flashing, shields smashing into straw dummies.
He slowed.
Something ugly twisted in his chest.
I can do that, he thought, then immediately corrected himself.
No. I want to be able to do that.
His mother's hand caught his shoulder and pushed him forward.
"Don't gawk," she said. "You'll see enough of it later."
She didn't say if you survive long enough. She didn't need to. The camp said it for her.
***
They were given a tent on the quieter edge of the camp, near the supply wagons. Technically, it was hers. Practically, it became theirs.
A trunk at the foot of a cot. Her spare gear hung on a rack. A single wooden idol in the corner, worn by finger and prayer.
Nothing of Meid.
Nothing of home.
Ivander stood in the entrance, hands hanging limp, while she stripped off her gauntlets and set them down with soldier neatness.
"You can stay here until we reach the city," she said. "It's not much, but it's dry. Food comes twice a day. Don't get in anyone's way. Don't pick fights. If you do, pick fights you can win."
Her gaze flicked from Eric to him.
It lingered on Ivander just a fraction longer.
Pity, there and gone.
It felt worse than anger.
Eric nodded, shoulders already trying to square, eyes already studying how men walked, how they carried themselves. He'd grow into this, Ivander thought, like he'd grown into everything else.
Ivander felt like someone had picked him up from his village and dropped him into a story he hadn't qualified for.
He hated it.
He hated himself.
***
Nights were the worst.
In the day he had new things to look at. New words to learn. Commands in the Empire tongue, shouted again and again until even he understood: left, right, form, break, march, hold.
At night there was just the tent ceiling and the sound of other men outside, laughing, drinking, gambling, fucking in hastily erected screens or just not caring who heard.
He heard things he didn't have names for yet, and some he did. Moans. Slaps. The grunts of men trying to prove something to themselves inside someone else's skin.
Eric snored three cots away, dead to the world.
Ivander stared up at the canvas and tried not to think.
Sleep came in sick, jolting drops.
When it did, his father was always there.
Never in the way he'd died. He never saw Meid with half his face burned off, or his body broken in the square where the bronze had fused with bone.
No. His mind was kinder and crueller than that.
Meid in his dreams sat by the cold hearth of their cottage, just as he'd done a thousand nights before the legions came. He'd ruffle Ivander's hair with that heavy hand, call him "stubborn weed," chuckle when Ivander scowled.
"Missed the deer," dream-Meid would say, fond and infuriating. "We'll get it next time."
Then, as Ivander reached for him, he'd stand.
He always stood.
He'd always say, "Stay here. Be useful. I'll be back."
And then he'd walk out the door.
Ivander never managed to follow.
His legs might as well have been nailed to the floor.
He'd sit on the pallet, five years old, ten, fourteen, watching the door flap move and settle, knowing with an adult's certainty that this time, like all the times, Meid wasn't coming back.
He'd wake with his hands clenched and his jaw aching from how hard he'd been biting.
Every morning he'd tell himself, it was just a dream.
Every morning he'd know it wasn't. Not really.
***
By the time they reached the city, he'd learned a few things.
How to carry water without spilling half of it. How to stay out of the way of men who were tired and armed. How to read his mother's mood from the way her shoulders set when she walked into the tent.
He'd also learned, of all the cruel little lessons, that pity had weight.
He caught it in glimpses. In the way a veteran, scar running from neck to ear, looked at him and then at Eric when the two of them tried a basic drill with wooden swords.
Eric picked up the stance fast. Not perfect, but close. He adjusted when told. He listened.
Ivander's feet tangled.
His grip was wrong.
He turned his shoulder when he should have stayed square.
The veteran barked corrections, but they came less and less often, as if the man's voice got tired of climbing that same hill.
When they finished, breathing hard, the veteran clapped Eric on the shoulder.
"Good base," he said. "You'll make something of that."
He glanced at Ivander.
Hesitated.
Then he settled for: "Keep practising."
It sounded a lot like, don't hurt yourself.
His mother watched from the edge of the yard.
Later, Ivander passed by the open flap of the officer's tent and heard her talking to someone inside.
