Orphan: Book One: Chronicles of the Fall

by Lee Ramsay

  “Axes?”

  “And scythes, and spears, and bows, and clubs. Whatever is cheap to produce. Sorry to ruin your image of swearing yourself into a lord’s service. Thought you’d be roaming around in a good suit of armor and a sword at your belt, didn’t you?”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “It’s damned hilarious – and what I thought when I swore myself into Old Duke Riand’s service.” The veteran shook his head. “See, most noblemen don’t maintain more than a handful of guards, much less an army. If it comes to war, they call up levies and send commoners to die in the field with whatever farm tools they brought with them.”

  Tristan thought that through for a moment. “That’s stupid. I can see where an axe would be useful, or a scythe. I doubt a hoe would do much good.”

  “They do use some sense,” Dougan said dryly. “So, if you have a bunch of hunters, you give them bows if they shoot for the pot and spears if they’re used to hunting boar and bear. You give farmer scythes and woodsmen axes, and train them to hit other people. Take my word for it; a bunch of angry commoners wielding farm tools can make a mess of a well-armed and armored knight.” He examined a pine sapling before slapping the axe handle into Tristan’s palm. “This will do.”

  Tristan gave Dougan an uncertain dubious glance as he drew the axe head back over his right shoulder. The older man grabbed the shaft before he could swing the weapon and poked him in his exposed gut. “You’ve left yourself open and vulnerable, which will get you killed. No doubt you could kill a person with the blow, but they’re more likely to stick you before you complete your backswing. Try with one hand.”

  Resetting himself, Tristan drew the hatchet over his right shoulder with one hand gripping the handle. The grip felt awkward and left him off balance as he swung. The bit thumped into the pine but did not sink very deep.

  “Balance comes when you use a shield. You will train with each hand before we use one of those,” Dougan said, intuiting the younger man’s thoughts. He took the hatchet and pushed the youth aside. “A fighter who can use a weapon in either hand has an advantage, even if their off-hand is weaker. Don’t worry about strength for now; focus on accuracy. A well-placed blow is as good as a hard one.

  “Now, imagine this is a person.” The veteran advanced, the tool’s handle held in a comfortable grip, and cut both a forward strike and backhand with two quick chops. The bit cut a large cross into the sapling without sinking deep enough for the axe to lodge itself in the wood. Fibers deep in the small tree’s trunk snapped as he barreled his shoulder into the trunk. A moment later, the tree’s weight brought it crashing down.

  Dougan handed the axe back to Tristan. “Trees are a bad stand-in for a body, but they do in a pinch to help strengthen the grip and grow accustomed to hitting something. You get the idea, though, yes?”

  “Hit fast and shallow, and don’t rely on the weapon alone?”

  The older man slapped the younger’s shoulder and nodded. “Do it right, and they won’t stand up again.”

  Chapter 5

  Midwinter brought a mild thaw. Snow choking the road between Dorishad and Dresden Township melted enough to allow some travel, though it took three days rather than the usual two for many of the hamlet’s residents to make it home. Most of Tristan’s peers remained for the Midwinter Festival, which would then be followed by the New Year’s celebration, under the watchful eyes of adults not much older than them.

  For the first time, Tristan did not resent being unable to attend. He still wished he could be there because it sounded like tremendous fun, but Dougan had been as good as his word when it came to training him and taught him axe techniques and the basics of how to use a scythe as a weapon. Borrowing a bow from Thoran – a hunter, fur trapper, and Ryjan’s father – Tristan learned how to string a bow and loose an arrow at a target. His aim was terrible, but he improved under both men’s tutelage.

  The thaw also brought Anthoun’s return.

  Sitting with Karilen in the manor’s kitchen, Tristan winced as his ward parents shouted in the library on the second story. To say the sage was displeased to learn Dougan was teaching him to fight was an understatement; never had he heard both men raise their voices in such a manner. Being the root of the argument, he felt miserable.

