Dark Age (15 page)

Chapter 17

T
he final months
of my training passed like the leaves that began falling from the trees. By now the Guard was both my new family and home. Like a natural cycle, old faces disappeared upon finishing training, only to be replaced by new recruits that filled the cottage. This change was so constant, that on its face my environment was unchanging.

My newly received kitchen duties forced me to get up even earlier, to have breakfast ready before any of the Guards were up. At the very least it helped me bear with the growing loneliness I felt. Handing out the bowls, I got the little social interaction I needed. Most of the recruits knew and greeted me, yet I knew few of them. I had lost enough in my young life to realize that every face I risked befriending set me up for more pain in the future.

The common-hall vacated as I finished cleaning the last dishes. In the back room I changed and headed outside to the training grounds, where the recruits were readily lined up, waiting for their team leaders to start the warm ups. They were waiting for me.

“Let’s go,” I yelled at them angrily. “Start moving, and for the next hour don’t stop!” I had never been a loud person, nor an angry one, but when it came to waking the inner beast in a group of young men, force and dominance was necessary. Only when I pushed them to their limits, they realized that they could do so much more than they had imagined.

After the warm up I took the third trimester students to the training grounds. We no longer practiced regular sparring, but instead prepared for extreme situations. In case of an ambush we were advised to return to the outer wall as quickly as possible to gain more support. To practice this, a recruit was surrounded by five other hostile recruits, and had to fend against the attackers while making his way to the other end of the training grounds safely.

Many were beaten in the first moments, unable to defend themselves against the enemies striking from all sides. Others tried to run and almost made it, but were stopped by a faster enemy that caught them off guard.

Entering the center, I looked into the eyes of each of my foes. My sword, real with blunt edges, lay softly in my grip as I walked in a circle.

No one had moved. They expected me to take the run. To their surprise, I rammed my sword into the ground and looked at them with a blank expression. Confused the five looked at another, but none let their guard down.

From behind, a recruit charged at me. As his sword slashed out for my chest, I dodged and disarmed him in a matter of seconds. I pushed him to the ground, holding the blade to his neck. He yielded and exited the training ground. With my right hand I pulled my own sword from the ground, extending each blade into an opposite direction.

The remaining four nodded at one another and attacked. With the twists and turns of a dancer I fended off their blows, waiting for them to make mistakes. A bulky recruit over six and a half feet tall was the first to make one. His sword loomed above his head, ready to strike me down. With a rapid thrust, the tip of my blade dug into his chest protector. Angered, he lowered his weapon and yielded.

The other three would not yield. I would have to beat them till they could no longer walk.

A slight dizziness began to cloud my sight. All the twisting, turning and dodging had taken the air out of me. While I knew I could keep fighting after being hit, I could not allow it. I had to know that I could fight without getting slashed into two pieces, because out there the swords would not be blunt.

My two weapons began to weigh me down. With fully tensed biceps I struck out left and right, bringing two of my opponents to the ground. The third one ahead of me was ready to lunge at my unprotected body. But before he could do anything I dropped my swords and jumped him, smashing his body to the floor. Pressing my knees into his chest, I flung my fists out at him until he yielded.

Slowly I got up from his shaking body and tensed my hands to crack the knuckles. With calm and controlled steps I walked across the training ground. Nobody was chasing me, so there was no need to run anymore. The other recruits started applauding me, but I did not look back.

My feet carried me off the training ground toward the river I had once crossed when I left the city. I knelt down and washed the sweat and blood from my hands. The different colors rushed away down the stream and left me with a clear reflection. The thin layer of fat that separated a healthy child from a starving one was gone. My jaw and cheek bones had become more prevalent, giving me an older and colder look while my entire body had transformed into a fighting machine of nothing but raw muscle covered by skin. I had not yet given up shaving, but the stubbles alone changed my appearance. The boy that once roamed the city streets was gone.

The gates were mere fifty feet away. If Katrina were to sit on the Mount, which we never dared during day time, she would have been able to see me. And if we both were to stand at the gate, I could have heard her voice. Many people are separated by distance, but all that separated us was time. A few feet that could not be crossed in nine years.

