Dave Lawson, Fantasy Author

At age fifteen, Gen saw her first dead man. His limbs were mangled, twisted in unnatural angles, with a gaunt face turned pale from blood loss. A gaping hole in his abdomen revealed torn flesh and glimpses of bone, painting a gruesome picture of his suffering. A stranger. Only the Gods could fathom what had torn through his body with such savage, inhuman ferocity. 

Yet, the corpse seemed unremarkable, like everything in Plum Village. Like Gen herself. A dead body in a field—just one more thing for the old women to mourn. 

Gen mourned her life. Her father was a tent farmer in the southern valleys of Piran, where she spent her formative years chasing goats, riding horses, and learning the best ways to slaughter animals. She assumed killing a person was not much different: swing your weapon, watch the blood spurt, and listen to the cries of anguish fill the air. She imagined she’d feel tired yet content afterward. 

Her mother did not approve of Gen learning how to slaughter livestock, believing that job was more suited for the men of the farm, like Yan and Huber, Gen’s older brothers. Yan, however, was more interested in chasing the daughters of nearby farmers. He’d been married off the previous summer at nineteen after an indiscretion left the neighbor’s daughter pregnant. Huber was a hard worker but often argued with their father, leading their father to frequently invite Gen to accompany him.  

“I need a break from that damned boy,” her father would say, then rub the short, coarse whiskers that reappeared on his chin each evening. “You’re the only level-headed child I’ve got.”  

She was out in the fields that day, herding sheep. One sheep stopped among the sheaves of winter wheat and wouldn’t stop sniffing. And there, amid the golden stalks, lay the corpse.  

Kirth. She’d be late to dinner if the sheep took much longer grazing, and a dead body would only slow things down further. It was better to leave the corpse for scavenging animals than to bother her father about it.  

She pushed the sheep back toward the herd and followed behind the curious animal when she saw three men, King’s guards by the look of their navy and gold uniforms, riding through the pastures. She hailed them, and they rode up to her. Their horses, hulking brown and gray beasts, were more muscular by half than any of her family’s feeble cart horses. They were the most powerful animals she had ever seen.  

All three men were muscular as well, though Gen was mostly struck by how young they were. She couldn’t have been more than four years younger than them, yet, they carried themselves with such ease, like veterans of the Kings service, and not the recent recruits they must have been.  

“We travel on King Thran’s business,” the middle boy said, his voice brisk and commanding. He had short brown hair, and the beginning of a scraggly mustache, looking to have the pale skin of the Northern Piranese. Though smaller than Rosenfel or Oban, Piran’s population continued to rise, especially in the north, around Mintar, where several bustling suburbs sprang up as the city sprawled to the west. The south of Piran, the agricultural center of the country, rarely saw visitors from the more civilized and inhabited north. “A man has been spotted in the area. A criminal against the crown. We seek his location so that he may pay for his crimes against his most venerable majesty. Have you seen anyone in the area?” 

“Other than the goats and my family, no,” Gen responded. “We don’t get many visitors.” 

The man on the left scoffed. He had a hooked nose and a cruel smirk on his face. “She’s hiding something, sir. You know how Southerners are. They look out for one another, even if it means treason.” 

“I hide nothing.” Gen pointed over a short hill to her left. “If you don’t believe me, my father is over that hill, working in the fields. He can answer any other questions.”  

She turned back to her sheep, the conversation over as far as she was concerned. The men spurred their horses over the hill. She was sure her father would be better at dealing with the men. He had a way with words that had not been passed down to her, though Huber and Yan were both clever with a quip.  

She walked toward the western pasture with the sheep, heading to the barn where they would be shorn. Whatever wool her father did not sell would go toward new clothing, something Gen desperately needed. Gen towered over her parents and Huber, her height nearly matching Yan’s. Her clothes, snug and worn, strained at the seams. The patches her mother had sewn on the elbows and knees were wearing thin despite multiple mending efforts.  

In the distance, she heard yelling. Her father’s voice. Leaving the sheep to graze, she ran toward the sound.  

The King’s men stood over her father with whips out, laughing as they struck him. The whip cracked against her father’s back, and Gen heard a scream—sharp and high-pitched, unlike any sound she’d ever heard from him before. She froze, the horrific wail echoing in her ears. Her father’s face contorted in pain, a sight that tore at her heart. Each lash of the whip felt like it was striking her own flesh. Helplessness washed over her, and she bit her lip to stifle her own cry. 

“I know nothing,” Gen’s father said, curling into a protective ball and raising his hands in surrender. His sobs reached Gen’s ears, raw and broken.   Each one tore at her heart. She stood paralyzed, her own tears welling up as she watched the men mercilessly beat the person she looked up to the most. 

