Morgan Rice - A Rule of Queens

Darius blinked sweat from his eyes as he smashed another rock, and another. He could feel the eyes of all of his friends on him on this day. Since the day before, when he had arrived with Loti, he felt the entire village looked upon him differently. They had all watched him run off to bring Loti back, had all witnessed him run off to face the Empire, alone, without fear of consequence. And they had seen him return, with her. He had gained great respect in their eyes.

He also seemed to have gained their skepticism: no one seemed to believe their story, to believe that Loti had gotten lost, that they had merely found each other and walked back. Perhaps they all knew Darius too well. They looked on him with different eyes, as if they knew that something had happened, knew he was holding a great secret. He wanted to tell them, but he knew that he could not. If he did, he would have to explain how he did it, how he, the youngest and smallest of the bunch, the one no one thought would amount to anything, had alone killed three Empire warriors with superior weapons and armor—and a zerta. It would come out that he used his power. And he would be an outcast. They would exile him. As they had, Darius suspected, his father.

“So are you going to tell me?” came a voice.

Darius looked over to see Raj standing beside him, a mischievous smile on his face. Nearby, also looking his way, were Desmond and Luzi, each smashing rock, glancing over at Darius.

“Tell you what?” Darius asked.

“How you did it,” Raj said. “Come on. You didn’t find Loti wandering alone. You did something. Did you kill the soldiers? Did she?”

Darius looked over and saw the other boys coming over, looking at him, and he could see they all had this question burning in their minds. Darius raised his hammer, took aim at a rock, and smashed it again.

“Come on,” Raj said. “I gave you a zerta ride. You owe me.”

Darius laughed.

“You didn’t give it to me,” he replied. “I chose to go with you.”

“Okay,” Raj conceded, “but tell me all the same. I need a story. I live for stories of valor. And this day is going on way too long.”

“The day has barely begun,” Luzi said.

“Precisely,” Raj said. “Too long. Like every other day.”

“Why don’t you tell us a story of valor?” Luzi said to Raj, seeing that Darius would not reply.

“Me?” Raj replied. “I don’t think you shall find one amongst our people.”

“You are quite wrong about that,” Desmond said. “There are always stories of valor, even amongst the oppressed.”

“ Especially amongst the oppressed,” Luzi added.

They all turned to him, his deep, commanding voice filled with confidence.

“Do you have one, then?” Raj pressed, leaning on his hammer, breathing hard.

Desmond raised his hammer and smashed rock, and was silent for so long, Darius was sure he would not reply. They all settled back into the rhythm of smashing rock, when finally Desmond surprised them all by speaking up, looking down and smashing rock all the while.

“My father,” Desmond said. “The elders will tell you he died in a mine. That is the story they would like you to believe. To know otherwise would cause too much dissent, foment too much revolution. I will tell you: he died in no mine.”

Darius studied Desmond with the others as a heavy silence fell over them, and he could see his furrowed brow, the seriousness in his face, as if he were struggling with something internally.

“And how should you know?” Desmond asked.

“Because I was there,” Desmond replied, looking him in the eyes, cold and hard, defiant. With his commanding presence, several other boys began crowding around, too. They all wanted to hear his tale, which commanded attention. The air of truth was ringing out, such a rare thing amongst his villagers.

“One day,” Desmond continued, “the taskmaster whipped him too hard. My father snatched the whip from the man’s hands and choked him to death with it. I remember watching, being so young, so proud of him.

“When it was done, when we were both standing there looking down at the lifeless body, I asked my father what was next. Was it time to revolt? But he had no answer. I could see it in his eyes: he did not know what was next. He had given in to a moment of passion, a moment of justice, of freedom, and in that moment he had risen above it all. But after that, he did not know what to do. Where does life go from there?”

Desmond paused, smashing several rocks, wiping sweat from his brow, until he continued again.

“That moment passed. Life went on. Within the hour, horns of warning sounded, and I was with my father as he was surrounded by a dozen taskmasters. He had urged me to hide in the woods, but I would not leave his side. Until he smacked me so hard with the whip across my mouth, that finally, I did.

“I hid behind a tree, not far, and I watched it all. The taskmasters…they did not kill him quickly,” Desmond said, his voice choked with emotion as he stopped hammering and looked away. “He fought back valiantly. He even managed to whip several of them. He left marks on them which I am sure are still there to this day.

“But he was one man with a big heart and a whip. They were dozens of professional soldiers, with steel weapons, in armor. And they enjoyed to kill.”

Desmond shook his head, quiet for several minutes, the boys riveted, all silent, all stopping their work.

“I can still hear my father’s screams, to this day,” Desmond said. “When I go to sleep at night, I hear them. I see him struggling. In my dreams, I wish I was older, armed, and try to see myself fighting back, killing them all, saving him. But I was too young. There was nothing I could do.”

He finally stopped, the work fields completely silent. Finally, he raised a hammer and brought it down with all his might, smashing a large boulder into pieces.

“He died in no mine,” he concluded softly. And then he fell silent, going back to work.

Darius’s heart was heavy as he contemplated the tale, all the boys quiet now, a somber air over all of them. Raj’s smile had long faded, and Darius wondered if that was the tale of valor he’d hoped to hear.

After a long while of smashing rock, Raj came up beside Darius.

“Now it’s your turn,” Raj said to him quietly, out of earshot of the others. “What happened out there?”

Darius continued smashing rock, shaking his head, silent.

“They changed their mind,” Darius insisted. “They let her go.”

“And the soldiers who changed their mind,” Raj said, a mischievous smile on his face, “would they be back in Volusia now? Or shall we never be seeing them again?”

Darius turned to see Raj smiling back at him knowingly, admiringly.

“It’s a long road back to Volusia,” Darius said. “Stronger men have been known to get lost themselves.”

Darius stood in the small dirt field behind his cottage, the click-clacks of his wooden sword filling the air as he attacked the well-worn wooden target. It was a large cross he had made out of layers of bamboo, tied together and stuck into the ground, one which he had been swinging at since the time he could walk. In the dirt, his footprints were well-worn, embedded in the ground before it.

The cross was crooked by now, nearly falling over, but Darius didn’t care. It served its purpose. He slashed at it again and again, left and right, ducking an imaginary enemy, spinning around, slashing its stomach. He lunged forward, jabbed, turned his sword sideways and blocked an imaginary blow. In his mind, he saw a great many enemies coming at him, an entire army approaching, and he fought and fought in the sunset, at the end of his day shift, until he was dripping with sweat.