“What?” Varrl barked.
“Yes, sir,” Kelc said louder, anger fueling his words.
“Good. Come on, Kreggen, mount up. Let’s get after it. Adda!” Kelc’s father waved his wife forward, reaching out for the bag.
Only then did Kelc notice that Kreggen and his father already had the travel coffin on the wagon, the wood almost the same hue as the sides of the wagon walls.
“We’ll be back tomorrow morning, early,” Varrl announced to seemingly no one. “Have a 3-2 ready.” Without delay, or even a glance at his youngest, his father snapped the reins. “Heeyah!”
The wagon rumbled away, the heavy clip-clop of hooves nearly drowned out by the clamorous noise of the iron wheels against the packed dirt. Kelc watched as it turned across their property, rolling past uncounted headstones, lumbering forward until it was far enough off that it finally shrunk and vanished into the grasslands.
With nothing else to look at, Kelc’s eyes settled on the willow tree that stood in a nearby field. It had lost all of its leaves, but still it loomed over its surroundings, perhaps fifty or sixty reaches in height. It was the only tree within sight of their house, which also stood alone. No neighbors lived near. Only the willow.
Kelc suddenly realized that his mother watched him.
“Youngest,” she said, a frown dominating her expression, “can you dig the grave?”
Kelc almost laughed, so bitter were his thoughts. It seemed to him that he’d been digging his own grave for years. His own father had a saying: “We’re always digging someone’s grave.” He pushed those thoughts out of his mind. His mother didn’t deserve them. She was as much a prisoner here as anyone else.
“I can,” he said. “I’ll just have to take my time.
“Your ribs?” She moved as if to touch them, but Kelc stepped back, unwilling to accept her care or pity. He fixed her eyes with his and nodded. His mother took a deep breath. “Let me make you something to eat before you start then. You can change out of your robe.”
Kelc nodded again and stepped back into the house, walking to his room. He kept his robe on, tugging his jacket on over it, unwilling to have his mother dress him. He did pull a pair of socks on before slowly lacing his boots, a painful endeavor that took longer than the rest as it agitated the now sewn cut in his shin and forced his ribs to throb. Finally, he felt ready enough to get to work.
He allowed himself a grim smile. His father was gone for a day. It would be just him, Shy and his mother. These days, that was as good as he could ask for.
He stepped back into the main room and smelled bacon. He made his way to the small table in the kitchen, which was really just a service buffet with two chairs. The family never sat down to eat, since only men sat to meals per Symean tradition.
“Did Shy already eat?”
“She did,” answered Adda. “Early.” Kelc’s mother peered out the kitchen window after answering, a longstanding sign that something bothered her.
“Where is she?”
“She is with Hennon, the hempster in Nordren. He has a suitable son. She is meeting him and his family.”
Kelc’s stomach twisted. Shy was almost nineteen and at twenty she would be married off, but it felt too soon. Far too soon. Kelc chewed his lower lip for a few moments while considering it. He then pushed on, for his mother’s sake. “Hennon,” he said, as if tasting the name. “What is the son’s name?”
“Lerghen,” she answered softly. “It is a family name. He is the fourth of his name.” Obviously she’d been told the same thing by Kelc’s father. “It is said he has considerable skill at the family craft.”
“Making rope,” Kelc said.
“Yes,” Adda said, her frown deepening. “Making rope. Here is your meal. I’ve got a cup of fresh milk here as well. I saved it for you, youngest.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you,” repeated his mother, saying the words sadly. “Oh, Kelc, you are too gentle for this fool land. No one taught you such manners and caring, yet you persist.” Her voice cracked. “What will you do?”
So deep in Symean tradition was the distaste for weakness that Kelc felt guilty for even wanting to reach out to his mother.
“Survive, mother.”
“Survive,” she barely managed to say. “Is that all we offer you? Your brother will become Territorial Warden, your sister will raise a family of her own. And you,” she said, tears beginning to fill her eyes, “will survive.”
