A hero forged in blood, p.1
A Hero Forged in Blood, page 1
A Hero Forged in Blood
Copyright © 2022 by B.H. Preston
Cover design by Thea Magerand.
Map design by Cartographybird
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Any characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-959096-47-4
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-959096-48-1
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-959096-49-8
4697 Main Street
Manchester Center, VT 05255
Canoe Tree Press is a division of DartFrog Books
To my son, Calum, to who I dedicate this book. I know you love reading books, just as I did at your age. I hope you enjoy this book and always dream!
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
Adena
A -DEE-na
Agwin
Aug-win
Alpheon
AL-fee-on
Amphisbaena
AM-fuhs-be-ah-nah
Andaluria
An-DA-lu-ria
Ashland
Ash-land
Asitra
Ah-SEE-trah
Asiz
Ahh-ZEEZ
Aspis
AH-spis
Bardicus
BAR-da-cus
Binicorn
Bi-na-corn
Blakenshield
Blay-KIN-sheeld
Brightshire
Brite-SHAIR-ur
Bhalla
BAH-laa
Bonberry
BON-beh-ree
Briskly
BRI-sklee
Bristlekamp
BRI-sl-camp
Chum
Ch-UM
Cimetes
SIGH-me-tes
Daneyel
DAN-yuhl
Duke
Dook
Dunntaika
dunn-tie-ka
Echethier
Eh-KAH-theer
Eldrin
EL-dren
Empyrea
Em-PEER-ri-ah
Fayspire
FAY-spai-ur
Fluteds
FLU-teds
Evias
EH-vy-ahs
Gadar
GAH-darr
Garth
Gaarth
Hintaga
Hen-TAH-gah
Junagi
JOO-nah-gi
Karatheas
KA-rah-thee-is
K’Lani
KAY-laa-nee
Kaden
KAY-den
Kel Tyrion
kel-Teer-ee-un
Kugdor
Cug-DOOR
Lucient
LU-see-ent
Lumhagen
LOOM-hay-gen
Luna
LOO-nah
Megalos
MEH-gah-lows
Mercalyptus
MER-cah-lip-tus
Millicent
Mil-LAH-cent
Nethopolis
na-THA-poe-lis
Nosegye
NOWZ-guy
Omak
Oh-MAHK
Orealus
OR-real-us
Parrotlets
PAIR-ra-lets
Trophorus
TRO-for-us
Pepper
PEH-per
Petey
PEE-tee
Rosenhelm
ROW-sen-helm
Sadunia
SAH-doo-nee-ah
Scruffenfoot
SKRUH-fin-foot
Shroudscar
SHROWD-scar
Tha’lassa
THAW-lah-sa
Truthorium
TROO-thor-ee-uhm
Valmyr
VALL-mear
Varun
VAH-run
Waptoo
Wop-TOO
Woo’apma
WOO-op-maa
Westramore
Weh-STRAH-more
Weylyn
WAY-lin
Whaldalf
WALL-dalf
Wildepointe
WILL-da-point
Yah’zaval
Yaah-sha-val
When the light fell upon the gates of the seven
And the sun once smiled the brightest
Darkness will soon eclipse the moon,
What was once pure is no more,
For the world was not ready for what was in store
Yet there was an arrival of courage and justice amidst two cries
The first did not last through the many lies
But the chosen shall stretch far till the ends of the world
Great Spirit would be his strength, West would be his betrayal
Prepared shall he be, to stop the whims of the deceiver
And thus, the curse over the world shall lift from thee
When the blood flows, and the metals will sing,
Until someone higher into the world that He shall bring
—B.H. Preston
CHAPTER 1
When Kaden woke up to the sweet, aromatic smell of sugary bonberry buns wafting through the air, he knew he had forgotten something special. His mother only baked bonberry buns on consecrated days, days of remembrance, or days of high worship. He lay on his bed, curled up beneath his sleep-warmed blankets, and tried to think of what he ought to be remembering. Was it the anniversary of the Day of Separation? A feast day for Orealus? Or was it one of the unspoken days, days when his mother bowed her head and mixed her tears into the dough she kneaded and shaped, days where a loose word in a sharp ear could bring punishment down on your whole family?
