
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/2805119.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      A_Land_Fit_for_Heroes_-_Richard_Morgan
  Relationship:
      Ringil_Eskiath/OMC, Ringil_Eskiath/Grace-of-Heaven_Milacar, Ringil
      Eskiath/the_Ravensfriend, Ringil_Eskiath/Jelim_Dasnal
  Character:
      Ringil_Eskiath, OMC, Grace-of-Heaven_Milacar, Gingren_Eskiath_(junior),
      Creglir_Eskiath, Ishil_Eskiath, Jelim_Dasnal, Gingren_Eskiath, Mershist
      Wrathrill, Archeth_Indamaninarmal, Flaradnam_Indamaninarmal, Grashgal_the
      Wanderer, Egar_Dragonbane
  Additional Tags:
      Gay_Male_Character, Sexual_Experimentation, Homophobia, Swordfighting,
      Psychological_Trauma, Power_Dynamics, Sexual_Roleplay, Heroic_Sword,
      Comrades_in_Arms
  Collections:
      Yuletide_2014
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-12-20 Words: 5620
****** Five Ways Ringil Eskiath Learned to Fight ******
by mific
Summary
     How Ringil Eskiath learned to fight, in bed, and out of it.
Notes
     Written for Yuletide 2014, for Kabal42 who shares my enjoyment of the
     ‘Land Fit for Heroes’ fantasy series by Richard Morgan. I hope I’ve
     managed some of what you wanted.
     One problem I had was that canon itself—especially as it relates to
     Ringil’s earlier life—contains some things on your "do not want" list
     and you were keen for some close-to-canon backstory. So this is
     canon-typical and if it’s somewhat darker than you may have wanted,
     my apologies. I've skated around the specific non-con of canon and
     hope that the dS games I've written, although a little dub-con, are
     consensual enough not to bother you.
     Warnings: Graphic violence, and underage in modern terms, although
     not necessarily for the world of canon, where Ringil’s mother is
     married at age twelve and has four adult children by the time she’s
     forty. Regarding non-con: there’s a reference to the rape that occurs
     in canon, but nothing graphic. Some of Ringil’s dS relationships can
     be read as dub-con, although I’ve tried to write them as consensually
     as possible, but if you view all underage sex as non-con then I need
     to warn for that.
     The timeline's a little hard to figure out from canon and I may not
     have it right—also, there's probably some overlap. In my head, Jelim
     dies when they're both about 15, Ringil runs with street gangs in his
     early to mid-teens and works for Grace-of-Heaven from age 15, after
     Jelim's execution. Ringil (in my headspace) attends the Trelayne
     Military Academy from age 17. I added Verryn in there from when
     Ringil is 13, up until Jelim's arrest two years later.
     I did end up reading The Dark Defiles in the run-up to writing this,
     and there are a few references from that, but I hope, no actual
     spoilers.
See the end of the work for more notes
                                   ~~ooOoo~~
The Fighting Dance — Blademaster Verryn
Ringil Eskiath hated his tedious fucking tutors. They smelled of ink and dust,
of old, musty books and jerking off alone in their chambers, traditionally
sited in the part of the mansion where the Eskiath family’s noble apartments
gave way to humbler accommodations for the servants. His tutors almost ruined
his natural intellect and love of reading, forcing him to plough through
ponderous classics. They tried to make him write musical notation—a lost
cause—and droned on about penmanship and the history of Trelayne—which as far
as Ringil could see was largely lies invented to glorify the Fair City’s
founders, who’d most likely been murdering bullies.
Then, in Ringil’s thirteenth year, Blademaster Verryn was hired by House
Eskiath to train Ringil and his older brother Gingren in swordsmanship,
knifework, and the warrior’s arts.
Verryn was from Hinerion, a mongrel port city part-way between Trelayne,
capital of the northern League-states, and Yhelteth, capital of the Empire to
the south. He was a mongrel as well, sired on his Trelayne-born mother by a
passing Yhelteth soldier. Verryn was compact and lithe with a mobile, big-nosed
face, darker-skinned than the denizens of Trelayne. Ringil, too, had Yhelteth
ancestry through his mother, Ishil, which had given him his crow-black hair.
