Canen Darkflight
09-02-08, 07:26 AM
(Closed to Ayithe Solete)
--------
Prelude
--------
The villagers, slowly stirring to the break of a new day, could be heard pacing around the dirt tracks long before they came into sight. Children clung to their mothers' skirts as they all bustled around a well centred in the middle of the village, surrounded by rickety wooden huts reinforced with clay and mortar, collecting the day’s drinking, cooking and cleaning water in large clay pots. The hooves of horses mixed with the traces and chains, the hollow rumbling of rickety wooden wheels of farming carts, and above it all the crashes as tons of brass, iron and timber bounced on the bumpy mud throughways drowned out the chattering of neighbours and friends. Then they were in view; the farmers, carpenters, merchants, town guard escort and their outriders, all of them to advance the slopes of the Dagat Ahas mountain belt to travel to the next village and ply their trades. Once, they had been ambushed by highwaymen, caught dead whilst running, swamped by the ambush and slaughtered like sheep. Now, they would do the journey again, this time with security. Mothers held their smallest children and pointed at the men, husbands and fathers, and their leader, and waved them goodbye, wishing them well for the days travel.
The trotting ranks of black and navy green uniforms, the curved, polished sabres of their soldiers, and the timely drumming from the horses' hooves against the stone and shale path leading out of town was a splendid experience to behold. The workers, old and young, nodded in approval at each other. This time they would be safe. These guards were finely cut figures in society, strong and brave. No highwaymen would be getting the best of them today.
The soldiers themselves were not so confident.
True, they had beaten back the odd brigand or two in their time but, marching into their lengthening shadows, they wondered what lay beyond Dagat Ahas’s safe borders, the next town and the last before the “bandit frontier”, as it was lovingly known in the corps. Soon they would face again the horrific veterans of the Hua Lian bandit brotherhood, former soldiers turned criminals, the hordes that had turned to crime in the wake of a realisation that it paid more than honesty. Some of them had served all their life to finally come to that conclusion. Those who had were the more dangerous, fuelled by a hatred of having wasted their lives fighting for nothing. In the face of such emotion, ironically, it was often these types of people who turned to nihilists, the most dangerous and unpredictable of people. The types who just want to watch the world burn.
The townspeople were for now impressed, at least by the cavalry and the escort, but to experienced eyes the guard might not have been enough. The small force that awed the children of Dagat Ahas would not frighten the Hua Lian.
Canen, hammering a strip of iron into shape across a potholed anvil in his workshop on the outskirts of town, watched the cavalry sheath their sabres as the last spectators were left behind, and then he turned back to the job of cooling the dirty, tempered metal in a sink. The Khaian grunted as he twisted, feeling a sharp pain bolt up his right leg from a familiar place. The jagged cut had become nine inches of puckered scar tissue, clean and pink against the darker skin. That bastard Hua Lian had nearly ended him, the bandit’s dagger halfway through a massive down-stroke when Canen’s rushing blade had lifted it from the ground and the masked rogue’s grimace, framed by a weird helmet, had turned to sudden agony. Canen had twisted desperately away and the dagger, aimed at his neck, had sliced into his thigh to leave another scar as a memento of sixteen years of survival. It had not been a deep wound but Darkflight had watched too many men die from smaller cuts, the blood poisoned, the flesh discoloured and stinking, and the doctors helpless to do anything but let the man sweat and rot to his death in the shit houses they called infirmaries. A handful of maggots did more than any army doctor, eating away the diseased tissue to let the healthy flesh close naturally.
Canen pulled on the black overalls he wore most days, stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth as he carefully slid his injured leg into one of the sleeves of his trousers. They were in need of tailoring, but whatever state they were in, it was all he had, his clothes, his sword and what he could carry on his back and under his arms. Canen Darkflight knew no home other Dagat Ahas now, no family except for his horse, and no belongings except what fitted into his supply pouches. He knew no other way to live and expected that it would be the way he would die, even if it were to be here.
