Tycho and Ledo ensured Denor had no leisure to ponder anything save for relentless training. They drove him hard, partly because they were secretly astonished at their discovery that Denor had the potential for improvement, and partly because Ledo harbored a persistent guilt over the razed village and his impotence to halt its demise.
As Andronian men, Ledo and Tycho treated feelings like unpleasant vermin—acknowledged grudgingly, if at all, and never invited to stay for tea. Dreams and fears fared no better. Denor discerned his father’s love in the way Ledo scrutinized and tolerated him, a sentiment undoubtedly mirrored by his grandfather. If one included unrelenting beatings and daily doses of murder in their definition of 'love.'
This narrator could devote endless amounts of text to the techniques that Denor failed to master, and could wax lyrically about the various trials and tribulations, but that would be yet another paragraph in the way of progression. Since there had been enough of those already, we speed forth through the interminable and cold training segments that involve very little happening.
Our hero wasn't predisposed to moping for long, not when his days were filled with what others might euphemistically call 'training.' Most boys his age would have dissolved into a puddle of despair, but Denor? He was mercifully devoid of introspection these days. The constant pain was like an overly enthusiastic companion, easily numbed by a few stolen bites of his grandfather's ‘special’ herbs.
Despite how roomy it was, there was no space in his head for mourning lost villagers or connecting with the few who had fled north, save for the odd visit to Gella and Charan. Those emotions were boxed up and stashed in the dusty attic of his brain, alongside his battered self-worth, which now sported an alarming number of sword holes.
Instead, Denor was being forged into a weapon, albeit a very clumsy one. He felt the weight of expectations from his father and grandfather pressing down on him, heavy enough to flatten a less resilient boy. But Denor bore this burden with a curious excitement about future adventures. The past, with its cozy village fires and Hevath’s meandering tales, was left behind. His focus was on mastering the excruciating art of combat, and becoming the finest warrior in the sector. Destiny demanded it, apparently. Granted, at his current pace, it might take another sixty years, but Denor was undeterred.
In Tycho, he had found a grudging yet excellent teacher, who had managed to elevate his skills from 'dismal' to 'humiliating' over the past few weeks.
“I’ll be frank with you, Denor, and when I say ‘frank’ I mean, well, devastating. You’re terrible at fighting. Everyone has to start somewhere though, so trust the plan. We’ll make something out of you yet.”
Tycho often said doubled-edged things like this, and reassured him not to fret over the slow progress, typically during late-night sessions filled with tales of eluding slavers or surviving brutal skirmishes. Denor would listen, eyes wide with admiration and affection, and whisper, "Someday, Grandfather, I will be like you."
"No, Denor, you don’t want to be anything like me. Beside, with all the knowledge I impart, you will be greater. It will take time, but men once knew me as an Andronian mercenary. They will know you simply as ‘The Andronian’."
Initially, Denor thought this idea preposterous. Any illusions of his prowess with blade or fist had been thoroughly beaten out of him. But as time went on, it became a goal, a distant star to navigate by, to get off this backwater planet and do something with his life. To be ‘The Andronian’, he would need to transcend the role of mere scoundrel or mercenary. He didn't yet grasp what that entailed, but he was resolved to discover it, somehow. First though, more things needed to happen. So they did.
He awoke one morning in a haze as his father yanked him out of the house with all the gentleness of a misplaced energy bolt.
"Guh?" Denor mumbled, his brain clearly struggling to catch up.
"You're going scouting for me today. Get dressed," Ledo grunted, tossing his gear and a bundle of clothes at him as if that explained everything.
"In your place?" Denor asked, his thoughts finally starting to clear as he got steadily more entangled in the gear.
Ledo nodded, his face tightening as he saw the blank expression on his son’s face. He knew what was coming next.
"Okay, and by scouting, you mean…?" Denor trailed off, trying to grasp the situation.
His father sighed. "Checking what's out there and reporting back. It’s very simple, Denor. Just like back home but on a larger scale."
"Right," Denor replied, though his confusion only seemed to deepen. "Right," he repeated, still unsure.