Verryn had learned blade skills as a soldier and mercenary, and had studied for
some time at the legendary Demlarashan Cloister, where adepts spun in an
ecstasy of bladework. Or...had spun, until the Revelation crushed all competing
brands of mysticism, forcing Verryn and the other adepts to flee and sell their
swords and skills. He was in his twenties, hard-muscled and scarred, with a
neat chin-beard. To Ringil’s mind, Verryn was excitingly mature, half or more
of his years already dedicated to combat. It lent him a dark glamour.
Ringil learned Verryn’s history in the bed in Verryn’s chambers near the
armoury, after becoming his favourite pupil in every way. Not that there’d been
much competition—his older brother Gingren approached swordsmanship as he did
all else: ploddingly, dutifully, as a necessary responsibility befitting his
noble birth. Ringil’s younger siblings were deemed too young for martial
tutoring, which was just as well, as Ringil might have skewered that little
shit Creglir if he’d been matched with him.
Ringil took to bladework with a passion, felt it slot into his being like a
missing part of his soul.
Verryn approved. “Dance, boy, dance—become one with the blade!” he'd exhorted,
his southern accent always thicker when he was aroused.
“This isn’t a sword,” panted Ringil. “It’s a cheap half-length practice toy for
children. I’m not a fucking child!” He’d been training with Verryn for a year
now, and felt he was owed a better blade—Gingren already had the broadsword
required by the Academy where he was enrolled the following spring, and Ringil
coveted it. Not that his father or brother had ever taken any notice of what
Ringil wanted.
“Indeed, no, not a child,” Verryn said, eyes flicking appreciatively down
Ringil’s body. The transition to adulthood had Ringil in its clutches by then,
his body maturing, with Verryn’s training, from coltish lankiness to muscled
grace.
Ringil felt uncomfortable and excited, heat rising in him and loosening his
tongue. “Show me that Yhelteth cross-parry again?”
Verryn gave him an appraising look, then stepped in behind him, positioning his
arms, sliding a thigh between Ringil’s legs to correct his stance, pressing him
upright against his own body with a hand to Ringil’s belly. Ringil could feel
the heat and hardness of Verryn’s erection in the small of his back and it made
him shiver, the games he played with Jelim a faint echo of the dark coiling
want that rose in him with Verryn.
“Tonight, boy,” Verryn breathed in Ringil’s ear. “My room, yes?” His hand slid
down to cup and squeeze, and Ringil pushed his stirring cock into the calloused
palm, gasping. Verryn’s rooms being situated off an empty passage near the
armoury rather than deep in the maze of the servants’ quarters proved
remarkably useful, that night and many others.
Ringil knew his parents would see Verryn as a depraved corrupter of youth. In
Verryn’s bed, sprawled sweaty and content, he learned that Verryn had fled to
Trelayne to escape a Yhelteth beheading on exactly those charges. Ringil wasn’t
the first pupil Verryn had bedded. He didn’t care.
Ringil knew what he wanted, knew what had fired his pulse and made his heart
race even before the storm of puberty kicked in, and it wasn’t breasts or
petticoats. He’d watched men on the street, the younger, tighter-arsed servants
in the gardens or stable, and the sons of the rich and noble families in his
parents’ social circle. Watched them covertly, and wanted. From the servants
he’d heard tales of the sexual experimentation boys got up to elsewhere, and
envied the children of more modest households who attended day-schools. Ringil
had no friends, just his useless brothers, distant parents, and idiot tutors.
A few weeks shy of thirteen, Ringil had met Jelim Dasnal—a wealthy merchant’s
son his own age who was bored with the gossip and political chatter at the
annual ball House Eskiath hosted for the Trelayne harvest festival. He and
Ringil had conspired to escape into the humid autumn night, playing tag in the
walled gardens and outbuildings before skirting a sleeping stablehand, a
drained flagon of ale cradled in his arm. They nestled in an unused stall
filled with sweet, new-cut straw, whispering and giggling, touching and kissing
until a servant called from the courtyard for Jelim to join his parents at the
carriage.
So Ringil already knew he liked boys, that he was bent. Verryn wasn’t a boy,
though—he made Ringil’s head spin and his blood pound. Verryn’s prowess as a
fighter and the dangerous knowledge that he’d killed added a dark gloss of the
forbidden. Hoiran knew, Ringil had never excited much interest or praise from
his father, too busy with politics and commerce to take note of his second son
except to admonish or correct. They’d always rubbed each other awry, Ringil too
headstrong and outspoken, unable to play the obedient son his father demanded,
retreating into sullen silence after too many blows from his father’s sword-
calloused hand taught him a measure of circumspection.
