The Chronicles of Shak: Origin
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As it has been told to me, I tell it to you.
Bevald Seny Csaboreva Manadryal Kaec – Bevald to his friends, steel-tipped death to his enemies, and Seny to everyone else – rode with his fellows, the adventurers known as the Company of the Raven, east through the rocky valleys of the Spurr Foothills towards the Trade Road. They were battle-scarred and flush with trophies and loot from their latest trip into the Giantspire Mountains and they looked forward to three days hence when the sight of Duvik’s Pass would signal their arrival back to the lands surrounding the great city of Povero, their home. It was sometime early in Greengrass of the year 5145.
Riding that day in the dust and sun with Bevald were Tenshen of Many Names, a quiet, wiry Ostrali good at opening things and being unseen, Fijuri Khwin, a Choyen master archer, Dak-niya Niyazi Tafz, the Jaris warrior who generally led or spoke for the company, Dan-zomo Buri Tafz, Niyazi’s fraternal twin and a former combat medic in the Poveran Army, and Bathilda Webweaver, the seductive mistress of the arcane and Bevald’s sometimes lover.
Within sight of the Trade Road, there came a wailing sound close to their path. The party skinned out and discovered an orc, a female Ormuz-kai, with a young child of her own race. They were hidden among some tall rocks and brown brush. The wailing was coming from the child, a dusky olive-skinned boy-child of no more than four years of age. He cried for his mother, and as the party approached they could see why.
The orc woman had been injured, and intentionally. She was alive but only, evidence of several blows and the fletching of two arrows in her back revealing someone’s intent to end her.
Buri went to her and did what she could with her healing skills, but the rivulet of blood leading down the hillside from where she lay told the story that it was clearly too late. As Buri prepared to speak to her gods for their restorative succor, the orc woman began to mumble and speak.
Nobody understood the different tongues of the Ormuz tribes so numerous in the Giantspires. Buri knew some, and did her best to understand for them all. The woman had been “waiting”, she said, for the “one to come”. There was more, something to do with the keening child kneeling at her side whom she called “Shak”, but it was slurred and strange and before Buri could puzzle it out or questions could be asked, the woman’s spirit had passed into the next great journey. There were left only questions, the woman’s few things, and the child.
A cairn was built in silence, the company working the strange event in their heads as they piled rock. It was agreed among them that the child should be returned to the tribe of its origin. A search of the woman’s things for clues to her tribe turned up a flat shard of obsidian rock carved with orc symbols on a leather thong. Khwin studied the fletchings of the arrows recovered from the deceased and between those and the other clues the best guess was an unwelcome one. All signs pointed to the Chupúk-mag, or “Skullcracker” tribe.
The Skullcrackers were a violent and mostly hostile people, and their warriors were among the Ormuz-kai’s most tenacious and cunning. They were feared and shunned by non-orcs and for good reasons backed up by a history including the ritual sacrifice of “outsiders” to their fel deities. Returning the child to them would possibly be a more dangerous expedition then they were used to accepting without a cadre of hired retainers, and they were neither equipped nor prepared for such an undertaking.
The decision to take the child with them to Povero was ultimately made by Bathilda, who – pointing out the tribe’s murder of the boy’s mother – suggested that they might only be returning the boy to a similar fate, and that she would bear no part of it. He was bundled with what they could gather from his mother and put on the pack animal for the ride home.
Upon reaching Povero, the Company drew lots for temporary guardianship of the boy until a more permanent solution could be arranged. Bevald drew the painted mark, and so it was that fate or chance or the gods placed them together for the first time. After tithe, tax, and the company’s cut, the profits from the latest adventure were split and the spearman took his share and his new ward back to his house at Winsor Farms.
The Vos fighter’s return home was a routine he’d practiced over many years as an adventurer. After suffering the suspicious frowns of his neighbors riding through town, he would go through the same activities: stable and settle his mount, stash his hard-fought earnings and the physical loot he took away, clean and repair his fine old Imperial chainmail and war spear, obtained from one of his first forays as a member of the company, and so on. Throughout it all, the now-quiet boy was his shadow – never interfering, never talking, merely following and watching.
When all was done, Bevald found himself a man without a plan. He could feed and shelter a child, but parenting had never been something he had aspired towards. It was an awkward situation for them both.
Eventually, a new routine was established. It consisted of the old routine around the farm, but with Shak, the boy, helping out where he could. Bevald discovered the boy was a surprisingly quick study for an Ormuz, who took to his assigned tasks well and with a quiet intensity which burned in his amber eyes. Over the months that followed the two each became comfortable with the other. Bevald discovered inside of himself a fatherly quality he’d not known existed. It was a gradual metamorphosis from lone warrior/farmer to parent, but it happened.
