Burnt Offerings
(a prequel to Time Around)
I:
All of his life, he has lived in sight of the divide. To the west, gentle hills roll under a canopy of bright blue, punctuated only by fluffy, white clouds. A castle dominates the horizon there, shimmering, gilded. To the east, everything is different. The air roils with black smoke, the very sky stained red, smeared like a permanent sunset across the breadth of the valley.
No one ever talks about what goes on beyond the hills to the east. No one spares a glance at that terrible sky. To the boy, it is a mystery, almost as though he is the only one aware of the horror since no one else seems to see.
He knows that men ride by on horseback every so often, dressed in leather armor, carrying swords and scythes. He knows father had two eyes once, and two good hands, but the patch has been there since before he was born and his father will never use his right arm again. He knows that he once had another sister, that her hair was the colour of gold, like their mother's, and that she is dead. He knows that he is too young to be told anything else, and he knows that his family is afraid.
In two days time, his sister and brother will come of age. They will be nineteen seasons on this earth, but he does not know why this news makes everyone cry. His mother is holding his sister now, while his father sits at the table and drinks. His brother is out, holding hands with the girl who lives down the path, walking the fields under the blue sky.
His mother tells his sister that things will be what they will be, but his sister only answers that it's not enough time.
II:
In time, his brother comes back from over the horizon. He is different now. His shoulders hunch, his eyes are blank. He never speaks, though sometimes he shouts and snarls and sobs.
He spends his days staring at the wheel as their mother spins, watching the revolutions, head bobbing silently. The girl down the lane comes by less and less, until eventually she stops entirely. Father's hair is completely grey now and he drinks more and more and eats less and less.
One day, the boy wakes up to find the bed is empty beside him again. When he comes outside, he finds his mother sobbing as his father stares at the red sky. His brother is gone again, they tell him finally, and he will not return this time.
His sister never comes home at all.
III:
He is four months shy of sixteen when the news comes down from the castle. His mother cries when she thinks he cannot hear her. He spends most of his time sitting beside his father's grave, knees drawn up to his chin.
The sky is uglier than ever before, splitting wider and wider, stealing into more and more of the blue. He knows that beyond the hills ringing this valley, there are monsters. He isn't sure what colour their sky is.
In four months time, they will come for him, and he will go, because that is what is done, and there is nothing else to do. This knowledge makes him numb and he does not know what has happened to his heart. Once it beat so rapidly in his chest he wondered if it was a bird, like the ones that flitted around his mother's garden. Now, he was certain it was a stone.
The boy watches the clouds race across the sky, away from the crimson fingertips behind him, racing towards the brilliant blue above the far-away castle. He wonders what it would be like to have choices, instead of all these debts.
IV:
He is the youngest in his unit by two whole years. There is another boy, stocky, large, with a smile like a wolf's. His father lives in the castle, counting money for the Duke. He has an elder brother who will inherit that, so he has decided to become a soldier. He will be given his own command in a few years time.
At first, he is afraid of the older boy, shying away from him, sitting closely to the oldest man in the group, a mute man who seems too old for his bones. Eventually, they are paired up for weapons training and the boy is almost kind.
They take their rations together, talking of their families and their homes. He learns the other boy has already killed a man, when he was only thirteen, who was stealing from the Duke's cellars. He learns the boy's name is much shorter than his own, and that his own name is ridiculous and strange.
A few weeks later, he learns that the other boy's friendship comes with a price, and when he is not willing to pay it, it is taken from him anyway. The old man at the fire seems to be the only one who notices, but he never says a word.
V:
They are not men. He knew this, all this time, but today, it is burned into him in ways he did not think possible.
They look like men, but larger, muscles twisted, ears pointed. Their brows are heavy and their eyes fat. Their skin seems to be made of leather and nothing the army possesses seems to have much effect penetrating it. They crush men's backs with one blow of their clubs while flaming arrows seek out anything they can touch.
He is on the wall, holding his position, responsible for cutting loose any hooks that try to grapple onto the side. The smoke is choking him, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes, but he cannot stop to cough, to wipe them, because his knife is dull and there is never any time.
Wave after wave of the creatures assault the wall. The other boys, small and thin like him, rush around him, carrying pots of oil to pour below or struggling with their own knives. The wall is the only thing keeping the brunt of the beasts at bay - it forces them to bottleneck into the ravine, where they can be more easily managed by the men defending there.
The air around his neck sizzles suddenly as the boy beside him lights his jar of oil too soon. Pieces of something wet and hot rain around him and he vomits, hugging to the wall for support. A hook plants right in front of his face, and he clutches at it, trying to pull it free before remembering the knife. His hearing is wrong - everything suddenly seems faint and far away. He realizes he never heard the boy beside him scream. The rope in front of him frays, finally unraveling, and the sudden slackness indicates a monster has fallen away with it, its weight doing more damage in the end than the boy's knife.
