Chapter 3

Love, Hate and Brotherhood

After the Lijos I stayed at the barracks. No one told me to leave, no one said where I should go instead, and, although no one told me to stay there either, I began to be a permanent fixture at the swords and soldiers. Days became weeks, weeks became months, and little by little I started to think of the barracks as home. After the first couple of days Kenna gave me chores to do. Nothing difficult or physically demanding at first, just delivering messages, cleaning the officers common room, running to the shops. It was on just such a trip that I met a boy named Vega. I was on my way to the book shop to get some ink for Kenna, which was near the outskirts on the eastern side of the town, when I took a short-cut through the residential part of the town and I saw a group of children in the street. At first I thought they were playing, but it quickly became apparent that there were two groups of children not one. There was a group of six six or seven year olds who were being bullied by a group of three eight or nine year olds. I never learned why they were being bullied, if indeed there was a reason other than the fact the the older kids wanted to. I stopped a few meters back, deciding what to do, when one of the young children, a little girl, tried to runaway. She had only take two steps when the leader of the bullies reached out and scooped her up. That swift motion conjured dark memories to my mind, for in that instant he became the rider from Boer and the little girl was my sister Astur running to our mother. Rage swept over me and before I knew it a bestial roar erupted from my chest, a cry of pure primordial anger and all motion amongst the children ceased. After a few second of silence, I took a step closer, looked the bully in the eyes and said “ Let the girl go.”

The boy stared at me with an expression of sheer contempt and growled “ Or what?”

In the evenings after work at the barracks was mostly over, Kenna had being teaching me the basics of combat and swordplay. He had had a child sized wooden sword made for me. A sword that I had taken to wearing on my belt at all times. So when the boy asked “Or what?” I just took another step forward, drew my sword and once again demanded “ Let the girl go!” I was still six at the time and, although I was tall for my age, all three of the bullies were bigger than me, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I’m not sure whether it was courage, youthful stupidity or a mix of both but i was completely unafraid standing there. The bully just smiled, threw the girl to the ground and said “ Fine, I’ll just smack you instead.”

We slowly walked up to each other and then we he decided that he was close enough he swung his fist at me as hard as he could trying to knock me out with one punch. Just as I was hoping he would do. I skipped backwards, dodging out the way of his punch, and quickly swung my sword at his face. I caught him on the forehead and he staggered back. I took a second swing and then a third in quick succession but he had brought his arms up to protect his face. He charged and tried to tackle me but I span out of the way and when he turned around I took a fourth swing at his face. The tip of my sword smashed into his nose and blood splattered everywhere. Unfortunately since I was so focused on him, his friends grabbed me from behind and held my arms. Once the head bully had recovered from the last blow he walked up to me, blood all over his face, ripped my sword out of my hand and broke it over his knee. I tried to get free of his goons grip but they were too strong. The bully threw the pieces of my sword away and punched me in the face. After the second hit a voice from behind me screamed “ Hey! Let him go!” It was the little girl the bully had been picking on. The boy completely ignored her and carried on hitting me. The boy was big and hitting me hard so I was quite groggy by this point but I just made out the girls voice from behind me shouting “ Come on! Lets get them!”. I don’t remember much after that but apparently six kids are better than three bullies if they are angry and are given the courage to fight. I woke up in my bed and Kenna told me that a group of children had brought me home and said that I had saved them from some nasty kids and given them the courage to stand up for themselves “ They hailed you as a hero they did” he told me “ They said you must be the fifth Agaeti.”. You never forget the first time someone calls you a hero, even when you haven’t done much to deserve it. I mean all I did was hit someone with a stick and got beaten up, if anything it was them who rescued me, but I felt amazing for awhile after that despite the bruising.

