Fanfic:Commemoration
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Many years ago...
The last one moved forward with a swordsman's grace.
The brigand must have known that even if he won here, he would die. He probably accepted that - had waited for Caden to raise his nobleman's sabre; knowing it. Caden turned aside the first strike, letting the brigand's rusty blade slide down the flat of his sword. The nameless man stepped into Caden's deflection, bringing his weight to bear on his slender sabre. The impact jarred Caden, and caused a dangerous bending of his elbow. As he fell back onto one knee to recenter his weight, the brigand's blade tip drew a line across the back of his wrist.
Caden sucked country air into his lungs. Hot wetness trickled down between fingers and over the grip of his basket hilt. Instead of parrying to nurse the pain, he sprang forward. His blood made a sound like the first drops of rainfall as it sprinkled against the brigand's mismatched armour.
Quick as lightning the man swung to the side, creating a powerful shift in his body weight that he channelled into his rusty steel. Caden's strike missed, but he managed to turn it into a vertical defence. Yet his feet were still working to find their balance, and he didn't have the rigidity to brace it. He nearly lost his sabre with the blow it took. The ball of his foot twisted painfully and he had to pull himself back to upright with his toes.
The brigand stepped into his retreat.
Kill fast, came his foster-father's words, and kill ugly. The memory of this Tairen voice caused a kind of pain in Caden's head - the fact that their source lay just behind the brigand and was bleeding his life out into the soil threatening to overthrow him. As the highwayman stepped towards him, he stepped in to meet him. A moment passed where the swordpoints found their level - heavy on the bottom, light on the top - and then the brigand's sword slid down as Caden's angled up.
The murderer's heart was his.
In the sabre went, puncturing webbed steel with a hiss. A whiffle of air pushed through the tear as the brigand's heart and lungs contracted. His blue eyes widened. His sword clattered to the earth. The surviving boy disentangled himself and fell back on the ground - yanking his sabre free.
Caden looked - horrified - into the brigand's eyes as he died.
Sound came alive on the road to Illian, and the High Lord's caravan was in an uproar after the attack had ended. As the last brigand fell, Caden scrambled to his feet, dropping his sabre to hold his bleeding hand. The black rune on its back was streaked with crimson, yet Caden had only eyes for the man in the grass - Varcan Saniral.
"My lord," Caden croaked as he came to the man's side - his sparkling green eyes taking in the blood and the opaque dimness staining the fatherly gaze that met him. The brigand had rent his guts to shreds and left him to die in the grass. The blood. There was so much of it. "H-help is on the way. Stay strong, my lord."
"Caden."
Feeling his shoulders shake and his eyes burning, Caden bared his youthful lips from his teeth in a snarl. "T-those animals! How dare they attack a caravan of diplomats? Bloody ingrates, they don't deserve to live!"
"Hear me, Caden."
"Be silent, my lord. Help is on the way. Save your strength." Not knowing this reassurance to be true, with eyes only bent on the horror before him, he still tried to sound confident - tried to be strong for this man that had cared for him - took him so far along, given him a real life.
"My son."
Falling dead silent, Caden stared at Varcan. It was the first time he had been named this way. He supposed he was to feel some absurd notion of joy in hearing those two words, but all that happened was that his torn heart broke apart. He could say nothing in response, stupefied before the fact that Varcan was saying those words with his last breaths.
"I... only regret that I have but one life to lose for my nation," said the High Lord and reached up to brush errant strands of hair from Caden's forehead, "For if I had more, I would have spent them in a better way, and reared you to take my place - your heritage be damned. Tairen or not, you are the only true son I had. Now, my place will be taken, and my lands confiscated. I realise that... with my death, you are rendered into the common boy I hired as a page that autumn day, many years ago."
"Shut up," hissed Caden, his breath moist with the tears that had reached his mouth. "You are not going to die, my lord."
"I am, and there is naught any of us can do about that." Lord Varcan halcyon voice was still adamant. He was not a man to be questioned, and especially not with notions based on sheer nonsense. "Remember our family motto."
Grinding his teeth, Caden said it in a hot whisper. "Courage is fear when it's said its prayers."
"Find the courage," said Varcan, looking away. "You will need it in your life - a path that has now vanished below your feet. You need to find your way - your own way. I cannot guide you any longer."
He wanted to say something, curse or swear oaths that would stay with his foster-father in the afterlife and when he was reborn into the Light and the world again. But he could not summon anything but silent, racking sobs. He wanted to punish the world for this injustice. He wanted to scream his defiance to the skies, but he was rendered into the mere boy of eighteen winters - immobile and speechless before the calamity he faced.
"Caden," said Varcan as he tried to reach for something. "Take it up."
Reaching into the dry grass, Caden found the hilt of his foster-father's bastard sabre. The long curve of steel was lifted from the field of battle like a snake pulled out of the ground. The basket hilt covered his bleeding right hand, the leather-bound hilt inside it still warm from the High Lord's grip before he had taken his mortal wound.
"Honour it," said Varcan in hushed words, "Honour it well. Swear it to me; that you will commemorate this sabre - to let it always be a memory of what I taught you. Swear it... now."
Taking the long hilt into both his hands, Caden's arms shook as he held it - kneeling there in the grass. "I..." he bit down on his feebleness, found his resolve, "I do so swear."
"Good... That's good, son.... That's what I... wanted.. t-to..." Death stole his last words. To know.
The silence was thick afterwards, and the whole caravan of Tairen Lords and Ladies with their retainers and squires stood around the two persons at the edge of the road. Already, the whispers began. The scavengers were not late in their scheming, and would soon bear down to claim whatever they could. Yet the outcast boy was to be neglected, left behind - untouched.
He was unclean; a leper in their social structure.
Throwing back his head, Caden Ives screamed out the agony in his soul; let the whole world know what a grave injustice had been done to him. Fie an all, and death to any opposition ahead. He had nothing to live for anymore. He was unfit to honour Varcan's memory, let alone his sabre. There would be no mercy for anyone.
No remorse felt, as he ended his life one step at the time.
Note: Thus began Caden Ives' many years as a sell-sword, travelling aimlessly around the nations, before he ended up at the Grey Tower's gates.
