Chapter Text
Today, people call me many things. Titles and epithets if they wish to flatter me. All of them are true - Bronze Tiger, Prince of the Earth, Lawgiver, Great War Leader, Grand Duke, Bull-breaker, Death of the Icewalkers, Demonbane, Ring-giver.
None of them were what I was born with. And, as my Beloved says, this account shall be read by those who know little of me, my life, the land in which I was born, or the lands which have sworn themselves to my rule.
So let us begin at the beginning. My father was Drakan, Voivode of the Dravas Valley, and Father of both our household and the Dravashan Clan. My mother was Jorena, born of Clan Sharak, and Mother of our household and clan. They had long since resigned themselves to raising only three children before, to everyone's surprise, my mother conceived again. Our sister was 7 years old when we were born, and our brothers are older still. That we were twins came as a surprise, for neither my mother nor father came from families where twins were common. We appeared to be suited for the Path of the Son, and were so named, Mekir and Rilun. Thus am I Mekir Daravashan. My parents gave me a Breath-name as well, but I will not relate it here.
Like all Medoans, we were placed on a horse and our parents led it by hand around a circle as a young child. I do not remember that. I remember riding alongside my elder brothers. I must have had six or seven summers. It was warm, and we were riding for the joy of it. I had shed my tunic and I was shrieking in delight until my brother told me that I was bothering the sheep. It was a perfect memory of joy that sustained me over years to come.
In my early childhood. I was required to go to a school run by an Immaculate. Not one of the Dragon-Blooded, we hardly rated that. But an older monk who seemed pleased enough to teach us how to read and write. As the Voivode's son, I had to have extra lessons in learning to speak, read, and write in the language of the Realm. I found this monstrously unfair.
I played like other children. Aggressive and competitive, as befits a Son of Medo. I loved to race horses, wrestle, and run foot races. Some of the older men of my father's household would teach me elements of the Wind-born Blade Dance. I cannot say I became an expert in all weapons but I could take a bird on the wing with my bolas. My sibling joined in willingly, but I always felt they were watching the way the children interacted as intently as they were actually playing the game.
When we were eight summers old, we went out hunting rabbits by ourselves, as many children in Medo do. We came across a lion. The steppe lions of Medo are larger and have a less prominent mane than those of the South. They are less common, and their territories are huge.
My sibling and I froze. Two children cannot fight a lion. We noticed the moment it smelled us.
It did not charge. It merely watched us, and that was almost worse.
Rilun started chanting. It was something in the Ancient tongue that loremasters and Windborn use to speak with the ancestors and with the spirits. I didn't know he spoke that language at all. When they said that Great-Pibling [1] Taluen had taught it to them, I was a little surprised, as that revered Windborn elder had gone to winds the winter before we were born. But it solidified in my mind that they were almost certainly Windborn. The lion waited until he was done with the chant, then seemed to nod and walk away.
One thing we both loved was dancing. Dancing in Medo is sacred. Not solemn or serious, but sacred in the sense that the thaw after winter is sacred, or that a newborn babe is sacred. It was the most fun one could have without a horse. I danced aggressively, even in children's group dances. I learned the Rider's dances, the spear dance, the dances one does when dancing before a Hearth [2], the dances one does when dancing for the sheer love of your heels striking the ground. My father's hall had a wooden dance floor at one end, and I loved to spend time stamping out the beat there. Rilun was just as enthusiastic, although they learned the graceful elegance of a Hearth dancer as well. They said often that they didn't know whether they were a Hearth or Rider on any day until they stepped onto the floor.
I found myself the leader in the games of the children of my father's fort. My sibling was my shadow, an observer of people and of moods. He told me when someone was sick or was pretending to be sick because they were angry or sad. I found it easy to solve disputes and to cheer up our friends when I had their advice in my ear.
As I mentioned, we loved racing our horses, and one day Tarek argued about who crossed the finish line first so fiercely that I didn’t know whether to start a fist fight or declare a rematch. Rilun quietly tugged my sleeve and whispered in my ear.
“Don’t,” they whispered. “He isn’t angry about the race. His father leaves tomorrow.”
I nodded, gracefully accepted Tarek’s victory, and apologized for the argument.
Those unfamiliar with Medo may assume the other children followed me because I was the Voivode's son. They did not. He, like all good Medoan nobles, stressed the importance of earning trust before asking for loyalty. And if he thought I was demanding respect I hadn't earned through misusing his name, I would have been decisively humbled in public, and have had difficulty sitting for days.
