"The Primeval"

Dunbar, Scotland – 1650

He awoke sputtering, retching. He clawed at the flesh of his naked chest. Instead of rent flesh he felt tender skin, and instead of crushed bones he felt narrow ribs, all accounted for, in a row, and all intact. A wooden bucket sat beside him, and inside it a bundle of soaked cloths marinated in a brine of congealing blood. The scent stung his nose; he could taste the iron in the air.

"When a small boy comes across a panicked horse's hooves, the horse usually wins..."

He sat up. Penance blinked, eyes adjusting to the darkness of the small tent. A shadow reclined at the entrance, highlighted by the muddy gray sky outside.

"Of course," the shadow said, "some boys' bones can be stronger than a horseshoe, can't they?"

"Who are you?" Penance demanded, scooting to the back of the tent.

"I could tell you that, child." The man said. "But, then again, I know the answer to that question. Do you know that answer, I wonder?"

The boy cocked his brow:

"What, could I tell you who you are? Dunno. Can you guess the number I'm thinking of?"

The man scoffed. He pressed a palm to his forehead:

"Do we keep our brains squarely in our ass, child?"

"Can't speak for you," Penance mumbled.

"It's been a long time since I've suffered such a young voice to speak to me with such cheek, lad..."

"Now, when you say cheek..."

Shouts echoed in the air outside. The man parted the tent cloth, bringing more light into the cramped surroundings. Men on horseback raced by the tent, all of them clad in loose chain armor and helmets, decked in red sashes and bearing red standards on the side of their saddles.

"Those... those are Parliamentarians." Penance whispered. "Where are the Covenanters? The Scots? What happened?"

The man scoffed. Penance could see him better, now. He was in his early 50s with long, straight hair colored gray like a fogbank. His hair reached his shoulders, dangling like wet ropes. His face was pockmarked with uneven bumps, very like the face of the moon, and his two hazel eyes were wide and large, though quite sunken into his head. His body was wiry, very thin, and very sleek, although his upper body was disproportionately toned, and relatively large muscles bulged out the sleeves of his shirt. He chuckled at Penance's question, shaking his head:

"What happened, you say? Ah, well. There's a word for it, and a very old one, at that. It loses a bit in translation, but in this tongue I believe it would be called a 'clusterfuck'." He motioned beyond the tent. "The Covenanters— those dashing, brave, dumb-as-bricks Scots— figured that they could end the battle early. Cromwell had his Parliamentarians all stood up in a line, and our brilliant tacticians, in their infinite wisdom, thought to press themselves right into his midst. Oh, never mind getting caught up between a gully and a hillside. Cromwell had only to hit their right flank, hard, for the whole Scots' force to crumble." He shook his head, chuckling. "Ah, it's been said so often in war that a blundering enemy makes it too easy for his opponent to defeat him. I've seen as much, and many, many times. But in this battle? Ha! They'll say that the Scots delivered themselves right into Cromwell's hands. Oh, those Parliamentarians are out there, now, wrangling up captives for the march south. They'll take every able man who can manage the walk back down to the borderlands and hold them down there while Cromwell moves on to Edinburgh. They'll likely topple things there in short order, too." He looked back at Penance. "Of course the English are magnanimously ignoring the older men and younger boys on the field. Honestly, I don't know whether to be grateful, or insulted..."

"You're glib about the whole thing, aren't you?" Penance said. "For one who lost the fight."

"I'm no rank and file soldier, lad," he snapped. "I'm a forge master."

"A what?"

"Weapon smith, child. And my weapons are unequalled. It wasn't the steel I put into the Covenanters' hands that lost this day, it was the brains in the heads of their wielders. Steel can be smoothed, and every imperfection balanced, but there is little a weapon maker can do to correct any faults in its user. And I wouldn't be so snarky about blaming anyone for losing a battle today, boy, given that you lost your own little battle with a horse. Didn't you?"

