A Chance Beginning Read online

  He turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling, the sunlight picking out the dust that floated in the air, mixing with the rising smoke.

  “You’re just a whore,” Bryon said, “and I’m just an idiot running away from home.”

  Before leaving the room, he looked back at the sleeping woman—his Kukka.

  “Will you remember me?” Bryon asked quietly, then he scoffed. Would he even remember her?

  “Why do I care?” he said to himself as he closed the door behind him.

  Chapter 4

  BEFEL RUBBED HIS FACE, PRESSING the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to chase the sleep away. Erik lay next to him, breathing slowly and evenly. He looked down at his plate, remembering that he had lost consciousness before he could touch it, but now most of it was gone. He knew it wasn’t his brother that had eaten it. The hissing white rats, trying to hide just inside the shadows cast by neighboring buildings, told him that. They fought greedily over the scraps.

  Befel spat in their direction, but they only hissed louder.

  Erik was here, but where was Bryon?

  “Whores and cheap brandy,” Befel muttered. “He’s more like his father than he will ever know.”

  The brandy was a certainty. Bryon’s father—Befel’s uncle—made a sweet, orange brandy that almost tasted like juiced oranges. They had gotten into one of Uncle Brent’s casks, once. Not only did Befel and Bryon get so drunk they couldn’t even stand, when his uncle found them, he beat them. His uncle had hardly ever disciplined him until then, but on that day, he received a beating like he had never received before, or since. He knew Bryon got it even worse.

  As for the whores? Befel didn’t know for sure, but he suspected his Uncle Brent of being unfaithful to his wife. He knew his mother, his aunt’s sister-in-law, did too. He had unwittingly walked into an argument between his father and mother once concerning his uncle’s infidelities.

  Befel didn’t blame Bryon for wanting to leave. Anyone living in Bryon’s house would want to leave. But his fool of a cousin seemed to take with him all his father’s worst characteristics and left behind all the good and noble aspects of their culture. Befel shook his head, once again failing to understand his cousin’s motivations.

  He remembered a hot spring day, staring over the shaft of his hoe while Erik tried desperately to pull a large, bushy weed—witch’s brush their father called it—from their planting row. He had stared east as the sun beat down on them, as sweat poured over his face and down the back of his neck, and thought about what Jensen had said.

  At the last Peace Day feast, Farmer Jovek’s eldest son had been talking about going east. Befel didn’t much care for Jovek and even less for Jensen, but nonetheless, he couldn’t help but listen to what he’d said.

  “Go east, and you’ll never farm again. There’s riches, gold, and women aplenty. A truly easy life.”

  At that moment, it had all sounded so good to Befel, and then later, as he had toiled with Erik that day, the last thing he wanted to do for the rest of his life was be on his father’s farm. He had watched his father break his back over a farm that seemed to yield less and less every harvest.

  As he waited for Erik to free the weed, he had shrugged and shook his head as he stared east. At that moment, he had made his decision and told his brother.

  “I’m going.”

  “Why? Am I doing something wrong?” Erik had asked.

  “No,” Befel had replied. “I need to leave.”

  “It’s midmorning,” Erik had said, still puzzled. “Where are you going? Do we need some supplies?”

  “No, Erik,” Befel had replied, “I mean I need to leave this place, this farm.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “Are you sure? This will all be yours one day,” Erik had said.

  His comment had stung Befel’s ears and did so still to this day, but he didn’t reply.

  “Why would you want to leave all that?” questioned Erik, a baffled expression on his face.

  “Because,” Befel had answered, “the only fate I could think of worse than working this farm is death.”

  “But where will you go?”

  “East,” Befel had replied.

  Now as he stood beside his sleeping brother, his stomach grumbled, and he looked down at the empty plate. He kicked it, and as it flew across the cobbled alleyway, cockroaches scattered, and the white rats hissed again.

  “So much for going east,” Befel muttered.

  He looked down at his brother and thought how peaceful he looked when he slept.

  “I’m responsible for you, you know,” Befel said. But was he?

  He looked up at the sky and once more thought how the nighttime looked different here. It wasn’t the lack of stars, masked by the torches and street lamps of a border town. It was the different positioning of the constellations. Befel shook his head. No. He couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but it was just different.

  It was a night similar to this when Erik came to him and woke him to explain that he wanted to go leave with Befel, to travel east with him and Bryon. At first, Befel couldn’t understand it. Erik loved the farm, but then he squeezed the truth out of his brother. His younger brother understood the issues their farm faced, understood the problems their father refused to talk about. He wanted to save it. Erik thought the money they would earn in the east might stem the tide of feudal lords from Hámon seizing free farmland.

