Chapter Text
Keith wakes to the sound of screaming and clanging metal.
These are not new sounds. Children and babies scream all the time, and he lives in a village full of black and silversmiths. These are the sounds Keith is growing up alongside, and sometimes the sounds he makes himself. It’s a little early for these sounds, however, judging by the darkness that still engulfs his family’s hut.
Something is burning. Perhaps his father left the fire going again, falling asleep at the anvil as he is wont to do.
“Father,” Keith mumbles, not yet opening his eyes. “The hearth...”
More screaming, more clanging. Horses braying, fire burning, men shouting. Sounds louder and louder until finally Keith sits up and opens his eyes, blinking to adjust.
His father is nowhere to be seen. The fire pit that sits in the center of their home lies dead, embers barely glowing in the burnt wood ashes, certainly not enough to be illuminating the house in flickering spots of red and orange. Keith coughs, only now noticing the smoke that curls through the walls and up into the rafters.
“Father?” Keith tries again, and is only met with more shouting and clanging from outside.
Keith throws off the deerskin blanket and slides his feet into his only pair of shoes, rubbing his stinging eyes as he pads to the front door and pushes it open.
This is not the screaming of happy children and the clanging of blacksmiths hard at work.
Keith stumbles backward with a cry just in time to avoid being trampled to death by an enormous horse, its rider brandishing a mace dripping in a suspicious red liquid. The rider’s face is masked by a strip of cloth over his mouth and nose, but his eyes burn with the reflecting light of the crackling fires that are engulfing Keith’s village, thick tendrils of smoke rising into the night sky and shrouding the stars from view. Keith knows behind that mask the rider is smiling wickedly.
The horse jumps forward, and the rider is gone. Keith stands slowly, wide eyes taking in the dozens of riders just like the other, all brandishing weapons of various sizes and shapes that drip with the same blood. Women scream for their children, men raise their swords against the night raiders as the fires roar around them. Keith watches in silent horror as people he knows are cut down one by one in front of him.
Mabel the fruit stall keeper used to give him free strawberries as thanks for helping her carry heavy baskets. Now she lies in a crumpled heap, face barely recognizable beneath the blood and dirt, her clothes shredded.
Jason the baker liked to ruffle his hair and laughed when Keith pouted at him. Now he gurgles, blood pouring from his mouth as a raider pulls a sword from his stomach.
Milo the butcher’s son, only a year younger than Keith, slung over a raider’s shoulder like a sack of radishes and crying as he’s carried away from his sobbing mother. Her cries cut off abruptly as another raider decides she’s making too much noise.
Somewhere in this madness is his father, Keith knows. A fear grips his chest, that perhaps his father is among the bodies strewn about like rag dolls. Keith’s body moves before he knows it, racing through the burning buildings and thundering hooves, hiding behind barrels and ducking quickly around corners to avoid being spotted by raiders. The putrid smoke stings his nose; normally he loves the smell of smoke, of a warm campfire and roasting rabbit. But this smoke is tainted with burnt human flesh, a scent Keith never wants to smell again.
He checks every body he finds, swallowing down the bile that crawls up his throat as he wipes away blood and grime from motionless faces. None of them are his father. Keith doesn’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
Keith is running, now. He has checked every corner of the village and there is no sign of his father. Tears streak down his cheeks, cutting silver paths through the ash and grime that coats his face. He instinctively heads back to their shack, wanting to at least surround himself in something familiar before he, too, is cut down, or taken away like Milo.
He’s just about to make a break for it when strong hands wrap around him from behind, one hand over his mouth and nose and the other around his middle. Keith kicks and yells for help, the sounds muffled by the hand on his face. He manages to bring his teeth down on his captor’s finger, the man holding him cries out in pain, removing his hand from Keith’s face. Keith gasps for air, readying up for another kick when his captor speaks.
“You’ve still got some fight in you, son. That’s good.”
Keith knows that voice.
“ Father?”
Akira looks weary, his face blood streaked from a cut on his temple and hair caked to his forehead, but he’s his father. “Keith,” he says, voice deep and soothing despite the panic and mayhem, and Keith has never felt like crying more. He buries his face in his father’s chest, not resisting when Akira picks him up and carries him the rest of the way to the shack they share.
