clever-sadist.com

in a village full of louse and grouse, there lived a boy of no respectful significance or name. His father knew little of anything but the bottom of a bottle or a harsh backhand; and his mother knew less. The boy’s days were filled with chores and frightened cringing beneath the one cupboard the kitchen held.

The village was quaint. Tidy, may be a better description, nestled as it was within the woods heart. The village lay as if the yoke within the egg of the forest. Enough fields and plantations surrounded the actual village for the people to make a living and trade with the brave merchants who tempted the forest from the Kingdom on the other side.

The village was quaint. And the village was quiet.

At any time the pleasantly sweet smell of roasting flesh hung above the thatched roofs blocking the cloying, pungent smell of manure and fermenting grain. Amidst the village, those louse and grouse, they knew of the boy and knew of the boy’s parents and spectacle, but no one cared to help. No one dared to help.

This boy’s name was Harm.

Oh, Harm was of no name, his step-father would not give him one and his mother said he got more than he deserved. Harm no longer argued. The village looked aside when Harm’s step-father taught him lessons; they had since Harm had been young and not the almost man he was now. But Harm took the lessons still even though his step-father had taken on a limp two years back and Harm was taller and stronger.

Maybe his mother loved him, Harm had never pressed the issue. But she never tried to keep his step-father’s fists from flying or comforted Harm when the lumps and bruises began to spread. Her mantra became the sentence he tried his best to keep her from repeating.

“You get more than you deserve.”

For she had already caused Harm, by a father unknown to him, a father he would hopefully never know. A father he couldn’t know, a father of royalty.

The land of Kaden Roe was large and fathomless, indeed, and hardly a noble would pass through the village of louse and grouse. Harm would never be recognized or commented on, except by his stepfather, Lou the Louse.

Harm’s mother had married Lou because he was a continuous source of income and able to feed she and her son and she had silenced herself on the continuous abuse that followed thereafter. She only spoke after her husband slept, merely to say, “You get more than you deserve.”
For the most part, Harm tried his best to stay out of the way. And even through the nonstop lashings and abuse Harm grew up. And he shouldn’t have dared.

Constant work and steady food were fertilizer enough for the boy Harm for he grew tall and masculine; shadows fell just right on his face to show his well defined features. Shoulder length black hair and ice blue eyes fascinated anyone who came across him. His outgrown and outworn clothing were the only betrayal to his heritage.

As tall and strong as Harm had grown the beatings had not stopped but now Lou, Lou the Louse, always kept a sharp wary eye on him through his barrage of fists, frightened of the oppressed striking back but Harm lived on and worked hard and tried to avoid needing a lesson from his step-father. Lou said it he did it to keep Harm humber and show him he was no better than anyone else.

Lou knew himself to be wrong. Lou knew Harm was a prince indeed, Prince Harm of Roe and for this reason and this reason alone was Lou vengeful and jealous of his stepson. But it is said that you can taunt an animal only so long before the animal will bite.
Fall came on Harm’s nineteenth year, as it always did, the grasses fallow and the men harvesting the last of the crops before the first winter freeze. Harm worked and laughed with the rest of the young men, oblivious to some hateful hearts around him scorning his looks and jeering him for his upbringing. When not sweating with a scythe in hand, Harm treated thatch to fix the roofs of the village huts in dire need of repair. The coming winter would be scathing if the summer were any indication and besides, roofing was better than skulking just out of Lou the Louse’ reach and sight.

The wintering months were always rough while Lou was pent up in the house and foul about the ache in his bones brought on by the cold but first frost was still weeks away and Harm wouldn’t worry about that until he must.

But the farmwork of today was merely a prelude to the change and it came swiftly:

A resonate, eerie brass moan, like the braying of a metallic wolf, sounded from the hollow at the eastern edge of the wood breaking the monotonous pitch and sway of the scything and the normal louse and grouse sounds of the village. Like prairie dogs, the heads of the men perked up over the stalks to look around in confusion. A cry went up and all heads turned east.
The view from the village to the forest was clear though the road zigged and it zagged and in some places it curled and nearly cued and was almost helter and most definitely skelter. The sight of the forest edge was unnerving from afar for it looked as if the wood had begun to creep and crawl and edge out upon the fields, not following the road but scything a clear path for the village.

Two men dropped their equipment ran breakneck through the stalks for the village proper before the shock of the moment broke and the rest of the men headed for their homes where they might protect their families. The village green, which here in the village of louse and grouse was actually quite brown and muddy, the women had gathered and were even now surrounded by a ragged group of defenders with scythes and hammers and garden rakes; equipment only a farmer could consider a weapon.

Grown men scowled and exchanged glances while the women flocked together and murmurred and gaggled as if hens at the feed.

Harm stood as transfixed as the other villages; the farm tools in his hand gripped tight out of habit but all but forgotten. It seemed the ground itself undulated and crawled like a massive caterpillar inching it’s way to village proper. Then the mass of movement became clearer as it closed distance, the whole becoming thousands of separates with faces and matching blue/black uniforms with matching swords and hats.

….to be continued