Ledo's patience was wearing thin. "Just say it."
"And when you say 'going out,' you mean...?"
"Beyond the outskirts of the village," Ledo replied through gritted teeth.
"Okay, but could you explain the first part again?"
Ledo smacked the back of his son's head and shoved him out the door.
They soon met up with a ragtag group of warriors who proudly called themselves the "Outlanders." Though none had met Ledo before, they had both seen him and heard of him. Like him, they had ventured far beyond the village borders, traipsing across the icy plains of Andron VII in search of anything remotely interesting. Their exploits had led them mostly to barren wastelands and the occasional half-hearted cave, but their enthusiasm was undiminished. While the elders strategized, the Outlanders exchanged tales. They bonded as only men who have suffered the same miseries—and were on track to endure even more—could. Everyone knew the elders would eventually draft them into the harshest battles, not out of any high regard for their skills, but because their losses would be the least mourned.
To avoid said losses, they also had a healthy avoidance of any Gurruks that might be lurking out there. It was one thing to be an adventurer, another thing entirely to be too curious.
This probably explains why Ledo wanted absolutely nothing to do with them, and instead threw Denor in their general direction. They had clearly observed the gunsmith’s skill at tracking and there was an unhealthy amount of hero worship going on. Ledo was not the sort to appreciate that, being about as social as the average honey badger.
Rodrik was, for lack of a better word, the sort of man who could lead without actually doing much leading. This made him the ideal leader for the rudderless Outlanders. It wasn’t that he was particularly clever—he wasn’t, though in comparison to Denor, who was outwitted by inanimate objects on a daily basis, he might have seemed so. No, Rodrik’s gift lay in his ability to be remarkably unremarkable. He had the kind of face that could blend into a crowd of two and a mind that drifted somewhere above the clouds, in a realm where wry remarks were the primary currency. The rest of the Outlanders mistook his wit and confidence for intelligence, a very common failing when appointing leaders.
He was ten years older than Denor, which meant he had accumulated ten more years of experience in not being anywhere useful at the right time. However, this made him the de facto leader of their little expedition, if only because everyone else who questioned the leadership magically lost their Outlanders membership. Today, he wielded a blaster, a tool that, if nothing else, gave off the vague impression that Rodrik might be of some use in a tight spot. He wasn’t, but he was the leader, so he just had to give the impresssion that he was.
Rodrik had begrudgingly accepted Denor onto the scouting trip, muttering something about “needing to get back to training” with the tone of a man who was quite content with the current state of untrained affairs.
The man sighed after a matter of minutes, leaning against a rock face at the top of the slope with the air of a man who had seen Denor in motion on the way up and realised he wasn’t going to be having much fun today.
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At his feet, Denor was still wrestling with his gear—a tangled mess of straps and buckles that seemed to have a mind of its own. Our glorious hero, for his part, was cursing under his breath in a way that suggested he was rapidly losing any romantic notions of scouting.
“So, Denor,” Rodrik began, his voice a lazy drawl, “remind me again—why exactly did I agree to drag you along on this little stroll?”
Denor looked up, a scowl firmly in place. “Because you’re supposed to be training me, I think. Plus Ledo wanted you to do it, I think. I’m not entirely sure. Can you help me with this gear?”
Rodrik rolled his eyes in despair at the boy fighting a losing battle with the harness. “Yes, the mysterious Ledo Kara. I suppose that’s reason enough to endure your company. Though I suspect he’s secretly trying to test my patience rather than your skills. Would be just like him, really. No matter what I do the man just doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
Denor muttered something that sounded suspiciously like an insult, but Rodrik, ever the magnanimous leader, chose to ignore it. Instead, after assisting Denor out of frustration more than pity, he cast his gaze toward the distant spires of New Titania, barely visible through the haze of snow that perpetually fell over the village. Every day on Andron VII you were standing at the very edge of galaxy, where the ruins of the old world met the substandard remains of the new. It wasn’t exactly the sort of place one went for a leisurely stroll, you could end up in an ancient underground tomb or eaten by a wild beast. Fortunately Rodrik knew the safest routes, and sent everyone else off on the more suspect trails.
