Chapter II – Honor Lost
Krinashum, in the far south of Saldaea, was a very happy little town. Shyne quickly began to enjoy it. The trip through Kandor and most of the rest of Saldaea had been generally uninsteresting, and Shyne and his friends had been fairly bored before arriving at this sleepy town away from most large roads.
Nana seemed fairly certain they would be safe here, and it was obvious she was glad to be home. Her older brother was happy to take the four of them in, as he'd recently lost his wife and his only child had just gotten married. He claimed his home was too empty with one person living in it anyway.
The next three years went by without incident. For a few days, Shyne and Jaram's hair, pulled back into two braids, with tiny bells to the tip of each, caught a few glances and in some cases stares, but before long the three children were thought of no differently then any other child in the village. The three of them continued to spend much of their time in the nearby forests, often spending days camped out. They were far enough from the Blightborder now that Nana could let them out for days and not worry about them coming across a fist of trollocs or a dragkhar. When they weren't gallivanting around in the woods, Shyne was practicing his sword forms. He and Jaram worked odd jobs and scraped up enough money to eventually get a set of swords made for Jaram, so they could practice with real blades as well. Two or three times a week, the two boys would take out their wooden practice swords and spar, while Shena watched and kept score.
When Shyne was 14, he decided he wanted to join the army, to fight trollocs and in so doing attempt to avenge his parents. By this time, he and Jaram were fairly evenly matched with their swords and Jaram took up his friend's idea. They approached Nana with the idea and she couldn't help but notice the zeal they both had for the thought of military service. With a heavy heart, she let them go.
The parting was difficult. Shyne and Jaram packed up their few belongings and enough food and money to see them to Shol Arbela. The morning they left was full of Nana and Shena's tears. The man Shyne had come to think of as an uncle gave them advice he thought every man should know before striking out on his own. Quite of a few of the townspeople of Krinashum came out to see them off.
"If you ever get tired of killing trollocs," Nana said to them moments before they turned to walk away up the road, "you know where to find me. You'll both always have a home here."
They struck out for the River Arinelle, where they caught passage upriver to Maradon. From there, they hitchhiked and walked the road through Kandor and Arafel to Shol Arbela. Whenever the ship captain didn't need them, and then at camp every night, they practiced sword forms, with the wooden swords whenever anyone else was around. Many of the ship's crew and other travelers would sit and watch, especially before they reached Arafel, where fighting with two swords was common.
Once they reached their destination, it didn't take long to find a recruiter that was willing to take them in. They were young yet, but when it became obvious that they had no where else to go they were given to a grizzled, middle-aged veteran by the name of Larilun, who among other things would be seeing to their weapon training to make sure they were up to army standards, while the army decided where to put them.
Larilun soon found out they were already beyond grunt standards. Still, the style they used was strange. He began coaching them in the forms of the Arafellin military, forcing Shyne and Jaram to adapt to a new style. The months they spent with Larilun forced them to grow not only as swordsmen, but as soldiers and as men. The two of them grew up more in those months than in the years since their parents had been killed and eaten by a Trolloc horde.
Sword forms, however, were not the only things Larilun taught them. At Shyne's behest, he found them a teacher for something he claimed very few men in the military trained for. With this new teacher, the boys learned the trolloc language. Larilun told them that they were shaping up for reconnaissance duty and laughed about it, but seemed actually impressed by their will to learn what so few cared to know.
Finally after months of training, they were assigned to a unit. When they arrived at the fort they were stationed at, they received an odd welcome from what was now their military family. They were the youngest people at the fort, and immediately became aware of it. Shyne and Jaram were the butt of every joke, the object of every stare and head shake, until the first time the fort was attacked. When the others realized the two boys could hold their own, they gave them a sort of grudging respect and allowed them to exist a bit more easily within the soldier society.
Shyne understood their feelings, and so did Jaram once Shyne explained them. In the army, your life often depended on the guy next to you. If the two boys had been as untrained as their age suggested, they would have been a danger to everyone around them. Now that everyone knew they were capable, they could be trusted.
That first battle, though, was something Shyne would never forget. He'd never seen trollocs kill before. Jaram remembered very vividly what he'd seen when the manor had been decimated, but Shyne had never known the chaos and horror of battle. One particular memory that would haunt him was the sight of a single trolloc, slightly larger than the rest, taking down three soldiers with a swing of his giant scythesword. The memory of blood splattering from three separate bodies attached to faces he knew was something he could never forget. Only one memory would ever stand out more in his mind.
The sights he saw during his first battle left another impression on him though. As they were cleaning up after the trollocs broke and fled back toward the Blight, Shyne came across the first trolloc he'd killed. Its face, too, was engrained into the boy's head, if for no other reason than because it was the first intelligent creature he'd ever killed. He knelt beside the body, and remembering the horrors he'd seen, pried its sword from its hand. The sword was clean, except for the blood that had been splattered onto it after the wielder fell. That sword he kept and much to the resentment, and in some cases amusement, of many of the people around him, he began practicing with it.
There was no one willing to train with the thing and few willing even to touch it. Therefore, there was no one to teach him. He was forced to create his own style with it. He took what he'd been taught of single-sword fighting and modified it for two-handed use. The blade was much heavier than anything he was used to, heavier even than both the heron-marked warder's swords he never used.