Penance looked down at the grass, curling his toes:

"I... uh... there was a retreat, and there were a lot of Covenanter troops running back through the camp. Some cavalry came running through, too, and I, uh, almost got trampled when—"

The man drew a loud breath, shaking his head:

"Almost? Spare me, lad! I found you lying out there under a broken trough. You were crushed as flat as a crepe. Oh, and you'd appreciate the odd looks I got in the aftermath, once the Parliamentarians had secured the place, as I dragged a pancaked little lad's body across the field. They must've thought I was a loon. I had to resort to weeping and shrieking and all, pretending you were my kin. Still, that helped get me enough sympathy to avoid being rounded up with the rest of the captives, so there's that."

"Glad to be helpful," Penance muttered. "Now: who are you?"

"My name is Uallas," he said, "and I'm much like you, Mo Flath Beag."

The boy scrunched his face:

"Wh— what did you just call me?"

"Your Gaelic is lacking, is it? Well, that is a pity..."

Penance got to his feet:

"Listen: I don't know what you think you saw out there. I— I was just knocked out, and—"

Suddenly the man reached into the grass beneath him and pulled out a massive longbow. He held up an arrow with his other hand, wagging it back and forth:

"Do we need to do this the hard way, lad?"

Penance didn't quite know what he meant by that.

He wasn't gonna wait to find out.

The boy leapt up and over Uallas, who only bowed his head and sighed as Penance raced onto the muddy remains of the Covenanter camp outside. He sprinted past the curious looks of English soldiers lounging about, raiding the camp supplies, and watering their horses, and disappeared in a mess of brush. He emerged in a bank of trees and kept right on running. After a moment he stopped to catch his breath, and while standing there, hands on his knees, he heard the snap of a twig far behind him. He whipped about, blinking into the fog, and saw the faint outline of a man carrying a longbow.

Penance cursed under his breath and took off running again. He raced into dense tress, certain that any shot would be impossible through the foliage. He worked his legs in serpentine arcs, confident that his youthful stamina would more than make up for his small legs. There was no way that any codger could bring him down in this kind of terrain. He should be out of sight any—

Thweeeeeeeeeeee...

That whistling sound was kinda weird. At the time he couldn't place it. He wasn't really thinking about it, too much. Not until the arrowhead tore into him, that is.

Penance screamed, crashing hard on the ground. He rolled several times and finally came to a rest on his stomach. When he reached behind his body and caught hold of the busted arrow shaft sticking out of him he screamed again. The boy got on his elbows and crawled into the denser woods, teeth gnashing together, and rested at the foot of an oversize oak. He looked back again, surveying the busted arrow shaft, and he muffled another rage-filled scream with a handful of moss against his face.

Really? Really? Of all the places!

The boy twisted his body about; he got his left buttock elevated, and he wrapped his hands around the arrow shaft. He buried his face in the moss, made a wish, and then yanked up on it as hard as he could. The arrow came out with surprising ease.

The pain? That wasn't so surprising.

Once he was done screaming his head off in the moss pile he came up for air. Uallas was there, standing over him, a bemused look on his leathery face:

"I am sorry! My aim isn't what it used to be—"

"Asshole!"

"Well, I assure you, I wasn't aiming for yours. Poor lad: you do keep your brains down there, don't you? No, I was only aiming for your spine..."

Penance looked up at the man, his brow furrowed.

"Now get yourself up, lad," Uallas motioned. "You'll be close to healed up by now. Unless you wanted me to go out and find a nursemaid to kiss it for you?"

Penance snarled. He limped to his feet, giving his left rump a small massage with one hand. It wastrue, of course; by now he couldn't even feel the torn flesh.

It still hurt, though...

"What do you want?" The boy growled.

"That was not your first time, was it?" Uallas said. "Back there, under those horse's hooves? It was not the first time you've... well, 'died'?"

