THE REALM

Chapter One

  I cleared the last rise before I reached the home place. As a home it wasn't much, but it was all I had. There wasn't much to be proud of, but the land was suitable enough for farming and most years we didn't starve in the winters.

  That was more than could be said for many within the Kingdom of Smirnaz. Like my home, the kingdom I lived in wasn't much to speak of either. In a way, it was only hanging on by a thread. Without the outside intervention from the other six kingdoms of the Kingdomer faith, Smirnaz would have long since fallen prey to the Nicationer Nations, of which there were many.

  While the faith of the seven Kingdomer Nations was unified in the belief of the one God, El Elyon, the beliefs of the Nicationer Nations were as wide-ranging as the stars in the celestial heavens. Some worshiped gods of stone and wood, while others practiced the dark arts of the fallen Malachim.

  The Nicationer Nations hated those of the seven kingdoms down to the last woman, man, and child. Most of all they hated us for our belief in El Elyon. Their name for Him was the Awful Judge and their hatred spanned back to the time before, when El Elyon had destroyed the world the first time because of unrighteousness and corruption.

  I found it hard to relate to it all as I was just a simple farm boy. I wished things would get better, but wishes had never really gotten me far in life. After all, I was still here on this miserable patch of land that gave birth to more rocks than potatoes.

  I crested the rise that overlooked the farmhouse and stopped abruptly. White-hot, seething anger coursed through me to the point that my vision became blurred.

  There was a horse tied up outside the house. I knew the horse and I knew what its rider was up to.

  The pails full of berries dropped to the ground as I took off down the slope in a pace eating run fuelled by my anger. I reached the barnyard and noticed the man, who called himself my father, wiping at a bloody lip as he stood in an aura of shame just within the boundaries of the barn.

  He saw me and quickly moved away into the darker recesses of the barn. I felt my level of anger burn hotter at the visible evidence of his cowardice.

  I did then what I had done many times before. I rushed headlong into the house and grabbed hold of the man who was busy raping my mother on the floor.

  It never ended well for me, as I always lost, but today felt different. It had been six months since the last visitors and then there had been two of them. I hadn't stood a chance and it had been a near thing that I had even survived. As it was I had been unable to walk for a month and my broken ribs had made my ordeal last well into the winter.

  I didn't care about the beating I would receive though. What was happening was wrong and, Creator help me, I'd never stop fighting out against it!

  In the here and now though I relished the feel of bludgeoning in the face of the man I straddled on the floor. With every strike of my fist and corresponding splatter of blood I felt a small retribution of revenge for all the times before, when it had been me being hit and kicked about on the floor.
The men who came to visit my mother almost got as much satisfaction out of beating me up as they did from playing around with my mother. That thought spurred me on to greater depths of hatred and I grasped the man's head and smashed it backward against the floor repeatedly.

  Dimly, through the blood wrath that clouded my mind, I heard my name being called and the feel of someone tugging at my shoulder.

"Rollan! Rollan, stop!"

  Numbly, I lifted my head to meet my mother's eyes. She was down on her knees beside me. At her urging I let go of the man, who lay still on the floor beneath me.

  Her face bound up with worry, my mother began feeling at the man's throat, in search of a pulse. She brought her hand, now wet with the man's blood, away from his throat with a shocked gasp, "You killed him!"

  I should feel something at that knowledge, but so help me I didn't. In fact I felt completely empty of caring about anything.

  One thing I did know, though, was that I was glad this man was dead. He deserved to die. All of his kind did.

  I heard a noise at the door behind me and then my father's voice screeched out, "What have you done, boy?"

  Bitterly I spoke into the silence that followed, "What you should have done years ago!"

  I started to turn to face whatever abuse he might deal out, but I wasn't prepared for the sudden jerk on my shirt by my mother or her deafening screams into my face, "You fool! Look at what you've done! You've messed up everything! Now they'll kill all of us!"

  "What?" I asked dumbly.

  My father seized me from behind and dragged me back across the floor with more effort than he'd ever shown in any protective effort on behalf of my mother. I half-heartedly thought about resisting, but I was too lost in coming to grips with the situation that was unfolding.

  My father heaved me off to one side and I tumbled off the porch into the dust near the hitching rail. I sat up in the dust to see my mother and father standing on the porch, staring with nervous anxiety at each other.

  Slowly, as if asking a dumb question or one that I couldn't believe the need of even asking, I asked, "You're mad at me for keeping you from being raped by that man, mother?"

  My mother turned on me and with surprising harshness said, "How do you think we've survived out here on the border Rollan? Open your eyes boy! The visits by the surrounding Nicationers are all that's kept us from going under out here on the borderlands. But now, because of your foolish stunt, they'll come and burn this place down around us!"

  I blinked repeatedly as I felt my whole world begin to collapse in on itself. Feeling far too much emotion leak out into my voice I managed to choke out, "All these times that I've come to defend you… save you… it was all just acting out a part?"
I watched my mother's eyes dart off to the side as she said, "They paid more for the double experience. They liked beating you up almost as much as they liked having me."

  I felt bile rise in my throat at the reality of the lies I had been living under and suffering from.

  My eyes turned to my father, "And you were in on all this too?"

  My father gestured around broadly, "Look around boy! Do you think we could have made a go of it with this crummy place? It wouldn't matter how much effort we made or how much good weather that we could ever have, we'd still not make a success of this place. If it hadn't been for your mother doing what she has, we would have starved long since or been killed by the border raiders!"

  "What are we going to do Ralin?" My mother asked, breaking into the conversation anxiously.

  My father looked past her to the Nicationer's horse and then back to me still sitting in the dust. "This is what we'll do Ezney. I'll haul off the dead Nicationer, while you get busy scrubbing up the blood. As for you boy, you get on that horse and ride out of here and never come back or, so help me, I'll kill yah!" To underscore his words he picked up an axe from beside the door and brandished it at me threateningly.

  I wasn't scared of him and, like a glutton for punishment, I made my way up to my feet and asked my mother, "Don't you love me?"

  She shrugged, "It's not really a question of whether I love you or not, it's about survival. It was good while you were here, but now you need to leave, as your father says."