Kelc had no answer. Tears filled his mother’s eyes. And not because of what had already happened. Of that Kelc felt certain. Adda cried because of what she felt coming. He couldn’t deal with this now. Not today. He tried to distract her.
“Maybe I’ll find a woman with considerable skill braiding twine,” Kelc answered wryly. “We’ll live next to Shy and her hempster husband, Lerghen.” It worked.
Adda barked a laugh despite herself. “Kelc, I’m serious. I…”
“Mother, one way or another life will carry on. Today I dig a grave. Tomorrow must take care of itself. It seems I can only live one day at a time.”
Adda nodded. That she understood all too well. “Yes,” she said.
“The grave,” Kelc said, finally taking a large bite of bacon. “Whose is it?”
“Old Kenning Bann out of Maphill. We got word late last night. A rider came at dusk.” She pursed her lips.
“Last night at dusk? And father left only a bit ago?” That was very strange. Varrl had ridden off into the night more than a few times to retrieve a body.
“The wounds you gave him have caused him some considerable trouble,” answered Kelc’s mother. “He was too weary and hurt to drive the team last night and refused to be bucked around riding along with Kreggen.”
Kelc made no comment, but allowed the feeling of satisfaction to grow in his mind. He knew it was wrong to enjoy it, but he couldn’t avoid feeling pride at causing Varrl some real pain. His mouth quirked to a side. “Kreggen would have driven that blasted team hard if he knew it would hurt him.”
“And your father knew it.” Adda shook her head, partly enjoying the topic, yet saddened by the unavoidable presence of anguish that the truth brought. “Finish your meal, youngest. I must gather your bedding and wash it.”
Kelc finished silently and then climbed to his feet, making his way to the front porch. There, he stopped and looked out over the property.
At its center sat the house, five rooms where five desperate people lived. Surrounding the small wooden house stood grave stones, some within ten paces of the front door. It seemed like they went on forever. The ground gained a few reaches of elevation in every direction, as if the house sat in the bottom of a great bowl, making every horizon a silhouette of headstones. Only the willow tree broke them up, allowing the view of something other than the graves of the dead.
Off to the left sat the cleanhouse, a grey brick building where the bodies were prepared for the ground. Kelc worked his jaw looking at it. The place was awful, and yet, working with the corpses was the only time that he felt like he did something of value with his life, rare as it was that Varrl would let him. Beyond that was a smaller block building wherein the blood furnace sat. There, the blood of the dead was incinerated to keep disease at bay.
Out of sight sat a small outhouse and a tool storage shed, but neither of them offered anything more than another bleak stone structure.
“Huh,” Kelc chuckled mirthlessly as he tapped his heavy boot on the wooden porch, “our house is the worst built part of the whole property.” He let the thought sink in for only a moment while staring off toward the village of Nordren where Shy was being entertained by Hennon and his family.
His stomach clinched again as he considered losing Shy, considered being alone with his father and mother. He couldn’t even imagine it. Only darkness formed in his mind. Emptiness.
“Greeching hells,” he breathed.
Kelc set the sole of his boot hard against the footrest of the digging iron and forced the
fullered bar into the ground, breaking through the hard-packed soil, slicing through the heavy mat of grass roots that twined through the dirt like pink veins. The bar stopped a little shallow, sending pain through his ribs. “Skeesh!” He waited a time before he raised it a few knuckles and again stomped it, this time with a grunt of exertion. Its flattened digging edge sunk deeper into the resistant earth before jolting to a side, having encountered something far harder.
“Greeching rock,” Kelc muttered under his breath as he clutched at his midsection with one arm, as if to stabilize his bones. “Probably the tip of a greeching mountain,” he continued, the pain in his ribs along with the difficulty of the dig bringing out his temper. “Damned thing!”
He wrestled the bar free of the ground and lined the sharp edge up next to the long narrow hole he’d just made. He took in a breath and practically jumped onto the footrest, driving the iron into the ground, sinking it all the way up to the rest. “Good.” His breath spouted out before his face as a white vapor riding air cooled by an oncoming snowstorm. With every passing glass the air seemed to grow colder as the day persisted.
