Corvus Rex

by J K Ishaya

  "So, he really was a monster," Howard states, a spark of mirth in his eyes at the irony.

  "Yes, though being a child, I did not put the man and the beast together completely, despite his original claim. I had not seen him change into this thing, but after that, the dream of the steps terrified me so much that I usually woke up almost immediately before I could encounter either form. From then on, I threw myself more into my physical training and chose to think of other things like girls and proving myself to my peers.

  "The stranger on the stairs, and the monster, were consigned to the farthest reaches of my young mind."

  ✽✽✽

  "By the time I turned thirteen, the dream had been almost completely forgotten, and I had a new, more taxing distraction. Aches had begun to creep into my back as the curve grew worse with the coming of pubescence. My back always burned with tension, and one hip would occasionally give me grievance. Eventually I feared I couldn't keep up with my peers, even those younger than me and less experienced, and I began to fall into a state of melancholy that I would never be as strong as them or have a purpose.

  "Then one morning, after a particularly frustrating training session with my brethren, I threw my sword against a stump and broke the blade in half. This provoked a stream of curses from me while the others threw jeers and whispered amongst each other about poor Zyraxes and his crooked back as I stormed off."

  Howard's eyes flash with excitement to hear my original name. The pencil scratches on the paper, spelling it wrong, though I care not.

  "Decebal followed me to a little retreat I'd made in a hollow under the stairs leading up to my room in our house. 'Come out of there,' he said, and I emerged expecting a reprimand that did not come. He stood, arms crossed, examining me for a long moment as I wiped at my snotting nose and pushed back tears of humiliation. All the while my back prickled, and when I winced, he turned me around and ran a hand down over my tunic, tracing the course of my spine with less than gentle prods. He murmured comments of, 'Ah, there it is,' and 'Hmmm, I wonder,' and then he turned me back around, and his hands gripped and assessed the slant in my shoulder line. His gestures were rough and seemed to lack sympathy, but they were part of a bigger plan to come. 'The last thing you are going to do is give up over this,' he said. 'You are special, Zyraxes, and I know in my heart that you are meant for great things.'

  "I asked him why, and he sighed as someone ready to tell a tremendous secret. 'You were told that you were a foundling child by those jabbering women who helped raise you, loving though they were, but I have never told you everything.' He gestured that I follow him as he went to gather a couple of his men. This included his brother, my uncle, Diegis, and Bielis, who was not related but whom I also considered an uncle for his brotherly bond with my father. Both were his lieutenants and confidants in virtually everything.

  "'It is time to tell him,' Decebal said to them both, and I noticed the exchange of looks, brows furrowing, and Diegis' eyes even glazing slightly as if haunted. They trailed behind us as we went to the stables and mounted up, then we rode out of the western gate and wandered past rows of merchant tents camped along the main thoroughfare into the dava and there we fell into single file down a narrow woodland path and entered an area where Decebal often took his troops to train in the leafy terrain. We wound around the mountain side and Sarmizegetusa grew further away until we were on an opposing hill where the sounds from the fortress, especially the howling of the Dracos, carried as if through a tunnel, bounding off exposed rocky faces. At last we came upon a natural clearing and Decebal gestured for us to dismount. He stepped past the corpulent roots of a knotted oak to the opposite edge of the clearing where there sat a river rock, at least two feet wide, with fern clutches growing up against its cool sides. The ground stretching out from it had a slight dip down and I recognized immediately that it belonged to a small grave several years old by the way moss had covered it.

  "'It was here that we found her,' Decebal said, indicating the tree and its circling roots. 'Your mother. I was on watch that night in winter when we heard her screaming, all the way down here.' He gestured back toward the fortress, indicating how easily sound carried up from that chasm. 'They were paced screams, a matter of seconds between them, rising and falling.'

  "'I still remember them like yesterday,' Diegis said, his head bowed over the grave. 'And the state in which we found her. She was a beautiful woman. Such a pity.'