When Niyazi and Buri visited one evening deep into Harvest of that same year, Niyazi explained that he had secured an arrangement for Shak with the High Church. There was an abbot at the Divine House of Waves who was willing to take the boy on as a Church laborer, assisting with their dockside efforts. The work would be hard, but honest, and no harder than the work on the farm. And the priests would see that they boy received a minimal education.
The idea had much merit. Orphans such as Shak were frequently “adopted” by The Church in such ways. But all Niyazi and Buri had to do was look at how Bevald and Shak looked at each other across the table as they considered the move to know that such an arrangement would no longer be necessary. Buri smiled, yet Niyazi seemed skeptical about making Bevald’s temporary custody permanent.
It mattered not. Before the Jaris twins left the following morning, Bevald had announced to them his intentions with regards to Shak. After they left, he sought out the Poveran Guard captain who served as the local constable and formalized his adoption of the young Ormuz-kai boy.
This is how Bevald Seny Csaboreva Manadryal Kaec – Bevald to his friends, steel-tipped death to his enemies, and Seny to everyone else – became my father, and how I, Shak, became Shak Melos Kardonyeva Manadryal Kaec. Or at least, it was the beginning, as it has been told to me.
I was yet very young, and so the brutality of my birth people and the murder of my mother were memories and emotional scars quickly buried underneath the many daily tasks associated with working on a farm. My new father was a great fighter but a poor farmer and this he knew well, so his choice of crop was hay. It is difficult to grow a poor crop of grass, he would say, and all the other local farms needed hay for their animals, and so he grew it and saved himself the trips to market during harvests and saved the other farmers the acreage they would otherwise have to devote to growing their own hay.
Bevald would leave me alone, sometimes for months at a time. He would spend a week preparing his armor and gear with my help, and then his friends would arrive or he would ride out to meet them and then I would be by myself until he returned. This would occur several times each year, as the Company of the Raven drew contracts or discovered leads or clues to possible wonders, mysteries, and hidden wealth.
While my father was gone I would care for the farm as best as I could. Being a lone Vos adventurer in a community of Barind farmers had not earned Bevald much other than suspicion from his neighbors. His adoption of a barbarian orc child made it worse. During his absences I would spend my time mainly to myself, not venturing away from the farm or into town unless necessary, and then only for brief excursions.
The townspeople never turned violent, but after a while I could understand the intentions in the dour looks and the comments in their language which I did not understand. In a place somewhere inside of me the knowledge of their unprovoked disdain hurt me. But their respect was of little consequence to me and they still bought our hay.
By the Summer of my thirteenth year, the boy I had been had all but given way to the man I would become, at least in body. I had grown tall, taller than my father, and the years spent working the land had made me hard and tough. The imposing nature of my growth had quieted the comments from our neighbors, at least while I was present. I could sense their fear, and while I held no desire to harm anyone and no spite for them in my heart, the fear I saw in the hurried looks away or the crossing to the other side of the road was a secret guilty pleasure I enjoyed.
It was one particular evening of that season when Niyazi returned again to visit my father. I remember it well because he seemed displeased with Bevald over something to do with me. They did not speak to me about it, and when they would catch me listening they would turn or walk away to continue their conversation. When Niyazi left, it was clear the relationship between them had been strained.
After that, Bevald’s trips away from the farm grew fewer by half. My schedule was altered also. A farm hand was hired to assume many of my chores, which were replaced with other responsibilities. I was made to read, which was something completely new. I had never held a book, but in the span of a moon’s turn I had a small collection of them on a shelf in my room by my bed. I didn’t understand them, but my father took time to read them to me, carefully working out the words for my benefit. It was slow-going – not like learning to toss hay.
Bathilda Webweaver arrived on a snow-covered horse during Firetide of that year, wrapped in her cloak like a pillar full of baked goods for market. In packs on her horse were more books, and scrolls, and other things. She was kind, if somewhat homely, I thought. My father did not think so, I knew, and they often would disappear for an hour or two doing things I knew of but had little opportunity to do myself.
Learning to read was easier with her, somehow. She knew tricks of it my father did not, and she molded my speech to a more correct shape and tone. She also taught me about how to speak without speaking, and how to read the unwritten language of expression and posture. She lived with us for a long time. It was a time of gladness.
There were other things my father taught me, things not in books. I already knew how to find the tracks of the small wild critters living around the farm. He added to that the knowledge of how to stalk them, and lure them, and finally how to trap them and cook them. He wanted me to be able to survive off the land. We ate well that year.