  “Stupid,” Befel muttered to the sleeping form at his feet. “I should have never let you come, but you would probably have followed us anyway. Where would I be if I didn’t have to keep worrying about you?”

  Bryon had not been happy when Befel told his cousin about Erik coming along too. His younger brother certainly irritated Bryon already, but now the money they had saved up for two people to get east wasn’t enough. Now they had another mouth to feed. Now they had another person to worry about and Erik, as far as his cousin was concerned, was just a naïve boy and nothing but a hindrance.

  “But you’re not so naïve anymore, are you?” Befel said quietly.

  Now Erik seemed increasingly annoyed with Befel as he still treated the young man like some clumsy toddler. The thought of his younger brother moving to adulthood almost made Befel smile, but instead, he shook his head and looked to the sky again.

  “And now here I am,” he whispered, “no further east than I was in the first place, and now with hardly any coin in my pocket. Instead of making more coin, I have to deal with an increasingly distant and troublesome cousin and a younger brother who isn’t so young anymore. You’re a fool, Befel. Damn you, you idiot. You were the one that was supposed to get everyone east. You were the one with the plan. You were the leader, the eldest, in charge of your kin. And what are you leading now? Damn you.”

  Chapter 5

  ERIK ELEODUM STOOD AT THE eastern edge of Waterton’s market, watching the border city’s bustling inhabitants. They bartered, sold, bought, and haggled—and sometimes fought. Erik shook his head.

  “I hate coming here,” Erik said. But needs and hunger often overcome hatred. And he needed to talk to De
l Alzon again.

  Nearby, the fat merchant stood in front of his cart, rearranging his array of fruits and vegetables, making sure the most appetizing apples, pears, and squash sat to the front. Erik skirted the edge of the market, avoiding most vendors, walking toward Del Alzon.

  “Fresh fruit!” he called out, his voice deep and gasping. “The freshest vegetables! Picked just this morning!”

  The extra flesh that hung below his chin jiggled from side to side like a turkey’s wattle every time he spoke, and his piggy eyes darted back and forth, seeking new targets. However, he didn’t see Erik walk up behind him, seeming very unawares for a supposedly savvy, border town merchant.

  Erik picked up an apple and turned it over in his hand. The side Del Alzon chose to face the crowd looked polished and clean, a bright yellow and red mixed in long streaks. But on the other side, Erik saw a large brown bruise, soft to the touch. He sniffed, and his nose turned up at the sickeningly sweet smell of rotten fruit.

  “Fresh indeed,” he muttered.

  “What was that?” Del Alzon said, turning and wiping away the sweat that regularly collected on his great, bald head. “Ah, young Erik, it is you.”

  Erik held up the bruised side of the apple. “You call this fresh?”

  Del Alzon shrugged. “If you can find better, you can have it.”

  Erik dug through the apples, all stacked in neat rows in a wooden crate propped up at an angle by a stick. Erik finally stopped, grasped a smaller fruit, red with a single yellow spot on one side, and showed it to Del Alzon. The merchant presented a large hand with sausages for fingers, palm up: “Be my guest.”

  Erik took a bite. Juice dribbled down his chin, collecting on his week-old stubble as he showed Del Alzon the crisp, white flesh below the apple’s skin.

  “Truly, a farmer’s son,” Del Alzon replied with a sigh, “to find a treasure among the rubbish.”

  Del Alzon waddled to the back of his cart, his arms swinging out wide to miss his great girth. He grabbed two crates full of more fruit and vegetables and set them in front of the cart, gingerly bending over and, when his stomach finally got in the way with the second one, he dropped it with a crash. A few tomatoes spilled out of one crate, breaking and splitting against the cobbled road. Del Alzon just kicked them below his cart and wiped juice-covered hands on his apron that may have been white at one time.

  “So, young Erik, the other day you said you want to go east.”

  “Yes,” Erik replied, “at least, my brother and cousin do.”

  “And you?” Del asked.

  Erik shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve followed them this far.”

  “Can you fight?” the fat man questioned, and Erik looked puzzled.

  “I think so,” he replied, looking at his feet, then back at the merchant. “Yeah, sure. I’ve been in a few fights.”

  “But have you ever fought with a sword?”

  “Well . . . no.” Erik shook his head. “What’s this all about?”

  Del Alzon didn’t answer Erik for a while, setting about to arranging more fruits and vegetables and shooing away nagging flies and children alike.

  “You say you want to go east,” Del Alzon said. “But what I’ve been wondering is why? Why would anyone want to go east? What are they willing to do to get to the east? Those are the questions I have been asking myself.”

  He stopped and glared at Erik. They were the same height, or perhaps Erik was maybe even a little taller. But just then, Del Alzon seemed to tower over him.

