Boyhood Brigand

“Away, swine!”
Losu waved his toy sword around in the air, smacking it against the rump of a particularly fat pig. The creature looked about, disgruntled, and then went back to its slop. Losu, amazed his killing blow had not severed the sow’s flank clean through, tried again, to no effect. The pig didn’t even bother to look up this time.
“Thou art a worthy enemy, pig,” said Losu gravely, with a salute. He searched to find easier opponents. Opponents being anything on his parents farm that an eight year old with a stick that had a smaller stick across the bottom of it, could kill. But such were the pursuits of youth. They thought nothing of the war that had engulfed the West, but only of fighting their own war against the evil farm animals of their homeland. And what a magnificent battle it was, thought Losu.
Losu’s mother called him in for dinner. Losu rode over on his imaginary horse, dismounted, and bowed before his mother. “Sir Losu at thine service, madam! May I ask what the matter is?” His mother feigned a love swoon and then smiled. “Yes, the matter is that you need to eat your stew.”
“But Mooooooooommmmmmyyyyy!!! I hate that stuff.”
“Warriors eat stew all the time.”
“This warrior doesn’t.”
“No, he doesn’t. But he will.”
And with that Losu the Great was vanquished, dragged kicking and screaming inside to eat his leek and radish stew by the commander of all evils, the dreaded parents.
While I leave the story for a moment, I will explain to you that Losu’s family lived in a small cottage with a thatched roof, on a sizable farm near the great Theda River. Losu’s father was attached to no lord, a fairly prosperous farmer who was part of the Krekton town council, and looked after his family well. He was a retired warrior, but after the Commotion Times, a period of two-hundred- fifty-three years in which there was almost constant war between the West and East kingdoms of Revel and Kite (respectively), he retired from his position as a lieutenant in the Kite’s Infantry 3rd battle, took his pension, bought a small plot of land, and settled down with a woman whom he had met on a campaign. She gave birth to one son, and two daughters, the latter two having died before their first year. Returning to our story…
Losu ate his food grudgingly. He was not at all a fan of soggy leeks, and even less so of radishes. But he ate it. Mostly because he new his father would take away his sword if he didn’t. That brought a new question to Losu’s mind. “Mama?”
“Hm?”
“Where’s dad?”
“He’s talking to the king.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“Is the king coming to dinner tomorrow?”
“Only if you finish that stew. The king only likes little boys who finish their leek and radish stew, like him.”
Losu ate the rest of his stew quicker than he had eaten his first spoonful. He took up his sword and went to the window looking out onto the river, where he sat on the sill and stared. He often did this. It was the best place to see if there were any evil warriors coming, since he was always told that the bad warriors came from the water. Losu sighed after a while. No evil warriors to fall beneath my blade today, he thought.
Then three ships glided into view.
Losu gasped.
Those weren’t merchant ships. Merchant ships did not have wyrms on their prows and shields on their sides. Merchant ships did not only have men with helmets, shields, and chain mail aboard, and much less men with weapons that were well cared for and gleamed in the setting sun. All of this was on board these ships. So Losu made the logical conclusion that these were not merchant ships.
“Mommy!! Look! Warrior ships!”
His mother rolled her eyes, put down her book, and walked over to the window. When she saw the ships beaching themselves and battle-clad warriors jumping off the side and running toward their cottage with weapons drawn, she screamed. She quickly grabbed Losu away from the window, and dashed down into the cellar, where her husband fermented ales. She was crying. Losu didn’t know why. “Mommy, why are you crying?” She ignored him, and hid him in an empty barrel in the corner. Trying to calm herself down, she managed to say “The first chance you get, run,” and then went back upstairs.
Losu was terribly confused. Then it dawned on him. The warships he had seen earlier had been enemy warships. Well then, shouldn’t he go fight them? His mind wrestled itself, deciding whether he should run out and fight the men, or stay here like his mother had ordered him to. His thoughts were abruptly cut short, though, when there was a large crash as the door was broke in. He heard some men shout, his mother scream, then was sounded like the tearing of cloth, but he wasn’t sure. What he heard next was the men laughing and his mother sobbing. Losu was frightened. What were they doing to his mother? Would she be alright?
Then he heard a roar of anger, and his mother began to scream once again, but it was cut short. The men grumbled, then footsteps. Some left the house; the rest seemed to be searching it. Losu was now terrified. What would he do if they found him? More important, what would they do if they found him? He panicked, and pushed the lid off the barrel, making a dash for the stairs. Just then, men began to descend from the main floor. One was muttering about how the ale was always in the basement, the other was wondering if the “*****”, Losu had no idea what that was, had any little girls she might have hidden in the basement.
The boy dashed back to the ale barrel, but the men spotted him first. “OI! You!”
Losu looked around. There was no where to go. Losu took a breath and drew his sword, preparing to make a last stand. The two men stopped and looked at him in a bemused way. Losu, mistaking their amusement for fear, yelled in coherently and charged them, stick flailing. The two men nearly collapsed laughing. Losu hacked and stabbed, and grew more and more despairing when he saw that his mighty blows had no effect, except for making the two men laugh harder. Finally one of them lifted Losu up and put him over his shoulder, still chuckling. Losu let them, he had no fight left.
But when they took him past the naked, dead body of his mother, her head lying a few feet away, he kicked and screamed to wake the gods. The men laughed again, and Losu, losing his fight once more, simply broke into tears. The men brought him to one of the ships, and sat him on a rowing bench. Losu did not protest. He sat and cried. Cried for the mother who had died to save him, cried for the father who he would never see again, and cried for his lost childhood dreams.
Eventually the men pushed off, boarded, and set to rowing. They were heading back to Juzar Osno’s land. They had gotten enough plunder in this raid.

