Fan Fiction ❯ "I was born, six-gun in my hand . . ." ❯ Chapter 2

Years and years ago, not quite in the Time of the Grandmothers, but a little before the Time of the Grandfathers, a great battle was fought between the army of a king named Alexander Eld and the warriors of Ilead. Eld's men numbered ten thousand, and our forces only numbered seven hundred. The battle was practically over before it began, but all Il'duri suffer from one trait - pride. We refused to give up our land for nothing, and the price would be paid in blood.

 

The Il'duri warriors, men and women alike, rode into battle and took no prisoners. Eld's forces had waned down to only one hundred, Eld himself among that number, when the last Il'duri was brought down. He was so amazed at the skill and strength of these people that he made them an offer. In lieu of killing them, he would allow them sovereignty if every year they gave up some of their children to Eld's own army. Confronted with the cold truth that there was no way they could win, the Il'duri agreed, and ever since then on Reap Night, Eld's forces came a-reaping, taking any child they considered of good enough stock to make a good soldier.

 

But as I said, that was before the Time of the Grandfathers. Eld's line is less of a line and more of a tree now, his many women bearing children who bore more children and so on until his blood was spread all over the land. Still, as blood tends to do, some of his lines were diluted to the point of nonexistence, his direct line included. Some indirect lines remain strong to this day, the last of the Elds in glory dimmed but not gone.

 

Eld's empire fell into the hands of one of his indirect lines, one so tenuous it might as well not exist. This new king, one Arturius Eld by name, was the one ruling when I was taken. Arturius' grandfather had started his own tradition of keeping a wizard as his advisor, and Arturius continued it. It was Arturius' wizard Maerlin who picked us - Zeke, Merak and I - to be taken so young. Most children taken on Reap Night were nearing ten years of age, yet Zeke and I were only six and Merak was seven. Arturius never thought to question why the young ones were taken, just blindly put his faith in the wizard and accepted his judgement.

 

Of course, when I was taken, I didn't know any of this. I was just scared, confused, and rapidly building toward anger. The actions of our captors didn't help matters.

 

The first thing the men did was line us all up in a long dark room. There were others from Asran besides my friends and I, other Il'duri children from different villages, but we were all costumed, dirty and scared. Apparently they'd been told to run as well - my first hint that our parents knew what was going on - and were covered in dirt, leaves, hay, dung and only the gods knew what else. We were stripped and sent first to a shower room, then dripping and cold to stand on the cold rock floor in bare feet. There, shivering and confused, we were yelled at by a man we first called Kesh'ikai - roughly “soul-sucking bastard” - but later knew as Chief Evim Saquorro, a man we respected and even liked.

 

While I was fluent in two languages, Ilead Standard and the Asran'duri language of my village, my Imperial Standard was rudimentary at best. Cold and intimidated though I was, all it took was two recognizable words in the same sentence to raise my six-year-old Il'duri ire - “forget” and “mother”. The instant those words were shouted in my face I denounced this Kesh'ikai, his master, and their lines back to Alexander Eld and the pit that spawned them.

 

The violence of this reaction makes sense to any Il'duri, whose ways generally tend to be viewed as backward or downright wrong. For what it matters, we think everyone else is backward. In Il'duri society there is very little gender bias. This makes sense since there is no logic in decreasing your number of warriors by half simply on basis of gender. Only one area of society brings the gender issue into bear - political leadership. Here is a sign that everyone else is backward - they are ruled by kings. I accept that men can do pretty much anything a woman can do, but let's admit it, men just aren't capable of the thought processes required to make a good leader. Think about it logically, this is a creature whose idea of “good” ranges from “woman” to “three women and ale.” Yes, please, let the barely refined barbarian control our fates.

 

Anyhow, the clear-mindedness of the Il'duri led to some specific turns of phrase. A great incentive is to tell someone to do something for their father's sake. If they've done something wrong, a great recrimination is to say they've forgotten the face of their father. However, if you want to be sure something will get done, change “father” to “mother” in that first line. If you change the same thing in the second line however, prepare to witness one of two things - murderous rage, or pitiable suicide. T forget the face of one's father is to be shamed, to have done something so wrong it is worth that moment's penance, but to forget the face of one's mother is to have become worthless, to have gone so low no amount of groveling could make it better. This distinction is saved for the worst of traitors and blasphemers.

 

Weak I may have been, weak enough to be captured anyway, but hell if I'd ever at any point forgotten the face of my mother.

 

And so my training had an auspicious beginning, with me left in the cold while the others went inside, hungry while the others ate, and tired while the others slept. Early the next morning I was sent into the mess hall with the others to scrounge for breakfast among last night's garbage, and then training began.

 

In a word, training was hell. Every morning we had a cross-country run that grew increasingly more difficult as time went on. After that we had class with Maerlin, that damned wizard always carrying the Rainbow, who taught us things from math and foreign languages to military history and terror tactics. After that was a brief respite for us to gather our strength and nerves (and whatever we could steal from the mess) and then came physical training. It started as dance, over months became gymnastics, ten later martial arts and all matter of weapons training. And as if this weren't enough, there were also the little surprises Maerlin called “pop quizzes” that we came to fear more than anything else in the world.

 

In general, pop quizzes were cruel. First, they were the odd midnight marathons, exhausting but standable. Then there were the nights of sleep deprivation or starvation. Sometimes we were simply yelled at for hours on end to break our spirits, or beaten by unknown people to break our bones. Harsh, granted, but not exceptionally cruel. That changed later, when Maerlin's pop quizzes became twisted. We would find rocks in our boots that could not be removed and were forced to walk (and run and train) with that little torture. Mysterious wounds would appear and fester in a matter of hours. Our small meals would turn to ash in our mouths, and water to sand. Eventually it got to the point where pain and hunger were so commonplace the days we weren't tortured seemed fundamentally wrong.

 

The pop quizzes were frequent for about four months, then became rare evils for the rest of the others' training, all eight years of it. Luckily for me, I escaped after a year-and-a-half.