As afternoon drew closer I headed back to the training fields where I would complete a physical fitness test with Terric and Yorick. I was challenged on speed, condition, and strength. Once I had completed all tasks, the two came together and whispered each other a few words, before announcing to me that I had passed them all with excellence. Terric grabbed my shoulder with a smile, “You’ve done well Adam. I am proud to have seen you grow so tremendously over the past year. Since you are a Blacksmith, you are zoned for the mines.”

Images of Elias flashed before my eyes. I saw the cart carrying the boy with the burned skin. Under no circumstance would I go back underground for the next nine years to suffer a fate like my brothers. The feeling of suffocation from my night in the mine returned to my lungs. Sickness filled my stomach. I wanted to throw up.

“Are you alright, Adam?” asked Terric with the voice of both a soldier and father.

I took a breath, “I was the apprentice for the carpenter. I would like to work in the woods. If possible in the same camp as Peter and Nigel.”

Yorick glanced at Terric with questioning eyes, outraged that I dared to make requests, but the latter affirmed my wish with a smile, “the fresh air will be better for you.”

Later that day, when the sun was about to set, I left for the cottage to get cleaned and dressed for my celebration. Unlike the aristocratic outfit of my summoning, I wore a simple white shirt with the eagle around my neck.

Entering the common-hall I was tackled by Peter and the others who had already been waiting for me. He put his arm tightly around me and held a mug of beer high in the air with his other hand. “I have a toast for this young man,” the room hushed as Peter began to speak aloud. “For all of you that don’t know, Adam completed his Training today! He’s a man with the attitude of a wolf, the mind of an owl, and the character of an eagle. A true fighter, that has not lost his reason. There are so many things I could say about him, but it would be rude to keep him waiting so long for his well-deserved drink. Today Adam we celebrate you! Raise your glasses with me!” Peter lifted his mug and hit it against the others’, while whispering, “Good luck out there brother.”

We were the last party to leave, and stayed until the kitchen aids stopped serving us any beer. After months of being the last remaining recruit from my group of friends, it was good breaking the loneliness with such company. Peter, Stephan, Nigel and James, all of them certainly had their odd quirks but I knew that it would break my heart if any of them died out there. But death was the last thing on my mind. That night I rejoiced; I rejoiced in life and I rejoiced in my friends.

Like in the first night and the many thereafter, I could not sleep in the last either. When the images became too grueling, I made my way out into the cold and climbed up the ladder to the palisade.

Terric welcomed me with a nod, “Smells like your friends treated you to more than one drink. Try not to fall off the wall. You wouldn’t be the first man to reenter the city on a cart because of stupidity.”

We both started laughing. Nothing was particularly funny, but we both could not help ourselves. “You know,” I said, “I always used to climb on top of a roof with my girlfriend and watch the stars.”

“Oh boy, just don’t make any moves on me now,” Terric joked around.

“While you are not quite her, in more than one way, I appreciate the many conversations we had the past year,” I said. “Thank you for all that you have taught me.”

He nodded in reciprocation, adding, “Sometimes the master learns more from his student than the student from his master.”

Chapter 18

T
he woods were
magical. Never in my life had I witnessed nature so wild and living as I had during my years in the Guard. Small animals rushed through the thicket and birds sang lighthearted songs into the midday. A certain duality captured the forest as the sun began to fall. The joyous tranquility slowly seeped away and was replaced by an ominous darkness that held so many dangers and mysteries.

With quiet feet I stalked a small rabbit that was napping in the day’s last sunrays. With the bow tight in my hand, I slowly extended the string just far enough to kill the creature, without waking it from its slumber. My eyes focused and my breath came to a complete halt until the arrow was in line with the animal’s neck. I released the string, provoking a frightful squeak that was quickly drowned in the silence of death.

Excitedly I grabbed my dinner, cleaned off the arrow and headed back towards the camp. While our camps were spread throughout the woods to cover different zones, we all reported back to the central warehouse that was located just off the road to the Guard settlement. There we could grab new seeds and store our chopped wood.