“When you stand before your ancestors, all you have is your name and your honor. Do not degrade either,” he repeated every time I violated the rules of our household. He drove the lesson home with immediate consequences, but I remembered his words.
The eve of our 10th birthday was as momentous as any Medoan’s. Childhood ends, and we step on the Path of our lives. I knew what was right for me. So did my sibling. We had discussed it late at night, huddled under sheepskin blankets during the biting winter. We had talked of it while shadowing the herdsmen to learn their ways. They were Windborn, and had no doubts.
We stepped into the tent where the relics of our clan were housed precisely at midnight, accompanied only by our father and Helir, the eldest Windborn of our clan present. Skulls of our ancestors lined the walls. Shelves held ancestral weapons and armor returned by House Tepet when we fell in their service. The altar held burning incense sticks and a ceremonial knife of chipped stone.
Our father stepped towards the altar. “Honored ancestors, I present before you flesh of my flesh, spirits of my own spirit. I have guided them as well as I know how. They shall introduce themselves to you.”
It seemed as if I could almost see the ancestors coming forth. Their ghostly visages may have been the imagination of a boy, or present in truth.
I knew the script. I stepped forward and cut my thumb lightly, smearing blood on the altar. “Great ancestors of the Clan Daravashan, I come before you as Mekir, riding the path of the Son. I ask that you recognize me, blood from blood and bone from bone, and aid me in knowing how I should ride so that I take my place among you in honor when my ride is complete.”
One figure separated itself from the others. I knew this could happen, but I didn’t expect it. He spoke, and his ghostly voice resonated in my chest.
“You bear my name. Your blood is strong. You smell of sweat, steel, and glory. Take my saber, Mekir, son of Drakan.”
He said nothing further. Helir walked without hesitation toward a rack that held perhaps two dozen blades. He never looked uncertain. His hand settled upon one saber as though another hand had guided his own. It was of Realm-forged steel, and had a beautifully worked scabbard. “By the will of Mekir, son of Talen, this is yours. Bear it in honor.”
I had seen that saber all my life. It had hung on the wall beyond my reach, as distant as the moon. These blades were given by the ancestors alone, and to claim one without their sanction was a crime and a sin against the ancestors. Now Helir laid it in my hands. I almost missed Rilun beginning their rite.
Rilun stepped forward, cut their thumb, and smeared their blood on the altar as I had. “Great ancestors of the Clan Daravashan, I come before you as Rilun. The path of the Son was chosen for me in good faith, but it is not my path. I ride the path of the Windborn. I choose to stand in-between. I beg of you to reshape my flesh to match my path, but I will ride it regardless. I ask that you recognize me, blood from blood and bone from bone, and aid me in knowing how I should ride so that I take my place among you in honor when my ride is complete.”
We had a cousin who had been reshaped by the ancestors when he declared he was a Son, not a Daughter. It was rare. It was audacious to ask it.
This time a ghost with the distinctive unbound hair of the Windborn emerged from the group. “I am Taleun. You know me. Long have I scented this child. Their heart has ever inclined toward the Windborn path. Their blood upon this altar and the courage of this request tell me I scented true. They are Windborn. Unless any know why I should not, then I shall reshape them so their body matches their path.”
It was the longest answer any ancestor had given in any rite I had seen.
Another ghost detached itself. “Does the child know what it is they ask?”
Rilun looked startled. “To have my body match my path, neither son nor daughter, but Windborn. Never to be Father or Mother, but Windborn. To stand between living and dead, mortal and spirit, between clans and households, when need be. To be the embodiment of liminality.”
The ghost appeared satisfied and faded.
“Then let it be as you have said,” intoned Taleun. Rilun was engulfed by a wind that didn’t seem to touch anyone or anything but them. It swirled around them for what seemed like both an eternity and a heartbeat and when it died down, Rilun seemed to stand differently. I could see it, they had changed. It wasn’t dramatic. Their hair was in the single braid of a Son, as was mine. They immediately began undoing the braid.
Helir handed Rilun a comb and they looked immensely grateful. Rilun started combing out their hair.
Father stood tall. “My children have been seen by our ancestors. I swear on my honor and my name that I shall honor their Paths, guide them as best I can, and make arrangements for them to learn what I cannot teach.”