"What of it?" He snapped. "You wanna provoke me? Is that it? I don't think you do. I'm a sprite! I'm a changeling— a child of the fair folk— and you have just pissed me off!"

Penance took a menacing step in the man's direction, both of his fists balled, but to his surprise this little display didn't affect Uallas in the slightest.

Funny: it usually kinda did, whenever anyone else discovered his little 'secret'.

"You just saw what I can do," Penance barked. "My body heals all wounds, and I can even come back to life. Do you have any idea what else I'm capable of doing, old man?"

The man chuckled, wiping some stray bits of moss from Penance's face, even as the boy recoiled:

"Yes," Uallas said. "No doubt you're capable of dying in even more amusing ways, I'm sure—"

"I'll lay a curse on you, so help me—"

Uallas pinned Penance to the gnarled tree behind him, still smirking. The boy struggled mightily, but couldn't escape the man's grip. He screamed out another warning, which went unheeded. Then he went to flailing that bloody arrow shaft at the man, and he caught Uallas right in the cheek with it, tearing out a fearsome gash. This startled the boy.

It did not startle Uallas.

The man leaned his bloodied face down close to the boy's:

"You think you stand alone, lad? That you are the only prince of all creation? Oh, no: you are not alone, child. You're of a breed that was, and has been, for as long as Adam walked the hallowed grounds of Eden. You are one of many, and I do not know how long you have walked. Your body's no indicator: no inch of flesh betrays your true age. Your eyes tell me that you've lived long, though, and all that time outside the bounds of the Game we play. All alone..."

Penance's rusty iron eyes were transfixed on the man's face, and he daren't even blink. As he watched, the wound on Uallas' cheek began to scab over and seal up, and as the man continued speaking even the remaining scar on his face began to melt away, like a wax figure exposed to flame.

"I can tell you this, Mo Flath Beag: if you continue to walk alone you will die. And very...very... soon."

"I cannot die," Penance muttered. "My body heals me, whether I like it or not; it'll last forever—"

"Nothing lasts forever," Uallas whispered. "If nothing else, the Game certainly sees to that—"

"I'm not interested in any 'games' you have to play, either—"

"That is too bad. Because the Game has an interest in you, lad."

Penance bared his teeth and again brandished the bloody arrowhead:

"Let me go!" He barked.

Uallas looked to one side, sighing. He released Penance from his grip, and the boy stumbled a few feet away from the man.

"I leave today," Uallas said. "There's naught left here for me to do. The Covenanters are beyond the help of any steel or weapon smith. I make for Letterewe: my home in the north. Do you know it, child?"

Penance shook his head.

"It lies on the far bank of a loch named Maree, near the western coast. It's as far north as the very tip of the Isle of Sky, and it sits in the greatest wilds of the highlands, nestled amongst the old-growth of the darkest forests. The land out there is old—primeval, more like— and the road is very rough—"

"I'm not going anywhere with you, understand?"

Uallas rolled his eyes:

"I got that impression, boy, and I'm not keen on dragging you there, kicking and screaming the whole way. No, you'll come of your own accord, and I know that, truly. I know because I don't take you for an idiot. You want the answers, don't you? Well, I won't lie and say I have them all. What I'm offering is a primer, if you like, and the lesson is quite mandatory if you've grown to love breathing in your time on this earth."

Uallas turned his back on the boy, placing his longbow in a sling on his back, and he began to walk off.

"You'll likely lose your way at times, on a trip so long and treacherous. Tell those that you meet on the road that your master sent you out into the wilds, and that you are looking for the man who crafts 'liquid steel'. Eventually, once you're deep enough in the wilds, you'll find people who will understand, and they can point you in the right direction. Some may know me as Uallas, but they have other names for me up there that you might hear." He looked back at Penance. "Do you understand, child?"

"I'm— I'm not going up there, old man!"