The smoke is thick in the house, but there is no time to cough. Akira puts Keith down on the bed and lets go of his blood-slick sword, the weapon falling with a thud against the wooden floorboards. Akira drops to his knees next to his own bed on the other side of the single room. Keith watches with short breath as Akira pulls a chest from beneath the bed, taking the key from around his neck and unlocking it.
Keith was never allowed to touch that chest. It contained the last of the mementos left behind by Keith’s mother before she disappeared. Akira always told Keith that he would show him what is inside the chest when he was ready, so seeing the chest now has a dark feeling sinking into Keith’s gut.
His father pulls only a single object wrapped in linens. He holds it tightly to his chest before kneeling in front of the bed Keith was sitting on. “This was your mother’s,” he says, curling his son’s fingers around the object. It feels heavy in Keith’s small hands. “It’s all there is left of her. Protect it. Perhaps one day you can return it to her.”
Keith is crying again.
“Keith,” Akira says gently but urgently, tucking a strand of black hair behind his son’s ear. “Can you do something for me?”
Keith nods past the lump in his throat.
“I need you to run,” Akira says. His hands tighten around Keith’s. “Run away from this place. It’s not safe for you here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“These men…” Akira swallows. “They’ve come to take us all away. I don’t want them to take you so you have to promise me that you’ll run and never look back.”
“No!” Keith cries, leaning forward to bury his face into his father’s shoulder. “I want to stay here with you!”
Akira’s shoulders shake with tears of his own, the drops dampening the back of Keith’s shirt as he wraps his son in a strong hug. “I know,” he says. “But there is no time.”
As he speaks, the shouting outside draws closer, firelight bleeding into the room as raiders crowd outside the door. Akira’s face hardens. He draws away from Keith, picking up his sword as he goes to stand in front of the door. Keith’s breaths grow shorter, his eyes sting, and he wants nothing more than to go back to sleep.
“Keith, run.”
The front door breaks, and three raiders are in the living room.
“RUN!”
Keith runs.
He tucks his mother’s possession in his belt and bolts for the kitchen, with the back door that leads to the forest where Keith often went hunting for raccoons and other small critters. He knows those trees like the back of his hand, knows all the hiding places and hidden paths. If Keith can make it to the woods then he’ll be safe.
There is no one blocking the back door when Keith bursts through it. Swords clash and his father shouts a curse, but Keith doesn’t look back. He takes off for the woods, the fires behind him casting the trees in eerie light, the darkness between the trunks yawning menacingly. Keith keeps running.
Something explodes. Keith skids to a halt, turning back against his better instinct.
His house burns. Thick tendrils of smoke darken the sky even further, illuminated only by the huge flames that eat his home from the inside out. The raiders, reduced in number, Keith is proud to see, stand outside with their torches and laughing with one another as they watch the fire. The raider who had first entered their house is mounted on a horse, his clothing more decorated than the rest of the men.
He must be the leader, Keith decides, and burns his face into his memory. The wild hair, the square jaw, his single cold and unfeeling eye. He watches the house burn with an evil sort of smile, his exterior cool and collected even as he basks in the heat of burning memories.
There is no sign of Keith’s father.
The smoke stings his eyes, and Keith is crying again.
He hiccups, and accidentally catches the attention of the leader. They make eye contact across the field, the man’s eye narrowed and cruel.
Keith pivots and keeps running for the trees.
“Find the boy!” Pounding feet and shouting as the raiders take off after him.
Keith keeps running.
He runs until he can’t hear his pursuers anymore. He finds an overturned tree, breaking the smaller branches apart until there’s a clear spot big enough for a nine year old to lay down in. The sun has yet to peak over the horizon; Keith has no idea what time it is or if his father is even still alive, but he’ll be of no use to anyone, exhausted as he is. He lays down in the makeshift clearing, head pillowed in damp and decaying leaves, and ignores the smell as he tries to catch his breath. A few more tears slide down his cheeks as he wraps his arms around himself, already missing the warmth of his father’s hug.
He can still feel the object Akira had given him digging into his side. With a few moments to rest, he pulls it from his belt and unwraps the cloth.
It’s a knife. A small thing, no longer than his forearm. The cloth looks old, so perhaps Keith was expecting the blade to be dulled with age, but a quick test proves that no, the blade is still very sharp. Keith sucks on his bleeding finger as he inspects the hilt. A purple so dark it looks black, the place where the blade meets the hilt wrapped in yet another, thinner cloth, perhaps for grip.