Helir spoke, finally. “Thus concludes the Rite of the Path. You may remain if you wish to speak more to the ancestors. As riders upon a path recognized by the ancestors, you may visit this shrine of their skulls without requiring a parent to bring you.”
Rilun knelt before the altar and thanked the Ancestors fervently for granting their boon. Then they thanked them for recognizing me as well.
Even then, I realized they had already begun walking the Windborn path. They stood between the living and the dead.
My father sat down with us a few days later and spoke to us of fostering. We had some clan members in Karasch. Karasch stood upon the River of Tears, where Medo had long watched the old Shadowlands. The Windborn there were said to hear the whispers of the ancestors more clearly than any others. He said that Helir agreed this might be the best option to foster Rilun.
I knew this was possible. Rilun and I being fostered separately was a predictable consequence of choosing different paths. That did not make it more pleasant to contemplate.
As for me, a pastoral household of our clan had agreed to take me to learn the ways of sheep and cattle. All my brothers had done this, for how can one lead a people if one doesn’t know their ways? And to understand Medo is to understand the herds.
Helir and Rilun set out the next day. I had never really been apart from my twin for more than an hour or two. We always slept curled up like a pair of puppies. I did not cry. I could not cry when Rilun could see me.
My father rested his hand on my shoulder as Helir and Rilun rode off.
“It’s not easy, sending your child off for years. I have done it with all my children, save you. But I remember how much it hurt when my brothers and sisters were fostered. We talk a bit about parents making a sacrifice, but siblings do as well.”
“Yes, Father. Thank you,” I answered.
“Go, they can’t see you anymore. See me when your heart can bear it.”
I have never been so grateful to be dismissed. I’m not ashamed to say that I cried. Two years is an eternity when one is ten.
Perhaps a week later, a pastoral household stopped at the fort. They wore our clan’s colors, but while my father was powerful and wealthy enough to maintain almost a hundred lancers, they were much more ordinary. A dozen people, a couple hundred sheep, and a couple dozen cattle. My father greeted them with open arms. He knew the Father of the household, and called him an old scoundrel though he was younger than Father. I was introduced to him as “Serev, who knows more about sheep than any three other men I know, and has lower morals than any three other men I know.”
Serev answered Father with, “You pompous fraud. You forgot better looking than any three men you know. You're just lucky I took pity on you and taught you how to talk to girls.”
I was ready to pull a knife to defend the family honor. Father saw it, and said, “In truth, he is an old, old friend. His father fostered me when I was your age.”
I suddenly understood. Serev was not merely Father's friend. They had once been brothers in everything except blood. I could tease my brothers and they could tease me, but we rode boot-to-boot against anyone who teased our sister or Rilun.
“Well then, young colt, we ride in a week. We’ll stay here to sell and trade some things, but then we move on,” said Serev, apparently addressing me.
“What Serev is saying in his awkward way is that you’re fostering with his family, Mekir,” my father clarified.
“Why would you foster me to someone with lower morals than any three other men you know?” I asked my father. Serev whooped with laughter.
“I’m sending you there to learn sheep, not morals,” Father grumbled.
Within days, I had met all of the household, including 15 year old Vashir who slapped my butt and asked if I was sure I wasn’t a daughter and 10 year old Jorem whose eyes held mischief even though he complained that I’d take his favorite sleeping spot. My father gave me two ponies as remounts and kitted me out properly as a herdsman. Little would distinguish me from the other boys and men out herding sheep.
When we rode out of the fort, my world became twofold. In one portion, there was the open steppe, a herd of smelly and fairly stupid sheep, sheepdogs, and my fellow herdsmen. I was attached to Vashir’s side, learning by watching and doing what needed to be done. He was sometimes patient, and sometimes intemperate. I learned the faces, the dogs, and every different sheep bell.
I smelled of wool and sheep shit by the end of the first week. By the end of the first month, I no longer noticed.
In the other, there were tents that smelled of lanolin, smoke, and fresh cheese. There were smiling Daughters that seemed harder to talk to than the ones I had grown up with. There were sharp words because this household seemed to be incapable of expressing a feeling without protecting it with a hedge of sarcasm. But there was joy, and storytelling, and singing. And we danced. We danced on dirt stomped flat after a day of work. When the dancing began, I was no longer the new kid, the novice herdsman, the project taken on because of Serev’s friendship with my father. Here I was just Mekir, and my heels pounded the earth.