  "'What happened to her?' I asked.

  "'She had been giving birth,' Decebal said, 'and as we rode down from the mountain, torches roaring in our hands, hearing the wolves in the distance, we were startled when a woman's cries became those of a keening infant. We homed in until we came upon her here. She was dead already, and between her legs, you lay steaming and bloody in the cold, and I wrapped you in my cloak immediately. I held my torch near and looked upon her face. It was unfamiliar, and she did not appear to be a Celt, nor Roman, nor Sarmatian. We speculated that she might be some foreign royalty since her fabrics were so soft and fine, and her bracelets and earrings were golden and as beautifully crafted as our own, but most of their patterns belonged to some other land. She had a fur cape around her shoulders to keep her warm, but obviously, it did not do her any good that night.'

  "'What did she look like?' My voice had weakened at that point, and I grew lightheaded. They told me that her features were delicate, beautiful, not the darker features of Sarmatian women or Greeks. She hair held the sun like that of the women in the far north. Her pupils were wide in death, but around them shown rings of an almost preternatural jewel-blue like mine, glinting in the torch light. I knelt to touch the edge of the dip in the ground, fingers brushing the velveteen moss as if it represented something. My imagination saw it open up before me, saw her in there as if thirteen years had not passed, saw her alive and smiling to see me.

  "'Eyes like steel and sapphire,' Decebal said, 'and then I closed them ever so gently with my fingertips.'

  "'Did you save her jewelry?' I asked, wondering if I might have a glimpse of her that way.

  "'No, not after how she died there, like that,' Diegis said.

  "'Lest it carry a curse, or her spirit rise vengeful and blood thirsty, we decided not to,' Decebal explained. 'We buried her quickly with a blessing and I swore to her corpse that I would make sure her baby stayed safe.' Then he stepped in and took my arm to pull me back to my feet, looked me in the eye with a determined glare. 'You see now, boy? You were born under circumstances in which you should have died, whether from the cold that night or devoured by the wolves of winter, but you screamed until we found you. You did not want to give up then. Why, by Zalmoxis, would you give up now?'"

  I shrug. "That was all it took. I wanted to make him proud, and though learning my history brought up questions as to my real parentage, I'd had a good life among the Dacians. I was one of them, so I did not ponder these issues much, knowing the answers were long buried with my mother in a small grave in the forest outside the walls. At thirteen, it is not like I would have any idea where to start investigating it, or the resources to carry it out, and I believed the same superstitious reasoning they gave for burying her and all of her effects.

  "My father concluded, 'Your spine is nothing compared to the spirit inside you,' and immediately he took up training me on his own. He found private places where I could stumble and cringe without humiliation such as in the courtyard of our house, or in forest clearings, or on the edge of the Sargetia that flowed between the hills. I cannot tell you how many times Decebal took me to the widest expanses of the river, tied a rope around my waist and bade me to cross the rushing waters, learning balance against the current and over the rocks and building strength in my legs. I climbed cliffs and trees, I lifted and rolled small boulders, I pulled loaded carts over roads. In those places I could learn to work past the pain and keep moving to build my strength. War general that he was, I believe he trained me harder than the other boys and that is what made the difference.
Sure, I still ached. Some degree of pain always embraced my core, but I learned how to return that embrace. By the age of fifteen, I was a soldier in Duras' army."

  "At fifteen?"

  "Yes. As I said, training started at the age of five, so I was actually considered ready by twelve."

  Howard scribbles something in his notes. "I am aware from my own historical studies how young children were when recruited in various cultures. To hear it verified by one who lived it is remarkable. Please, do go on. Tell me more about Zalmoxis."

  "He was our primary god, the head of various lesser deities. In my time, we focused primarily on him and so little on the others, that in many ways you could almost call us monotheistic. It was rumored he had been a man who achieved deity and thus so could we. We believed we came from him and to his paradisiacal lands would we all return at death. Like the Greeks’ Zeus he carried a lightning bolt and controlled the weather among many other things. All rubbish to me now for various reasons, but at the time I was a true believer like any other Dacian."