"He's not built for the line," she was saying. "Not like Eric. He's… soft. Too slow. Too much in his own head."
The reply was low and indistinct.
She sighed.
"Yes, he's Meid's. I see him when he gets angry. But Meid had a body to match the fury. Ivander… hasn't caught up yet."
Ivander stood there, out of sight, heat crawling up his neck.
Hasn't caught up yet.
He held onto the "yet" like it was a rope in a river.
The rest wrapped around his throat and squeezed.
***
His mother's house in the city surprised him.
He hadn't expected one.
In his head, she lived in tents and barracks and improvised shelters by marching roads.
Instead there was a narrow stone building off a side street: two floors, shutters, a stoop worn by feet. It smelled of old stew and soap and ink.
When they walked in, a small girl stared at them from the stairs.
Her hair was dark like Meid's, braided badly. Her feet were bare. She clutched a ragged cloth doll against her chest and squinted at Eric and Ivander as if trying to decide what part of them to bite.
"This is Nikolia," their mother said. Something in her voice softened when she said the name. "Your sister."
Sister.
Ivander's jaw worked.
"How—"
"Same way you happened," she said dryly. "Different timing."
Nikolia blinked, then marched down the stairs and planted herself in front of Ivander.
"You're taller than Mama said," she announced. Her words had the city's cadence, quicker and sharper than the village drawl. "She said peasants are smaller."
"I—" Ivander started.
She turned to Eric.
"You're prettier," she concluded solemnly.
Eric coughed, face going red.
Their mother snorted.
"Nikolia, stop insulting your brothers in their first ten breaths," she said. "I still need one of them to like me."
She ushered them in, showed them pallets along the wall of the upstairs room. There were shelves with scrolls, odd bits of armour, a wooden sword leaning in the corner. The dollhouse version of a life she'd chosen without them.
Ivander touched the back of a chair, tracing the grain.
"Why… here?" he asked finally. "Why not… with Father? In the village? Why… split?"
His mother went still.
For a moment, the muscle in her jaw jumped.
"Because your father and I were very bad at wanting the same thing," she said. "He wanted roots. I wanted roads. Neither of us was wrong. Neither of us would bend."
"That's stupid," Nikolia piped up. "You're both stupid."
"True," their mother said. "Now go help set the table, little owl."
Nikolia scampered off.
Ivander stared at the worn boards under his feet.
"So we were… spare pieces?" he asked, voice low. "For your regret?"
She looked at him then, properly.
There was no pity in her face this time.
Just tiredness.
"You were the best thing that came out of our mistakes," she said quietly. "All of you. That doesn't mean the mistakes stopped being mistakes. Adults do that. We break things and love the pieces."
It should have helped.
It didn't.
He nodded, stiff, and went to help Eric with the bundles.
At dinner, Nikolia talked enough for all of them. She told him about the street vendors, about the neighbour who snored like a dying ox, about how Mama went away with the soldiers and came back with new scars and once with a broken nose.
"She looked like a potato," Nikolia said with savage delight.
Their mother flicked a crumb at her.
Eric laughed, the sound a little forced but real.
Ivander chewed his bread and smiled when he should, and counted every way this house didn't feel like home.
***
Training was supposed to fix that.
He threw himself at it like a starving dog at a bone.
Every morning he woke before dawn, slipped out to the yard behind the house, and drilled what the veteran had shown him. Stance. Footwork. Weight distribution. How to hold a shield so it wouldn't rip his arm off when something hit it.
Eric joined him, of course.
Eric picked up correction like it was a game.
He'd watch once, then adjust.
He flowed into movement quicker, muscles waking up to their uses.
Ivander felt like his body had been put together wrong. His knees wanted to bend the wrong way. His shoulders protested before his arms even lifted.
He forced them anyway.
Sweat burned his eyes. His palms blistered and burst and blistered again.
"Loosen your grip," Eric said once, after Ivander's hand cramped on the hilt. "You're strangling it. The sword's not going to run away."
"Shut up," Ivander muttered.
Later, when his mother's friend—a retired centurion with a nose like a smashed rock—came to watch, she nodded at Eric's form.