The ground beneath him trembles and he clings to the wall again. Something is happening below them, there is the sound of something slicing the air, a whipping sound, a whistling. The smoke is too thick to see. The wall shudders, pieces of stone exploding around them as they cry out and stumble. Another boy shoulders into him, clutching his head. There is stone where the side of his face should be.
Below them, the trebuchets fire again, another whistling, and the wall crumbles around them. He reaches blindly for the bleeding boy, but his hand meets only air. The bricks he is standing on are bowing and collapsing, mortar in his eyes, his hair, and his throat.
Before he can see again, he feels breath on his throat, hot and wet and inhuman. He hears it growl, realizing they must have ladders this time. He lashes out with his dull knife, but it hits sideways, spinning off of the creature's chest as it heaves itself over what's left of the wall.
He screams. He hears it, abstractly, as though it is happening to someone else. Another voice takes it up, somewhere to his left, and he spins that way, feeling claws swipe at his hair, narrowly missing him.
The jarring of his senses tell him he is running, but he cannot see, cannot focus on anything but the tiny corner of blue ahead of him. He moves towards that blue, ignoring the shrieks, the roars, the shouts, and the sparks flying around him. He has always been fast, so fast, and he runs for all he is worth. He hears people behind him, more legs thrashing the same as him, and he knows he is not alone in this. The other boys abandon the splintering defenses, running full-pelt as the enemy breeches the walls.
By the following day, the wall has fallen.
VI:
They find him eventually. He had known, intellectually, that they could, but he did not honestly believe that they would care. They care.
Men come with dogs, with axes, and they eventually cut down the tree he has climbed up into to hide. They bind his hands and drag him back to what is left of the wall.
There, he sees the other boy from his original unit, still alive, still whole. He does not recognize any of the other faces. They beat him, accuse him. They blame him.
He is told it is his fault the line was broken. He is told he is responsible for the bodies littering the field. He spits a tooth into the mud in front of his bleeding mouth, listening to them debate. He cannot feel his arms, wrenched tight behind him, but he can feel the weight of the other boy's gaze.
Finally, they decide what to do with him.
He is dragged over to a fallen slab of stone, his arms cut free only to be lashed across the surface. He is frightened now, more frightened than he was even during the battle, because this time, there is no haze. This time, there is no smoke. He knows what is going on and he cries softly, his throat too raw to form words.
He feels the boy's hands on him, one in his hair for a brief moment, so like the way he had touched him before, during their training. Just as suddenly, the hand is gone. The boy pushes his shoulders down cruelly, holding him in place. He throws his hair out of his face, trying to look behind him to see what is happening.
There is a moment of silence and then he screams. He feels the axe as it passes through his clothing, through his skin, where it reverberates against his bone. His mouth is full of blood and his eyes have rolled back into his head, but he feels the blade disengage as it tears free of his calf.
He still feels it as it falls the second time.
VII:
He spends the next year lying face-down on his mother's bed, pretending that the numbness in his leg is spreading throughout his entire body. He doesn't know why they sent him home. He doesn't know why he is still alive.
His mother sings to him softly, washes his broken body with a soft cloth, spoons him broth, and changes the dressings on what is left of his leg. The muscles begin to twist, to harden, and to shrink, and he feels the pain of it radiate through his whole back. His skin eventually grows back, covering the wound, hard and angry and scaly.
Eventually, he manages to stand.
He knows he will never put weight on that leg again, but he forces himself to lean against the staff his mother whittled for him, forces himself to walk, first through the house, and then, through the town.
He is reviled now. Each step he takes is a physical translation of the looks in others' faces. They see a broken, fallen wall in his shoulders. They see their dead sons and daughters in his eyes.
During the first beating, he weeps and pleads, begging for forgiveness, for understanding. During the second, the third, the fourth, he is silent. He has nothing to offer them except his regret and they have enough of that all their own.
VIII:
All of his life, he has lived in sight of the divide. Now, as he trudges through the forest, leaning heavily to the side, he feels it in his body. Something beautiful and tender shares space with something splintered and raw.
When he sees a flash of flesh, a tangle of golden hair, twisted in the bracken and the mud, he nearly turns away. Instead, he kneels beside her, lowering himself to the earth with the sudden thrust of pain that never truly leaves him. Suddenly, a violent, frantic terror bubbles up in him as he reaches for her shoulder, shaking her. He cannot bear to find her dead. He cannot bear the weight of a random stranger's death. Not again.
"Please," He whispers, feeling tears stinging in his eyes for the first time in years. "Oh, please... Don't be dead." He shakes her harder, desperation outweighing his sense, "Oh... Come on, please wake up..."
Rumpelstiltskin falls away from her as the woman groans.
AN: The boy in his unit is intended to be Hordor, the Duke's lieutenant Rumpelstiltskin kills in 'Desperate Souls'. I feel like a jerk for even writing this story because holy crap, this poor man's life has been abysmal.