In some ways, Verryn was the father Ringil had always needed—attentive and
appreciative of his efforts, setting clear rules and keen to teach. If some of
the skills he taught were how to pleasure him in bed, how to give a hand-job
and a competent blow-job without teeth getting in the way, well, those were
useful. Certainly to Ringil, who knew what he liked, and blow-jobs were high on
the list. That first night in Verryn's bed Ringil came in Verryn’s mouth,
muffling his cries in the crook of his arm as Verryn held his helplessly
bucking hips down and sucked him off expertly. Ringil liked giving as much as
getting, sprawled on the sheets between Verryn’s legs or kneeling at his
bedside, moaning around Verryn’s—thank Hoiran—modestly sized cock as he learned
to open his throat and take him in deep.
What he had with Jelim was different—a sweet, springtime love. It lacked the
dark, terrifyingly exciting edge of being fucked by someone stronger and more
powerful who could and did hold Ringil down and take what he wanted from his
body. Jelim and Ringil explored and experimented. Ringil got to be the
experienced one, to show Jelim what it was like to be fucked, to have a cock in
you, until the heat and tightness of Jelim’s perfect arse shattered his
pretence at worldliness and they ended up going at it like jackrabbits. No
matter—they were young, so they just did it again once they’d recovered.
And again and again, whenever they could steal some time and privacy, careful
to seem only friends, well aware that Trelayne law would not tolerate their
desires, would see them only as degenerates to be punished harshly if they were
discovered. Both were used to privilege and to their families cushioning any
misbehaviour with wealth and influence, but even so, sex with Jelim still had
the lure of the forbidden, and that was multiplied many times over with Verryn.
In the end, it was all one for Ringil—his passion for fighting, for the dance
of blades, blood pounding as he slashed and wove, and his lust and longing for
Verryn. Fighting made him hard, thereafter—a common enough occurrence, but
perhaps not to the degree Ringil experienced it. Maybe Verryn had warped him,
but Ringil was no innocent child—he’d used Verryn as much as Verryn had used
him, eager to learn all he could. He learned to master his lust and channel it
into the fighting trance, and on his fifteenth birthday, Verryn gifted him his
first true sword, a sleek Yhelteth rapier, beautifully balanced.
Verryn vanished without a word when the thing with Jelim went to hell. One more
betrayal. One more loss. But it was Verryn who forever made bladework the love
of Ringil’s life.
 
                                   ~~ooOoo~~
Rage — Jelim Dasnal
Jelim’s execution crushed any trace of springtime left in Ringil. There was a
terrible inexorability to the progression of events after they were caught
fucking in the stables—first, his father’s political manoeuvering to save
Ringil’s life at the expense of Jelim’s, whose merchant family had a less-
exalted name and fewer contacts. Then the trial, Judge Kaad sentencing Jelim to
public impalement with gloating self-righteousness. Finally the horror of the
barbed iron spike ratcheting up through Jelim’s young body as he hung in a
public cage at the Eastern Gate. Ringil vomited his remaining innocence out,
surrounded by Eskiath men-at-arms on the observation platform beside his stone-
faced father.
A human mind has limits—there was no conscious place for that much rage and
horror to lodge. Oh, Ringil thought he remembered that day, for all he tried to
suppress and forget, but what leaked into memory, what he sweated through in
nightmares and shaking flashbacks, was mere surface froth. The true record of
that day was wordless and insane, buried deep in his being.
Jelim’s killing flash-forged Ringil’s contempt for his father into life-long
bitter hatred. It set Ringil forever against authority, made him hate cruelty
and made him cruel. Made him, of course, hate himself.
It gave Ringil’s fighting a ruthless, febrile edge, driven by the wordless
inner screaming buried deep on the day Jelim Dasnal was impaled by order of the
Trelayne Committee for Public Morals. Sometimes, in the heat of battle, the
spiralling madness of that scream leapt from his throat and drove his sword-
arm. Sometimes it saved his life, always an ambivalent proposition for Ringil.
Sometimes it led to great deeds, to him being called ‘hero’, an even more
ambivalent result. It made some men revere him, made others fear him.
All that came later, of course; when he was old enough and hardened enough that
the inner screaming sometimes escaped without smashing him into component
atoms. At the time, Jelim’s death fucked him up in all the usual ways—drugs,
crime, bad company.