The berries were at their ripest now, and the hot, crisping sugar buns smelled decadent. Kaden’s stomach churned like butter, informing the rest of him that he wasn’t going to be going back to sleep anytime soon. He wanted to force his stomach into silence somehow—waking up in the morning was always hard for Kaden, and the thought of losing precious minutes of slumber to something as silly as a growling stomach irritated him. He turned his head away from the door and toward his open window, where a delicate breeze that smelled of fresh-cut hay pushed the bonberry scent away. The farmy smell carried his mind outside of these four walls, to his sleepy village of no more than four hundred people at the fringes of the kingdom of Empyrea. Within the village of Ashland, rustic homes sat apart from each other on grassy hills. Beautiful rivers streamed throughout the entrenched valleys into a nearby local creek the locals used to fish. Dirt roads dabbled with cobblestones paved the pathways from home to home, each containing a modest garden of spices, fruits, and vegetables. Kaden could hear the animals in the fenced backyards rousing: a rooster crowing, chickens scratching, as well as goats, sheep, and cows bleating. Mmm, that was better. He sighed, twisting a bit to get comfortable as he settled back into his bed. Just a few minutes more…
“Kaden! Wake up!”
He groaned under his breath, opened one of his eyes, and looked at the sliver of sky through his window. Orange, trending toward pale blue. Ugh, still so early. It was tempting to ignore his mother’s call just for the sake of lying here a bit longer.
Suddenly, four large paws pounded the wooden floor up to his door, which burst open so hard that it slammed against the wall. A second later, a tongue wet with sticky saliva and stinking of stale chicken bones and dirty pond water swept along the length of Kaden’s face. Sniff—slurp—lick!
“Ugh, Duke.” Kaden rolled away from his enormous, overly friendly dog. “Stop it.” Duke laid his head on Kaden’s shoulder and stuck his cold, wet nose directly into Kaden’s ear. “Fine,” he muttered. “I’m up. I’m getting up.”
He rolled back over and looked at Duke, over two hundred pounds of “pure” hunting dog which stood thirty inches from paw to shoulder. The boy pet his dog’s thick, shaggy, soft fur of a reddish-brown brindle. The Empyrean hound had long legs and mighty tails, sharp teeth, and talon-like claws typical of the breed. Droopy triangle ears pushed forward, and Duke’s tongue lolled out the side of his short muzzle under his black, twitching nose. Above his master, he danced side to side a little on his front paws, like a puppy. Kaden admired the way the creature’s sparkling brown eyes reflected the light from the window and thought back to the day they met. Four years ago, Kaden found the puppy near Ashland Woods and begged his parents to keep the rare-breed dog. Since then, the two had been inseparable.
“Looks like a bear, docile as a hare,” was the saying with regards to the breed, and it had undoubtedly bred true in Duke. When he wasn’t hunting or protecting his humans, he was as easygoing as any animal could be.
“You’re a good boy,” Kaden told his dog solemnly, “but your breath is absolutely foul. Have you been rummaging in the burn pit?” He pushed his thick wool blanket back, got to his feet, and scratched Duke behind the ears before reaching for the curtain. “Ma won’t like it if you spread the trash around again.”
Kaden pulled his curtain open and looked out at the morning sky, brightening above the dark bl
Kaden sighed. A part of him wished for something more exciting than another day’s worth of chores to do. What was the point of having a hunting dog like Duke if he never got to hunt anything more significant than a rabbit? What was the purpose of all the sword exercises his father made him do if he was never going to wield an actual sword? His father had been a guardsman once before he became a farmer. They went through the drills together, over and over, until Kaden knew them by heart.
He snorted. He could wield a wooden blade with the best of them. It was handy for fending off bad-tempered sows or overly affectionate hounds, but not much else.
“Kaden! I won’t be calling you again!”
He’d dawdled too long. “I’m coming, Ma,” he yelled back, pulling on a clean set of the simple, sturdy clothes that were a farmer’s lot—tunic, leggings, and a stiff wool jerkin over the top of it. He slid his socked feet into his boots and made a quick stop at the outhouse before heading into the kitchen, where a pot of cool, mint-scented water was waiting in the corner for him to wash up with. He did his face, then his hands, and glanced in the mirror hung on the wall above the basin, having to squat to see his hazel brown eyes. When he was a child, the mirror rested at a perfect height on the wall. However, Kaden had long outgrown the frame’s position, and the disparity between his height and the mirror’s location only became more evident after his last growth spurt. The villagers often commented on the boy’s height, at least two heads above even the tallest man they all knew. He had the lean muscles to compliment his thin stature, a natural byproduct of hard farm labor. Combing his fingers through his close-shorn, coarse black curls and rubbing a hand over his light brown face, he finally shook off his sleepiness. He turned to look at his parents.
