“Daniel,” Vannay said coldly, “I hear from Cort that your training does not go well.”
The young man of seventeen looked up from his tome, bleary-eyed from long hours spent reading as was usual. He rubbed at them to clear his vision, frowning up at his master. “Forgive me, teacher. There is much to study.”
“Yes, you spend much time with your head in books. Far more than any your class, or any class I’ve seen, I would dare say.”
“Have you not said that ‘knowledge maketh the man?’ Should I not prepare for the world?”
“There is more to preparation than just information-gathering, my student. As much as one hates to admit it, this is not a world where a man may overcome its evils with knowledge alone. If you are to be a gunslinger, you must try harder. Cort is a rough man, but he has molded more boys than I care to count into the men they needed to be. If you insist on continuing down the path of Eld, you will have to face him one day or another.”
Daniel felt anger, hot and unfiltered, blossom briefly in his stomach. He knew he was barely hanging on in the physical matters of his training. He was a full head shorter, or worse, than his classmates, and little he did seemed to increase his strength by any measure. Yet as it rose, his indignation died just as quickly. He knew also that he had no passion for fighting. “Yes, teacher.”
The others in his class, those that had not already been failed or awarded their guns, were swiftly approaching the most common age upon which the trial was undertaken: as with Daniel’s own father, most of them would be pushed by family honor to ascend or fall in their 18th year. The combat could be initiated at will, but as their bodies grew in stutters and spurts, so too did their ambition and their tempers.
One of the more notable challenges had come a year prior. At sixteen years old, Roedrick Davram was everything that Daniel was not: tall and brawny to a ridiculous extreme, he had towered over everyone else in his class for years on end. In physical matters he excelled, often with a savagery that was charged with his pride and arrogance. Though he knew his letters (a gunslinger would have no choice but to fail out unless they possessed that rudimentary skill), he had no passion for study or practice. There was no artistry or strategy in his technique, nothing that could be called true battle prowess: he typically overcame his sparring partners by sheer force. Time which was set for reading was often spent out brawling or carousing with friends just as rude and petty as he.
He cared nothing for ka.
Finally, after wrongly answering a question from Cort three times (and being clobbered hard on the ears at each failure), he had issued his challenge in a white, seething rage.
His weapon of choice had been naught but his bare fists. A supreme foolishness that had made Cort burst out in ugly laughter when he heard it.
If there had been anything else, a weapon of any kind, Roedrick surely would have succeeded. As it was, the matter had still been close.
By the end of the fight, Cort’s right leg hung broken at the knee. He won by the skin of his teeth, choking off his student’s air with his black ironwood staff. He had to hold against the hulking teenager’s throat, almost crushing his windpipe. And so it was that Roedrick Davram was sent west, having forgotten the face of his father.
Daniel, conversely, was not physically talented. His short stature was an embarrassment, worsened by the teasing of his cohorts throughout the years. His own father hated to speak with him, presuming him a lost cause. What little interaction they had usually came to blows, Daniel limply accepting a strike here or there in exchange for knowing that his father still recognized his existence.
No, Daniel despised physical altercation. He enjoyed the stimulation and virtue of reading, he was quite adept at it. He talked nigh daily with Vannay, of all manner of things: philosophy and culture, the science of the Old Ones (what little they knew of it, anyway), geography and history. If he continued down this path, it was a sure thing that he could have been an accomplished academic, a scholar of the highest degree.
All except for his father, who cared little for such things. No, all that William Bryne cared was that, once he became an adult, Daniel became a gunslinger. Bryne was a noble house, like the rest of them who trained their sons in the way of Eld, but their honor was small. All that William Bryne could see was that Daniel was smaller than the rest, slower than the rest. The gunslinger’s rite of passage did not suffer the weak, and all he saw in Daniel was weakness.
Thinking on these matters, that anger which had smoldered in him so briefly returned, settling like a flaming coal in his chest. “I cry your pardon, teacher. I have been foolish.”
Vannay raised an eyebrow. “In what way, Daniel?”