By the time I returned to the circular campsite, most of my group had already arrived and was relaxing on the forest floor. Nigel was dangling from a tree with his feet locked around a branch, “Even upside down that snack looks delicious. Ya got yaself a nice dinner there,” he said swinging from side to side. With a quick spin he pulled himself up and sat upright on the branch.

Peter sat below him with his back against the tree trunk, sharpening his blade, “Don’t give that bum any more food. He’s been scrounging off my breakfast anytime I don’t look.”

“Survival of the fittest my friend,” I said with a chuckle as I climbed up the tree and dropped down next to Nigel. “Catch,” I ordered, letting the rabbit fall into Peter’s lab.

“What a beautiful little thing”, he commented quietly, taking out his small knife. With the dexterity of a barber, Peter skinned the rabbit without letting a piece of meat go to waste. “I can make a fine set of gloves out of these,” he said looking at the bloody skin of the rabbit.

“Listen up Guardsmen,” announced Jacob our camp leader. “Let’s see if we finished today’s tasks. Marc, John, Nigel, how many trees did you cut?”

“One big ol’ one,” replied Nigel instantly. “Stole all the light from the others. Makes plenty of tough wood though.”

“Igor and Peter, what did you collect?” continued the leader.

“We got two baskets of berries, sir. Edible,” Peter ensured, “and four bundles of dead wood, good for fire. We also got a handful of these tasty mushrooms.”

“Alright, alright, good work. Adam and I sowed the new seeds at the eastern end, and set up this month’s plan. Well done comrades. Let’s head back to the settlement.”

With a playful shove in the back Nigel pushed me off the branch. Falling face down I barely caught myself on my hands, while he jumped with ease onto his feet.

Traveling through the woods, over the plain, to the settlement, we made it back in time to devour our nightly supper in the common-hall. Most of the time we sat with our camp, but sometimes the old group reunited when Stephan and James joined us at our former table, where we used to sit every morning and every night.

“Have you heard, some of those bastards ripped up the Northeastern camp,” reported Jacob excitedly. “Apparently the guards went too deep into the woods and harassed some of their savage children. Supposedly they even killed one of those monsters. Few days later they got ambushed on their regular tracks.”

“What’d they look like?” I asked curiously, trying to find some validation of the information I read in Smith’s diary.

“It’s hard to pinpoint actually,” said Jacob, “I’ve seen really ugly ones; huge statures with misshaped features. Just like the Final Testament describes the demons. Others look relatively normal, but those are the real devils. They try to trick you into trusting them by looking like us. But it is simple to avoid. When you see one, kill it,” he told us as if he were the most experienced Guardsman to ever walk this settlement, “Cheers!”

He bumped his mug of stimulant herbal tea against John’s who had been sitting there nodding his head in silent confirmation like one of the bobble head figures I had made in the past and sold to James’ father. “Kill first, ask questions later,” John said with a big smile on his lips.

I knew of the savage nature of the ‘monsters’, as they had called them, but the unknown fact that they were former Aristocrats and Escapists, fellow human beings, turned the tables and made Jacob and the guards look like the real monsters. Most guards felt excited, even refreshed by the thought of getting to slay a few of the cripples. They tried to make the act seem more heroic by calling them ‘demons’, but all I felt was pity. Pity for their ignorance, and pity for those poor creatures that were doomed by their ancestors’ choices.

But doomed we all were… doomed we were.

Passively my hands reached for the eagle necklace to fiddle around with, except it was not there. Immediately I began searching my pockets and shirt, but it was nowhere to be found.

“Have you seen my necklace?” I whispered to Peter who had been sitting next to me.

Surprised he looked around, “No, why?”

“It’s gone. I think I dropped it when Nigel pushed me off the tree,” I said worriedly. “I’m going to head back there and pick it up,”

“I’m coming with you, I can’t let you go out there alone,” Peter insisted.

“No, I will be fine. I need you here. If anyone asks just make up some story… tell them my stomach hurt and I decided to go for a walk.”

Slowly I rose from the table with my palm holding my stomach. Everyone looked up at me expecting an explanation why I was already leaving their company. With a painful grimace I told them that I did not feel well. They wished me a good night, and I left the common-hall. The moment I was out of their sight I charged towards the outer wall gate. I made it outside just in time before they would not let anybody leave for the night without proper reason.