His mother, Lydia, sat by the wood-fired oven, her dark brown eyes monitoring the bread inside of it while she heated more water for their morning blackroot tea on top of it. Her tight black curls, tickling her shoulders, framed her dark brown face. Her lips were pursed with annoyance—probably from having to yell for him twice—and her free hand smoothed out the worn blue linen of her skirt over and over again. That was a sure sign she was worried and trying not to show it. But why was she nervous? Did it have anything to do with why she was baking bonberry buns?
Kaden’s father, Daneyel, had his pocketknife out, and his sharp, dark brown eyes watched as he whittled another peg for the chair he’d been building whenever a lull in the farm’s activity let him work on it. His thick, black kinky hair kept its shape even as he moved his head over his work. The knife looked comically small in the man’s massive hands, which fit well with his impressive physique built from years of farm work. The tendons of his biceps worked subtly under dark brown skin. One more leg and the chair would be complete. It was a man’s chair, broad-seated and high-backed, and Kaden knew his father meant to give it to him at his upcoming birthday when he officially came of age.
A chair. Wonderful. What else could I possibly want?
An instant after he had the thought, he felt guilty for it. Kaden had more than most. When so many other children had lost theirs during the war, he had parents. Kaden had a warm, loving home and had never known great hunger or desperate need. He sat down in his child’s chair, chastened, and accepted a mug of tea from his mother. A fresh bonberry bun followed it, and he bit into it gleefully, closing his eyes as the hot, sweet jam inside soothed his rumbling stomach.
“Wha’s duh occshun?” he asked around the mouthful of bread and jam.
“Kaden,” his mother said with a sigh. “Swallow, then speak. You’re not five anymore.”
No, he was three times that—but the bonberry buns were such an exceptional food, he felt like a gleeful child every time he got one. He swallowed, washed the bite down with a gulp of tea, then said, “What’s the occasion?”
His parents exchanged a look. “There isn’t one,” his mother said after a moment. “Not really. Bonberry season is peaking, that’s all. The Fraynes had some extras from their patch and offered them to me.” She looked a little longingly at the empty jar by her foot. “I wish we had a patch of our own, but we’re a bit far from the right kind of trees for that.” Bonberry briars were parasites, only growing around the thick roots of oak trees. A few of the villagers had an oak on their land, but most didn’t.
“I could always go foraging for some,” Kaden offered. Suddenly, it seemed like a marvelous idea, lifting a weight off his shoulders that he didn’t even realize he’d woken up with. “We spent all day yesterday setting the hay to dry in the fields. Now that that’s done, surely today is a good day for a bit of time in the forest. I know where a whole grove of oak trees is, Ma! I could take your basket and bring back more bonberries than you’ll know what to do with.”
“We’ve got the sheep to see to today,” his father interjected.
“The sheep will still be there tomorrow,” Kaden said, trying not to sound like he was begging. “The bonberries might not be.” The shortness of their season and the lengths that birds and beasts went to get them off the briars were legends. Kaden wasn’t overly fond of sticking his hand into a bush covered with thorns, but he was even less enthusiastic about settling into another twelve hours of farm chores on a beautiful day like this. It felt like it had been ages since he’d been in the forest.
“Daneyel,” Lydia said softly. Something passed between his parents, some silent conversation that Kaden couldn’t quite understand for all his trying.
“Half a day,” Daneyel said a moment later. “If there are any bonberries left out there, they’re best gotten in the morning before the birds peck them to pieces. But,” he added earnestly, “you take Duke with you. Keep your eyes open for tracks, and if you see any signs of something dangerous, you—”
“Head home right away, I know, Pa,” Kaden said, standing up so fast his little chair rocked on its feet. “A half day will be plenty of time. I know just where to go!”
His mother got up from her seat by the oven and walked over to one of the extended wooden shelves above the counter. The shelves were even too high for Duke to get at. She grabbed a weathered basket, laid a clean rag in the bottom of it, and took it over to the oven. She plucked two more bonberry buns out of the heat with her fingertips, then set them in the basket. The sugar sprinkled over the top was dark and glittering, and Kaden’s mouth watered. “Provisions,” she said with a bit of a smile as she handed it all over to Kaden.
“Thanks, Ma.” He leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek and was startled when she pulled him into a hug so hard, he felt his ribs protest. His ma didn’t give hugs like this very often. What was going on today?
“Be careful,” she told him, stepping back and adjusting her shawl around her shoulders.