Losu woke up mid-afternoon the next day. After remembering last night, he cried some more. Gaining no attention from his captors except for a “Shut the hell up” from the steersman, Losu forced himself to stop. He stood up, or attempted to, and fell back down again. He was not used to the rocking motion of the sea. After about five minutes of determined standing up and falling back down, he managed to stay on his feet. He stood there for a bit, afraid to move because he thought he might fall again. They were within sight of land, albeit barely. All the ships, he noticed, had red sails with a black dragon in the upper left corner. The prows all had dragons, but the dragons themselves with unique. One had fire, the other didn’t, one had a beard, the other didn’t, one had closed eyes, the other didn’t, and so on.
Losu managed to make a few steps, and then fell again. It only took him two tries to get on his feet this time, though. He walked over to the nearest warrior, who was lying stretched out on the deck, trying to catch some shuteye. Losu interrupted any chance of that.
“Who are you?”
“Zalis Danalof, warrior of Juzar Osno the Deathbringer.”
“That’s a weird name.”
“So they say.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“My parents.”
“Oh.”
Silence reigned for about a minute.
“Where are we going?”
“Ploy, on the coast of the Revellian Empire.”
“Are you Revellian?”
“No.”
“What are you then?”
“Rasollian.”
“Where’s that?”
“You shouldn’t ask so many questions.”
“Why?”
“Because they might reveal something you wouldn’t want to know.”
Losu considered, and decided it sound advice, and so he shut up, and admired his surrounding. Sea. Wonderful. A little bit of green land to the north. And the ships. And…That was it. Losu sighed. Boring. He took a hint from the man called Danalof and tried to sleep.

When Losu awoke, he was hungry. Not just a little hungry, but ravenous. He looked around. His captors were chewing on dried and salted meat and water from a large barrel. Losu asked the man nearest him for some food, and got a snarl in reply. He tried to find Danalof, and spotted him getting some water.
“Uh…Mr. Danalof sir?”
“What is it?”
“Could I have a little to eat?”
Danalof sighed and went to his rowing seat, and searched through the oilskin pack under it. He pulled out a slice of bread and a sliver of meat, and handed to the youngster. “If you want something to drink, then just go over and dip the ladle in the water.”
“Okay.”
“But if you drink too much, we’ll throw you over the side to be eaten by the sharks.”
Losu gulped and nodded. Danalof was not kidding, as far as Losu knew. He had a look on his face that was deadly serious. Losu would soon learn that Danalof always had that set look on his face, and rarely smiled. But for now, he was content to get a drink and then go back to sleep.

After a few more days of open water, a magnificent city came into view, directly ahead. The men started moving around, preparing to enter the capital. Losu just stared from the bow. It was bigger than anything he had seen in his entire life. It was massive. Was this Ploy? Had to be. Why else would the ships be putting in? But they were not Revellians. So why…?
It hit Losu in a flash. They were going to sell him. To some Revellian slob! Losu ground his teeth. He had heard of men like this before, who sold other humans into slavery. But he had thought they were mere fairy tales.
Apparently not.