  “Don’t worry about it,” the matronly woman said as she laid a plate with a fresh-baked lemon pastry drizzled in honey on the table. Her kind face wreathed by curls gone more silver than brown, she patted his shoulder and settled into a chair. “I’ve been running Anthoun’s house for years. One thing is certain – when he abandons his studies for as long as those two have been fighting, it’s for pride’s sake rather than because he thinks he can win.”

  The youth toyed with his pastry but did not take a bite. “I don’t want them fighting because of me. It’s not worth it.”

  “It is. Dougan sees the world one way and Anthoun another. Neither is wholly wrong, and neither is wholly right. They’re fighting because they want the best for you.” Karilen gripped his forearm with a firm squeeze, then eased her hold and patted his cheek with a chuckle. “It is a little harder for them, I think, than it is for man and wife. Neither is exactly the most nurturing sort.”

  Tristan’s ruddy eyebrows flicked upward as he smirked his agreement. Anthoun was a somewhat distant father figure, while Dougan was gruff at the best of times.

  “You are lucky, in a way. You grew up with two fathers, where a lot of people might lose their one. What they don’t know how to provide, I’ve been more than happy to give. I’ve stepped in between them when it comes to you before.”

  The youth’s throat tightened as the plump older woman sat across the table from him and rolled her eyes at the language filtering down from overhead. Mother to Sasha – the woman who had wetnursed him when Anthoun brought him to Dorishad as a newborn – and grandmother to Jaina, Karilen was as close to a mother as the youth could have. Among his earliest memories were recollections of hiding behind her with his hands clutching her skirts whenever he was frightened or her rocking him to sleep while she tended his many childhood illnesses. She had reset his broken bones and bandaged his scraped knees, helped him learn his letters, and swatted or sworn at him whenever he got in trouble.

  As she said, many had been the times where she had intervened between him and Dougan and Anthoun, as neither of the men had ever thought they would raise children. Her intervention had more than once spared him a thrashing from Dougan’s belt, and she had often called Anthoun’s attention to the sage’s unintentional neglect of his ward son.

  Now in the latter years of her fifth decade, Karilen was plump and graying with work-worn hands and a wrinkled and jowly face – and possibly the most beautiful-spirited woman he knew. She could be as gruff and foul-mouthed as Dougan or as sweet as the pastries she cooked up to sate Anthoun’s sweet tooth. She had often praised him one moment and questioned his wits the next, kissed his cheek with fierce love, or beat his rear end with a wooden cooking spoon when he misbehaved.

  He adored her, never so much more than when she reminded him through her deeds that she considered him to be the son she had never had. The fact that she could have gone to her own home while his ward parents bellowed at each other, coupled with her subtle reminder that she had stood between him and them before, reinforced that she would always stand at his side when he needed her.

  Tristan’s neck squashed down into his shoulders as a door slammed overhead. Heavy footfalls tromped down the hall, followed by another door slamming. Silence descended, broken a few moments later by the sound of a door opening and a softer set of footsteps moving down the hall. Another door opened, then closed, and both Dougan’s and Anthoun’s voices resumed – quieter this time, but no less passionate. “Maybe you should get between them now.”

  “Had they gone at it much longer, I would have.” Karilen heaved herself to her feet and moved toward the basin of hot, soapy water. She took up a rag and began scrubbing a pot. “The fight is almost over
whenever Dougan slams a door and walks away.”

  “He doesn’t seem like the kind of man to give up.”

  “I never said he gave up. He spoke his peace.”

  Overhead a door opened and did not close again. Dougan’s heavy gait moved on the stairs in the center of the house, the risers creaking beneath his weight. He stepped into the kitchen a moment later, veins standing out in his temples. Crossing the room, he took the lemon pastry from Tristan’s plate and moved to the door leading outside. With a last glance over his shoulder, he said, “Anthoun wants to see you in his library.”

  THE SAGE’S LIBRARY commanded most of the front of the manor house’s top floor, with three windows looking down into the commons. Floor to ceiling bookcases lined each wall, the shelves sagging from the weight of the leather-bound tomes. One wall alone was stone, formed from the chimney rising from the hearth in the manor house’s parlor. Though the room was seldom used, a fire stayed lit in the fireplace; the warmth rose through the chimney radiated through the library. A large table sat near this wall, Anthoun’s well-cushioned chair with its back to the chimney and two smaller, less comfortable chairs on the other side.