But the screaming was always there, especially when he was fighting. Especially
when he was killing.
 
                                   ~~ooOoo~~
Fighting Dirty — Grace-of-Heaven Milacar
Ringil joined Grace-of-Heaven Milacar’s criminal operation because Milacar had
too much on him to refuse, but also for the sex.
Ringil had been running with street gangs like the Basement Boys and the Brides
of Silt down in Harbour End since before Verryn joined the household. His
issues with his father went way back, and it was how Ringil thumbed his nose at
the whole fucked-up Eskiath clan. Verryn, of course, disapproved, but Ringil
ignored him.
After Jelim’s execution and Verryn’s strategic disappearance, Ringil got
careless and even wilder, taking insane risks and working on smoking his own
bodyweight in krin. A few months of that, and he was nabbed by Milacar’s
enforcers and clipped over the head with a billy club. He surfaced to find
himself tied naked to Milacar’s bed, where he was informed in no uncertain
terms that in order to pay off his drug debts he was now “on the team”, as
Grace-of-Heaven put it. Ringil had seen Milacar around Harbour End and liked
what he’d seen. He’d pretty much engineered this scenario and wasn’t at all
averse to being tied to Milacar’s bed. “On what team?” he asked, unsure if
Grace meant his criminal operation or if he wanted Ringil to work off his debt
in the bedroom.
“Thief gang,” Grace explained laconically, sprawled in a comfortable chair
wearing nothing but an unbuttoned silk robe, cleaning his nails with a dagger.
“And you’ll take orders from Vinn-the-Knife. She runs the gang. None of your
entitled Eskiath bullshit here—this is Salt Warren turf and you’re mine: I own
you.” He set down the dagger and glared at Ringil. “You have any idea how many
contracts on you I had to buy? You’ve pissed off a bunch of powerful people.”
Ringil rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’m a bad boy, Grace.” He grinned up at
Milacar. "I can call you Grace, yes? Your full name’s kind of a mouthful.”
“You’ll call me sir,” Grace snarled and strode over to the bed. He was stocky
and compact, no fat on him, all muscle. No real resemblance, but somehow he
reminded Ringil of Verryn. Maybe Ringil just wanted to be reminded of Verryn.
“I’ll give you a mouthful,” Grace rasped, opening Ringil’s mouth and shoving
his hard cock in, straddling Ringil’s head and fucking his throat. He kept
Ringil tied there for hours, playing with him in between meetings with thief
gang captains, businessmen currying favour, and his enforcers. By the time he
finally let Ringil come, Ringil was indeed calling him sir, mindless with want.
Ringil kicked off his dalliance with organised crime by helping Vinn steal the
less noticeable antiques from the Eskiath mansion. He spent a lot of time
fucking—or to be more accurate, being fucked by—Grace and rose in the ranks to
lead his own thief gang, then worked as an enforcer. Grace taught him strategy
and cunning—that and street fighting, dirty moves practised in Grace’s bedroom,
the payoff for successfully besting Grace being removal of the cock-ring, and
Ringil being allowed to suck Grace while jerking himself off.
Ringil’s training with Grace-of-Heaven Milacar served him well in years to
come, when he was once again acting the part of a scion of House Eskiath. No
one expected a Trelayne noble from the Glades to fight as dirty as any Harbour
End thug, as well as wielding a lethal blade. Ringil also learned leadership
skills from Grace that were far more practical than the crap taught at the
Trelayne Military Academy. They were useful later, when Ringil led squads of
terrified men in the war against the Scaled Folk.
Possibly that was one reason the Academy refused to publish his post-war
treatise on skirmish warfare—there was too much of Grace-of-Heaven Milacar in
it.
 
                                   ~~ooOoo~~
Patience — Mershist Wrathrill
All the League’s noble sons attended the Trelayne Military Academy for training
in swordsmanship and the arts of warfare. It was required, if you were to have
any future in society. Ringil entered the Academy when he was seventeen,
largely to appease his mother. Ishil had lost patience with his delinquent
abandonment of the Eskiath name and status, running wild in Harbour End with
gangs and known criminals. His father he could have withstood, bolstered by
hatred, but when Ishil fixed him with a steely glare and told him to pull
himself together and grow up, he reluctantly acquiesced.
