Valiant (*On Hold*)

4 Beyond Again - Tyne

As it turned out, Kazmer was a slave colony. That was Etel's way of breaking my spirit, sending a ten year old boy to the mines in his home country of Rirdanta. I crossed an ocean with two dozen boys my age, was chained to them as we walked across a frozen tundra, remained shackled to them for months as we worked the mines until we could hardly breathe. Twenty of them died from causes that the Rirdans hardly took the time to record. Exhaustion, suffocation, starvation. With each death, I felt my will grow stronger. I no longer wished for death. I now prayed for life. A life outside of this place, a life of my own where I could hunt down Etel and show him what it truly was to break a spirit.

My eleventh birthday came and passed and I was never quite sure when it had been. I felt my body growing stronger from the manual labor, the muscles in my arms, my legs, my chest becoming more defined. I felt the exhaustion in my very bones, felt my lungs full of the soot below the earth, but still I felt more alive than I ever had. Etel had given me purpose, though it wasn't the one that he had intended.

Months after we had arrived, after nearly all of the boys I had arrived with had perished, our masters gathered us and informed us that the mine was empty. We were not surprised. We had found very little in the preceding weeks. Still, we looked about, wondering what was to be done with us next. They did not let us linger in anticipation long but rather informed us that we would be taken to the nearest market and sold to the highest bidder. There was a breath of relief on everyone's tongues. We were getting out of the mines. I seemed to be the only one wary of what we were getting into.

Days later found us back in the frozen tundra, shuffling along, chained to one another, as we made our way to the city of Kazmer. It was as dark and desolate as I had imagined. A mining town was never anything to boast of and the outskirts were as dreary as our camps at the mine. Lifeless eyes of tired men who had survived in mines only to be granted modest plots of barren land with no women to marry or warm their beds. Though they lived, they had died a different death.

A small platform had been erected in the center of town and, in the middle of the city, more people were gathered. Most of them not dressed for the frigid climate of the tundra. They had heard, then, of the mine's closing and thought it a good opportunity to purchase a strong young man for whatever work they had need of doing. We stood in a line at the base of the platform and I watched as the boys in front of me climbed on and stood there, still as a statue, while some Rirdan called out their value in a language I did not know and the men gathered argued until one won out and took the boy from our shackles into his own. The whole display was so heartless and inhumane that I found that familiar rage rising within my hollow chest. I welcomed it, relieved that my broken soul was still capable of such an emotion, so that by the time I was shoved toward the stage, I had worked myself into a fury.

The boy who had gone before me, I knew him by the name of Duncan, was sold quickly to a man with a pinched nose and scowl in the front. The man made his way onto the stage and grabbed Duncan, pulling him hard from the platform. Duncan, still tangled in his shackles, fell onto his knees and yelped in pain. The man turned on him impatiently and pulled a cord from his belt, snapping it so that it whipped across Duncan's back. The boy cried out again in pain and the man raised his weapon once more.

"Stop!" I shouted. The man froze and looked my way in confusion. They did not speak Vyndolian. I had learned a few words of Rirdantan from the men in the mines. Luckily, this was one of them. I shouted again. "Allj meg!"

The man's confusion turned back to his scowl and he raised the whip again, bringing it down onto Duncan with a resounding crack. The boy was on the ground now, whimpering in pain. I lunged forward, pulling my shackles behind me. I could not get far in my chains but I could get far enough. I reached the slaver easily and, in an instant, had my chains wrapped around his neck. I pulled tight and watched the man claw at the metal pressing against his throat, gasping for air, choking. I pulled tighter, jaw tensing in anger.