One of the men kicked her father in the stomach. “Come, we’re wasting our time with this wretch. We’d best head toward town and ask after the prisoner there.”  

The men mounted their horses and rode away. Once they were almost out of sight, Gen rushed to her father. He lay face down in the fields, blood soaking the sheaves of wheat around him.  

Thank Kirth he still breathed.  

“Father!” Gen picked him up, gently placed him over her shoulder, and hurried toward their house.  

“Gen, wait,” her father said in a rasping voice. “Those men aren’t worthy of the king they serve. But I need you to promise me you won’t look for them.” He took a sharp breath. “Don’t avenge me.” 

“But father—” 

“No, girl. I’m not dead. Just let it be.”  

“Yes, father.”  

They traveled the rest of the journey in silence. Upon reaching the farmhouse, Gen laid her father on the dining room table. Her mother, jittering with worry, tore off what remained of his tunic and began cleaning the wounds with a wet cloth. The blood-stained fabric fell to the floor as her hands worked methodically, but Gen could see the tremble in her mother’s fingers. 

“Gen, go fetch water,” her mother ordered. “We need some to boil.”  

# 

The well was only a few hundred paces from the house, and Gen set out immediately. After she’d retrieved a bucket of water, she turned back to the house. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a quick flash of blue peeking out of the yellowish-green of the grassy meadow to the north of the farm. A group of sheep clumped together. Odd. She moved closer and in the grass was a man.  

He was older than Gen’s father, surely, and in terrible condition; a slight, sickly frame, deep red cuts across his back.  

Another victim of the whips. And by the looks of him, the King’s men hadn’t been as lenient as they were with Gen’s father.  

 Was this man a murderer? He shifted uncomfortably in his shapeless gray wool tunic and trousers, the standard uniform of a prisoner. As he glanced around, the short curls of his graying beard caught the light, matching the wool of his clothing. His brown hair, beginning to recede at the front, still formed a bushy halo around the back and sides of his head. It was surprising because prisoners in Piran received no grooming. They were forced to grow their hair and beards out for the entirety of their sentence. This man somehow found time to bathe and trim his beard while on the run from the authorities.  

Gen turned to walk back to the farmhouse. Her mother would know what to do. 

“Please,” the man whispered.  

A chill seeped into Gen’s bones. She whirled back around to see the man moving his hands in a complicated ritual, ice forming on his fingers.  

Gen had never met a mage before. Mages were common throughout Sarakan, but they didn’t travel south into the farmlands often. No one did, other than the farmers themselves.  

“Surros, surros, surros,” the man repeated. 

 A cold terror ran through Gen’s body. She felt alone, endangered, at the mercy of this man. He could murder her where she stood, and she couldn’t do a thing to stop him.  

“Don’t hurt me,” she begged, gasping for air.  

The man looked up from work. “Surros aqui,” he said. His hands stopped the ritual. “I’m not going to hurt you, girl,” he said. “I’m trying to stop the damned bleeding.” 

“We don’t see many mages down here,” Gen said.  

“Possibly because of the hospitality of your king’s men.” The man had an accent that Gen couldn’t put her finger on. She knew it wasn’t Piranese.  

“We’re too far from the water.” Gen looked out over the wheat fields, which shimmered in the light of the two suns.  

“Much as I’d love to get to know you, I need to finish my incantations or I’m going to die in this field.” The man gestured to his wounds. 

“Those same men attacked my father,” Gen said, giving the man an accusing glare.  

The man held her gaze. “I’ll do what I can for him. As soon as I’m sure I’m not dying myself.” 

Gen knelt. “I could help you,” she said. She didn’t trust this man, but if he could help save her father, she’d do what she had to. “But only after you tell me why those men are after you.”  

The man regarded her with a stern look, and she noticed that his eyes, like the rest of him, were gray.  

“I angered the wrong people,” he told her.  

“Did you kill that man? The one in the fields?” 

“Yes,” the man said.   

Gen waited for more, but the man said nothing.  

“You murdered him?” 

“I simply chose not to die.” 

“You’re not Piranese.”  

The man laughed. “Accent give that away? No, I’m from Rosenfel. Came here to help a friend, but we were betrayed.” He brought his hands up to continue the incantation. “My friend escaped, thank the Swordsman. Wherever you go, girl, and whatever you do, never trust a man who offers to do you a favor out of the goodness of his heart.” 

Gen nodded at what seemed like sage advice. She already realized that most people were not to be trusted.  

“So, I should trust the stranger who tells me not to trust others?” 

The man laughed. “Stranger? No, girl, now we’re acquaintances. The name’s Ned.”