After Ringil’s forced initiation into the systematic abuse that greeted all
juniors, he left the Academy three years later with a better understanding of
the tangled bonds of shame and complicity linking the great and the good of
Trelayne in a corrupt web. And with renewed contempt for his family and their
peers. His swordsmanship was more polished—if duelling was your main purpose in
life—and he at least grasped prevailing military theory and strategy, useless
though it was likely to prove in any real conflict.
He also left with a slow-burning hatred of Mershist Wrathrill, his chief
abuser, but Ringil had learned enough from the history of warfare and Grace-of-
Heaven Milacar to set that aside and wait patiently until opportunity presented
itself.
                                   ~~ooOoo~~
The cliff-top at Demlarashan was worse than any hell raved about by fanatical
cults of the Revelation. The heat was a stifling weight, the sun bronze in a
white-hot sky, and knots of reptile peons grappled with beleaguered soldiers
from the Imperial forces. Some soldiers, by their colours, were allies from
Trelayne, Ringil saw as he and Egar thundered past on their warhorses,
scattering reptile peons to either side as they neared the monster that had
hatched the horde.
The dragon turned, tail lashing out over the cliff’s edge. She had clawed her
way a hundred feet up the sheer cliffs after swimming ashore, drawn by the
noise of battle and the stench of spilled blood—that of humans, and of her
reptile progeny. She dug her claws into the cliff-top and shrieked, then spat a
long stream of venom at them. Somehow, Ringil and Egar veered around the
corrosive blast, only a few sizzling droplets landing on their cuirasses and
boiled leather armour. Soldiers behind them, unable to escape the poison,
screamed and died.
They were on her then, inside the range of her venom glands, no clue how to
kill the beast towering above them. Ringil’s horse went down under a vast
taloned foot, but the screaming rage had already welled up in him, carrying him
in a crazed leap onto the dragon’s thigh, a knife in each hand stabbed between
the scales to haul himself up the burnished flank to a ridged spinal crest
where he sheathed the blades, handholds abundant now as he clawed his way
forward to the head. Below him, Egar’s horse ran riderless inland but there was
no sign of the Majak. At least the beast seemed to have forgotten her other
tormentor in trying to unseat Ringil.
He let the screaming in his head drive him on past fear or reason, clutching
the ridged crest with both hands, his sword sheathed until he was clinging to
the flared frill of spines around the dragon’s neck. Ringil pulled himself up
against them, drew his blade and leaned over, stabbing his sword at the
dragon’s bulging eye. She shrieked again, writhing, but not from Ringil’s
attack which had fallen short. Ringil heard Egar bellowing in berserker fury
and saw, as the beast shook him until his teeth rattled, a gout of acidic blood
spray out from the dragon’s throat where Egar’s staff-lance had sliced through
scales and flesh. Ringil raised his broadsword and hacked at the dragon’s neck-
frill, slicing away a swathe which let him finally reach over and plunge his
blade deep into the huge eye.
Then he was falling—thrown free still clutching the sword which seemed welded
to his arm—as the dragon howled and thrashed, Egar dancing around her feet;
harrying her, he later learned, until, maddened, she surged towards the sea her
refuge, forgetting the high cliff she’d climbed. Ringil fell onto the heaped
corpses of the squad felled by the venom blast, breaking his fall and further
pitting his armour with corrosion. Closer to the cliff’s edge he saw Egar on
hands and knees, retching, winded by a swipe of the tail-tip as the dragon
fell.
Ringil lay there stunned as the dragon’s last shriek cut off in an earth-
shattering crash and she met her doom on the rocky shore below.
Someone groaned, an odd, bubbling sound. For a moment Ringil thought it was
him, then realised it came from the pile of bodies where he’d landed. A
survivor. He levered himself wearily up and sheathed his sword, a mass of
bruises but probably no broken bones, and began dragging the venom-splattered
bodies aside. Under the dead foot soldiers was an officer in Trelayne
colours—what was left of them. He was badly burned across chest and arms—the
vitriol had eaten him down to the bone in places. No surviving that, but he was
not yet dead, staring up at Ringil, his face wracked with pain. Ringil knew
that face.
“I can honestly say, Mershist, that I’m happy to see you here,” Ringil said,
using the tattered Trelayne colours to wipe acid from his gloves.