“I have neglected my studies. ‘Matters of the body are just as important as those of the mind,’ he quoted. “I must ensure my victory, or all of this has been for nothing.”
“’No knowledge gained can have been for nothing,’” his teacher quoted in turn. “In this vein, I offer you some wisdom. There is another path.”
Daniel’s mouth twisted, like he tasted something sour. “I cannot withdraw from my training. My father—”
“—is a fool, who would deny the truth if it stung him like a wasp.” Vannay frowned slightly. “I know how stubborn William can be. It is good that you would remember the face of your father, but at the end of days, a man must choose his own way.”
“Yes,” Daniel replied hotly, “and I choose to follow in the steps of my father.”
Vannay’s frown deepened, touching his eyes. “So be it.” He turned to leave the library, but paused at the doorway, light pouring in around him. “I will continue to urge that you reconsider. Contrary to what William says, there is no shame in ending your training. I said a man must choose his own way, but neither can he ignore his ka. You would make an excellent scholar, and you would have all the time you cared for to study with. This will not be so if you fail in your trial.”
With those curt words delivered, he passed through the guards and left Daniel to his musing.
For his part, Daniel stared out after him for a while. He did not admit it to himself, but a quiet fear had latched onto the back of his mind. Still, there was time available to him. He would make the most of it, he deliberated, and turned back to his book.
-
“Danny?” A friendly voice called out to him, breaking his thoughts apart. “Ye alright?”
“Ah,” he mumbled, effecting a yawn. “Sorry about that. It was a long night out there.”
“Well, nevermind,” Robby waved him off. “A little shuteye does a body good. But come,” he said, “It’s time fer the bonfire.”
Together they stamped back out into the cold, treading back over to the front of the abandoned courthouse, where the vast majority of Deepwood’s inhabitants had gathered. The Village Mother carried a blazing torch in her scrawny arms, and the crowd around her shushed as she lifted it on high.
“This Fair Day, we give thanks,” she intoned sagely. “The harvest has come, and our stores are replenished. The ills of the world pass us by, and we are graced with a new face.” Her wizened eyes looked meaningfully at Daniel, who shuffled with some embarrassment. He had not expected to be singled out like that, but Robby cuffed him pleasantly on the back. There were a few cries of ‘hear, hear!’ from some other village folk he had helped in his off days.
“May he have many long days and pleasant nights here,” she seemed to grin. “By the grace of Gan and God,” she finished, dumping the torch into the bonfire. Straw and wood shavings at the bottom of the wood pile caught quickly, and before long the entire thing was cheerfully aflame.
Instruments were struck up, Fin and Knot and Locke whipping up a saucy jig for dabbling couples to dance to in front of the bonfire. The flames leaped and danced with them, casting long shadows in the square. Robby went to (fruitlessly) find a fair lady to dance with, leaving Daniel to tap his foot in time with the song.
He was joined in short by the Mother. “Thank you,” he said, “for that kind welcome. I hope I have been no trouble here.”
“Trouble?” She gave a harsh laugh. “By Gan, boy, yer as meek as they come. Or at least polite,” she elbowed him. There was surprising strength in it. “Seamus has been needin’ an apprentice for a while, anyway,” she jawed, hissing some of the consonants with no teeth left in her. “He was anxious to make his house accommodating, I trust ye’ve been comfortable.”
“It’s as fine a place as I’ve stayed in for many years,” he replied. “I thank you and him for your hospitality.”
“And where might ye have stayed, hm?” She elbowed him again. “Ye’ve been awful quiet about yourself these last few weeks. It’s clear as springwater that ye’ll cause us no trouble, but it causes whispers to not know anything of a lad.”
He fixed her with his steely gray eye. His mind hearkened back again, back to the day where he had lost his other eye.
-
In the failing light of autumn, a student and teacher gathered in the usual place: the Square Yard of the castle. The traditional challenge had been formally issued three days prior, and though the declaration had reached the ears of Gilead and Daniel’s classmates, few had chosen to gather and watch. He had no ka-tet to shout his name. Those who were not warded away by the fall wind which now chilled the open corridor simply had no interest in these proceedings: the result, to so many of them, was a foregone conclusion.
