Young Writers Society

Chapter Nine: 

It takes a child to raze a village~

Somewhere along the west coast of Adreitus, a town dropped dead. It was not a sudden occurrence. Nor was it odd in any shape or form.

In fact, it had been highly expected.

For five hundred years the sun had risen on the same buildings: the chapel by the town hall, the cluster of narrow houses that creaked if you so much as breathed against their walls. The town had been built on a cliff by the great conqueror, Algarath, though five hundred years ago, it had been nothing compared to what it was today. A few small huts, perhaps, and—as legend had it—a tiny stone cottage for the then Emperor of Adreitus: Blacksmith Eviryll, of the tribe of Orn. The stone cottage was there no longer, nor did a trace of it remain, and people told their children stories of how it had been swept away by the wind. The town itself, they said, was held together by magic, because buildings this old were not wont to survive the stormy weather.

And so, for a hundred years, the sun rose without little incident. Not much was prone to change in a small town by the sea. People were behind the times; all they had was their history, their small fishing units and a few tourists. The coast was unsafe, but the buildings were beautiful. The cliffs were cruel, rising up like a stark, pallid face against the wild sea.

Yes, even five-hundred years later, little had changed.

Except for the daybreak. 

The sun rose that morning on a heap of ashes; it seemed to avert its glance slightly, so the town was all shadows. The houses were skeletal, their bones blackened. The people—but it is best not to describe the people—were ash and melted rubber. The air smelt of smoke, the kind of smell that lingers for days, months, years, centuries and bides it way throughout time, between the pages of books. It was the smell of the dead, and it would have made any man’s organs ricochet from within themselves as he tried to understand … to find, to search for … a prickle of humanity buried somewhere in the dust.

Blacksmith Gairon inhaled deeply and smiled. He was an enormous man, as large as a small rentai and with twice the amount of steel and cruelty. His eyes were grey, large and unseeing even as he smirked at the corpse of the town, smacking his breastplate in glee. ‘Turn!’ he said, not as a command, but as a summons. A short, stocky man with a blond beard came running up to him, leaving the rest of the men to loot and pillage whatever could be salvaged from the ruins. It would not be much, Gairon knew, but that did not matter. They had not burnt this village down for its wealth, because even when standing its wealth did not amount to much and—Gairon’s lips quirked upwards into a self-satisfied smile—the Blacksmiths of Orn had all the wealth they needed.

What Gairon wanted now was power.

‘Yes, Blacksmith Gairon, Blacksmith Centurion, Blacksmith of the great kingdom of Orn—may it rise from the ashes once again—’ Turn bowed in greeting. ‘What is it that you so require?’

Gairon looked at Turn intensely and replied, the same reply that he had given to the question ever since he had acquired position fifty years ago: ‘As Blacksmith Centurion, I require nothing, Turn. Do you affirm this?’ When he grinned, much wider than before, his teeth gleamed in the sun: a chequerboard of blacks and whites and yellows.

Turn completed the greeting, as was custom: ‘I need not affirm it when Blacksmith Centurion deems it so.’

They stood in silence, silhouetted against the sun: the much taller, striking-looking man, who could have been handsome were his nose not a hunchback, were his pride not such a viciously defining characteristic … and the shorter man, who stood like a rock, his gaze calculating, his loyalty unwavering even as he regarded his master with the slightest bit of unease.

When Blacksmith Gairon spoke, his voice echoed strong and clear, heard even by his ranks as they spread through the town.

‘Do you know why we burnt this town down, Turn?’ he asked.

‘No, Blacksmith Centurion, I do not,’ Turn said robotically, despite knowing already for what purpose they had arrived there. But with Blacksmith Centurion, you had to agree with everything he said, and humour him in the most respectable manner possible, otherwise he would dispose of you swiftly and soundly, and Turn had seen various Officers being killed for much lesser than that.

‘We burnt this town down as a sign,’ Gairon said, drawing the words out from between his teeth. ‘We burnt it down because this is where our roots began, and this is where my great great grandfather was raised, and this is the best place to begin with, when you conquer a kingdom.’

‘Where do we advance to from here, Blacksmith Centurion?’ Turn asked, even though he had memorised their route and knew of every step they would take in order to get there.

‘We move North,’ Gairon bellowed. ‘North until we have either torn down or established rule in every town, every village, every city that falls in our way! We will take over the throne of Adreitus, as it is rightfully ours! Over Syti, over Durthnõt and Treville!’ He paused to take a deep breath, his nostrils flaring, his grey eyes wild as he ran a hand through his beard. ‘And we shall regain what Dreidas took from us five-hundred years ago.’

There was silence, save for the light lapping of the waves against the rocks. Gairon stood with his hands clasped behind his back, a slight smirk on his face as he stared at a splotch of brown on the horizon—Welders’ Island, where a lighthouse stood, a red strip against the now-purple sky.

The wind brushed their cheeks, too docile a being for a day like this, too soft as it swept past the two men and fluttered down the cliff towards the town. The sea, too, was oddly calm, iron grey, darkening as the sun drifted past the horizon and sunk into the other side of the world. Gairon closed his eyes and began to sing, his voice rich but low as the sky darkened:

‘To see the sea, while sirens weep,

when rentai burn the bay, ho!