A rasping croak came from Mershist Wrathrill’s throat. Probably damaged by
inhaled venom—his lungs would be filling with fluid. “…Es…kiath…”
“That’s me,” said Ringil, baring his teeth in a grin. “Delighted you remember.
I certainly remember you.”
“…kill…me…” rasped Mershist, his eyes desperate.
“There was a time I’d have jumped at the chance, but no. You’re not fucking
worth it.”
Ringil left him dying in the pile of corpses, and went to help Egar.
 
                                   ~~ooOoo~~
The Iron Promise — The Ravensfriend
Two years before he and Egar met the dragon at Demlarashan, when he was not
long graduated from the Academy, Ringil, Egar at his side, headed back across
Yhelteth to their barracks after a briefing about the progress of the Lizard
Wars. To Ringil's mind, the main message from the briefing had been "we're
fucked", so he planned to do some krin and get drunk.
Egar stopped where a side-street climbed away from the main road in a series of
shallow steps and tilted his chin up towards the houses on the hill. The
nobility of Yhelteth lived there in a maze of walled gardens, flowering trees
and shaded balconies. And plenty of armed guards to keep out the hoi
polloi—unless you had the favour of the lady of the house.
“Ah, Gil? I’m just…”
Ringil waved one hand. “Yeah, yeah. Go see Imrana. Get yourself laid.”
Egar grinned. “Might do. Might read poetry.”
Ringil rolled his eyes. “Oh, very likely.”
Egar smirked more widely. “She’s got some pretty hot poetry. Never knew poets
had such dirty minds.”
“All the ones I ever knew did,” Ringil said, remembering one back in Trelayne
who’d written verses calling him “Angeleyes” and celebrating the “pale peach-
like globes” of his arse. Twat. Ringil’d had to steal the pages and burn them,
as much to destroy the hideous purple prose as to avoid arrest. That damned
Angeleyes nickname had leaked out somehow, though, and stuck.
Egar clapped him on the shoulder and bounded off up the steep laneway. They’d
been assigned to the same squad—Ringil, as a Knight Graduate, was nominally in
charge with Egar as his lieutenant. Steppe Majaks didn’t pay much attention to
Imperial or League military hierarchies, and Ringil was well aware that Egar
would follow Ringil’s orders only if he thought them worth following. They’d
liked each other from the start, which boded well, and both were seasoned
fighters, although not yet against the Scaled Folk. The rest of their men were
raw recruits, or to use Egar’s phrase, “fresh lizard-meat”.
Ringil took the back-alleys to the barracks, emerging on the far side of a
small square opposite the entrance to his squad’s billet. He stopped, frowning
at the scene greeting him. A tall, black-skinned woman stood in front of the
barracks’ entrance, booted to the thigh and clad in a tight-fitting black
jerkin and pants that shimmered oddly, hurting his eyes in the sunlight. She
was wrapped with several harnesses holding sheathed knives. He suspected the
shimmering stuff was Kiriath armour—she was clearly Kiriath. He’d seen groups
of them in the main thoroughfares, coming and going from the palace. Rare to
see one alone.
The woman was facing down one of the priests of the Revelation, whose
deliberately torn gown and bare feet proclaimed him as being from an especially
fanatical sect. The priest was shouting at her, spittle flying, but other than
narrowing her eyes she just stood there, arms crossed, implacably barring the
barracks’ door. One of Ringil’s newly-recruited squad hovered behind her in the
doorway, pale and wide-eyed.
Ringil crossed the square. “The fuck’s going on here?” he snapped.
The priest continued ranting, but the Kiriath woman turned and looked him up
and down. “And you are?”
“Knight Graduate Ringil Eskiath of the Imperial forces.” Ringil nodded at the
recruit in the doorway. “He’s one of mine.”
She raised an eyebrow, ignoring the enraged prelate. “I’m kir-Archeth, of Clan
Indamaninarmal. Do I call you Knight Eskiath? Sir Eskiath?”
“Call me Gil,” he said. Ringil tipped his head at the priest. “Who’s your
friend?”
She fixed the priest with a jaundiced gaze. “This is Invigilator Clethru. He
claims that your soldier here,”—a head-tilt to the anxious recruit behind
her,—“blasphemed against the Revelation. Wants to take him to the Citadel.” She
shrugged. “I happened to be passing and felt sorry for the kid.” She and Ringil
exchanged a look and Ringil nodded. The Kiriath, from what he’d heard, might
not gainsay the official state religion, but as scientists and engineers they
were too rational to buy into it. Ringil had been raised with the Dark Court,
the northern pantheon, but what little faith in interventionist deities he’d
ever had as a child had been burned away in the crucible of Jelim’s death.