The man tilted his head and clucked his tongue. Eventually he smiled, shrugging:

"Then your brains are where I thought they were all along. Sorry to have damaged them, Flath Beag..."

Uallas sauntered out into the mist, and as he walked he began to whistle a jaunty tune. Penance watched him as he walked, almost skipping with merriment, and he spat out a choice word for him under his breath:

"Asshole."

II.

It'd been a long week, all things told.

First Penance learned that, apparently, he wasn't alone with his little 'talent' for not dying. That was revolutionary enough.

But, second, he also found that his home of the past five years was an occupied city, and it was not the friendliest of times to come back. That Uallas guy might be a creepy prick, but he was also right about Oliver Cromwell's troop movements. The Parliamentarians laid siege to Edinburgh not long after the debacle at Dunbar, and it didn't take Penance long to learn the news as he ambled westward, following in the English raiders' wake. Dunbar had freed up the coast for them, and from there the English would have all the supplies they'd need to lay a long, bloody siege to the capital.

He was sorry to see the city go. Penance had fond memories of Edinburgh: the twisty streets of hard cobbled stone and cramped rows of three-story tall buildings all winding about, looked down upon by that massive castle perched high on the mighty hill at city center. One of the street boys he roamed with told Penance that the hill was actually a volcano, but that it didn't erupt anymore.

Now might be the time, Penance thought bitterly. If you couldn't drown the English in water, maybe lava would prove more effective.

Penance detoured far around the capital city, making his way further westward. He had no idea where he was going, in fact, and this was not an uncommon thing. Every five years or so (or a decade, if he was fortunate enough) he found himself wandering the road, alone, and he almost never had an idea where he'd find himself next. He was in Scotland by chance, and before that it was London. In truth, he actually really liked London, too. The boy no specific loyalty to the Scottish cause, no more than the English, anyway, and the only reason he was pissed at Cromwell's troops was because they'd forced his hand: it was time for him to move, again, and that always made him feel lonely.

It was something that was sure to get easier as time went by, he thought. No doubt, after a few more decades of moving, he surely wouldn't be bothered by it in the slightest.

Nope: not in the slightest.

It wasn't until a week later— as he bedded down in some hay outside a dilapidated barn, curled up deep in the pile to ward off the cold—that he realized he was slowly migrating northward. It had started innocently, enough: he favored the warmth of the sun on his face, rather than his back, and so he'd begun correcting his course, little by little. It wasn't until he was far beyond the bounds of any nearby village or town that he realized he was following Uallas' directions, and that realization somehow brought a chill to his blood. One early morning he set his feet to the path but found that they didn't work: his body refused the call to drive itself northward. He felt the impulse to run back south into the lowlands, or maybe east, or even run west and drown himself in the sea.

Anywhere but north.

Penance overcame this chilling feeling. He willed himself northward, and as the days went by the land became more strange, and more cold. The wilds between towns stretched to great lengths, and the forests teemed with malevolent, shining eyes at night. This land was old, far beyond the grip of man, and it showed. At the few places that passed for inns along the way the boy exchanged chores for a warm meal and a dram of something hot. Half the time that 'something hot' was a half-finger of whiskey, and it was marvelous stuff for the cold, he thought. Everywhere he stopped he asked about that weird 'liquid steel' thing and the master forger who made it, but he got no answers from anyone.

His luck finally changed once he reached the low-lying banks of a place called Torridon. It was the first village he'd encountered in some time, if it could be called that, and the locals were an insular, surly bunch. But one night while he cleaned up vomit-soaked tables in the local inn he managed to strike up a conversation with a completely drunk-off-his-ass local. As soon as Penance made mention of that 'liquid steel' thing the man's glassy eyes bulged:

"Ah! So yer out to the far banks of Maree, are ya? Mind yer back out there, lad: mind it! Tha's faerie country, so's they say, at least. An' it were the Picts afore tha'. Ol' Loch Maree still brims wi' 'ere magics, so's they say. The Fairy Queen still haunts her dark isle, jus' bobbin' in the water, she does, wi' 'er ruined cathedral all done up in moss an' rot. So's they say, at least. Some call 'er Muc-sheilche— heh! the daft twats— but no: she's a kelpie, by now, for certain. Mind, child, mind: for a kelpie's so keen on foolin' boys an' girls to the water's edge, eager to drown 'em 'neath the waves. So's they say, at least."

