David Dalglish - Dawn of Swords

“The antelope was beyond your hunting party and would have escaped into the Stonewood. It would have died a horrible death had I not intervened.”

“Your mercy knows no bounds, my son. However, you must remember that every action our people make is a potential lesson to be taught. We must allow them to fail, even if that failure is embarrassing.”

Bardiya shook his head. “We may use the creatures around us for clothing, shelter, and food, but it is still our duty to preserve the life that surrounds us, showing it dignity even in the face of death.”

His father’s expression began to grow angry, his dark cheeks turning a deep crimson as they often did during these sorts of conversations. Unlike the general populace, his father did not buy into Bardiya’s impartial view of the gods. To Bessus Gorgoros, there was Ashhur and only Ashhur, and he would never see things differently.

“You are an overly sensitive fool,” Bessus said in a hoarse whisper.

“Bessus!” exclaimed Damaspia. “Don’t speak that way to your son.”

Bessus turned on his wife.

“I will talk to him as I please. He disobeys my edicts, teaches sacrilege to our children, and usurps my authority at every turn, as if he were the patriarch.” He pointed a slender finger into Bardiya’s face. To the giant, it seemed small as a twig. “You forget that I was forged by Ashhur’s hands, not you. I was given the ability to create an everlasting life to join with my own so we could lead our people into the golden forever. All you have done, Bardiya, is grow.”

“Bessus, enough,” scowled Damaspia.

Bardiya placed a hand on his mother’s shoulder, stilling her rage. He refused to raise his voice under any circumstance, and decades of meditation and prayer had taught him to never lose his temper.

“Father, you are turning red,” he said. “I have angered you. I apologize.”

“Do not patronize me.”

“I’m not. I truly am sorry.”

He was, and his father knew it. He watched as the ageless patriarch’s anger deflated ever so slightly. Bessus was a smart man, the most capable of all their people. He knew when a battle wasn’t worth fighting. He dropped his head, frowned, and grunted.

“You disappoint me, Bardiya,” he said, sadness in his tone. “You make the job your mother and I have undertaken much harder than it should be. Do not return to Ang for a week. Think about what you have done, and the lesson you have denied Taniya. Stay out here with your tree and sleep beneath the stars. However, do not offer your mercy to the wild things of Stonewood, and do not step foot within the elven lands. Should you bring Cleotis Meln’s wrath down on our people again, I may have to send you away for good.”

Bardiya sighed. As if I need to be told that.

Though he and his father had always clashed about faith, it was only recently that Bessus had taken to verbal outbursts or the occasional punishment. And it was Bardiya’s own fault.

Two years ago, as he’d waded in the section of the Corinth River that flowed through Stonewood Forest, a flock of kobo had wandered into the water nearby. Bardiya had sensed a shift in the air, the scent of putrefaction filling his nostrils, choking him to tears. He’d stumbled toward the kobo, arms outstretched, his vision shaky from the horrific smell. A single touch on the beak of the majestic birds was enough to tell him that the entire flock had been stricken with the hacking, an uncommon disease that doomed its victims to cough up blood until their lungs finally ruptured. The worst part was that the hacking was seemingly immune to Ashhur’s healing grace, at least when administered through Bardiya’s hands. An entire generation of brine geese had been obliterated in his youth, and half the population of desert foxes not ten years after that.

So he gave the sick birds his mercy. One by one he dispatched them, right on the banks of the river, and then built a large fire to burn their remains. He sang songs of Ashhur’s blessings as the flames crackled and hissed. It was there the elves had found him, on their land, filling the forest with smoke and destroying its creatures. The elves did not believe his story, as the hacking had never shown its ugliness in Stonewood before. Bardiya was thrown out, threatened with staffs; the elves had even fired arrows on him as he fled. Since that day, humans were no longer welcome in the heart of Stonewood Forest. Arguments over boundaries and ownership of land had followed ever since. Bardiya’s simple act of mercy had driven a wedge between their two peoples, creating a chain of bad will that was yet to be broken.

“I apologize again, Father,” he said.

“I know that you are sorry,” his father replied, looking disappointed. “I simply wish you could see things from my perspective at times. It is no easy task, leading a whole society into maturity. You do not seem to respect that, or my wisdom, and you act as if my head is filled with nothing but air.”

“There is something to be said for a head filled with air,” proclaimed a familiar voice. “If not for women like that, I might still be a virgin.”

Bessus whirled around, as did Damaspia. Bardiya lifted his head slowly, gazing down the slight rise to the edge of the Gods’ Road. The dust cloud in the distance was gone, replaced by two gray horses that stood twenty feet away. How they had arrived without him noticing the sound of clomping hooves was baffling.

On one horse sat the youngest DuTaureau child, Nessa, her face youthful and naïve as she picked dirt from beneath her fingernails. Patrick DuTaureau sat on the other. Bardiya hadn’t laid eyes on his oldest friend in nearly five years, but Patrick’s unusual appearance couldn’t allow his being mistaken for anyone else. Back hunched, sprays of wild orange curls dancing like sprigs on his head, and legs, too short for his large upper body and dangling like limp noodles over each side of his mare. The massive sword he always carried hung from his saddle, and an impish grin stretched his misshapen features.

“So,” said Patrick, “how is my favorite dysfunctional family? Righteously fucked or fucking righteously?”

“Patrick!” exclaimed Damaspia, throwing a hand over her mouth.

Bessus rolled his eyes, but held back a biting comment and simply bowed. In that instant Bardiya appreciated, and even admired, his father’s restraint. They might occasionally not be on the greatest of terms, but he could not deny how much he loved and respected the man whose seed had produced him.

“It has been a long time, Master DuTaureau,” Bessus said. “But I ask that you refrain from profanity while visiting our lands.”

“Not visiting,” said Patrick. “Just passing through.”

A bird cawed overhead, and Nessa lifted her pretty head to stare skyward. Bessus brushed dirt from his elbows, hefted his spear, and slipped his free arm around Damaspia. Bardiya noticed that his mother, while acting courteous, refused to lift her gaze to Patrick’s deformities. But then again, most people didn’t. That was something that Bardiya could not understand. Patrick might look different, and he was certainly crude and derisive at times, but in his heart he was a good man, as good as anyone else in Ashhur’s Paradise.

“We will be going now,” said his father, turning toward the trail that led back to Ang. “Have a good journey, Patrick, wherever it is you go. Bardiya…I love you, even if you anger me.”

Bardiya leaned back, saddened. His head struck the same branch he’d hit earlier that morning. Bringing up a giant hand, he rubbed the sore spot and groaned.

Patrick whispered something to his sister and clumsily dismounted his mare. He waddled over to where Bardiya was leaning against the cypress tree, and cupped his eyes against the glare of the sun so that he could look east, to where the grasslands ended and the desert began.