As he thought that, he felt an odd prompting to look up, as though a hand had
tugged on his hair, forcing his head back. He saw movement on the roof three
stories above, where masons were adding two extra levels to the barracks to
house the incoming draft. Ringil squinted into the harsh blue of Yhelteth’s
sky, then cursed and leaped forward, knocking Archeth through the doorway. They
barrelled into the recruit and all three crashed to the floor in a tangle of
limbs and imprecations.
Ringil felt the blade of a knife under his jaw and froze, then a thunderous
smash sounded from behind him and the ground shook, stone chips flying past and
rattling off the corridor walls and floor. A few flying stone splinters pierced
Ringil’s coat and lodged shallowly in his back. He’d fallen over Archeth, whose
knife-hand never faltered. The recruit had scrambled back down the passage
crabwise and was muttering an old prayer to Firfirdar, Queen of the Dark Court,
mistress of dice and death. No wonder the kid had pissed off the invigilator.
“You saw that block falling?” Archeth asked. She took a shaky breath and
dropped her blade. “Saved my life.” She looked a little sheepish. “Sorry about
the knife. Automatic reflex.”
“No problem,” said Ringil. “I, yeah. I saw something move, looked up just in
time. Fucking masons should be sacked.”
“They’ll have run off by now, probably for good. Emperor Akal wouldn’t have
just had them sacked if I’d been flattened, he’d have had them dismembered.”
“Yeah,” Ringil nodded. “Well, just an accident, no need to make a fuss about
it.”
“Ah…Gil?”
“Yeah?” he said vaguely. Reaction was setting in; he felt a little strange.
“Get the fuck off me?”
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
They hoisted themselves up, then peered out into the small square. A block of
stone that must have been two cubits a side when it was whole had crashed down
where they’d been standing and shattered into several lethal shards. Even
inside the building, Ringil had been lucky to escape injury. He thought again
of that ghostly tug on his hair and shivered, wondering at his luck.
Fate had not been kind to Invigilator Clethru. A chunk of stone the size of a
large turnip had eviscerated him and he’d bled out on the pavement of the
square.
Ringil squatted and examined the wedge-shaped hunk of rock that had smashed
through the priest’s abdomen, severing spine and blood vessels. The symbol for
Firfirdar had been scratched into the stone: a pair of dice, burning. Archeth
bent over his shoulder. “What’s that?”
“Firfirdar’s mark.” He glanced up at her. “She’s a northern deity these days.”
Ringil shrugged. “Workman who carved it might be from the north, or still
secretly hold to the old ways. They put her symbol on the stones for luck and
to stave off accidents.” He made a face. “She’s the queen of fate and luck. And
death.”
“Hmmm. Not sure if she's not doing her job, then, or doing it only too well.”
Archeth straightened, and Ringil rose from his crouch. He rolled his shoulders,
wincing. “You’re hurt,” she said, turning him, examining the blood-stained
rents in his coat.
“Not badly—a few stone fragments cut my back. I’ll have the regimental surgeon
clean it up.”
“One of those butchers? Yeah, no. I’ve a carriage on the main street. Come on,
you’ll see the palace physician—least I can do. My father’s Flaradnam
Indamaninarmal, adviser to Emperor Akal. He’d never forgive me if Knight
Graduate Ringil Eskiath, saviour of his beloved daughter, got blood-poisoning.”
Ringil turned back to the doorway where most of his squad were now clustered in
nervous excitement, their eyes flicking to and away from the priest’s bloody
corpse. He sighed. Hoiran’s balls, they were absolutely going to be lizard-meat
unless he and Egar could beat them into shape.
“Shass! You and Tannet check the roof, although I’m sure you won’t find anyone.
Rhellen and Mace, go to the nearest guard post and explain what happened, then
get this mess cleaned up after the body’s removed. And for Hoiran’s sake,
Kidnen, don’t swear by the Dark Court in front of fucking priests. You’re damn
lucky this one’s in no state to report you. I’m escorting the lady kir-Archeth
to the palace.” A flurry of sir!s and they scurried off, glad to be told what
to do. Ringil sighed again. Fucking infants.
