Post by Astrid Oathsteel on Nov 22, 2012 20:53:30 GMT -5
“Force rules the world still,
Has ruled it, shall rule it;
Meekness is weakness,
Strength is triumphant.”
The journey to Sarkotos was long, and hard. There was so much land to cover, and she wanted to do it as quick as she possibly could. She could not stop and enjoy any of the new sights she was seeing, nor could she afford to spend time in slumber more than enough to simply move again. She’d never been outside of Alzorc save for the forays into Rumerian land to push their raiding parties back over the Knockskulls. She could see in the eyes of those she passed how they judged her. Big, dumb, barbarian brute from the North. The further south she rode, the harder those gazes were towards her as if they did not trust those that came from that far north. Riding allowed her much time to reflect upon her life, though, something she’d not had the time to do in a very long time.
A red-headed child ran around the bonfire, laughing and smiling as she chased her friends. She was bigger than the other girls, even from a young age, but for now it did not matter. The snow was thick around them, though the fire had caused the groundcover to melt around it. After growing weary of running, she fell to her knees before the flames with cheeks as red as her straight hair, and stared into the flames as if a story unfolded before her in the flickering colors. She held a long stick in her hand, and used it to prod at the burning embers to make the sparks fly.
A slight smile formed on her lips as she rode along, slowly for now for while she was in a hurry she also knew she could not push Furusta too much or he’d fall under her and she’d be on her feet for the rest of the journey. She saw a group of children run along in the field by the road, and a bonfire, and she realized she still enjoyed staring into the flames. Some things just could not be taken from a person, no matter how hard life tried to remove it.
She’d grown even larger by the time she was ten years old, and while the northlands bred them big, she was bigger at a younger age than the other girls. What did not matter when she was younger, now became a source of teasing. She cried at her mother’s knees many nights, over the teasing and torturous words of the other children and her mother would tell her the same thing, over and over, “One day they will see you for what you are truly worth.”
She was not much past ten years old when warriors of the Jarl of Northness arrived in town and snatched up the dirty ten-year-old onto the saddle of one of them, and galloped away without even a word of explanation to her mother. Her mother caught the sight out of the window of her cottage, but by the time she reached the door to scream after her, they were left in the dust. All the way to Northness they carried her, until they reached the Jarl and deposited the overly-large girl in front of him in the mud. She was on her knees, hands palm down in the puddle, as her dirty face stared upwards towards him and her lips set in a line. She was afraid, but she refused to show it. Ice blue eyes stared up into the very same blue eyes of her father. There was no doubt she was his, she had the cut of his face, his fire-red hair, and blue eyes like the coldest glacier. But, she was J’vel – a bastard, one of his many children from various mistresses around the area. She would find no fatherly love or pride in the man’s hard face. Only a stare of narrowed eyes, assessing her as he did all of his children, before deciding their fate.
“She’s big, let’s see how she does with the thrall training for battle,” Jarl Randver stated simply.
And, that was that. She’d been placed, and she was grabbed by both shoulders and near dragged down the muddy road until she was shoved through a set of high wooden gates, that closed behind her. She rose and looked around her, she was in what looked like a school. It was a large courtyard where several men and women fought with sword and shield. The clanging of the swords against the metal shields filled her ears and made them ring. She walked around the perimeter, arms hugging herself, still dripping of the cold mud she’d been thrust into.
Ten years were spent being trained, every day rising to exercise no matter how cold the wind was upon her nearly bare body. They were being trained to fight, to withstand anything that Alzorc could throw at them. Withstanding cold, ice, snow, wind, cold water, rugged terrain, pain, hunger, thirst – all this was taught to the thralls as they were forged into warriors of Alzorc. Warriors needed no reason to read, or write, or do anything except fight and live. She was taught how to survive for weeks, even months at a time in the Knockskulls. She excelled, and by the time she was 16 she could best many of those older than she. The last few years, she was given the task of training the children that had arrived – children always arrived. Many were J’vel, such as she, bastards of the Jarl. It seemed he had many women, in order to create warriors to fight and die for him.
Astrid pulled Furusta over to a bubbling stream, and she slipped off the saddle and moved to her knees by the stream and dunked her hands into the water. Cold, it was soothing to her. She leaned down, splashing her face and neck with the freezing cold water. She was close to Glass Bay. She’d chosen to pass through Kullyr, and follow the coast to Kyngfeld to take her around to Sarkotos. She had purchased a fairly decent map with a good bit of her coin, and as she was not familiar with the Ridgebacks, she had decided on a course that would be easier on Furusta. She leaned back onto her heels and glanced around. Even here she could smell the sea air, though it was not quite as chilled as it was in Alzorc. She rose and moved to her horse, and pulled out some hard bread and bit off a chunk of it, letting it soften on her tongue before she began to chew. She let Furusta graze and rest. She slid down the trunk of a tree into a sitting position as she chewed the bread, and leaned her head back, closing her eyes.