The Little Prince
Aram Hurt was the chosen son of the Twisted Hairs until his death. He was big and strong and his family was tribal royalty, but he was undisciplined and prone to bravado. His father had tried to beat some humility into him, but he was too reckless. He would pick fights constantly, often fighting six or seven men at a time. He smiled when he fought. One time it lost him his two front teeth. He kept fighting.
Mortuus Anima was trained for four years in Kingman. In those early days of the Legion it was customary for a boy to be trained until the age of sixteen, but no one knew how old Mortuus was when he was brought to the fort and he grew so fast and so large he looked sixteen. In accordance with his promise to himself, he refused to talk even when he finally picked up English. He could've told them he wasn't old enough, but he was too proud to speak up.
Until his first big growth spurt his fighting lacked technique and more often than not he lingered behind on marches. He was seen as soft, and quickly earned the nickname "The Little Prince," because of his unconsciously entitled attitude and his symbolic recruitment into the Legion. Everyone in Kingman knew he was the chosen son of the Twisted Hairs and the other boys harbored class resentment against his perceived nobility. Even if his life before the Legion wasn't that different from the other boys (or, in Max's case, objectively worse), he was "The Little Prince" and he had grown up fanned by slaves and idly eating ripe mutfruit according to his peers. For the most part he was unaware that was his reputation. Really the only thing that separated him from the other boys was confidence, but that meant little when Ya-et-ehh could send him flying with a single backhand.
At the age of eleven he grew a foot and a half. It was practically overnight. At least amongst the smaller boys his lack of finesse no longer mattered. He had the drive and he had the muscle, and he could take on three boys at once. He broke Silus' arm and smiled the whole time. He still wasn't able to truly match the older boys who had more technique, like Victor or Nuvakwahu, and Ya-et-ehh could still beat him handily as Ya had the size and the technique.
Once he started winning fights the other boys began to accept Mortuus. Typically the boys who tried to make friends with him were boys he could beat handily, excepting the boys who came from tribes that fought with the Twisted Hairs. For instance, Max, the scion of civilization who was only aware of the wasteland and its tribes as distant abstractions that existed outside the walls of his small town followed Mortuus like a shadow. In contrast, Victor came from a nearby tribe that had a longstanding rivalry with the Twisted Hairs. He had lost family to Twisted Hair blades, and he relished every opportunity to fight "The Little Prince" he was given, even though he and Mortuus were on roughly equal footing. Eventually when Mortuus was twelve he was notable larger than the thirteen-year-old Victor, but their rivalry continued in earnest.
Cracked-Glass was small and he wasn't a good fighter. He was more timid than the other boys, and it was obvious he wasn't cut out to be a legionary. He could see alright without his glasses, not great but not as bad as he made the others believe. He didn't want Sir or the other boys to know how well he could see because he needed his glasses to feel safe. His entire fighting style was developed around protecting his glasses because he wasn't willing to spar without them. Sir hated him.
He was also from a tribe that had a bad relationship with the Twisted Hairs. The tribe were known as the Dibe among other tribes but they called themselves the Blessed. They mostly raised bighorners in the wasteland and occupied an area to the south of Mortuus' former tribe, but didn't have a fixed location as they moved from graze-land to graze-land. They were peaceful and made good trade with other tribals- except the Twisted Hairs, who had massacred more than half the Blessed about sixty years before Cracked-Glass was born.
Mortuus didn't know Cracked-Glass was once one of the Blessed. He wasn't even aware there was a more than seventy-year-old grudge between the Blessed and the Twisted Hairs. Cracked-Glass certainly didn't act like he'd been raised to blindly hate Mortuus and his former tribe. If anything he seemed more desperate to be on Mortuus' good side than Max. Two years into his training and still no one knew whether Mortuus Anima understood English but Cracked-Glass talked to him all the same. The other boys who were more aware of the politics of the local tribes thought it was odd, but Mosayru was particularly relieved that Cracked-Glass' attentions were elsewhere. Before the boy started bothering The Little Prince he was always chattering mindlessly at Mosayru. Mortuus didn't seem to mind, and in truth he didn't. After awhile he was surprised at how intently he listened to the boy, how much he enjoyed the companionship of this strange fellow recruit with the cracked glasses.