'They' were very colorful, Penance thought.

"Ah, but The Norman's out there, too, working the forges at Letterewe, beyond the waters. The steel arrives by ship, ya see, down through Loch Ewe, and the whole of the land there's dedicated to workin' it. An' The Norman works it, too, jus' same as all the rest. But, for the right price, an' the right person, well, he can make the finest metal e'er shaped to a blade!"

"The 'Norman'?" Penance cocked his head.

"If it's 'liquid steel' tha' your master's after, lad, well, there is only The Norman to see."

He reached the south bank of Loch Maree two days later. The wind howled from the west, bearing stinging cold air from the restless sea, and the sun was buried in a grave of stillborn clouds. Penance was told that the loch ran a good distance either way, and his best bet at this point would be to cross it. The thing was not so very long across: he could see the moody hills on the far banks, as well as smoke curling along the shoreline at what must certainly by Letterewe. The boy wandered the shore, looking for driftwood. He found a suitable slab and took it into the water.

The cold loch stung his skin fiercely, and he wasn't out long, paddling on that driftwood, before his fingers and toes numbed. There were several little islands scattered in the center of the loch and he made for one of the smaller ones: a misshapen thing that was all but covered in thick trees for its 50-yard length. Once there he beached his driftwood and walked the shore, wiggling his limbs to restore the feeling. The wind still hammered his body, and that didn't help matters, so he sought a temporary refuge. He wandered into the shelter of the trees, aimlessly following the island's length. After a time he came upon a gnarled old tree that was very different from all the rest: it rose out of a small gully of water, and its body was hammered with copper coins all along the length of its trunk. All around it grew strands of a certain kind of holly plant that Penance had yet to see on his journey north. The rotted remains of paper strands still clung to its sickly branches.

"Clootie well," the boy muttered, his eyes widening. "Huh..."

It had been in disuse for many years now, obviously. In fact, the tree itself looked dead. Ironically, it may have actually died from having all those copper coins pressed into its body. It wouldn't be the wounds themselves that killed it, Penance thought, but the copper. It was a poison. That was a real indignity to the poor thing, he thought: being killed by the very people who came to you for help in the first place.

Unfortunately Penance didn't have a piece of paper on him. He settled for reaching up and resting two fingers on one of the rotted strings. He closed his eyes and whispered to himself:

"May that old crackpot not waste my time..."

He grunted. Well, that wasn't very inspirational, was it?

Penance tried again, closing his eyes:

"May I learn what it is I'm made of, exactly..."

He looked up again, nodding. That was better. That was good. Penance took a step back, but then he quickly put his fingers back on the rotted paper. He made one last wish, and this one was so ridiculous and pathetic that he didn't bother speaking it out loud.

It was his single greatest wish in the world.

But yeah: it was also ridiculous.

He'd come this far, and so he decided to follow the island to its center. He came to a small clearing and nearly tripped over a mossy stone. As he wandered all around the place he realized that there were the remains of some structure, and further in he realized what it was: some kind of church. A few arched buttresses still loomed on the fringes of the clearing, all weather-beaten and alone, the walls they supported now long since gone. There was a small well further in: a meter-wide hole in the ground ringed by jagged, uneven limestone bricks. Penance noticed something rather odd: there was a pulley system rigged up at that ancient well, and a rope descended into the black pit of its maw. None of that was unusual, per se, except for one small thing: the rope that ran down into the black water of the pit was not ancient and frayed, like everything else on the island, but instead it looked quite new.