Before a storm, when seadoves warn

of a calm that ravages deep, oh!

-

And onwards march, like storms do hark

and bleed against startled skies.

A Blacksmith does his waiting well.

A Blacksmith does not lie;

-

When he says, “Oh, at day's end,

when troubled toil lies seething,

one won’t suspect a dying crest,

nor hear its sword unsheathing.”’

Silence fell on them once more, and Gairon turned abruptly to walk towards the town, his chainmail clinking as he left. Quietly, Turn followed him.

It was as they reached the iron gates of the town, the only structure in the town still left standing, that one of the soldiers came jogging up to them. It seemed to Turn that even the gate had been charred black by the intensity of the flames, and as the soldier placed his hand against the metal and winced, drawing it back immediately, he knew the fire had been even better than they had imagined. The flames were still leaping in the distance, reaching for the sky like spindly fingers that grew and shrank in whichever way suited them best.

‘Blacksmith Centurion,’ the soldier said hastily, looking at his feet. ‘We have a messenger from Syti, he is by the west end. And—we have found a child. Alive,’ he added.

‘Burn the child,’ Gairon said smoothly. ‘And set camp; I will speak to the messenger there, and we will depart at dawn. Has the messenger given a name?’

‘A servant of Luin. He goes by the name of Baert.’ Gairon’s eyebrows rose at the mention of Luin, and he opened his mouth to reply, but the soldier interjected: ‘Forgive me, Blacksmith Centurion, for delaying your orders regarding the child so, but, it is … as you will see, or, er, if you could so allow us to show you…’

‘Say what you will, soldier,’ Gairon barked. The soldier winced.

‘The child is already on fire, Blacksmith Centurion. He is burning the warehouse down and we cannot get near him to force him to stop, or to expunge him.’

‘Is it a child or is it a fire nymph?’ Gairon asked testily.

‘A child, Blacksmith. We are certain of it.’

The Blacksmith’s jaw tightened. ‘Take me there.’ 

~*~

When they arrived at the warehouse—or what had been the warehouse—the child was screaming, refusing to be dragged along by the collar even as the soldiers closed in on him. There were scorch marks where his wrists banged against the ground, the air around him seeming to rise and fall, and his head was almost completely encased in smoke. He looked to be no older than five, but his face had a certain gauntness to it, as if he had not had the happiest childhood.

As one of the soldiers aimed a spear at the child, he screamed, his hair going alight, the fire on the ramshackle building behind him licking at the stars. 

‘Stop,’ Gairon boomed, and the soldiers stepped away from the boy immediately, forming a wide circle around him, kicking ash and dust as they went. The boy's tiny frame shook visibly; his hair was plastered to his forehead, coal black and flecked with grey where the dust had settled into it. From behind the layers of smoke shone a pair of bright green eyes.

Gairon strode towards the boy, knelt in front of him, and reached out a hand. ‘Shake it,’ he said seriously. The boy’s eyes darted between Gairon’s face and his hand.

‘Shake my hand,’ Gairon rumbled. The boy jumped, grasped the Blacksmith’s large hand stiffly, and shook it.

‘You are now in my allegiance,’ Gairon said, standing up and clapping the boy on his shoulder. He staggered. Gairon’s lips twisted into a cold smile as he turned to look at the soldiers. ‘And where are the rest of you?’ he demanded. ‘Gather the troops and all meet at the bottom of the cliff, the same place we used at our vantage point last midnight. Turn—take this boy with you. He will prove … useful, won’t you, son?’ He leered at the child, whose hands hung loosely on his either side, smoke curling around his wrists, sparks dangling off the ends of his eyelashes.

‘If you burn anything, boy,’ he lowered his voice, his tone suddenly menacing, ‘I will be sure to dispose of you myself. I have survived all manner of burns—I have killed rentai and dragons without batting an eyelash. If there is anyone to fear here, it is not you. It is me.’

The boy nodded, the air around him cooling; he stared at Gairon steadily, but his eyes brimmed with fear.  Gairon, too, nodded at the boy, his face clouding over with feigned goodwill once more.

‘To other matters,' he said. 'Turn, I wish to see the battle plans once more. Tonight, I will brief the soldiers. Ready the crests, in grey and bronze. Tomorrow, we strike Aerdyn.’ 

It was nearing midnight when a slight man came traipsing up to Gairon, identifying himself as the same Messenger Baert who had requested an audience with the Blacksmith Centurion. The words that fell from the thin, shrewish man's mouth were simple, but Gairon nearly dropped a flagon of brew on the sheaf of parchment lying before him, when he heard:

‘We have found the Orb. The key, however, is with one Evian Threshold.’

‘Luin has been known to exaggerate in the past.' Gairon steepled his fingers. 'Your sources are … credible?’

Baert pulled a round object from the billowing depths of his tattered black cloak. Placing it on the desk between them, he grinned toothily.

‘Immensely.’