My encounter with the bullies encouraged me to train harder, yes I beat Vega, who’s name I didn’t learn until later, but I needed to be good enough to win when I was fighting more than one opponent. I spent hours every evening working on my swordplay and hand to hand fighting skills. I would have spent all day every day training but Kenna gave me more and more work to do. Over the next year I became his assistant. I was with him most the day, helping him sort through all sorts of paperwork, reports from patrols, progress reports on the training of new recruits... I was with him when he did his rounds of the barracks, talking to recruits, supervising training from time to time. I was even with him during official meetings, since I knew all the reports I could often remind him of information he had forgotten or overlooked. The only time I wasn’t with him was when he sent me on errands or his workload was light enough that he let me do what ever I wanted, and what I wanted was always to train. In the evenings I usually had to train by myself but when I got time of during the day I went to train with the soldiers. I usually trained with the new recruits who were mostly around 15, the minimum recruitment age. I was better at fighting than any of the recruits were but I trained with them because the real soldiers were all to big. Despite the size difference I sometimes managed to get one of the veterans to practice with me, usually Gron, Dyr or Magr, Kenna’s lieutenants, who I had befriended, or as close as possible considering the significant age gap.

Since I spent most of my time at the barracks I new most of the soldiers but I had met very few people my own age, and of those I had met none could be considered my friends until about a year after I had come to Vandi. I was sitting on a bench in the town square having a sandwich for lunch when two boys came running up to me.

“ Hey! You’re the kid who beat up Vega aren’t you?” one of them asked me.

“ What?” I replied, I hadn’t thought about the fight in a long time and I had never heard the boys name before, so it didn’t dawn on me what they were talking about.

“Vega!” the other one exclaimed. “ It was you who broke his face with a wooden sword wasn’t it?”

“ I certainly broke somebody’s face with a wooden sword. If you say his name is Vega then I’ll take you’re word for it.”

“ I knew it was you!” said the first one. “ We were there! It was so cool!” When he bragged about having been there he reminded me of when the old soldiers bragged about having fought in a famous battle so I assumed that the story had become something of a legend where they lived.

“ Really? I can’t really remember the faces very well from that day, on the account of having my head punched in.” I said jovially. “ But if you were there then I guess I owe the fact I still have a head to you.”

“ You don’t owe us anything.” said the second one. “ You freed us. Thanks to you we found the courage to stand up for our selves. Vega and his gang haven’t dared pick on us since.”

“ My name is Drengr.” said the first boy, holding out his hand. “ And he’s Rekkr.” as his name was announced Rekkr stuck his hand out too.

“ Pleased to meet you.” I said, shaking both the proffered hands. “ I’m Kappi.”

“ You were so awesome when you were fighting Vega.” proclaimed Drengr. “ There was so much blood when you smashed his nose! That never healed properly, it’s still crooked. Can you teach us to fight like that?”

“ sure.” I replied “ I have to get back to the barracks right now but I don’t have anything to do this evening. How about we meet back here three hours before sundown?”

“ OK!” they exclaim simultaneously, bobbing there heads excitedly.

“ Do you have your own practice swords?”

“ I have a good stick!” said Drengr “ Should I bring that?”

“ I have one too!”

“ No, that’s OK. I’ll bring the weapons. I really have to go now. See you tonight.” I got up, waved and went back to the barracks. While I was in view of the two boys I walk with cool dignity, like a hero and mentor should, but as soon as I turned the corner I broke into a run to go and tell Kenna that I had a legend of my own.

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We met up as scheduled, I brought three of my custom practice swords, I had five new ones made after Vega broke my first one, and three of the smallest shields from the barracks, although even the smallest were a bit too big for us. We practised for hours that first night and agreed to meet up again the next night. It wasn’t long before we started hanging out whenever we could which was normally a few hours in the evenings and sometimes we met up for lunch. I finally had sparring partners that were the same size as me but far more importantly, for the first time in my life I had real friends.

At first when we met up we spent most our time practising our swordplay but after a while, especially on Hvitrsday we spent our time just messing around, playing children’s games. Hvitrsday is the eighth day of the week, a day of rest when noone works, all the shops close, the taverns shut their doors and the whole town relaxes. It was just such an occasion that I met a girl who would change my life, a girl named Kyn.