He absently thumped the rope with one finger, plucking it like a harp string. When he did he felt something strange: a ringing noise between his ears. It was like the bells in one's head after hearing a canon fire from up close. Penance wagged his head, grunting, and moved off until he finally came to the far shore of the island.

Letterewe beckoned from the edge of the loch, even closer to him now. Penance was about to turn on his heels and wander back to his driftwood when he spotted a curious sight: a plank of wood was hidden beneath a mess of reeds on the shore. He uncovered it and discovered that it was no mere plank of wood, but rather an entire boat, and it was intact. He got to his feet and looked all around him. He called out, his young voice echoing across the dark island, but he got no answer.

That was enough to satisfy him.

After a mercifully dry crossing he banked the boat at Letterewe and wandered into the small village. Here they were well-versed on steelmaking; it was, in fact, the region specialty. They also knew 'The Norman' by a familiar name: he was indeed that curmudgeon Uallas, and Penance learned that his homestead was far up on the hills overlooking the settlement. He made it there before sunset, and as he wandered the grassy hilltops he found a curious thing poking out of the ground: it was a stone, very large— at least twice as tall as he was— somewhat phallic-shaped, and covered with strange etchings and indecipherable gibberish.

Beyond all this, near the northern edge of the hills, he finally found the man himself reclining on the grass. Uallas' eyes scanned the lowlands below him. Unending acres of old-growth trees blanketed the land, radiating out in all directions. The man's eyes were drawn to the east, where one of these trees slowly cantered to one side and then fell hard on the ground. Men set upon it, little more than ants from this distance, and Penance noticed that a good portion of the forest had been cleared in that direction.

"Wood helps start the fires for the forges," the man noted, not looking back at the boy, "and so it gives way to steel. It's the nature of things— you know— that the weak must make way for the strong. Lands like this, though, they used to be untouched. But as the ages press on, and as man's hands go wandering all about his crib, well, little does not end up bearing his fingerprints. When I look out on these horizons and I see this forest fall I feel an age ending."

Uallas finally looked back at the boy:

"But, then again, it is not the first I've felt. Nothing lasts forever..."

Penance got to his knees, still a distance from the man:

"How old are you?" He asked.

"Older than you, but younger than some."

Uallas got up, and Penance quickly did likewise.

"That doesn't answer my question," Penance said.

"I never offered you 'answers', boy, only a primer. I'm offering the lessons you need to understand the basics of your situation."

Uallas approached the boy, and Penance tensed. He did not back away, though.

"What is my 'situation'?" The boy demanded.

"To the point? Your situation is hopeless. Completely."

"Then why bother bringing me up here at all?"

A thin smile wormed up Uallas' face:

"Point of fact? I quite like hopeless causes. First, though, answer me this: are you willing to listen to me, and hear my voice, and follow along with what I teach you? Are you willing to be obedient, speaking when spoken to, and listening when not speaking? I will not waste my time on an idiot child whose willfulness prevents them from hearing my voice—"

Penance took a step forward:

"If what you've got to teach me is worth my time, then yeah: I'll listen."

Uallas sighed, shrugging. He put a hand on the boy's shoulder:

"Mo Flath Beag: what I have to teach you is nothing less than the most important lesson of a lifetime. A thousand lifetimes, even."

Penance stared at the man's shoes, and then he slowly looked up at him. The boy nodded:

"Fine. Then I agree. When do we start?"

He didn't have time to react. Uallas' other hand came up on the other side of the boy's head and he twisted both hands about. It was almost graceful. Penance could possibly have appreciated that move.

If his neck wasn't snapping apart like a twig, that is.

The boy landed on the ground, limbs twitching erratically. He couldn't move any muscle in his body. Uallas stood over him and spoke quite calmly:

"We start tomorrow, lad. So get a good night's rest..."

And with that he planted his boot down in the boy's face, forcing darkness into his eyes.