“You know,” Denor said, adjusting a particularly stubborn strap, “for someone who’s supposed to be the leader, you don’t inspire a lot of confidence.”
Rodrik flashed him a grin. “I prefer to lead by example. Specifically, the example of what happens when you put your faith in sharp words rather than sharp weapons. First we’re heading to New Titania’s lovely outskirts. After that, we’ll be joining the rest of the Outlanders to explore this curiosity they’ve uncovered.”
Denor stopped getting tangled gear and looked up, a wary expression on his face. “Curiosity? Sounds like trouble. Shouldn’t we avoid that?”
Curiosity, of course, was a polite way of saying ‘something that will probably get you killed, but with a bit of luck, you might come back with a story worth telling.’ The curiosity in question involved missing people and a strange place—exactly the sort of thing Denor’s grandfather had warned him about before he’d wandered off into a life of questionable decision-making. Naturally, it was also exactly the sort of thing that Denor would rather avoid. But then, if Denor had any real sense of self-preservation, he wouldn’t be Denor, would he?
Rodrik let out a bark of laughter. “Avoiding trouble is the very thing we’re not supposed to do. Didn’t you read the Adventurer’s Handbook? Section three, paragraph two: ‘Seek out anything that looks like it might bite you and prod it with a stick.’ It’s practically a tradition.”
Denor frowned, as though trying to remember whether such a handbook actually existed or if Rodrik was just making it up. He decided it didn’t matter. “I think that’s how people go missing in the first place.”
“Precisely!” Rodrik said with far too much enthusiasm. “Which is why we’re going to investigate. And by ‘we,’ of course, I mean you’ll bumble along trying not to get lost while I graciously offer commentary on your mistakes.”
Denor wanted to respond with a witty retort, but by the time he had thought of something, Rodrik was already starting to walk, his boots kicking up small puffs of snow as he went. Denor had no choice but to follow, albeit reluctantly. The outskirts of New Titania may be more civilized lands, but they sported Trunian patrols, and were not a place for the faint of heart, but then, neither was adventuring—at least not the way Rodrik did it.
The man seemed perfectly at ease, as though he’d been born to wander through forgotten places. Perhaps he had. He certainly had the look of someone who had seen more than his fair share of strange things and had lived to tell the tale—much to the annoyance of anyone within earshot.
That or he was a complete fraud running on bravado and a cult of personality.
Fortunately for Denor, his journey to the outskirts of the valley was uneventful, and didn’t merit much description beyond the next sentence, which conveniently starts now.
Carefully skirting the charred remains of Denor’s old village, the motley crew slipped over a ridge and found cover above the valley where New Titania had been built. The valley widened to the south, with the snowy wastes irrigated into central plains, producing enough food to sustain the settlement. It was both an eyesore and a declaration: they weren't going to repeat the mistakes of Titania Vale with this New Titania, and they had decades of not being razed to the ground to prove it.
Tycho's stories hadn't prepared Denor for his first close-up view of New Titania. Massive buildings loomed over the plains. Energy walls encircled them, and a winding path led to the main gate and its security checkpoints. Large transports came and went in an orderly fashion, shooting off into the stars to places Denor could only dream of. He watched them with clear envy, as it wasn’t like he could walk up to the gates and ask for ‘one ticket off this frozen rock, please’. You know, on account of him being an Andronian, a mortal enemy of the Trunians barely considered sentient.
This was only marginally worse than his previous plan, which was to hide in the coat of a passing trader and hope that the man didn’t notice when he put it back on.
Now he stared, eyes wide with a mix of awe and an encroaching sense of insignificance. Beside him, Rodrik's blaster twitched, a sardonic smile playing on his lips.
"Big, isn't it?" Rodrik said mockingly. "How long do you think it would take them to get us if I took a potshot?"
Denor fell into a contemplative silence, his mind whirring with strategies and possibilities at a pace that would embarrass a hobbled Aurox. "It is big," he concluded. "When do we attack?"
