Post by Seek on Apr 3, 2015 23:57:31 GMT 10
Series: A Pale View of Hills
Title: Bloody Days
Rating: PG-13
Event: 500 Word Dash
Competition: Decathlon
Words: 500 words
Summary: The hills are vastly different when Mattes is a boy.
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In the oral traditions of the hillmen of Mattes’ clan, the hills are mist-shrouded, distant and green. A storyteller learns, as an apprentice, the names of the various ancestors and the tales of their deeds; the names of the spirits of the cold, gleaming stars in the night sky. They learn to recite tales of the far green days, before the land became hard and dry; the soil ochre, and before it seemed as though the blood shed in the ongoing hostilities with the kingsmen had forever stained the soil.
The hills of Mattes’ childhood are bloody; a far cry from the days of his grandfather. He’s taught to work leather, as all proper hillmen are, but he doesn’t start with health-signs or prosperity-signs but armour and luck-signs. “Things’re different now,” his father says, sighing. “Time was, the kingsmen left us alone, and we only stole across the border to raid cattle or sheep on a thin season. But now…” he shrugs.
He’s a small boy—coming barely up to his father’s knee—when he watches solemnly as his father teaches him to work leather in the traditional way, skillfully piercing hardened leather platelet after platelet with his thick needle and stitching them together in the typical warrior’s coat. “The first thing my father taught me,” he says, and Mattes remembers sitting at his feet before the fire, listening intently, stench of drying hides and cured leather, “Was how to make a good pair of boots. And I’ll teach you that, one day, with the luck-signs and battle-signs and all of those.” He spat, to the side. “But these’re the times we’re living in now. And a good coat of leather plates properly done can save a man’s life.”
His workman’s hands callused but gentle, he guides Mattes through the shaping of his first luck-sign, teaching him to twist the strips of leather in the braided patterns that draw the eye of the luck-spirits, forming the unique patterns of their clan. “Luck,” his father says, gruffly, “Don’t rely too much on it, Mattes. You understand?”
“Why?” Mattes wants to know.
“Luck is fickle,” his father replies. For a moment, his dark eyes go distant, although he tugs sharply when Mattes begins to fidget with the strands. “Stop that,” he mutters, and Mattes obeys. “Skill is what remains with you,” his father says, finally, “Even when luck leaves.”
Soon after his first luck-sign has been braided into his father’s belt with clumsy fingers, his father folds his fingers around the wrapped-leather hilt of a makhaira; the traditional, sweeping sword of the hills and has him swing at a stuffed-straw dummy. He’s too young to think of asking why he should be learning the makhaira. He practises the moves again and again—a decapitating sweep, a slash that’s meant to open up an enemy at the guts—and understands none of them, until years later, and then he’s too sickened and too far removed from the hills to wield a makhaira again.
Title: Bloody Days
Rating: PG-13
Event: 500 Word Dash
Competition: Decathlon
Words: 500 words
Summary: The hills are vastly different when Mattes is a boy.
-
In the oral traditions of the hillmen of Mattes’ clan, the hills are mist-shrouded, distant and green. A storyteller learns, as an apprentice, the names of the various ancestors and the tales of their deeds; the names of the spirits of the cold, gleaming stars in the night sky. They learn to recite tales of the far green days, before the land became hard and dry; the soil ochre, and before it seemed as though the blood shed in the ongoing hostilities with the kingsmen had forever stained the soil.
The hills of Mattes’ childhood are bloody; a far cry from the days of his grandfather. He’s taught to work leather, as all proper hillmen are, but he doesn’t start with health-signs or prosperity-signs but armour and luck-signs. “Things’re different now,” his father says, sighing. “Time was, the kingsmen left us alone, and we only stole across the border to raid cattle or sheep on a thin season. But now…” he shrugs.
He’s a small boy—coming barely up to his father’s knee—when he watches solemnly as his father teaches him to work leather in the traditional way, skillfully piercing hardened leather platelet after platelet with his thick needle and stitching them together in the typical warrior’s coat. “The first thing my father taught me,” he says, and Mattes remembers sitting at his feet before the fire, listening intently, stench of drying hides and cured leather, “Was how to make a good pair of boots. And I’ll teach you that, one day, with the luck-signs and battle-signs and all of those.” He spat, to the side. “But these’re the times we’re living in now. And a good coat of leather plates properly done can save a man’s life.”
His workman’s hands callused but gentle, he guides Mattes through the shaping of his first luck-sign, teaching him to twist the strips of leather in the braided patterns that draw the eye of the luck-spirits, forming the unique patterns of their clan. “Luck,” his father says, gruffly, “Don’t rely too much on it, Mattes. You understand?”
“Why?” Mattes wants to know.
“Luck is fickle,” his father replies. For a moment, his dark eyes go distant, although he tugs sharply when Mattes begins to fidget with the strands. “Stop that,” he mutters, and Mattes obeys. “Skill is what remains with you,” his father says, finally, “Even when luck leaves.”
Soon after his first luck-sign has been braided into his father’s belt with clumsy fingers, his father folds his fingers around the wrapped-leather hilt of a makhaira; the traditional, sweeping sword of the hills and has him swing at a stuffed-straw dummy. He’s too young to think of asking why he should be learning the makhaira. He practises the moves again and again—a decapitating sweep, a slash that’s meant to open up an enemy at the guts—and understands none of them, until years later, and then he’s too sickened and too far removed from the hills to wield a makhaira again.