“Escorting me, are you?” said Archeth, amused.
“Sounds impressive,” Ringil said. “Little leadership trick I learned up north.”
He faked a slightly sarcastic bow. “Lead on, milady.”
                                   ~~ooOoo~~
Three months later, at An-Monal, Grashgal the Wanderer presented Ringil with a
newly forged Kiriath steel broadsword and scabbard, a gift from Clan
Indamaninarmal for saving Archeth’s life. Ringil was already fast friends with
Archeth, Flaradnam and Grashgal by then, having been taken under the wing of
the Indamaninarmal clan.
“Well, I say ‘forged’, but really these blades are grown. It’s a complex
process,” said Grashgal. Flaradnam nodded, ebony face solemn, eyes twinkling.
Ringil held the sword in both hands, speechless. He’d had no idea they were
planning this. The blade was covered with gleaming Kiriath script. Archeth
leaned over, pointed. “That’s its name,” she said.
Ringil looked at Grashgal, raised an eyebrow. Grashgal shrugged. “It’s
complicated. Hard to translate from High Kir.”
Archeth frowned at the script and read, hesitantly, “I am…Welcomed in
the…Home…of Ravens and…Other Scavengers…in the Wake of Warriors.” She grimaced.
“It’s a clumsy translation, and only part of the name.”
“Even so, bit long for a sword’s name,” said Ringil. “Welcomed by ravens? …I’ll
call it the Ravensfriend.”
Archeth helped him into the scabbard harness and showed him how the side seam
split open when he unsheathed the blade, granting him precious moments of
advantage. He sheathed and unsheathed it, feeling the sword’s perfect balance,
how it sang as he slid it in and out of the scabbard.
“You’ll need it,” Flaradnam said grimly. “A messenger just arrived from the
palace. Scaled Folk rafts have washed ashore all along Rajal beach. Looks like
a major hatching—we’re all to be deployed there.” He tilted his head at
Archeth. “No, not you, daughter. Someone must manage the Emperor.”
“You can’t keep me out of the front lines forever, Dad,” Archeth said bitterly.
“I can try,” replied Flaradnam, his face set.
Ringil barely heard their argument, sheathing and unsheathing his new sword,
mesmerised. It felt like an extension of his arm. It felt alive.
“In, out, in, out.” Archeth had given up on her father and wandered over,
grinning. “It’s like pornography, Gil, watching you play with it.”
“Fuck off,” said Ringil. “Don’t bad-mouth my new love.”
Archeth shook her head, amused. “Come on, lover boy, the wedding feast’s in the
other room.”
Ringil went to sheathe the sword, then stopped, caught by a gleam on the blade
just under the hilt. He held it close, tilting the tiny inlaid engraving to
catch the light. A pair of dice, burning.
“Archeth?” Ringil asked, a cold shiver running down his spine. “Why would a
Kiriath sword have the Dark Queen’s symbol on it?”
She peered at it, shrugged. “Something in the forging? Dad says the swords name
themselves, and choose their own patterning. Apparently it’s—”
“Science, not magic,” Ringil recited with her in tandem. “Yeah, right.”
Archeth grinned. “I’m not getting into that shit with him again.” She turned
towards the back room. “Food’s getting cold.”
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” said Ringil. He hefted the broadsword in his hands,
staring at it. “Fate and death, is it?” he said. “I’m in.”
Ringil sheathed his sword and followed Archeth, the Ravensfriend a solid
presence at his back as though it had always been there.
                                   —the end—

   “I am Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers in the Wake of
Warriors, I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves, I am Carry Me, and Kill with
Me, and Die with Me where the Road Ends; I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length
   of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave.”
[The Ravensfriend’s full name, from the ‘Land Fit for Heroes’ series by Richard
                                    Morgan]
End Notes
     Verryn is of course made up out of whole cloth, but in canon,
     Ringil’s clearly an accomplished swordsman from the start, at the
     Trelayne Academy—it's why he's so disliked, and his self-defence
     against another student's presumed bullying, resulting in him putting
     out that student's eye, is one motivation for Ringil's brutal
     initiation. So I wondered where he'd learned those skills, given that
     his older brother seems a bit useless and his father mostly doesn't
     give him the time of day. The family has men-at-arms, but I doubt
     they'd have sophisticated swordfighting skills. Enter Verryn.
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