"Good lines," she said. "He'll hold, if he doesn't get fancy."
Her gaze shifted to Ivander.
She watched him go through the same drill. Shield up, step, thrust, withdraw.
He knew he was stiff.
He knew each movement cost him twice what it cost Eric.
He finished, panting, and looked at her.
Her expression was not unkind.
"Too much thinking," she said. "You try to remember all the rules at once. You can't. Do one thing right. Then another. Let the third wait. Otherwise you freeze and die with a perfect list in your head."
He nodded, throat hot.
When they walked away, he heard her murmur to his mother:
"He might not take to the line. But he watches. Put him on the flank or with the skirmishers. Let him see the whole field. Not every man needs to be a hammer."
"Meid wanted both of them to be shields," his mother said, voice flat. "He thought that was safest."
"He was wrong," the centurion said. "About a lot."
Ivander pretended not to hear.
He trained until his arms shook, until his vision blurred.
He still lost every spar to Eric.
He still lay awake at night, replaying every mistake, every slow block, every time his brother's wooden blade tapped his ribs or collarbone or head.
Why can't I be better? he thought, again and again. Why can't I at least beat him once? Just once.
There was no answer.
Only the sound of Eric's breathing in the dark and Nikolia's soft, muttered dreams.
***
Years scraped by.
He stretched out. Bones lengthened. The awkwardness of his limbs didn't go away, but he learned where their edges were. He bruised less. He bled less. He stopped dropping his shield when he was tired.
He still lost.
Not just to Eric. To the world.
Recruits who'd never seen a proper hunt before picked up spear drill faster than he did. Camp followers' sons who hadn't had a father to show them how to stand still learned under the centurions and surpassed him in a season.
He carried water. He cleaned latrines. He patched armour. He held a shield for others while they practised striking.
Everyone else seemed to be moving forward.
He lived in place.
Useless.
The word ate at him like rot.
He didn't need anyone else to say it now.
He said it for them.
Anger settled under his skin like bad wine.
Some days it made him drill harder.
Some days it made him want to put his fist through a wall just to feel something give.
On one of those days, when Eric had knocked him on his back three times in a row in front of watching eyes and the centurion had just pursed her lips instead of correcting, he walked out of the practice yard without a word.
He didn't go home.
He walked down into the city instead.
The border capital had grown up like a scar across the land: old stone, new wood, patched streets. Taverns near the outer walls where soldiers spent pay and locals spent what they had left after tax.
He found one with noise spilling out of it. Laughter. Shouting. The clatter of dice on wood.
Maybe, he thought, if he found somewhere where everyone was too drunk to aim, he'd finally win at something.
***
The tavern was half smoke, half sweat.
Men crowded shoulder to shoulder, cups in hand. A girl with a tray weaved through them, dress cut low enough to make the older ones leer. A couple of off-duty legionaries were arm-wrestling in a corner, forearms thick as small trees.
Against the back wall, a rough circle had formed.
A pit.
Not fancy. Just a space where the tables had been pushed back and the floorboards bore more stains than the rest.
Two men were inside it, barefisted, stripped to the waist. One was bigger. The other was faster. Neither fought clean. Elbows, knees, headbutts. The crowd roared encouragement at every hit.
Ivander watched a while, jaw tight.
Every strike made his own bruises ache in sympathy.
When the fight ended, the loser woozy and bleeding from the mouth, a call went up.
"Next? Next up? Come on, boys, don't tell me you're all cowards."
The man shouting was thick-necked, scarred, eyes sharp. The sort who made a living off other men's blood.
Without thinking too hard, Ivander stepped forward.
"What do I get if I win?" he asked.
A few men laughed at the sound of his voice.
He'd grown, but he still didn't fill the space the way others did.
"You get to stand," the pit boss said. "And half the pot." He squinted. "You old enough to be in here, boy?"
"No," Ivander said.
"Good," the man said, grinning. "Drunk men love a story where the boy gets his teeth kicked in. Shirt off."
He stripped.
Scars already crisscrossed his ribs from training, from accidents, from being in the wrong place when someone dropped something heavy. He wasn't impressive. Not like the others. But he was lean, at least. Rope over stone.
