Sword of Destiny

Being the fifth son of a blacksmith was tough work. It was really tough work. And not because of the labour. Quite the opposite in fact. And with his name, it was even tougher. He had a girl’s name.

His mother had been desperate for a daughter, and when she fell pregnant for the fifth time, she was determined that it would be a girl and insisted on the name. He’d come out with a winkle, a one-eyed snake pointing right at her, but still she persisted. He kept the damned girl’s name. The thing had cursed him ever since.

If he’d been a girl, then his life would have been a whole lot easier.

His oldest brother was king – heir to the smithy empire – and he bore the arrogance to go with it. Damn, did he wear that badly? But in some ways that wasn’t surprising, because though Brother One was the oldest, he certainly wasn’t the best. That was son number two; the gifted child. He had a bright future, if only as usurper of his reprobate older brother.

The third son was well-placed too. He was eccentric, but somehow, someway, he’d established himself a slice of the future. He’d pioneered a mobile furnace, and he serviced remote demand whilst hooking up with his father for heavier work. He was often away with the army, lugging that great ceramic wagon of his, but he’d always return and the wealth flowed plenty. Ironically, it was strange Brother Three who would be most successful. That was funny.

Even son number four had something, if only a mediocre education. At least their father was paying for a fourth education, threadbare as it was given the silver that flowed to the priests. Number five had nothing. He was nothing. The fifth boy of a blacksmith who wasn’t a girl, and he had to live with that every day. Every day for ten years and counting.

But he did have something more than all of that. He liked to understand things, just like Queen Delfin did. And he had the enthusiasm to persist. He had unjustified and incredible passion. It was just a shame he had nothing to focus that passion on.

“Oi, Jossie.”

And his passion counted for nothing when he was called Jossie. That name would always curse him.

He pushed on along the street, sped up even. Someone calling his name could only mean one thing: bad news. No-one knew his name, unless it was to mock. And mockery usually became plain old bullying soon enough.

He was weaving through the early morning streets of Triosec, avoiding those who taunted him. He hung his head low, hitting the main artery and targeting a magnificent building that was set back from the street. It was all stone, with a shallow but elegant sloping roof, and it was a wonderful sight. That was his home, or at least his spiritual home, and that was where he was headed. It was the oasis of his torment, and his sanctuary. Bliss.

But it was also where his passion manifested itself most fully. That building was the library, and in those dusty old tomes even he could dream. Those times galvanised him for what lay back in his real home; the smithy. That was the life he tried to forget.

He shook his head and thumbed the book in his hand, appreciating the relief of the leather. There was such artistry there, even in the construction of the volume, and the passion that such perfection drove in him was insatiable. He almost wanted to skip at the beauty of the thing.

“Oi, Jossie.”

The streets were near empty, which was the point, but apparently not empty enough. He looked down at the dust-caked mud-veined road. This was the centre of Delfinian power, and yet the decay was overpowering. He glanced left and right, almost despairing of the poor maintenance, even at his young age. All it would take to re-affix that door was a well-placed hammer and a true nail. But iron was expensive, and steel was nearly precious, so instead the door just leaned there, against the frame. Barely a door at all.

But the streets were still in use, and the ignorant strolled by with hardly a concern for the perishing town about them. And this was the hub of Delfinia. It was so sad.

Perhaps other people were too busy to notice the decay? They certainly rushed around a lot. But the neglect in the city suggested a lack of pride in its people, and that seemed strange. These citizens had great potential ahead of them – far more than he did – so why did their passion not burn bright? Even he could, at a stretch, imagine raising this city from the ashes of its distress. Or at the very least, he could fix that door.

“Oi, Jossie. Get back here!”

Of course, it was the Mandari invaders who had left this great nation in such a state, stealing as they had the finest principality. He had read that as part of his learning, his study, and that story resonated with him in a deep way. Ahan had been lost a hundred and fifty years ago, but the loss was still raw in the Delfinian psyche. And more than that; Ahan was where it all began, where Queen Delfin launched her revolution. That loss was therefore a wound that would not heal until Ahan was reclaimed, and as a child of Delfinia, it resonated with him personally. Perhaps if Ahan had not fallen, then Delfinia might not be in this state. And then, perhaps, he may not be the fifth failure of a blacksmith. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Could he really blame the invaders of Ahan for his own sad predicament? Could he blame them for a life in the gutter?

“Now!”

Fists swept from an alley and grabbed at his shirt, trapping him. Why had he not spotted the ploy? He turned to his captor and gulped. It was not unexpected.

“Hello little Jossie.”

The boy of sixteen sneered at him, all rancid breath – like he’d been long on the booze – and a row of desiccated teeth, yellow and browned. He whimpered back at the sneering boy. It had been a while, he supposed. He had to look on the bright side.

The filthy alley darkened. The exits would already be covered, and the biggest bully, a young man of nineteen called Beef, came up behind him and laid hands on his shoulders, resting a block of a jaw on his mop of hair. He instinctively puckered his arse. He might be needing that later.

“Be gentle, Chick. This one’s delicate.” In his head, he liked to call them the Farmyard Friends, but he’d never actually say that.

A hand left his right shoulder, and he tensed instinctively. He gulped, not looking away from Chick, but sensing Beef behind him. The expected punch came soon enough, and the pain scorched his lower back. He crumpled to the floor and the laughter was suitably foul.

“Whoops. I broke her.”

The sniggering from the group crawled all over him. He was nine years Beef’s junior, so how was it that this idiot still sought out the pleasures of the bully? He supposed that even low filth had the pleasure of wiping their feet on the lower scum. He was rock bottom, and the best solution was concealment. It had become a game of ignorance and deception, this dance with the Farmyard Friends, and he was quite good at it. But not good enough. They always found him eventually.

“Are you going to take her?”

That voice crawled out of the shadows and grabbed him by the throat. It was familiar; too familiar. He scanned the shadows, and another gang member melted into the light. Brother Four. Brin.

His brother stooped out of the gloom and pulled up behind the gang leader. His breath would have caught if he hadn’t been winded. That was his brother!

And yet this wasn’t the same young man from the smithy. This was not the downtrodden glare that Brother Four normally wore. This creature had a disturbing lust in its eyes.

Beef straightened up. “Nah, not this morning. I had my fill last night. You wanna go, Brin?”

The look of his brother sharpened for the briefest moment, but then subsided. Presumably then, Beef was unaware of their family ties. Either that or he was sick, which was not without the bounds.

His brother’s eyes widened worryingly, but thankfully he shook his head. The rest of the group turned down the offer too, which was nice. His sphincter relaxed. Then he had to smother a laugh as a cough. The Farmyard Friends probably didn’t even know what a sphincter was.

“Let’s just punish her for the insolence, shall we?”

What insolence? At least this was the easy way out.

When the young men had finished with him – his brother at least refrained from the beating – his entire body was a rich tapestry of punishment. One eye was swollen shut, and the other was a weeping mass of pain and scorched light. He was also certain that a rib or two were cracked, but that pain barely registered. His near-crippled hand clawed at the dusty ground, and his attackers sniggered at their victory. One final jab to the lower back and he vomited instinctively. Then he lay his face in the acidic discharge.

“Come on boys. I think she’s had enough for one morning.”

So much pain; so much humiliation; so much hatred. He lifted his cheek from the vomit-puddle, but red-hot tremors scorched and he dropped his head back to the floor. It hit the ground with a wet slap. His vision faded, and his library book was ground into the dirt. In some ways, the desecration of that fine artistry was the saddest part of all. A tear escaped, and his mind faded to black.