Bevald taught me the ways of the Vos, too. These were things his father taught him, and his father’s father before that. We would take trips to Povero and practice things like persuading the guards to let us in without recording our names, or haggling with food merchants over the price of our midday meals. He taught me how to get people to talk about things without realizing, with whom to speak to learn different things, and who not to talk to at all.
At the farm, my lessons expanded. Sometimes I would be with Bevald, sometimes Bathilda, sometimes both. I learned things they had learned from lifetimes spent adventuring: how to ride a horse properly, how to care for my wounds and help others with theirs, how to find my way outside using the sun or the moon and stars, and how to move quietly.
This did not all happen overnight. My education spanned the turning of many moons. During Goldenleaf of my fifteenth year, Bathilda and my father retired from the Company of the Raven. They had each had enough of the constant travelling and had secured enough wealth for themselves that their futures were fairly set whatever path they chose. Bathilda opened a shop in Povero, selling books, scrolls, and other mystical rarities and arcane or alchemical things. My father returned to live at the farm, which greatly pleased my heart, for I had grown to feel as a true son and he as a true father.
It wasn’t until after he retired that my father taught me the spear. It seemed natural enough – he had taught me everything else, after all. I had always considered the spear to be a poor choice of weapon compared to the sword and shield that I had seen so many men use and use well. But my father corrected my thinking very quickly. The speed and precision as he worked the deadly, leaf-shaped steel at the end of the long shaft was amazing, and somewhat unsettling at first. While I had always known my father was a warrior I had never seen him actually fight with deadly earnest. As he led me through the forms I wondered how many times he had killed with the weapon I held in my hands.
I grew to respect the spear, and over time my proficiency with it improved. I could never best him in our duels, using the hay thumpers with padding on the end for a fake blade. But I could see the satisfaction he took in my progress and ability.
When Bevald felt my skill with the spear was satisfactory he added a new wrinkle. Now when we practiced, I would wear armor. How to move properly with the weight and bulk of the protective coverings was a lesson in itself. How to fight while wearing a suit of linked chain was even harder still. But, as with anything else, time and practice erased the awkwardness and discomfort and replaced it with grace and endurance.
In my seventeenth year, on a cold Deepwinter night, we were visited by the Company of the Raven. Niyazi spoke to my father again, away from where my ears could hear little more than the urgency of his tone. Bathilda was with him, but she seemed absent, lost in her own troubled thoughts. She greeted me warmly but I sensed a forced distance in her that I never completely understood.
When the discussion was over, my father told me that he would be leaving again. He instructed me to practice my spear and care for the farm as always – not that there was much to do with snow on the fields. His eyes were full of grave concern but his tone was as solidly stern as it always was when he would prepare himself for another ranging.
When I made my goodbyes to him the following morning, when I watched him ride away with the others, I did not know it would be for the last time. Looking back, I think, maybe I did know somewhere deep inside. You might say I felt it more than knew it. Had I known it, I would have said some things of my appreciation for him and the life he gave me. Now those things go unsaid and make for rough, bumpy edges on my Vos heart.
It was Bathilda who returned to the farm the following month. Her horse led Bevald’s, which pulled a small wagon. We buried his body together as she told me of his death, fighting some terrible creature in some forgotten place. The creature had been defeated and this was somehow important, but I heard little through the fog of my grief.
When she returned to the city I was alone again. The first night I couldn’t sleep, nor the second. The third found me in the field where my father’s marker lay, under a short, old tree in the corner of a hay plot near a brook. I knelt there, weary from the helplessness I felt as much as the lack of sleep. A memory stalked in my mind. It bade me to wail, but I would not even though I wanted to.
I wasn’t an Ormuz-kai child lost in the wilderness watching my mother fade away as her life ran down the hillside. No, there was no parallel here. This was different. I was different. I had grown, and learned, and become more than that.
The sound which came out of me was primal, visceral, drawn from the depths of my soul. It was no child’s wail but a scream of agony, a war cry, an angry explosion of futility’s suffering that echoed throughout the night-enshrouded farm and the farms beyond. I wanted everyone to hear it. I wanted the gods to hear it. Hear it they did.
My father and I were of surprisingly similar build, so sizing the armor was a trifle. Even the eagle-adorned helm fit well enough. The horse was an old friend I’d groomed for many years, so it would accept me. I knew now, finally, why fate had spared me and set me on this path so many years ago. Or like the day my father rode beyond my sight for the last time, I felt it more than I knew.
I donated all the riches Bevald had stashed to The Church and the Winsor Farms common fund, saving only enough to maintain the farm. After that, much of the sideways glances stopped - funny how coin can change people’s opinions of you, but that is another story for another time.
I closed up the farm, saddled my horse, and rode for Povero. With my father’s spear in my hands, I would find my own riches, and my own glory.
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