Kelc took a step back from the digging iron, admiring how perfectly he forced it into the ground. The handle stood straight up, shivering in the gusting morning breeze. He allowed himself a thin smile before he again took the bar in hand and reset it, carefully placing his boot before ramming it downward.
He needed nearly a glass to get the perimeter done, taking great care to get the dimensions right while doing what he could to minimize the pain that resulted from sudden motion and knowing that any error in the dig will earn his father’s ire, something he had seen more than enough throughout his life. “Don’t need that,” he grumbled as he tossed the digging iron to the side in favor of a broad-headed shovel. “Okay,” he told himself, expecting the actual digging to be much harder on his body.
Though the shovel wasn’t perfectly flat, he used the deep channel left by the digging iron and slid the head into the ground. Once it stopped, Kelc stood on it and rocked it back. Grass roots broke audibly, unable to keep hold as the young man pushed down on the long handle, rewarded with a large solid chunk of hard, arid earth. With a quiet grunt, he tossed it to the side, feeling only moderate complaint from his chest.
All the way around the perimeter, he set the shovel and tilted it back, removing the dense top layer of soil. Time and again, he pried up the hard earth, adding it to a growing pile, ultimately leaving a depression six and a half lengths tall by three and a half wide and almost a length deep.
Once he threw the last chunk of dirt to the side, the soil so hardened by dried clay that it didn’t even break when it landed, Kelc nodded. “There.” A great deal of digging remained, but now it would be simple shovel work in looser, sandier soil.
He attacked the softer soil, grumbling whenever he encountered a rock, letting the shovel drop as he clutched his aching ribs; the soil is frequently interrupted by oblong grey stones like those that rest at the bottom of a lake or a riverbed. “Gods must have dropped you here a long time ago,” he said as he tossed another smooth damp rock from the deepening hole. “Put you here just for me,” he snorted and continued digging.
Kelc stopped after a few more shovel-loads to mop his head with his sleeve despite air so cold it bit at his throat as he breathed. Though it neared midday, heavy grey clouds blocked the sky and it grew colder. “Just another reach or two,” he told himself, standing in a hole where his head and shoulders remained above ground. He’d been digging for four glasses already, ever since he finished eating, just after his father left. “Too bad he’s coming back,” Kelc breathed, heaving another load of dirt up and out of the hole.
Once his grey-green eyes were level with the top of the hole, he reached over the edge and found the measuring stick. He rested it on the bottom and looked at the marker line near the other end. “Good,” he said before placing it in the opposite corner. “Good.” He switched it to a third corner. “Hells.” It was shallow by a quarter length.
He bent down and used the shovel to shave a few knuckles of dirt from the bottom of the hole, slicing it clean with a practiced forceful thrust.
“Greech!” The position wrenched his sore muscles, sending tendrils of pain along his ribs all the way across his back. “Hells.” He sucked in a few quick freezing breaths, calming his pain before patting the floor with the flat of the shovel and again checking the measuring stick. “Good.” He spun to the fourth corner and checked it. “Yes.”
He placed the measuring stick and the shovel on the ground outside of the hole and then shuffled around slowly, placing his boots heel to toe as he moved around, making sure there were no particularly high spots, but there were none. He trampled any loose dirt and packed it down, creating a mostly flat surface before looking at the dirt walls around him, admiring how well he cut the corners of the rectangular hole. “Another grave undertaking,” he said quietly, reiterating a line his brother used to say every time they dug a burial.
He lowered himself to his haunches and then dropped onto his back, enjoying the coolness and close confines of the fresh grave as he looked up at the dirt walls, to the ominous clouds overhead. “Kreg.”
His brother created turmoil in his mind. So strong, and yet… His brother had never been able to stop their father. He just mitigated some of the impact of Varrl’s rage, drawing some of it away from Kelc.