The sun had begun to set on the horizon, as I walked across the wide shining green plains that separated the settlement from the forest. The grasses grew taller and the bushes thicker the closer I came to the woods, until the smooth natural transition left me surrounded by trees taller than most houses in the city. From there on I knew my track towards the camp by following the flat trail that was created by our daily footprints.

I knelt down in front of the tree, putting my head on the ground to see anything lying in the grass. Carefully I brushed my fingers through the soft blades. Moving my head I saw the silver chain reflect in the moonlight. Relieved, my breath slowed as I put it safely around my neck.

A rustling sound caught my ears. My head darted towards its origin, finding nothing but the bushes and vast darkness.

There it was again, this time a few feet to the right. I spun around, catching a pair of innocent eyes. “Come and show yourself,” I shouted to the creature, which shrugged at the sound of my voice, “I won’t hurt you. I promise,” I added with a softer tone.

I expected an ambush. I expected a monster. Oh, even a demon. But that moment a fine hand pushed aside the leaves, and the elegant head of a young woman popped out of the bushes.

With careful steps the girl came out of the thicket onto the clearing. Her silky black hair framed her light brown skin that stood out distinctly like no other with its fine and clear lineament. She appeared so tall yet stood one head short of me. One step at a time she came closer.

Her clothes were ragged and mostly improvised. A skirt sewn together from different dark fabrics was fit tightly around her thin waist and hung just a little below her knees, while her chest was wrapped up by a piece of cloth. In the cooling night she appeared so vulnerable and yet so strong with all her skin, while I was hiding behind my thick armor.

She had not said a word yet, nor was I certain whether she even spoke my language, but some curiosity within me drove me closer to her. The moment I stepped towards her she took a step back like a timid deer. I stood still and dropped my sword in its sheath from my belt to the floor. She observed me for a moment, and finally stepped closer, no longer fearing my presence. Our steps shortened when we were at arm’s length. Her gleaming eyes looked up and down, as if she had never seen something like me this close. It seemed odd to think that I was a strange appearance… that maybe I was the savage in her mind.

To me however she looked nothing like a savage, monster, or demon. And if she were, she must have been the devil’s magnum opus. Quite contrary she reminded me of an angel.

When our toes almost touched, both of us suddenly stood still, observing one another with big eyes. She lifted her hand, and softly touched my cheek; and with that touch, all the tales of fear and slaughter had been dispelled.

Carefully I raised my hand and copied her behavior. Her light brown skin was tender like a newborn’s, yet thin and defined by her high cheekbones. She grabbed my hand and pressed it against her chest. With a strange soft accent, and light voice, she uttered what I perceived as her name, “Janari.”

I repeated the ritual and took her small hand, pressing it against my chest which was covered in metal.

“Adam,” she said trying to imitate my voice and subsequently started laughing. For a moment she tilted her head and looked at me with a crooked smile as if a million thoughts were running through her mind. Her big dark eyes focused on mine, searching for answers or mere words to say.

My hand was still holding hers on my chest. She pulled it back and laid it with spread fingers upon mine. I interlocked my fingers with hers and pointed upwards, “Sky.”

She repeated after me with her odd but sweet accent. As I looked up at the stars I saw Orion, the knight that had accompanied me ever since my early childhood. “Orion,” I said next and wished I could have told her the story about Elias. For a while this game of ours continued and through learning the words I felt as if I got to know her better.

The perfect silence of the lonely forest was broken when some crackling sounds came from within the trees. “Adam!” screamed Peter worriedly from deeper within the woods.

Janari grew alarmed like a scared deer again. She shrugged together and frantically looked around. I held her by the shoulders to calm her down, upon which she pressed her head against my chest, hiding from whatever was coming. For a second I cherished the embrace, as a warm feeling emerged in my heart. When Peter came closer I had to push her off. She gave me a sad confused look. I signaled her to run back into the bushes, so that Peter would not mistake her for a brute.

Understanding, she ran off. As she reached the end of the clearing, she slowed a last time. She turned around and looked longingly after me, uncertain whether we would ever meet again, or be tossed at one another in a moment of enmity.