One day while the boys were sparring (Broken Tree and Helo had already graduated to real Legionaries, but they had been replaced by three boys from Kingman who Mortuus could beat handily and thus didn't really care about), Max managed to knock the glasses off of Cracked-Glass' face. While the other boys were congratulating Max, Mortuus knocked Silus to the ground and walked over to pick up the glasses and hand them back. The other boys were shocked. Even Sir couldn't believe it. It was the nicest thing any of them had ever seen Mortuus do. To him it meant nothing. It didn't occur to him that his silence was intimidating, or that for all the time Cracked-Glass spent with him no one (least of all Cracked-Glass himself) thought Mortuus actually liked him or his company. When the three boys from Kingman joined the fort they were warned explicitly that The Little Prince was dangerous, and that he hated everybody. Already he was becoming legend, a monster to be feared. But he was just a twelve year old boy, quieter than most and stronger than most but ultimately not very different from the other boys he trained with.
A great pressure was released with that one simple act of kindness. Suddenly all the boys wanted to be Mortuus' friend, except Victor and Pliny and Ravid, although they did soften to him. Cracked-Glass suddenly found himself in a privileged position as the only acknowledged friend of The Little Prince, and almost all the boys vied to replace him. Mortuus himself had grown so accustomed to being popular in his ten years amongst the Twisted Hairs that he hadn't even noticed that he hadn't been popular for more than two years, and acted like nothing had changed. It became a game to see who could get Mortuus to smile, but the only time he ever seemed happy was when he was fighting.
"You should focus on his left arm," Cracked-Glass told Mortuus one day after sparring. Mortuus listened intently. He'd just been beaten by Nuvakwahu, who had recently grown a foot and was no longer the same size as Mortuus. "When he arrived at camp, he had his arm in a sling. I think it's been broken before," Cracked-Glass explained.
Mortuus nodded his head intently, one of the rare gestures he made when someone spoke to him. The next time he fought Nuvakwahu he focused on the boy's left arm. Nuvakwahu, who typically fought with cunning and rivaled Mortuus in brutality suddenly fought timidly and on the defense. Mortuus beat him easily.
It wasn't so surprising that Mortuus could beat someone bigger than him. The biggest revelation was that Cracked-Glass was good for anything at all. Sir and the other boys had long since given up on him, and Mortuus was the only one who acknowledged him, albeit in his own reserved way. Through Mortuus, Cracked-Glass had found his place amongst his peers and within the Legion. A greater sense of camaraderie grew not just amongst Mortuus Anima and Cracked-Glass, but amongst all the boys being trained in Kingston. They all grew strong as they no longer sought dominance, but worked together. Even Max developed into a warrior in his own right through the support and friendship of everyone, including Mortuus. Old tribal animosities faded away, became forgotten relics of lives that the boys no longer cared about. They were unified under the Legion and they were much stronger for it.
One day Victor was scarring Mortuus' arm like his own during some down time. Cracked-Glass had questioned Victor and Ravid about the beautiful scars on their arms, and although they explained their old tribe decorated their warriors with delicate and elaborate scarring as a significant right of passage, they were hardly important now that they were part of the Legion. They offered to provide similar scars to any boy who was interested and Mortuus had expressed an interest.
"Oh, uh, I was cleaning the barracks the other day, and I found some weird, knotted up hair under your bunk. It looked unhygienic, so I threw it in the fire. Hope that's okay," Victor mentioned casually. Mortuus shrugged with his other arm. He didn't really care. The dreadlock he'd saved when he'd arrived in Kingman didn't mean anything to him any more. He could barely remember why he'd kept it in the first place. He was a Legionary now.