  It was a room Tristan entered only when invited, and then only when Anthoun gave him lessons on how to manage the hamlet’s affairs. His lessons were held during the day, though he remembered a handful of times when he had been in the library after the sun had set – most often when he had gotten himself into trouble.

  The youth paused at the open door and peered into the room. Dozens of candles lit the library and shed golden light across curtains closed against the night. He steeled his nerves and rapped his knuckles against the doorframe.

  “Come in, Tristan, and have a seat,” the old man said almost at once.

  He perched on his usual chair, his passage through the room swift enough to make flames dance on their candlewicks. Anthoun slumped in his seat, interlaced fingers lying flat on the desk. The sage was dressed for travel; a soft gray felted coat hung from his shoulders, the front unbuttoned to reveal a black woolen vest and bleached linen shirt. His hair hung loose to the shoulders, but it was more silver than the iron-gray Tristan remembered from his youngest days. Though clean-shaven, the ghost of a beard frosted his gaunt cheeks and cleft chin.

  “So,” the sage said after several silent moments, gray eyes unblinking as he stared at his ward. One eyebrow arched. “You managed to convince Dougan that I have erred in my plans for you.”

  “What about my plans?” Tristan asked, cheeks heating as he challenged the old man’s gray eyes with his green.

  “I don’t recall giving you permission to speak,” Anthoun said, his tone mild but enough to silence the youth. He unlaced his fingers and spread them on the desk’s surface. “Another area, according to Dougan, where I am out of line. Before he stopped speaking to me altogether, he reminded me that your majority is nigh. Seventeen years you will have lived under my roof.

  “People dislike being told when they wrong,” the sage continued. “Most will argue to their last breath when they believe something strongly, no matter the evidence placed before them. For a scholar, such behavior is inexcusable. It is equally uncomfortable when a parent must be reminded that their child is no longer a child.”

  Tristan blinked and said nothing.

  “Now that I’m listening, you don’t have anything to say?” Anthoun asked, a tired smirk curling his lip. “Let me see if I can discern the gist of your thoughts. Upon achieving your majority, you plan to leave Dorishad and see the world from which you have been isolated. You asked Dougan to teach you how to defend yourself, as you’re not stupid enough to think everyone will welcome a nameless orphan. Your life here is not enough as it has all been handed to you, and you want to carve something for yourself from the world before settling into our little part of it.”

  The chair creaked as the sage leaned forward. “And there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. Have I summarized your position accurately enough?”

  Tristan rested his elbows on the chair’s arms and slid back in his seat. “Yes.”

  Anthoun picked up a white goose quill from where it lay beside a stack of books and twirled it between his fingers. “It may be hard for you to accept this, but I was a young man once. I know what it feels like when your elders refuse to listen, or have others think they can determine what is best for you. Believe me when I say you are not ready for what lays beyond Dorishad’s walls.”

  “I’m not ready to attend the Harvest Festival, when children as young as eight are going? Dresden Township is two days’ travel north. People my age are there, while I spend another year here.”

  “Granted, but there is much more to this world than Dresden Township, the Harvest and Midwinter Festivals, and the New Year’s Celebration – all of which you know nothing about.”

  “Whose fault is that? You ignore my questions to focus on manure, irrigation, and trade with our neighbors.”

  “I’m trying to apologize. If you would quit interrupting, maybe I could finish and offer to remedy the gaps in your education,” Anthoun said, the quill’s shaft snapping as his hand tightened around it. He dropped the broken quill to the table’s top. Jaw muscles jumped as he ground his teeth and slid the pile of books at his elbow to the center of the desk. “You will continue training with Dougan if you’re intent on it. We, however, will begin lessons on the world beyond Dorishad and its surrounding settlements.”