They were into the city’s harbor that noon, where they roped Losu’s hands together and put a noose around his neck to lead him. They tied up their boat at a dock, paid the small fee, and headed through the town. Losu had noticed that only their boat had come in, the others had stayed out to sea. He also noticed that they headed straight through the market. Weren’t they going to bother to sell him? Or would they come back later? Perhaps they already had a buyer? Or the slave market was in another place?
It was none of these. They took him all the way to the opposite side of the city, and through the gate there. Losu noticed that there were only about five men here now. But there had been about thirty men in the ship. So had they split up somewhere? Must have. But why? Then Losu realized it would look a little odd if a score of armed men had moved through the city together.
They made it past the gate, and into the open countryside. There was one road leading from the city walls, although a crossroads could be seen just ahead. The men lead Losu straight, heading approximately, as Losu guessed from the position of the sun, northwest. However, once they were out of the sight of the city walls, the five men tugged Losu off the road and over wild country, now with the setting sun blinding them. There were hills over there, Losu could see. They meandered their way through the shrub and small trees, hacking apart the brush with axes. Eventually, the other men from the ship joined them, in fours and threes. By the time the sun had set, all of the crew was there.
They walked through the night, into those hills. Losu stumbled along, fighting off sleep with one half of his mind and with the other half wondering why in hell’s name they were in these godforsaken hills. The small platoon kept to the valleys, weaving through the high buffs. They never slowed their pace. All through the night, until they could see dawn breaking over the endless lumps of earth. Just as the sun peaked over the hills, they came to their destination.
Losu stood atop a pass down into a massive valley. It was full of trees, and had a large lake in the center of it, a river flowing from north to south, splitting the valley in two. On the far side, people were felling the trees and building what looked like the beginnings of a palisade. The lake itself was full of ships identical to the one he had into Ploy on. Before Losu could see anything more, though, he was tugged down a small set of stone stairs, with were the only way down the small cliff that dropped from the valley they had come from into this one. They then took a small dirt path through the woods on this side of the lake. Small patrols, who Losu would learn are the light archers and infantry of the army, popped up every then and again, though, after seeing the captain of the ship, smiled and greeted him in a language Losu did not understand.
When they broke out of the woods, Losu saw what had been shielded by trees before. About a hundred yards of open ground, broken by a ditch, then another twenty yards or so, and a palisade. All guarding this side of the lake. There was a single path through the palisade, a long hall of a palisade with archers looking down you at every step, two turns, and a large wooden gate at the end. It was a funnel, about thirty men wide at the beginning and about five men wide at the end. A deathtrap for any invader. Even at eight, Losu understood that.
Once they were through the gate, they came into another open area, and found themselves again surrounded by palisades, with one gate at the far side of the courtyard of death. Losu reckoned about five hundred men could fit in here with enough room to do battle.
They passed through the last gate, and Losu saw the lake. Gods, it was huge. There were a few small punting rafts waiting to take he and his escort across the lake. Apparently, for all its grandeur, it was actually fairly shallow, never going deeper than twenty-five feet. And even then, there were sandbanks that, at low tide, meant you could use a fifteen foot pole and make it across with ease.
Once across the lake, Losu saw that it was indeed a palisade wall that they were building, though not nearly as impenetrable as the first had been. It seemed that whoever commanded the army, for Losu had indeed seen enough armed men to believe it was an army, expected attacks to come from the east only, and the west was fairly safe. True enough, supposed Losu, because the only way across the river around here were the army’s rafts.
Losu then noticed they were approaching a large tent, with two guards standing outside the entrance and a pole that had a boar’s head on it, drenched in what appeared to be blood. He guessed this was the commander’s tent. The ship’s captain called into the tent in a loud voice in the same language he had been greeted in, and then stood stiffly to attention. The rest of the crew did the same.
A tall, lean man emerged from the tent. He had on a simple, dirty shirt, and brown trousers. He looked like a normal man, but everyone else brought their hands to their chests and back down again in salute. Losu examined the man and was examined in return, or he thought. The commander looked to be in only his mid-twenties, had a slim figure, lightly built, but was taller than any other man around him. His hair was cut much shorter than any other man around him, it was nearly shaved clean off his head, and dirty blonde. His mouth was thin, and his nose made him look like a large bird of prey. His eyes though. His eyes were terrifying. They were black. Like how some people can roll their eyes to the back of their head, so that all their eye is white. Only black. Pitch black. Darkest of dark. Blacker than a demon’s soul. Those eyes held the malice of the world.
Some say that the eyes are a window to the soul. And that was most certainly true in this case.
Losu nearly shat himself trying to meet the man’s “gaze”. If it could be called that. Eventually the commander “smiled” and asked him something. Trying to regain control over his senses and his bowels, the boy attempted to look puzzled, but only ended up looking more terrified. Danalof translated for him. “He wants to know your name.”
“Losu Jekisut.”
Danalof translated. The commander nodded, scratched his chin, and then said something else.
“He wants to know if you would like to become his personal slave,” Danalof translated, a small expression of surprise on his face.
Losu shrugged, but said nothing.
Danalof must have translated that into a yes.
And that was how I came into the service of Juzar Osno.