He stepped into the ring.
The man facing him had a broken nose that had never healed straight and the kind of easy stance that said this wasn't new to him.
They touched fists.
The first punch hit Ivander in the cheekbone.
He saw light.
He staggered, tasted blood.
The crowd roared.
He could have dropped. Could have stayed down, let them laugh, crawled out and told himself this had been a stupid idea.
He didn't.
His father's hand was on his head again in his mind, ruffling hair.
"Missed the deer."
No.
He snapped his head back up, blinked, and moved.
He wasn't fast.
But he'd spent years learning how to stand behind a shield and not fall. He knew how to take a hit and still be there. He let the next punch slide off his shoulder, stepped inside the man's reach, and drove his forehead into the bridge of that already-ruined nose.
Pain screamed through his skull.
The other man howled.
They grappled.
The fight became ugly and close. No room for clever footwork, just knees and fists and bodies slamming into each other. Ivander got a fist in the ribs, an elbow in the jaw. He gave back a shove that sent the man stumbling, then caught a wild hook he hadn't seen coming.
He went down.
The boards met the back of his head with a crack.
For a moment everything went soft and grey.
He heard the din over him, distant, like waves over stone.
Get up, he told himself.
His body didn't agree.
The pit boss's voice cut through the fog.
"Down! That's it, he's done!"
Hands grabbed him under the arms, hauling him upright.
The room blurred.
He spat blood, tasted iron, and squinted through swelling eyes at the man he'd fought.
The other was wiping his nose, blood streaming between his fingers. One eye was already closing.
"You hit hard for a useless strip," the man said, almost approvingly. "Come back when you're not scared of dying."
"I'm… not scared," Ivander muttered.
He wasn't sure it was true.
He wasn't sure of anything, except that everything hurt.
The crowd dispersed, interest already drifting.
He caught his balance against a pillar.
Somewhere to his left, a man laughed too loud and said something lewd about "that little tavern girl's mouth."
Ivander turned his head.
A woman stood by the bar, tray in hand, three men boxed around her.
She was perhaps a year or two older than him, maybe younger. Hard to tell. Tavern life made people age sideways, not forwards.
Her hair was tied back in a loose knot, strands sticking to her temples with sweat. Her dress was practical cloth cut immodest by necessity; the neckline had been pulled lower than she probably liked. One of the men had a hand on her hip, fingers creeping upwards.
"Come on," one of them said, slurring. "One smile. One touch. You do it for others."
She smiled.
It didn't reach her eyes.
"I do it for those who pay," she said. "You haven't. You want something for free, go pray at a temple."
The man's fingers tightened.
He leaned in, breath sour.
Ivander felt something cold move through him.
It wasn't chivalry. Not really. It wasn't outrage on her behalf more than on anyone else's.
It was anger with nowhere else to go.
It was the memory of not being able to move when Meid walked out.
He was already moving before he finished the thought.
"Hey," he said.
He sounded like someone else.
They turned.
Three men.
All older. All drunk. All bigger or broader or more experienced in being bastards.
Perfect.
"Her hands are busy," Ivander said. "Yours don't need to be on her."
One of them laughed.
Another frowned.
The third squinted at Ivander's bruised face and bare chest.
"You the one who just got put on the floor?" he asked.
"Yes," Ivander said.
"And you want more?"
"Yes."
He didn't give them time to decide who would swing first.
He went for the hand on her hip.
He grabbed the man's wrist, pulled, and drove his own elbow into the man's throat.
The man gagged, stumbled back.
The other two surged forward.
Someone shouted.
The tavern blurred into motion.
Ivander took a fist in the ribs, another in the side of his head. His vision sparked. He slammed his shoulder into one of them, felt the satisfying give of someone's knee buckling.
A cup smashed over his back. Liquid—ale, wine, he didn't care—ran down his spine.
He tried to keep his feet.
He failed.
He went down under a rain of kicks.
His arms curled around his head by instinct more than design.
Boots thudded into his sides, his shoulders, his back. Each one a drumbeat saying useless, useless, useless in his ribs.