During the sparring a few days before, everyone understood that Varrl lost control, but Kreg hadn’t intervened until the damage was done. “Do you really think I need such lessons?” Kelc asked his brother. “Do you think I can live in this house with father and not gain such an understanding without letting the greeching man kick me? While I’m down?” he growled. “The least you could do,” he growled, “is step in before I am bleeding and broken.”
But the mental image of Kreggen just shrugged. That’s life in Symea, brother. I survived it and so will you, somehow.
“What a mess this nation is,” Kelc whispered. “How can this be normal? How can this be the way we continue?”
For generations beyond count, Symea was a warring state. They had fought the empire, straining her resources before finally being overcome and had since unsuccessfully rebelled against her cause numerous times despite being largely left alone. Only tribute and soldiers did the Empire ask of Symea. Things Symea would proudly boast of were it not demanded of them, but ever had pride been the strongest trait and greatest weakness of Symeans.
“So we fight, and fight…and serve.” Kelc let the words tumble through his mind. Fight, serve and fight. “Serve,” he said again, this time the word acid on his tongue.
Children were property. Once a male child arrived at the age of nine, he could work in assistance of the family industry. At thirteen he could perform the family industry, beginning eight years of indenture. At twenty-one, he was allowed to begin his own industry, but in a different community than that of his sire unless his sire died or gave up his industry. In this way, it was said, Symea would grow and remain productive.
“Slaves,” Kelc whispered, his breath a ghostly plume over him as it rose from the grave. Kreggen’s image reappeared in his mind, offering a strange glimmer of hope. “A freed slave.”
Suddenly his eyes burned. For all of the envy and anger Kelc held for his older brother, there was definitely more to feel. He would miss him. Kreg had done more to help Kelc learn, be it his letters, the sword or survival, than his father had ever even tried to put to words.
In only a few months Kreggen would be gone and all of his father’s attention would turn to Kelc. Tears shook from his eyes as a cold convulsion rattled through Kelc while he considered dealing with his father alone.
“Not alone,” he practically wept. “Shy.”
But what help could Shaia really be? She had a worse lot than did the boys.
She learned the art of caring for hearth and home. Cook, clean, sew, weave, medicine…the list seemed eternal to Kelc, yet she learne
d it all. “To raise her value.” So she can be auctioned off, he thought.
Families paid the daughter’s family in order to court her and paid more to marry her. But before they married her in, they were allowed to “know” her.
Per Symean tradition, the prospective husband could lay with her twice before making a decision on marriage. Though it was considered of questionable honor, many men had laid down the courting coin to lay with a woman twice before thoughtlessly turning from her, declaring her a poor match.
“And Shy can say naught of it.” Lava erupted inside of Kelc, thinking of his beautiful sister being used so without her consent. “And even if she wanted the man…the ceremony.”
As part of the marital vows in Symea, the woman and man traded blows. It was said that once, when the nation was weak, the blows were symbolic slaps of little force that were exchanged, indicating that each newlywed needed to grow a thick skin. Now, however, they were a sign of dominance, proof that each of them, more so the woman, were strong Symeans that could bear pain and burden.
Twice had Kelc watched as brides, on their own wedding day, were knocked from their feet by the open-handed shot delivered by the man they were supposed to care for and comfort. One of them ended her ceremony woozy with a black eye rising through her perfect complexion.
“Imbecilic,” Kelc seethed. “We fight. Better than anyone, we fight. We fight our enemies, we fight ourselves…we fight.” He thought of the strength and bearing of his father and brother. He saw them standing amidst a field of grey headstones and brown grass and he nodded. “They fight.” He saw his mother, who looked twice as old as she should. He saw his sister’s warm brown eyes full of fury and hatred. “We all fight.” Tears came again.
Kelc remembered his own fury as he sparred with his father, wanting nothing more than to let the man’s blood, to see him disabled on the ground begging Kelc to cease his attack. “Even I fight,” he wept.
He lay in the grave, his watery eyes unable to see the first flakes of snow that spiraled down to him, unable to see his own hands quivering as he held them up over his face to keep the cold from his wet cheeks.
Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One Page 2