  He took the first two books from the stack, both bound in worn brown leather, and pushed them across the desk without looking at the titles stitched into the spine. “The Economics and Flow of Trade by Tinstafel. You had best know how money works if you’re thinking about roaming the world. Follow that with Foundations of the Modern Nations, Political Patterns, and Local Customs by Ola Mihelic. You should know where you are in the world, its customs and cultures, and who gets along with whom.”

  A third book, bound in black with white lettering stitched to the cover, followed. “This last is my own work, compiled for a nobleman some years back. It will provide you with knowledge on various topics, which we will then expand on from other books in my collection.”

  Tristan picked up each of the books and balanced them on his lap. None of them were light. “This is a lot of reading.”

  “If you were expecting me to tell you stories, then you’re mistaken on how this works. You may find what I teach you more useful in the long term than what you learn from Dougan. I assure you, harsh as he might be with his training, I will be as demanding,” Anthoun said. He gave a wry chuckle and laced his fingers together with a lifted eyebrow. His gray-eyed gaze remained sharp and steady. “Do not disappoint me. I would have taught you all this, but between your impatience and impending majority, we lack a sufficiency of time.”

  “Thank you,” the youth said, glancing down at the books. “Anthoun, I—”

  “What part of ‘we lack a sufficiency of time’ did you not understand?” the sage asked, his lips curling in a lopsided smirk. He flicked his fingers toward the door. “Off with you, now. You have quite a bit of reading to do.”

  Chapter 6

  The books Anthoun bade Tristan read were difficult to digest.

  Tinstafel’s book alone was dull enough to put him to sleep within minutes, but as he slogged through the dense theory, he began to understand why Anthoun deemed the book important. In Year 138 of the Fourth Migration, ambassadors from Western Celerus’ major nations met for the Council of Mytoos. Commonalities – such as a polyglot regional language – would reduce the chances of petty wars erupting over simple misunderstandings. Similarly, standardized coinage was essential to further limiting the possibility of war; national economies’ success or failure became dependent on the quality of goods produced and exported rather than which country minted the coins.

  Thus, Western Celerus’ currency system came to be. Platinum was among the rarest of metals and formed the basis of two coins – Sovereigns and Half-Sovereigns. Each bore the m
inting nation’s crest on the obverse and the ruling monarch’s face on the reverse, and they were used to pay debts between the different countries. Archs and Half-Archs, shortened terms for Monarchs, were the highest denominations in circulation; few of the lower classes ever saw an Arch, as the one-ounce coins carried more value than most commoners produced in a month. An Atrice, a silver coin whose name derived from Patrician, and the copper Coarser, derived from a slang term for commoners, were the standard denominations used to buy everything from a bowl of soup to paying rents.

  One country had not participated in the Council of Mytoos. Through its ambassador, the Kingdom of Merid refused to debase its language or devalue its goods. Other diplomats shrugged off the dismissal. According to Tinstafel, it became clear by Year 237 that Meridan exports’ quality outstripped what was produced by any other country – particularly military materiel. While the Kingdom of Caledorn produced some of the best iron, coal, and weaponsmiths in Western Celerus, Merid’s weaponry was superior and seldom for sale.

  “Ah, the Kingdom of Merid,” Anthoun said when Tristan asked him about it, the two sitting at the sage’s desk. “The Meridan are an ancient people. If we accept the rumors told about them, they arrived in these lands from the Distant East at the dawn of the First Migration. In theory, they remain the closest to their original bloodline.”

  Tristan leaned over the map spread out on the desk and found the Kingdom of Merid in the northwest with his finger. “Ola Mihelic says in his book that the region’s indigenous peoples almost destroyed the Meridan. Yet, somehow, they managed to wrest the land they hold from no less than five tribes.”

  “So rumor has it. The First Migration is believed to have occurred three thousand years or so before the Council of Mytoos, but there weren’t many historians keeping detailed records at the time,” Anthoun said wryly, pressing his fingers together. “It is said that King Seban Terador, the Meridan leader in exile, is the reason they survived. Estimates are that only four thousand of the Meridan bloodline remained when they reached Western Celerus.”