  "And Decebal and his lieutenants, they really believed your mother would rise from the grave if not appeased?"

  "Yes, that is a belief that has survived in that part of the world for a long time, I'm afraid. In some cases, it applies to suicides, in others it is a woman dying in child birth. These people were believed to rise again as the living dead strigoi, a vampire-like entity, and feed on the blood of their relatives. Again, rubbish, the acute nonsense of a superstitious people."

  He nods vacantly, and I easily read his wonder that a creature like me could decry superstition so easily. "So, you have no religion now?"

  I stare at him. I know only of the darkness out there and all of the indifferent, cruel things, and it is too soon in my story to speak of those things. Upon my discomfort, I finally say flatly, "Agnostic."

  This earns a snort from Kvasir in his quiet corner, and Howard glances at him, smiles as he assumes there must be an inside joke or other deeper reference. But there is no joke, and after I shift around and resettle, it's time to move on.

  "When I was initiated into the army, Dometian's legions had crossed the Danube out of Moesia, retaliating after we launched a series of raids on their camps. Our raids were intended as a warning. They had already encroached too far, putting Dacia on edge. Soon after, Duras fell, and my father very quickly took his place as king of Dacia."

  "You became a prince," Howard says with admiration.

  "No, not really. At least, not in the traditional sense you think of with a crown being inherited by a specific line. Kings were elected, so even as the king's son, I in no way looked at myself as royalty. Dacia operated on a very democratic process, even women were allowed to vote. Decebal's relationship to Duras had nothing to do with it. He was chosen for his skills as a military leader.

  "I was still a nobleman, yes, but foremost a warrior. In the first wave of their invasion, Rome savored a few small wins. Ever the pompous ass, Dometian declared himself the final victor prematurely and slithered back to Rome, leaving his general, Fucus, to fight in his place. At eighteen, I had the pleasure of taking Fucus's head, a deed that elevated me in the ranks. I felt my father's pride and it warmed me here." I clasp a fist to my gut.

  "I had never been as close to him as then. It pushed the pain in my body away and drove me even harder. I came up with a proposal for a new fighting force. An elite. I trained them as Decebal had trained me, hard and fierce among the elements, in the river and on the cliff edges in the mountains. They learned not only general combat, but we specialized in the guerrilla warfare that had gained us so much advantage in the past. Though many of them were my adoptive brothers, nobles like me, we chose not to wear the signature cap of tarabostes and went bare-headed most of the time except on the special occasion we were required to display our stations, such as for weddings. They were soft, conical caps made of wool or fur, depending on the season, that tipped forward a little at the top, and sometimes we wore decorative pins in them that displayed our tagmas. Eh, these were family symbols like monograms, something of a precursor to a coat of arms. We used them in jewelry and on weapons, but you do not see that kind of detail on Trajan’s column.

  "The column, I confess, has much of the last war correct in its general depictions. Many of Trajan's artists were enslaved Dacians. They gave almost every Dacian a cap. I suspect the reason was simply to distinguish them in such a cluttered illustration.”

  "You have seen it."

  "Of course. A long time ago when it was somewhat new, and all of the panels still painted in brilliant colors, and again fairly recently when I visited Rome. It sits barren of color now, bleached by time. It does not remotely offend me to see commoners depicted with noble caps. In those last days, we were all of the same standing. Nothing renders all men as equals faster than the brutality of war.

  "No, what offends me about the column is that it vulgarly boasts Trajan's victory. Wouldn't you feel the same if it were your people portrayed with their severed heads hanging by the hair, gripped in Roman hands? Held up as trophies?"

  Howard's brow softly creases at this observation. "Please, continue."