The one whose absence truly hurt was Vannay. When asked, the wise man had only said: “I will not witness your destruction,” and turned to face away from his student.
Daniel wore the usual garb of an aspirant gunslinger: leather breeches of his own making, and a simple white shirt woven from cotton picked in the south of the barony. He approached from the west, trying his hardest not to shake in his shoes.
Cort, with tight leggings and a tunic that barely covered his unseemly belly, stood tall on the east end. His one good eye pierced Daniel like a wicked dagger. He waited until Daniel stood before him, looking down at him like a bear may look at a rabbit. He studied him from head to toe, but not for too long; there was little in what he saw that might change his opinion.
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“This be your last chance, maggot.” His voice was hard, but his scarred and twisted face was filled with a terrible sadness. “Will you not cry off this foolishness?”
Daniel shook his head. He was terrified, in truth, but… this was his ka. There could be no putting off destiny.
His teacher huffed. “You’ve never been strong, boy. A mighty head for learning, far past your peers, but this…” He shook his head in turn. “You will fail. It is a waste.”
“Be that as it may, teacher,” Daniel took a breath to steady himself, “I must do this thing. I shall be a gunslinger, like my father before me, and his father before him.” As the words left his mouth, his eyes shifted to look at said father, who stood past Cort in the eastern end of the corridor, hemmed with the sickly brown of plants going into dormancy for the winter.
William Bryne held no love in his steely eyes, and Daniel’s soul quailed under their unerring gaze.
Yet, he had made his decision. He felt it in him as sure as he could feel his panicked heartbeat: there could be no turning from his fate.
Ka weaved as ka willed.
Another minute of quiet study passed. “Very well then,” Cort sighed, and he turned to walk shortly away. Though he now walked with a limp from that challenge with Roedrick, the muscles in his legs and his back and his paunch were no less packed. The man was a walking bundle of raw strength. His ironwood staff did double duty as a walking stick, but if any had taken this to mean he was weak—and thus an easier make of this sacred rite—they had paid dearly for the misjudgment.
There were still many a student who was sent west for their failure here.
Daniel swallowed as they took their places, he on the western end and Cort on the east. His legs trembled as the enormity of the trial at hand entered his mind. There were no books here, no dusty woodcuts or faded yellow pages he could read to prepare against the tide of what was to come. Cort’s savage visage filled his vision; his stomach roiled with boiling acid, his heart was hammering like Fair Day drums. Soon the ancient words filled his ears, strong and clear:
“Have you come here for a serious purpose, boy?”
“I have come for a serious purpose, teacher.” As serious as anything in this sordid life could hope to be.
“Have you come as an outcast from your father’s house?”
“I have so come, teacher.”
“Have you come with your chosen weapon?”
“I have so come, teacher.”
“What is your weapon?”
“My weapon is your own, teacher.” Daniel tightened his grip on the oaken quarterstaff, thinner than the ironwood cudgel, but with caps of bronze at each end.
Cort sighed. “A fine choice, t’were it any but you,” he muttered bitterly. Raising his voice again, he continued in the proper fashion: “So then have you at me, boy?”
“I-I do,” Daniel whispered tremulously.
“Speak up, you rotten puling brat!”
“I DO!” Daniel shouted, his heart fit to explode in his chest.
“Be swift, then,” Cort roared, but to both his and Daniel’s surprise, the short boy had taken a running start and was closing the gap between them like the wind. Swift, indeed.
Daniel was no fool: he knew his own size made him easy pickings for most, and though he had failed to live up to many of the standards Cort threw at the rest of their class, he had pursued his training with this oak staff furiously, almost as much as he had dedicated to scholarly matters. He could not afford to let his small stature defeat him, and so he had grown strong in his own right. For hours each day when he was finished studying and talking with Vannay, he had drilled with that staff in his father’s garden.