We were in the woods near Vandi, following the river Loekr, that ran south through Vandi and all the way to the Feigr, the ocean in the middle of the continent. Drengr and Rekkr were talking about some childish triviality that seemed very important to them at the time but I was only half listening, I was focused on analysing the terrain. About a month earlier Kenna had begun teaching me about more the more complicated notions of warfare, namely battlefield analysis. Analysing obstacles, choosing a defensive position, how to use terrain to your advantage, how to attack an enemy using this or that as a defensive obstruction, potential ambush sites.... Kenna was trying to teach me to do all this subconsciously but I don’t think he ever realised how seriously I was taking it and how obsessive I was being. I new all the best defensive locations in the entire city, how to get from anywhere to anywhere without passing a single good ambush spot, the best ways to attack any position in any of the pubic areas and every time I went out I was still going over and over every possibility in my head, even though I always drew the same conclusions. That day we were walking in an area I had never been to before. We had been going for five minutes and in my head I had already ambushed them six-teen times, identified seven workable defensive positions and figured out how to outflank each one. I had just spotted a seventeenth ambush spot and in my head I was in the middle of slashing Rekkr’s throat when I heard a shrill scream coming from a bit farther down the river, which was immediately followed by giggling. Drengr and Rekkr looked at each other and in perfect unison concluded “ Girls!”.

We got down low and covertly advanced on the enemy position. Advancing on all fours and being careful not to make any noise we reached the top of a small hill that abruptly fell away to reveal a small stream that fed the river. We crested the edge of the gully and began reconnaissance on the enemy forces. Three lightly armoured females were playing in the river, a surprise attack from our current position would dispatch them quickly, no threat. I turned my attention to the fourth girl who, from her location and posture was the apparent leader. I fixed my gaze on her and …... my soul melted, my heart leapt from my chest and my breath was snatched away from me. She was simply the most beautiful creature born of the mortal world. She was so beautiful in fact that I refused to believe that she even was born on the mortal plane. She had descended from the heavens, it was the only answer. My training told me to stay low and out of sight but there was a fire raging inside me, burning away everything I knew. My head rose so that I could see her better and I audibly gasped. She looked up as Drengr and Rekkr pulled me down. I could still see her through the grass, she looked around but saw nothing and carried on as she was before. There is a saying in the Hallr, the region to the south east of Hvitrland where Vandi was built, to float like a Valad leaf in the autumn breeze, it means to act without thinking and letting fate make your decisions for you. That day I felt more like a speck of dust in a mid winter storm, fate wasn’t gently pushing me in the right direction it picked me up and threw down my path.

I stood up and leapt down into the gully, walked up to her, drew my sword, knelt down on one knee and held my sword on my palms above my head and with my head bowed and my heart in my throat I said. “ Hail great kona, I bow before your beauty and offer you my sword and my arm with which to wield it. I will protect you from any enemy and if you will allow it I will be at your side until death takes me from it.” there was a moment of silence and then abrupt and very loud laughter. Once the laughter had died down I lifted my head and the girl was looking at me and smiling. “ Stand up silly boy and put your sword away. For your information I’m not “Great kona”, I’m just Kyn.” The kona are servants of Hvitr, creatures of the heavens, women of such beauty it is said they can bring calm to a stormy sea with nothing but a smile, and whether Kyn would admit it or not I knew in my heart that she was one, for her smile calmed the storm that had been raging inside me for over a year. “ I don’t have any enemies for you to protect me from and until death seems like quite along time but I would happily have you by my side until I have to go home.”

We spent all day together and most of the next and soon Kyn and her friends were with Rekkr, Drengr and I most the time, Kyn and I fell in love. Kenna may have saved me from death when my village was burned but it was Kyn who gave me my life back. In the year and a half since I’d come to Vandi vengeance and death was all that filled my mind, I obsessed over killing the man who had destroyed my life and trained constantly so when the time came I would be strong enough to realise my fantasies. All that changed the day I met Kyn, I let go of the hatred I had harboured and replaced it with love. Kyn made my life worth living and for the next six years I lived a happy life, bit by bit Kyn, Drengr and Rekkr helped me stop thinking about the past and vengeance until I stopped thinking about Ovnir altogether.