  "Unlike other Dacians, my men and I tattooed ourselves in the same manner as our Thracian neighbors, with patterns that distinguished us. We made lines across our foreheads, spirals in the contours of our cheeks in black ink from a formula known in the region. We grew our hair long like commoners, but we kept our beards groomed. Dacians in general were well groomed."

  I scratch up inside my beard as I ponder these things. "I still groom it precisely, you see? I enjoy the tools created to do so. Scissors… I love scissors. They have been around for centuries, but they have improved greatly over time." This earns another little smile from Howard. "What is a matter of style to a man of today is still somewhat cultural identity for me," I finish on that matter.

  "So smaller skirmishes continued to occur, and the Romans kept coming. Numbers. They always had us in numbers. They toppled our hill forts and laid waste to some of our villages until Decebal negotiated a fragile peace. To much outrage, he even allowed Sarmizegetusa to be occupied along with several of our other fortresses scattered on the surrounding mountains. He returned all prisoners of war and took on the title of client king, but he was really biding his time.

  "I married during this time, and had children, and for a while Dacia fell into a lull that I believe we all quietly enjoyed even if we did grumble about our overseers. I knew it would not last. My back, over these years, grew worse with its aches and pains, but I kept up my personal battle with it, training harder, longer, pushing my men along with me. Then the time came that we all felt ready to strike.

  "After years of observing the Romans’ ways, colluding with and bribing some of their less faithful officers, an uprising was rekindled. A plan was hatched along with our closest neighboring forts, Piatra Roşie and Blidaru, and we stationed warriors at the Iron Gates along the Danube. We attacked the occupying forces, imprisoned half of them, drove them from the fortresses and towns, and Sarmizegetusa belonged to the Dacians again. My men and I, a force of only seven, set out on a separate mission and crept into the other occupied villages and forts. We lured guards away from their posts and slaughtered them.

  "Your mouth is hanging open," I tell Howard.

  He closes immediately with a distinct clack of teeth. "Excuse me."

  "No," I catch myself. "No, excuse me. I distract myself with these details." I adjust myself on the edge of the bed, sitting up straight while my gaze falls to the floor. "To be honest, I cannot remember how many throats I slit during those raids, but it is the fact I find now that I savor the word slaughter. Do you understand? I remember so much blood spraying across my face as my men did the same, as it slid down our arms and matted in our hair." I keep it to myself how the memory sparks tastes in my mouth: the salt of sweat, the coppery, luscious tang of blood that I crave even now as I sit here, fed and sated though I am.

  Was I a monster even
then?

  No, Kvasir's voice answers gently in my mind. You were a man defending what you held dear. This from a non-human who only knows what being human means through psychic association.

  I look up at young Howard, in his old suit and ascot tie, and he is so far removed from those now ancient days. He has no need for scale armor, and he is not at all capable of doing what I once did or even what I do now. Even with his loathing various races of his fellow man, he is still incapable of killing a single one of them. Of that I am certain.

  "So, the armies returned with a new emperor: Trajan. His is still a bitter name on my tongue. I knew right away that he would be formidable. He had been a general before his rise to power, and his eyes were fixed on Dacian gold and territory like a hawk circling a juicy hare. We failed to stop him from building a bridge across the Danube directly into our lands, and so the path lay open. Upon the first wave, Decebal once more negotiated the enemy down, but, too spirited to remain Rome's bitch, he sent me and my men out on more retaliatory campaigns that, I admit, only inflamed the situation. It all finally came to a weeping, tragic head that even now is sickening to me.

  "Trajan was not Domitian. I knew that, but I do not think Decebal ever quite realized it. We knew how to manipulate the likes of Domitian, but Trajan did not haughtily turn back for Rome and leave his legions on their own. He would stay for as long as necessary and he had even greater numbers than any force before him. Like fleas, his army crossed the Danube and infested the south western region, the very seat of the Dacian empire. The other fortresses finally, completely, fell around us.