William Bryne watched, unmoving, as Daniel opened with a crazed flurry that briefly managed to sneak some blows past Cort; though the cruel, gnarled man blocked most of what came at him, he grunted as Daniel struck him twice: once in the shin, the bad one, and once in the chest.
Cort might have been a boulder for all the impact it had, not giving up an inch of ground. Still, he could make no move without opening himself to more. Daniel continued his onslaught, stunning his battle-hardened master. There is nerve yet in this boy, he thought, but it can’t last.
Before he could retaliate, Daniel had retreated. Normally this would have proved a mistake—there was no real respite in such close-quartered combat, not once the distance was closed—but for a wonder, Cort was rooted in place. Perhaps he was taken aback by his student’s unexpected resolve.
Whatever the reason this pause was allowed to take place, in his own mind Daniel exalted as he got his wind back. Secretly, he had expected to be struck dead already, though even in the fever rage of the battle’s beginning he realized that Cort had merely been defending, not exactly returning the favor. It couldn’t turn the tide, not fully, but his swiftness was on his side.
His hands shook as his excitement pitched. Perhaps he was not hopeless in this fight after all.
Then Cort did come, not swinging his staff like a cudgel as he normally did (for Daniel would easily dodge this with some effort) but instead matching his speed. Daniel’s mouth gaped, only just remembering to mount a defensive stance in time, turning each stab and parrying a blow to the head that would have knocked him senseless.
Cort’s strength was imposing, daunting, and his staff whipped at Daniel like a machine, side to side and top to bottom—there seemed no end to the attacks. Yet he was laboring, soon breathing heavily, and that was Daniel’s path to victory: he had to endure this, striking back when the man was winded.
After a little of this, with Daniel managing to turn each blow away before it ended his resistance, Cort stepped back with sweat streaming down his mangled face.
“Hai, Daniel, you do better than expected. A little, anyway.”
Daniel did not fall for this bait, stepping forward immediately and precisely to pursue the advantage. Cort seemed not to move, but Daniel’s mind did not process this as being strange; it bore a single focus, bending totally and completely on his goal. Every scrap of his mental being and soul were angled straight at his master, his foe.
Deep from within those crenelations and bloody fissures, an ineffable something sprang forth, responding briefly to his force of will and concentration. It lashed out like a sullen, sleepy animal, a limp strike that passed through Cort’s skull and meaty tissue to connect directly with the man’s sense of being.
For a marvelous moment it stunned him, and in contradiction to all his many years as a warrior and teacher, he found himself addled. His hands loosened, and one lazily drifted up to touch under his oft-broken nose, dabbing in idle wonder at a small bead of blood which had appeared there.
Daniel processed none of this consciously, however. In his blood fury, and in the shaking relief that he had made it this far, he simply saw Cort abandon his ironwood staff, letting it fall and clang hollowly on the weathered tiles. He did not, of course, entertain the idea that Cort was giving up, and raised his own staff overhead to deliver the strongest blow his angry little body could muster…
Only for Cort to stop it with cold, murderous precision.
To strike directly at the mind is far more dangerous than any gun, but like all weapons it requires skill and practice to use effectively. Daniel was still passing weak in this strange kind of warfare and his teacher quickly collected his wits (not being any kind of stranger to battle daze). The hoary man had stepped forward and caught the staff still at height, on his right forearm. Quicker than a viper, he turned his calloused hands and gripped the bronze end of the staff, yanking it from Daniel’s grip entirely, and throwing it down on the ground next to his own.
Like having a bucket of iced water thrown over him, Daniel was shocked right out of the battle’s reverie. He did not feel the weight of his age anymore; instead, he was seven years old again. Cort—or was that William?—barreled his fist at Daniel’s unprotected stomach, and in an instant all of the air went out of him with a little whuff.
In another half-second he was on the ground, struggling just to draw breath. He felt like his lungs had collapsed, burning with the overwhelming desire to suck in air, but he just couldn’t, it would not happen. His mind reeled with pain and disbelief, struggling to comprehend how quickly things had changed on him. His own limbs refused to obey him, and a strange darkness collected at the edge of his vision.