He was asked, at one point, by a soldier he'd grown to respect and like, why he trained with the scythesword. "My father told me once," he responded, "that one of the most important aspects of war is knowing your enemy. It's why Jaram and I learned how to speak the trolloc language and it's why I'm learning to wield a trolloc sword. I was born to fight them, and in understanding the way they fight, I'm sure I can fight them better."
In the following battles, he tried to pay more attention to the way the trollocs used their swords. He made sure he didn't pay too much attention and kept his mind mostly on the battle, but he learned in the midst of the killing. It became obvious to those who occasionally watched him practice with the scythesword that he was getting better and that he was beginning to fight more and more like the trollocs they'd fought against so many times. Some thought of his behavior as an unhealthy obsession. Others saw him as a link to the trollocs, and hoped that he could learn something through these exercises that would make it easier for them to do their jobs.
This continued for long amounts of time, sporadically dotted by short leaves, in which Shyne and Jaram would spend their time in Shol Arbela or some small town somewhere, wishing they had time to go back to Krinashum and talking about home. The routine wasn't broken until they were sixteen. After another short leave, they returned to the fort to be greeted by someone neither of them had expected to see.
"What are you doing here," Shyne asked.
"I missed you guys," Shena explained. "Mother and I traveled all the way here. I've been given a job as a laundress, so I get to stay here with you guys. Mother was very sad to find that you were on leave. She wanted to see you two, but didn't have time to stay."
"Where did she go?" Jaram asked.
"Home. The merchant that we were traveling with had to leave almost immediately. They said they would wait for her to see you, but couldn't wait for three days. And there wasn't anyone else coming this way for months."
"I would certainly have liked to see her," Jaram said sadly, "but I'm just as glad to see you, sister. Tell us all about what's been going on while we were away."
With Shena's arrival, Shyne and Jaram's existence brightened considerably. The three of them spent every moment they could together. Shena was always there to watch whenever Shyne and Jaram were practicing, if she didn't have any work to do, and she was always there with fresh bandages after battle. The other soldiers, too, took notice of the bright young woman and she began to take the form of a mascot for the company. Whenever she walked into a room, everyone brightened.
The more time they spent together, the more Shyne realized that she had changed. Not only had the years they'd been apart allowed her to learn the arts of the hearth and home, but they'd allowed her to mature both mentally and physically. At fifteen, Shena was an attractive young woman with an excellent grasp of what she wanted and where she fit into the world. As his view of her began to change, so did their relationship. It didn't take him long to realize that the feelings he was beginning to feel for her were comfortable feelings she was long used to feeling for him. Jaram, quickly becoming aware of what was going on between his best friend and his sister, found interesting ways to leave the two of them alone together.
A year later, Shyne and Jaram were given their first real assignment. The two of them, with three years of military life behind them, were respected and admired soldiers. They were chosen, due to their unique talents, to accompany a small party into the Blight to attempt to learn why the border had been so quiet recently.
There was nothing Shyne had ever experienced that could prepare him for the horrors of the Blight. Much of the time he spent there was soon a blur in his memory, but when the small party returned two weeks after they set out, they numbered only four out of the fifteen who had gone. That night, the fort celebrated the victory those four had won in the Blight while at the same time quietly mourning the eleven who had not returned. Between songs of conquest and songs of death, Shyne and Shena talked about the scarring images he'd seen while he was away. She knew he was deeply disturbed, and judging by the way Jaram was quietly looking paranoid, he obviously was as well. It was at that point that one of the older soldiers came over with alcohol. "To take your mind off of what you've seen," he said. By the time the celebration got into full swing, all three of them were quite drunk.
Some time in the night, Shyne and Shena left Jaram asleep at his table and went off to be alone. Shyne, full of alcohol and a recently renewed respect for life, started doing things that somewhere in his mind he knew he'd never try sober. For a while, Shena went with it, too drunk to mind much. As the effects of her drunkenness began to wear off though, she tried to stop Shyne before they did anything they shouldn't do.
The next thing Shyne remembered was staring down at the form of Shena, broken beneath him. His blurred eyes and mind were both cleared for that split second it took for him to realize what he'd done. His heart, already racing, began an attempt to pound itself out of his chest. He reached out to take her hand, to apologize and tell her he would request a leave so they could talk about this, or request a transfer to another fort if she would prefer. His hand stopped before it reached her though, and silent tears began to burn his eyes.
She was dead. He didn't know when her life had slipped away. He couldn't remember any of the details. But he was miraculously sober now. Shaking, he looked around at the storeroom they were in. "What have I done?"
Perhaps the affects of the alcohol resumed at this point, but whatever happened, most of the rest of the night would forever be a blur in Shyne's mind. Before he knew it, he was well away from the fort, carrying only his heron-marked swords, a few coins, and a few wilderness necessities. He didn't think anyone had noticed him leaving. He didn't think there would be pursuit until the morning. He just knew he would run the rest of his life, from the people he'd loved and trusted, from his best friend, but mostly from the image of the woman he'd raped and murdered.