Rodrik chuckled, and the rest of his band, who weren’t important enough to the plot to merit names, followed suit, recognizing their cue. "I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I'd rather not be incinerated today. You think like one of us, but maybe hold off on the frontal assaults for now."
"Oh," Denor replied, crestfallen. "Okay then."
Rodrik gestured dramatically towards the colony. "Do you see, Denor? The gate of the fortress faces south, but the main gate faces east..."
Silence followed him, with a somewhat embarrassed look on its face at having to be here.
“Denor?”
The boy looked up. “Can’t talk, eating a pie.”
Rodrik stared down at the pie, not understanding where it came from.
“mfff unndffffnn yuuu,” Denor helpfully informed him, projecting crust over the snow.
“Can you try that again, but without the pie in your mouth?”
“mfff unndffffnn yuuu,” our hero pointed out, this time speaking slower.
The man blinked. “Okay, now try thinking before speaking.”
“There’s a vendor over there.”
An older gentleman with a floating cart helpfully waved at the scouting party. “Fresh pies for sale! Get your fresh pies here!”
Rodrik frowned. “Why are you out here in the snowy wastes?”
The pie seller offered him a cheery smile of a man about to make many credits. “I offer my pies to every scouting party, war band or invasion force out here in the wastes! No discrimination here, no sir!”
The rest of the scouting party took advantage of the merchant, but Rodrik chose to ignore this strange occurrence.
“Do you understand what I was talking about before?”
Denor nodded, his eyes narrowing with the kind of intensity usually reserved for discovering someone had stolen the last meat pie.
"If we break through the main gate," Rodrik continued, "we’ll have to fight our way to the southern gate. The blood of the Trunians will flow in the gutters."
"And Kilru," Denor added, because fairness in bloodshed is important.
"Quite right," Rodrik said, stroking his chin in a gesture of ponderous wisdom. "The elders want the Trunians to come out and fight like men, but they won't. They'll hide behind their walls and weapons. So we’ll have to prove our bravery by tearing down that energy shield while they pierce us with bolts and mounted turrets."
"Mounted turrets?" Denor asked, his voice tinged with the same foreboding reserved for discussing particularly aggressive village chickens. It turned out that Tycho’s village also had a flock of the dastardly beasts, as his recent training had discovered. He was still picking feathers out of places he didn’t often pay attention to.
"Oh yes, they have those," Rodrik replied with a smile that suggested he found the whole situation mildly amusing. "We’ll probably have to reprogram our own orbital cannons to bring the shield wall down. But those are static guns, and getting them close enough to work will take a lot of time."
Denor nodded grimly. He had no idea what Rodrik was talking about, but nodding seemed appropriate, especially if he did it grimly. It was important to be all grim when talk of war started, and he had learned how to imitate Ledo well enough to pull it off.
"If the elders had destroyed New Titania when all they had to do was attack en-masse, we wouldn’t have this problem now," Rodrik mused. "But the Trunians have figured out they can weaken our resolve through gradual erosion. Now that the energy walls are up, we must pay a higher price."
"So we pay the price because they didn’t?" Denor asked, looking at his hands and noticing the distinct lack of energy blazing through them to combat the Trunian menace. "That’s going to be pretty hard."
Rodrik's smile widened and he spread his legs out in a heroic stance. "There's another price to pay, boy, besides blood! We face a clever foe, yes, but a man nonetheless. And men, they have followers, some less cunning than others. That is our weapon! Fail to wield it, and even the sharpest minds amongst us will fall. And Andron VII... it falls with them!"
Denor frowned at this dramatic statement, and considered the possibility that the fate of the entire planet rested upon the sharpness of his mind. "There is nothing I can do then."
Rodrik’s smile faltered as he gave Denor’s gormless face a lingering look. "Point taken. But what we must do is not work for warriors in the eyes of some, nor is it work for Andronians." Rodrik shrugged. "Though I suspect that when stories of victory are told, some details will go unmentioned, forgotten, and few will think to complain when we sabotage…"
Denor wasn’t listening though, he had went to get another pie.
It was at precisely that moment that two simultaneous and unfortunate things happened in Denor’s life.