The Nadir of the Labyrinth

by Christopher DeRosa

Table of Contents

Part 3: The Soldier’s Tale

My father was a professional soldier. Not like the folks who sign up in the king’s name to earn a bit of glory, and nothing like the nobles who become officers as a means of elevating themselves. My father was a fighter. When Knossos wasn’t on campaign, he would sell his arm as a bodyguard, a hired sword. If anyone needed a fighter, my father was there.

After every campaign, he would come home with another sword, one he had taken from a soldier he had killed, and put it up over the mantle. We had a collection of them from all the wars he had fought in. Swords from across the kingdoms of every make and metal you can imagine.

That collection of swords was his pride, and he was the proudest hoplite in the army of Knossos. I grew up with that pride and made it my own. My mother hadn’t been around since I was young; my dad was all I had. As soon as I was old enough to enlist with my father’s phalanx, I did so. I was eager to bring home a sword of my own to display on the mantle along with my father’s. I had spent my youth basking in the glow of my father’s war stories and now I was able to live one.

Now, nothing can prepare you for actually setting foot on a battlefield. Nothing can steel you against the blood and the ring of steel. But I had an advantage over the other recruits in our phalanx. I was linking my shield with a legend. Not only a legend, a man who had told me the unwashed truth of war. As much as he reveled in his victories, he prepared me as best he could for a real battlefield.

He was there at the beginning of the battle of the Lowland Vale when the arrows fell among us like rain, reminding me to keep my shield steady. He was there when our phalanx met the charge of the Lowland spearmen. He was there when the fighting was over, lending me a shoulder as I puked my guts dry in the copse behind our camp.

My father and I both brought home swords from that campaign. The men of the Lowland had been broken, and my father and I each carried one of their short, thin sidearms. Pigstickers, that’s what our men called them. We both received our pay for our service and hung those pigstickers up over the fire. We ate well that winter with the gold and plunder of two soldiers.

Now it wasn’t just my father telling me stories of war, we reminisced about the stories we had fought through together. It was around then, when the spring thaw came in, that we first heard stories that the Lowland spies had snuck into towns near the border. Our only thought was that, come campaigning season, we’d likely rejoin our phalanx and march back into the Vale.

The men of the Lowlands did attack again, of course. This time they raided our towns before we had a chance of get our men armed and armored. As veterans of the first campaign, my father and I instructed the newcomers how to fight the Lowlands folks. I had been a man for years then, but never truly felt it until then, as I took on the role of teacher and storyteller, just as my father had to me.

I’d never thought about having children before then but, at the time, the idea seemed wonderful. That summer we met with the men of the Lowland again, pushing deep into their valleys. We burned their towns and took our spoils, coin and swords. We earned those swords just outside their biggest camp. We had surprised them, pushed them back quickly. The battle was a rout, and the men had changed from soldiers to raiders. Their camp was ours.

My father and I had found their chief’s tent. We took bracers and rings made of gold. We’d never seen so much of the stuff in our lives. The chief found us there, sword at the ready. He didn’t have a pigsticker, but a slab of iron long as I was tall. Ran my dad damn near through before I could get my knife and rip out the Lowland chief’s throat.

Until then I had never really considered the possibility that my father could die. He’d told me it might happen at any time and that I had to be ready. But how can anyone be ready for that? I left all that gold and carried him back to our camp. The needlemen patched him up best as they could and let me wait by him through the fever and the chills and the pain. So much pain!

My dad recovered; he lived, but he was never the same. We went home that year with our plunder. I added the chief’s massive sword to the mantle and my father added the dagger with a ruby set right in the hilt. My father’s days as a soldier were done.

That winter was hard for us. There was more talk of the men of the Lowlands lurking in our towns, but it didn’t bother us. My father insisted he get back to the campaign in the spring. Even with only two years of soldiering under my belt, I could tell he couldn’t fight. The chief’s sword had cut something important in him. I don’t know what, but he walked with a limp for the rest of his days and could never lift his right arm, his spear arm, over his head either.

I told him he could be a teacher for the recruits, that he would do a world of good for them. He would grumble and go out to chop wood. He’d come back in an hour with not even half what he could carry the year before, out of breath and soaked with sweat.

The flowers had just started to bloom up on the mountains when we heard about men of the Lowlands in our town. The magistrate turned the town upside down to find them, he’d seen what those barbarians had done with the towns they crept into the year before.

One evening, his men came to our house and asked to search it. They’d been doing this with everyone in town. We’d known it was coming and thought nothing of it. Then the magistrate saw the glint of the dagger’s ruby. Saw the pigstickers and the chief’s sword hung up there on our mantle. He rounded on us, claimed that those swords were proof that we had sided with the Lowlanders.

We protested of course, tried to explain, but our pleas of innocence meant nothing to the magistrate and the cruel old king. They needed someone to blame, someone to kill to show the people that they were in control. My father’s years of service were of no help. The common folk who knew nothing of soldiering were convinced that my father and I had been turned, and those voices from our phalanx that spoke up for us were swallowed by the crowd.

The magistrate’s men hauled us away in irons. We waited in separate cells for days while they questioned us over and over, jabbed us with brands and tongs, told me they’d rip out my tongue if I didn’t confess.

Then one day, with no warning, the magistrate came and let me out of my cell. He told me I’d been absolved, that my father had confessed. I protested, screamed, threw punches but I was dragged out of there by the magistrate’s guards and sent home. They made it clear that if I tried to interfere further, I’d be locked back up in irons. I knew my father had protected me, but I almost gutted the magistrate next I saw him, as he paraded my father around in a pillory, displaying the weapons we had won on campaign as proof of his treason.

I watched my father stand in front of the Kingdom as he was pronounced a traitor by the people he had sworn to protect. He was mocked and beaten as the executioners dragged him to the ship with the bull’s head. I was there in the crowd, I watched that mob drag him through the mud. He saw me then, I know he did. He smiled at me; he had traded his life for mine.

I went back to our home and kept on soldiering. There was nothing else I really could have done. I stopped bringing back the blades of the people I fought, though. As the years went on, I got more and more reckless. All I knew how to do was kill and train men to kill better.

I got my scars then, though nothing as bad as my dad got from that chief of the Lowlands. We beat them back eventually, beat them so badly they didn’t try sneaking into our towns anymore. I was glad to do it. So often, I imagined the faces of the men I killed as the face of that magistrate who sent my father to die.

I don’t really know why I decided to do it. It wasn’t a planned thing, it just slowly simmered. It was a snowy night after a long campaign. I was sitting in my father’s old chair by the fire, polishing my sword when I realized I needed to kill that magistrate. So, I did.

The guards at the town hall knew me. I was the recruiter who trained all the new blood. They showed me inside, and I walked right up to the man who had killed my dad, and I ran him through with my freshly polished sword, nearly cut him in half. Then I let the guards take me in.

Killing a town magistrate is apparently a bad enough thing to have the king himself tell you that you’re going to die. I was dragged before the king, and I laughed in his face, told him I wasn’t afraid of him or his beast that killed my dad. Told him he was too afraid to kill my dad himself and had to have a monster do it. He was furious. That was all it took for him to send me here, just as I wanted. I could finally give my father the justice he deserved.

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Copyright © 2022 by Christopher DeRosa

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