Metal and Flesh (The Rohvim, Book 1)

1.5 Unyielding

The boys kept to the shadows on the way back to their houses—the Switchbacks lived in a seedier part of the city than the Rossam estate, but it was in the same direction. The moon overhead cast a white pall on the stone buildings, and the usually red iron window casings seemed black against the white stone.

“You coming over tomorrow to practice? We’ve still got some time before the tournament,” said Aeden.

“Yeah, but not till the afternoon. I’m supposed to meet someone in the morning.”

Aeden glanced over at his friend, who had been uncharacteristically quite since they left the barracks. “You? Meeting someone?”

“Yes, me. It’s the master healer. He asked me to come by the clinic.”

“Really? The master healer?” Aeden chuckled. “What would he want with you?”

“Maybe to invite me to be a healer,” Priam shrugged, “or something.”

“Father says they’re a bunch of sorcerers.” Aeden lowered his voice. “You’ve never … felt … anything, have you? I mean, like you had powers or something?”

“No. But he wants to see me all the same.”

Aeden nearly thought Priam was joking again, as the other boy was wont to do. It couldn’t register in his mind that someone of as high a stature as the master healer might want to see someone of Priam’s status over Aeden’s. Surely the old man was mistaken. Aeden made up his mind to appear gracious.

“So, you’re going to go? Would you join them if he offered? People like father don’t like them, but the king seems to. And the lord of the city of Elbeth. They both give the society their public support. I’ve heard the priests don’t like that.”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine they would. The priests don’t claim to have any power, but just do all those ritual things and solemn chanting and stuff. Seems pretty boring compared to the healers travelling the kingdom and helping people. The poor and commoners and all that.”

“They heal nobles too. They healed my family during the plague here. I was a kid, but I remember the master healer himself putting a hand on my head and then saying I was clean. Father sure didn’t seem to mind them then, but I remember him grumbling about them after we walked away from the healer’s clinic.”

The full moon had risen to its zenith in the sky, reminding Aeden how late it was, but his family’s estate loomed ahead at the end of the street. A solitary candle burned through the window of his father’s study, and he wondered if perhaps he had been discovered. Peering intently at the empty room, he could detect no motion. Surely his father had just left it burning accidentally. Or one of the servants forgot to make his rounds at the end of the day. He sincerely hoped it was not the second possibility. If Lord Rossam knew of a servant shirking his duty, well, it still pained him to think about the last time that happened.

Priam peeled off down a side street and looked back to Aeden. “I’m off to my house. I have to get up pretty early.”

“Hunting again?”

“Yeah. Father said we need more skins to make me some boots and some new clothes. And he can sell the meat. Plus, he likes exploring the mountains. You know that—he’s brought back some pretty wicked looking things—ancient pieces of metal and stuff. The lord of the city pays him for anything interesting he can find.”

“Ok, see you next week. Remember the pre-trials—don’t miss them,” Aeden said as Priam turned to jog back down the street.

The other boy disappeared and Aeden approached his family’s sprawling estate. The main building, three stories tall, loomed over the street itself with only a small courtyard separating them, while the rear of the massive house looked over a larger courtyard complete with fountain, bathhouse, and several outbuildings for the servants and storehouses for the goods produced on the family’s farms and ranches scattered out past the city walls. As it was still early summer, the tenant farmers and ranchers had not brought in the Rossam’s share of the harvest yet, but come fall the rear of the estate would be bustling.

Creeping up to the door, he reached out a hand to turn the handle. The door swung back before he could touch it, revealing the imposing figure of his father.

He did not look happy.

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Unyielding. Obedient. Perfectly obedient. At least, that was what the lieutenant had assumed about the army now at his command. Obedient they were, of course—really they could be nothing else. But his master had claimed unyielding as well, though at that moment, they seemed to yield easily enough to the bog he had led them through.

At first it was ones and twos that fell into the deeper parts of the thick mud and turgid water of the vast, fetid plain, but soon whole companies began thinning out due to the soldiers who, once they fell in, never seemed to be able to swim or wiggle their way out. A few even screamed as they sank under the murky soup, which quite surprised the lieutenant—he didn’t think they were capable of that. He made a note to ask the master about it. But most simply disappeared beneath the opaque surface of the bog.

They were never meant to swim. They were only meant to march, and fight.

By the time the army had extricated itself from the bog, nearly a third had perished. But it was of no concern, thought the lieutenant—the man his master had given the title Ironfist. A fist of iron to lead the armies of stone, his master had murmured one evening, several days before sending his most trusted follower south with the mass of humanity he had gathered over years of painstaking and patient work.

It was no concern because his master had sent men and women enough, and to spare. The city would be flooded the armies of light and liberation. The nobles would be crushed. The people liberated.

And the world would change, just as the master had said. Just as the Chronicles had prophesied.

Just as the creator himself intended.

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