The thought came, stupid and detached:
At least I'm good for something. A practice dummy.
"Enough."
The voice cut through the noise like a blade.
The kicks slowed, then stopped.
Someone muttered.
Ivander's ears rang.
Hands—smaller, cooler—touched his shoulder.
"Can you stand?" the voice asked, closer now. Female. Roughened by smoke and shouting, but clear.
He forced his arms down.
The woman from the bar crouched next to him, tray nowhere in sight.
Her eyes were green. Sharp. Not soft. But not cruel, either.
"I can stand," he said, lying again.
She snorted.
"Liar," she said, and slung his arm over her shoulders anyway.
She was shorter than him, but she moved with the practiced ease of someone who'd half-carried drunk men back to beds or alleys more times than she could count.
Together, they staggered toward the back door, ignoring the grumbles.
Outside, the air was cooler.
The alley smelled of piss and damp brick.
She sat him down on an overturned crate and stepped back to look at him properly.
"Stupid," she said, not unkindly. "But stupid in an interesting way."
He blinked at her through swollen eyelids.
"You're welcome," he muttered.
She huffed a laugh.
"Didn't ask you to save me," she said. "But I'm not ungrateful. Hold still."
She reached into a pocket and pulled out a rag. It had been white once. She spat on it, then started wiping blood from his cheek with the efficiency of someone who didn't flinch at other people's pain.
He winced.
She didn't apologise.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Ivander," he said. "Ivander Ghede."
"Ivander," she repeated, tasting it. "Long name for a boy who's bad at staying on his feet."
He almost laughed.
"Yours?" he asked.
"Ivy," she said. "Ivy-of-no-house. Ivy-who-doesn't-ask-too-many-questions. Ivy-who-knows-where-the-guard-patrols-don't-look. Depends who's asking."
"Which one am I?" he asked.
She considered.
Her eyes softened, just a little.
"You're the idiot who stepped in when no one else did," she said. "You get the version that brings bandages instead of trouble."
He swallowed.
"Thanks," he said.
"Don't thank me yet," she said. "You're going to bruise like rotten fruit tomorrow. Your mother'll probably think you fell down a flight of stairs. Unless she's a soldier. Then she'll know exactly how many men it takes to make those marks."
"She is," he said.
"Ah," Ivy said. "Then you're fucked."
He couldn't argue.
She finished cleaning what she could, then sat back, studying him.
"You looked like you wanted to die for a moment in there," she said casually. "Then you fought like you wanted to live. Make up your mind."
He stared at his hands.
They were scraped and bloody.
They didn't look like a hero's hands.
They looked like a boy's hands who'd tried and failed at one more thing.
"I just…" he started, then stopped. The words felt too big in his mouth. "I can't keep losing."
"To who?" she asked. "Those three? The man in the pit? The whole fucking world?"
"Yes," he said helplessly.
She nodded, as if this made perfect sense.
"Then lose differently," she said. "Lose on your feet. Lose where it hurts them too. Lose in ways that make them remember your name when they spit out their teeth."
He looked up.
Her grin was sharp.
"Or," she added, "get better and start winning. That works too. But it takes longer. And hurts more."
Something in his chest twitched.
The "yet" his mother had thrown him weeks ago stirred.
He didn't know if he believed Ivy. He didn't know if he believed anything.
But sitting there, in an alley that smelled bad, with a stranger wiping blood off his face and not looking at him like he was a waste of space, Ivander felt, for the first time since the village burned, like maybe he wasn't completely empty.
Maybe he was just… not finished yet.
"I'll try," he said.
"Good boy," Ivy said. "Now, come on. I'll teach you which corners to cut through if you don't want the watch to ask why you're bleeding."
He pushed himself up, ribs protesting.
As they walked out of the alley, the tavern noise rolled on behind them, uncaring.
The Empire didn't pause.
The legions didn't notice.
Somewhere beyond the walls, men in bronze were already drilling for wars he hadn't been invited to yet.
Ivander limped beside a woman named Ivy, every step a reminder of his weakness, every breath a quiet, stubborn promise:
Useless, maybe. Today. But not forever.