Jorem did, in fact, manage to share his favorite sleeping spot. Between his warmth on one side, and an oversized sheepdog on the other, I managed to get to sleep most nights without tossing and turning and wishing Rilun was there. We argued every morning over who had stolen whose blanket in the night. We wrestled until we were told to take it outside so many times that eventually we were thrown out of the tent preemptively if either of us so much as reached for the other. We stayed up talking often enough that Vashir became remarkably accurate at throwing his boot without opening his eyes. We bonded as only boys forced into close quarters did. He was following another herdsman, learning by doing as I was. We could compare work, lessons learned, and how our teachers ensured we were paying attention. There were more than a few nights one or both of us felt the sting of a switch before bed.
A few months after I joined them, Jorem and I were invited to join Serev and Vashir for blade practice. Serev was a master of Ashkrim Vayarin, the Wind-born Blade Dance. We began with the brush knives every Medoan herdsman carried as a tool. These techniques carried over well to the dagger. The whip had its own dance, however. It was not a weapon of sudden slashes and flowing parries, and the timing was unique. I learned the hard way that the weapon itself punished impatience. I was already almost as accurate as Serev with the bolas, and helped Jorem learn, because at first he could reliably hit dirt and himself and nothing else. Vashir used slow times with the herd to teach me the nuances of the herdsman’s lance. This was how one directed cattle, turned sheep, and drove off predators. Against men, the principles proved remarkably similar.
The first time I slew a wolf was hardly heroic. A pack had been trying to creep up on the flock, when a sheepdog alerted us with a full throated bark, something these animals rarely do unless they feel threatened. I turned towards it, ignoring Vashir cursing at me and ordering me to wait for him. I was on Torin, my first horse, the one I learned to ride on. At ten years old, waiting never occurred to me. I slid the lance into its holder on the side of my saddle and reached for the bolas I had tucked into my belt. I came over a low ridge and saw a pack of a dozen or so wolves being faced down by a single sheepdog. I felt at that moment that it would be madness to let a hero get torn apart and so I let fly with the bolas, and reached for my lance before urging Torin into a gallop. Torin and I took one with the lance, and I didn’t get the lance clear in time, so the lance left my hands. I think now that Torin smelled my fear at that moment, because she kept galloping on and it was some time before I got her under control and turned. Vashir had arrived and slain another wolf, and the rest of the pack was fleeing.
Vashir was visibly shaking with fury as he approached.
“Little idiot, if you get yourself killed, it stains my father’s honor. If you ever do that again, you better pray the wolves take you because it will be kinder than I will be. For now, walk your horse back to the tents and stay there until I return. If you mount her before I give you permission, I’ll geld you.”
The sheepdog shook himself and returned to circling the flock.
Vashir had threatened my manhood before, but in jest, exasperated at the antics Jorem and I got into. I half-believed him this time. I walked back to the tents, and of course the questions came fast about whether the horse was injured or if something had happened. I had the anger any boy has when he feels ashamed of his foolishness, and snapped out that the horse was fine, I was fine, but Vashir was overreacting. I untacked Torin and put her out on the pony line to graze. She was deeply unconcerned by the morning’s excitement.
The rest of the day, the family seemed to have reached an unspoken conclusion that the small indignant boy was Vashir’s problem and not theirs. They gave me as wide a berth as one can in a tent.
Vashir was considerably calmer when the herdsmen returned for the evening meal. He didn’t have the gelding knife out, which was a positive sign. But Serev also had a storm clouded face, for the first time that I remembered.
“Mekir, come,” Serev barked. I considered answering that I wasn’t a dog. Jorem was staring at me with big eyes. I decided that being difficult wouldn’t make my position any better, and quietly obeyed. Serev took me a little distance from the tents.
I thought I knew what a tongue-lashing was. Serev disabused me of that notion. He dissected me with the precision of a Realm Legion Surgeon, and made me feel about an inch tall. He then took a deep breath.
I asked if I could get this over with and just get switched.
Serev laughed. He said no, that wasn’t the right punishment. My punishment was to know that I scared people who cared about me so badly that they couldn’t think of a correction worthy of the offense.
I broke at that moment. I lost all the dignity that a son of that age hoards like warmth in the winter. I collapsed and wailed like a child half my age. And then I felt myself picked up and held. Serev had pulled me onto his lap and was holding me like his own child.
And I never endangered myself so recklessly again while I lived in his tents.