“Yield, boy, if you know what’s good for you.”
Daniel turned his bulging eyes to the towering man in front of him. He clutched at his sides, and finally managed a faint trickle of oxygen. Like a dam bursting he finally dragged in a wretched breath, gasping and coughing. He vomited on Cort’s boots, and he felt a strange sense of embarrassment.
“Yield, I told you,” was all the man said to him.
Daniel still could not process how he had come to be huddled on the floor, his red hair laying in his own sick. Where had all that excitement gone, that feeling that he was not totally and completely out of his league? He gritted his teeth, feeling the gunky acid coating the inside of his cheeks and his tingling tongue. His fingers and legs felt numb, distant. The darkness in the corners of his eyes had been replaced by a brightness that pulsed strangely with his own blood.
He felt himself slipping away from reason.
“Yield, boy! This is your last—” but the warning was cut off then, by a blow to Cort’s groin—jagged pain lanced up into his head and exploded behind his eyes as he looked down and realized that the little cocksucker had punched into his balls with all the strength left in his body.
It didn’t amount to much, but it was enough. The pity he had for his student evaporated as he bellowed with rage and pain. Without pause he simply turned on the boy again, falling into a merciless rain of blows.
To his credit, Daniel did not surrender immediately. He was struck from head to toe, every punch pummeling into him like a hammer, but he refused to speak the words that would send him from the trial a failure. All he could do was curl up into a ball and weather the storm, covering his face and chest with his arms, for all the good it did.
Then Cort drew up on him, sitting his prodigious girth on top of the boy to pin him in place, and got his strong, weathered hands around Daniel’s face. What the poor boy had failed to realize was that his teacher would not stop at a simple beating. No, this was a battle as sure as any, and soon he heard himself screaming, shrill and high, as Cort’s right hand gripped his head firmly and kept it in place.
Even then Daniel refused to yield, trying desperately to bite at the thick, grisly hand that was grappling with his face. He knew what was coming now. Somehow, he found himself unable to utter the two little, gigantic words that would save him, for he may not have had the blue gray steel of Eld’s line in his blood, but there was a steel in him nonetheless.
Cort snarled and exhaled through his uneven teeth, spraying Daniel’s face with warm spittle. His left hand’s thumb wormed its way slowly but surely into Daniel’s right eye. He screamed again and this time his throat ripped with agony as the vision in that eye distorted. There was a brief moment where it blurred and he was seeing triple, but the pressure mounted and the blur became darkness instead.
Hot blood began to stream down his face and ran into his mouth as he heard a sickening little pop, and then that half of his vision was simply gone.
He did not stop screaming, except to draw breath so that he may scream some more. It was not until Cort switched hands—dismissively flinging the bloody eye and its trailing nerve and viscera onto the ground, as if it were simply trash—and started to reach for the remaining eye that he finally squeezed those fateful words from his burning throat.
“I yield! I yield!” But this last turned into more screaming as he fully realized his failure, and the reality of its consequence.
Cort immediately stopped and stood, releasing himself from his battle frenzy (though it was hard—his stomach ached with the blow below, and he knew he would not visit the brothel that night). Instead, he picked up his staff and stumped back to his side of the corridor, exactly where he had stood before this farce began.
“Go west, go west, go west,” he intoned harshly. “You have forgotten the face of your father, and now you must go west.” Those miserable words cast their shadows on the boy, still screaming as he felt disbelievingly at the warm, ragged hole in his head. “You shall never return to Gilead, this great land of milk and honey. Go west and find your fate in the wastes, Daniel; you are of no one’s house now. Go west…” he turned to walk back to his crude dwelling in the city, but stayed for just a moment. To himself, he whispered “… and perhaps you may find the face of your father again, one day.” His part done, his role fulfilled, Cort thumped his staff down the corridor lined with the dying vines and flowers of autumn, back towards the land of light and civilization.
Daniel writhed on the ground, still screaming as he squirmed with pain, and shame overwhelming. He turned, sickeningly disorienting with only one eye now, and saw that his father had already gone.