  “You have the right build,” Del Alzon said. “Your brother and your cousin too. Strong arms. Strong legs. Strong backs. But you’ve never really fought. You don’t know how to use a sword.”

  “But what about us having the right build? Why would I need to be able to use a sword?” Erik asked.

  “I hear Golgolithul is hiring young men from all over Háthgolthane to fill its armies. Golgolithul is pushing farther east, you know, past The Giant’s Vein, farther into Antolika and the lands of Mek-Ba’Dune.”

  “Go on,” encouraged Erik as the shadowy look across Del Alzon’s face dissipated under the high sun.

  “For three years of enlistment, the Lord of the East offers regular pay and citizenship.”

  “So you think we should go off and be soldiers?”

  “If you can stomach it,” Del Alzon replied. “But with little fighting experience . . .”

  The fat man just shrugged.

  “I can use an ax,” Erik offered.

  “A wood ax?” Del asked.

  “Aye,” Erik replied. “We all three can. And a knife. And a bow.”

  “I suppose that would help,” Del Alzon muttered as Erik pondered what the man had told him.

  “Three years . . . that doesn’t seem so bad, I guess. I’ve already been gone two.”

  “Three years of survival can seem like an eternity,” Del said quietly, and Erik didn’t know if the man meant for him to hear.

  “Is the pay good?” Erik asked.

  “Better than you’re earning now,” Del replied with a knowing laugh. Then his round face turned serious again.

  “And there is opportunity for booty. The spoils of war. A simple soldier can become a rich man sifting through the pockets of the dead.”

  Del Alzon’s smile sent a shiver up Erik’s back.

  “But what about our lack of experience?” Erik asked.

  “They will teach you,” Del Alzon said.

  “How do you know?”

  Del Alzon pulled the neck of his shirt aside and pointed to the tattoo on his upper chest of a closed fist clenching a black arrow with a red fletching and a red tip.

  “The standard of the Lord of Golgolithul,” he announced somewhat proudly, and then pointed to a spot on the other side—a blue sun rising.

  “This symbolizes that I have served in Golgolithul’s campaigns across The Giant’s Vein,” he explained and then, pushing his filthy shirt further to one side, brushed his hand over a series of scar lines on his shoulder, one on top of the other.

  “Each one stands for one year of service.”

  Erik counted fifteen lines.

  “The lands of Antolika are dangerous, the men of Mek-Ba’Dune barbaric,” Del Alzon explained. “They are cannibals and necromancers and brutes. The Lord of the East may care little for the common soldiers in his army, but even they can be expensive. He is not known to simply throw away money, so he will ensure you are trained. At least enough to survive.”

  “Are you trying to test my nerves?” Erik asked, shuddering a little as he pondered the idea of cannibals and worshippers of the dead surrounding him on some distant field.

  “No,” was Del Alzon’s simple answer. “Just trying to be honest.”

  “What would you do?”

  Del Alzon thought for a moment.

  “I owe much of who I am today to the army of Golgolithul. Made a good deal of coin. Met a good deal of women.” That made Del Alzon smile.

  “Aye, I would go and serve. Service always does a young man
good . . . as long as he survives.”

  “So how would you recommend that we get east then?” Erik asked.

  “Finlo,” Del Alzon replied. “Ships leave twice a month from Finlo going east.”

  “I’ve heard of Finlo,” Erik said. “How do we get there?”

  “I hear there is a gypsy train heading that way. You should join that.”

  “Gypsies?” Erik questioned.

  “Aye, gypsies,” Del Alzon said, nodding. “Odd as they may be, it’ll be a fair bit faster—and safer—traveling in a caravan. What might take you two or three weeks on foot will take you one. Just watch your pockets and your backs.”

  Erik looked at Del Alzon and then nodded.

  “Do you see that man over there?” Del Alzon pointed to a tall, dark-haired man—a giant almost—across the marketplace

  “Yes,” said Erik nervously.

  “That is Marcus, leader of the Ion Gypsies and the caravan traveling to Finlo. There will be other young men like you, travelers going to Southland and miners going east to Aga Kona, a new mining camp just east of the Western Tor. You will want to talk to him.”

  “Befel told me about that mining camp,” Erik said. “He thinks we should go there; try our hands at mining for a while.”

  “Mining is a dangerous business,” Del Alzon said.

  “More dangerous than soldiering?” Erik asked.

  “Can be,” Del Alzon replied. “Takes a lot of skill to do what a miner does. I’d rather go off to some place and fight if you ask me. If it’s between dying out in the open with a sword run through my belly, or deep down in the ground, in the darkness, under a pile of rocks, I choose the sword and the open sky.”

  Erik nodded.

  “Will Marcus give me a fair price?”

  “He’ll give you a gypsy’s price,” Del Alzon replied. “As I said, just watch your pockets.”