Keith unwraps the thinner cloth, squinting his eyes through the darkness to make out a small symbol etched into the base of the blade. It looks something like a lightning bolt, but it means nothing to Keith, so he rewraps it.
The knife is heavy, but nothing a bit of training and growing up can’t fix. Marmorans are tribes of blacksmiths, after all. His tenth birthday would have been a right of passage, learning to forge his first blade and take his place in the tribe. It was only a few months away, but with the destruction of his village also went the culture and values of its people. For all Keith knows, he is the last of his village.
Keith rewraps the knife in its linens and slides it into his belt. It’s all he has left of his family now.
Keith doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep until the ground beneath him shakes him awake. He blinks away the morning sun, wondering why the sky is so bright if there is thunder in the distance. Then he wonders what he’s doing sleeping in the woods, until a harsh reminder comes in the form of someone wrapping their hand around his ankle and yanking him out from under the makeshift tent.
Keith goes kicking and screaming, getting dirt in his mouth and eyes as his body is dragged through the earth. His captor easily picks him up and crushes Keith’s arms to his sides. A glance around reveals he had been surrounded sometime in the night, the same raiders as before somehow looking more menacing now that he can actually see them.
Keith is still fighting, even as they toss him into a caged wagon pulled by donkeys. He’s not alone; Milo, James, and a few of the other children from the village are there as well, chained to each other and sniffling quietly. He is locked into shackles with the rest of the children, glaring with tears in his eyes at the lead raider, who sits on his stupid horse with that stupid look on his face, not seeming to care that he just wiped out an entire village.
“Good haul,” he says, and Keith memorizes the sound of his voice, too. “Where’s the nearest port town.”
“Capital of the Marmora territory, Slavan,” says a raider.
Ah , Keith thinks. They’re Galran.
“Then we make for Slavan,” the leader says, and turns his horse away.
The wagon lurches, and Keith can only watch in burning silence as they exit the forest, making for the road. He doesn’t know if it’s purposeful or not, but they pass the charred remains of his village on the way. The scent of death hangs heavy in the air. Many of the other children start crying again. Keith doesn’t look, instead presses a hand to the knife still hidden in his belt to steady himself. He’s already shed enough tears.
Slavan is a week’s journey by horseback. Keith spends the days doing his best to console the other children; he’s the second oldest among the captured kids, and takes it upon himself to be strong for the youngest ones. When night falls and everyone is asleep, Keith takes out his knife and runs his thumb along the blade, imagining running it through the one-eyed man’s stomach.
Slavan is a bustling port city built on an inlet jutting into the sea. Ships line up in rows, their gangplanks crowded with sailors loading or unloading stock. Merchants call out their wares, women hold their children close, and bucktoothed men gamble in the shadows. Keith had been to Slavan once before with his father, for a gathering of swordsmiths from around Marmora to exchange metals, techniques, and chit chat. Keith remembers feeling awed by the sheer vastness of the city, all the nooks and crannies to explore. Now, he thinks bitterly, it’s more like an elaborate prison.
The captives are taken to a secluded section of the city, where the buildings are built low and unassuming. Two days are spent in cells with other children taken from other villages, some even from the neighboring countries of Altea and Arus. Keith keeps to himself, tucking himself into a corner and planning all the different ways to stab the one-eyed man that stole his life.
Sometimes men and women come down to the cells to look at the children. The ones they like are taken away, and Keith never sees them again. Milo is one of the first to go, crying silently as silver coins are passed from hand to hand over his head.
Keith keeps his face cold and turned away, glaring daggers and resisting when people try to take him away until they decide he’s not worth the effort and pick a different child instead. A small part of Keith wants to stop resisting like the rest of the children have, just resign himself to his fate and hope that whichever adult takes him away is a benevolent one. But his father always told him he was so much like his mother, a fighter, a survivor. Giving up is not in his blood.
Only a half-dozen children remain by the time someone decides Keith is worth the trouble. A weasley man is led down to the cells, his features sharp and rat-like. Keith instantly dislikes him.
"One of my body boys got trampled in the last round of games,” he tells the one-eyed man. “Need a kid that’s not afraid of a little blood.”
The one-eyed man’s eye zeroes in on Keith, and Keith meets his gaze with a fire of his own. Remember, he thinks, This is the face of the man you need to kill one day.
“I know just the one.”