Chapter 1

Oh, Melandru wears a skirt of leaves and carries a rake and hoe,

She dances all about our fields and sings for the crops to grow.

Her skirts come tumbling off each fall when our harvests and prayers flow free,

But easy lad—don't jump ahead—'cause her bottom half's made of tree.

.

- old Seraph marching song, currently banned

On the eve of his eighteenth birthday, the day before he was to report for his compulsive military service in Divinity's Reach, Ffeldy ran away. Two hours after the recruitment sergeant reported him absent, a farmer in the Kessex Hills went to feed his moa flock, found Ffeldy hunkering in a shed, and reported him to the authorities. Ten minutes after that, Seraph from the nearest fort arrived. Ffeldy was knocked soundly on the head, apprehended, and led away with his wrists bound.

"Happy birthday, you ingrate," growled the farmer. Jagged scars lined his face and hands.

"And what kind of soldier do you think you are, kneeling in moa-dirt with your hands over your face, lad?" asked one of the guards as he led Ffeldy past the farmer, the farmer's wife, and their six children who had all run over to watch and laugh and throw bits of dandelion and moa-dirt.

"I'm not fit for soldiering, I'll be terrible at it, and I don't see why I should march off when plenty of other lads'd be there in my place in a second," mumbled Ffeldy. "Besides, I'm a conscientious objector." He'd been socked in the eye, which was starting to swell and he couldn't see out of it very well. He licked metal-tasting moisture from his lip. Maybe his nose was bleeding. He couldn't check because his hands were tied behind his back.

"Heh, next he'll be telling us that the farmer knew elemental magic and rooted his feet to the ground or turned him to stone or some-such," said the second guard. In fact, the farmer had indeed used minor earth-magic to root Ffeldy's feet to the ground when he'd first spotted him, and applied a stony veneer to his shins to keep him long enough for the Seraph to arrive.

"Aye, and only a complete skritt-brain doesn't run for the hills and lets himself be captured. You had a ten minute head-start, lad. But Queen Jennah needs her soldiers, and you'll make as good a meat shield as any. Though you're a scrawny one. Don't fear. We'll just have to thicken you up a bit first."

The guards marched Ffeldy along the old outpost road, resting only to dismantle the occasional centaur spike trap. The sun shone on the green hills, and at first Ffeldy was relieved to be free from the suffocating moa-stink of the shed. But then the fields gave way to scattered timber-and-wattle cottages. People came to the doors of their homes to see the little procession, and kids ran up to the front gate, and one well-borne looking woman in fancy fish-scale armor spat in the dust as Ffeldy was marched by. Even disregarding their prisoner, who was still smeared with moa-dirt and dressed in tawdry dirt-colored clothes made of canvas and old split leather, the two guards by themselves were a sight to behold.

Ffeldy remembered when he was the age of these children watching from the roadside, and used to watch the Seraph pass by his own front gate in Claypool. They always wore matching burnished breastplates and golden helmets and greaves that clattered as they walked. Each soldier had a sword and scabbard, and a shield shaped like a golden wing on one arm. In battle, Ffeldy thought a Seraph probably looked like that hero from the poem his mother recited sometimes, the one who transformed herself halfway into an eagle.

"Come, lad," said the Seraph marching at Ffeldy's left elbow. "Why would you not want to be one of us? Aye, you are one of the worst scrappers I've seen yet, but our drill captain can batter fighting know-how into the thickest of skulls. Even yours, I imagine, though I don't envy him the task."

"Sure, sure," said the Seraph on Ffeldy's right. "You may not live to be an old man in the army, but they ensure you have a nice enough few years. Or months. Wine, decent food, half an egg-shell full of hard spirits twice a week, the odd brothel permission slip. Old age isn't as nice as it's made out to be."

"I know about soldering," mumbled Ffeldy.

"What's that, young meat shield?" said the left Seraph.

"My Da' was a soldier. He was killed by centaurs when I was seven. Five of my brothers were drafted. Only one still writes home to Ma. And I'm the youngest."

"Well," said the rightmost Seraph in a reassuring voice, "at least your ma has your sisters at home."

Ffeldy didn't mention that he only had one sister, and she was in the Order of Whispers, whatever that was. And since the Order was usually up to some sort of illegal something-or-other, which was all Ffeldy knew about it anyways, he kept his mouth shut. Besides, she had seemed very eager to leave home two years ago and hadn't ever seemed to like him much.

"And what did you think you were going to do after you ran away?" asked the left Seraph, giving Ffeldy's shoulder a shake. "Live off the land until an Ettin dragged you into its cave and lived off you instead?"

"I could be a tinkerer. Or…a merchant, maybe. Or if I could prove my skill I could repair armor in the Eternal Battle Grounds. There's lots of need for that sort of thing there. Not everyone has to be a fighter. Do they?"

The two Seraph ignored his rhetorical question, though he hadn't meant for it to sound so rhetorical.

"Methinks the lad is full of so much putrid essence. We should render him down and sell him for good coin at the trading post. What about these objects you were carrying, eh lad? What exactly would an armor repairman be wanting with a set of these?" The rightmost Seraph released Ffeldy's elbow and held up three small multi-colored crocheted sacks. "Are you a juggler, boy? Running off to the circus?" The soldier tossed the three sacks and caught them again—actually beanbags that Ffeldy had made himself by filling small satchels with dried beans and stitched closed.

"I was not going to join the circus." He could tell that his face was hot with embarrassment and he prayed that the civilians they passed couldn't hear the conversation. The Seraph with the beanbags tried to juggle and managed a few bad tosses and catches before one bag went soaring out of control and hit Ffeldy in his already swollen eye. Ffeldy's knees buckled and, with his hands tied, he couldn't catch himself before collapsing forward onto his face. The second Seraph should have caught him, but he was doubled up and helpless with laughter at the first Seraph's antics. Ffeldy struggled to stand, but before he could stumble away into someone's cow pasture and escape, the Seraph had him by the elbows again.

"Don't look so shamefaced," said the Seraph who resumed his position on Ffeldy's right. "One out of three people we catch trying to desert are 'running off to the circus.' Seems a popular fantasy with the youngsters. Isn't that right, Melbus?"

"Aye, and if it's not the circus, it's finding their real parents or somesuch. Retrieving the body of a lost brother—"

"Lost sister, Melbus. It's always the sister."

"Aye, sister. Odd thing, that."

The Seraph fell silent for a while, only the sound of the gravel scuffling under their boots reminding Ffeldy that he wasn't alone. Then Melbus piped up.

"Well, lad, just be glad you're not in the Grove and we're not a stand of those Sylvari plant people."

"Why is that, Melbus?" asked the rightmost man when Ffeldy didn't rise to the bait.

"Running around with those sacks of beans? The Sylvari'd dig your feet in the ground like a tree and set them fernhounds on you for them sacks of beans. 'Trafficking of minors' is what they'd call it."

The Seraph didn't stop laughing until they delivered Ffeldy to the captain of the guard inside the sun-bleached stone walls of Fort Salma.