This place, it would seem, would hold more for him than he would be led to believe.
--------
Prelude
--------
The villagers, slowly stirring to the break of a new day, could be heard pacing around the dirt tracks long before they came into sight. Children clung to their mothers' skirts as they all bustled around a well centred in the middle of the village, surrounded by rickety wooden huts reinforced with clay and mortar, collecting the day’s drinking, cooking and cleaning water in large clay pots. The hooves of horses mixed with the traces and chains, the hollow rumbling of rickety wooden wheels of farming carts, and above it all the crashes as tons of brass, iron and timber bounced on the bumpy mud throughways drowned out the chattering of neighbours and friends. Then they were in view; the farmers, carpenters, merchants, town guard escort and their outriders, all of them to advance the slopes of the Dagat Ahas mountain belt to travel to the next village and ply their trades. Once, they had been ambushed by highwaymen, caught dead whilst running, swamped by the ambush and slaughtered like sheep. Now, they would do the journey again, this time with security. Mothers held their smallest children and pointed at the men, husbands and fathers, and their leader, and waved them goodbye, wishing them well for the days travel.
The trotting ranks of black and navy green uniforms, the curved, polished sabres of their soldiers, and the timely drumming from the horses' hooves against the stone and shale path leading out of town was a splendid experience to behold. The workers, old and young, nodded in approval at each other. This time they would be safe. These guards were finely cut figures in society, strong and brave. No highwaymen would be getting the best of them today.
The soldiers themselves were not so confident.
True, they had beaten back the odd brigand or two in their time but, marching into their lengthening shadows, they wondered what lay beyond Dagat Ahas’s safe borders, the next town and the last before the “bandit frontier”, as it was lovingly known in the corps. Soon they would face again the horrific veterans of the Hua Lian bandit brotherhood, former soldiers turned criminals, the hordes that had turned to crime in the wake of a realisation that it paid more than honesty. Some of them had served all their life to finally come to that conclusion. Those who had were the more dangerous, fuelled by a hatred of having wasted their lives fighting for nothing. In the face of such emotion, ironically, it was often these types of people who turned to nihilists, the most dangerous and unpredictable of people. The types who just want to watch the world burn.
The townspeople were for now impressed, at least by the cavalry and the escort, but to experienced eyes the guard might not have been enough. The small force that awed the children of Dagat Ahas would not frighten the Hua Lian.
Canen, hammering a strip of iron into shape across a potholed anvil in his workshop on the outskirts of town, watched the cavalry sheath their sabres as the last spectators were left behind, and then he turned back to the job of cooling the dirty, tempered metal in a sink. The Khaian grunted as he twisted, feeling a sharp pain bolt up his right leg from a familiar place. The jagged cut had become nine inches of puckered scar tissue, clean and pink against the darker skin. That bastard Hua Lian had nearly ended him, the bandit’s dagger halfway through a massive down-stroke when Canen’s rushing blade had lifted it from the ground and the masked rogue’s grimace, framed by a weird helmet, had turned to sudden agony. Canen had twisted desperately away and the dagger, aimed at his neck, had sliced into his thigh to leave another scar as a memento of sixteen years of survival. It had not been a deep wound but Darkflight had watched too many men die from smaller cuts, the blood poisoned, the flesh discoloured and stinking, and the doctors helpless to do anything but let the man sweat and rot to his death in the shit houses they called infirmaries. A handful of maggots did more than any army doctor, eating away the diseased tissue to let the healthy flesh close naturally.
Canen pulled on the black overalls he wore most days, stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth as he carefully slid his injured leg into one of the sleeves of his trousers. They were in need of tailoring, but whatever state they were in, it was all he had, his clothes, his sword and what he could carry on his back and under his arms. Canen Darkflight knew no home other Dagat Ahas now, no family except for his horse, and no belongings except what fitted into his supply pouches. He knew no other way to live and expected that it would be the way he would die, even if it were to be here.
This place, it would seem, would hold more for him than he would be led to believe.