Dawning of an Age

This is longer than the last, and it takes a little while to get to the sex, but bear with me. More of the world comes in, and the first of the action. Thank you for reading, thank you for the kind words, and thank you for your enjoyment.

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I smelled the smoke before I saw it, and knew the world had changed again.

The usual grayish-white tendril of gently writhing forge smoke was gone, replaced by or lost within an acrid, roiling black cloud that split the sky and bathed the forest in a sharp, hateful, unholy stench. I dropped the bundled furs I carried, forgetting all pretense of stealth or care, plowing through the snow clumsily, sending sprays of powder ahead and kicking up great clumps of it behind.

When I cleared the forest, my house was ablaze, erupting in great gouts of flame that belched and spit as it consumed my home and the only life I'd ever known. The thatched roof of the forge smoldered, already long gone, the stone of the building and the contents within too hard and stubborn to catch.

The house, though, had any number of small, flammable things within, and though the walls stood, the roof was agape, open to the sky as it spewed fire and smoke; pages of books, still guttering flame, flitted hot and light into the air, blown upward by the cold winter wind. Ash and cinder fell from the column of flame and smoke, dancing on the air before settling and staining the broken, sullied surface of the snow and finding my skin, burning into my face.

I stood in shock, useless and frozen, my mind struggling and failing to comprehend what I was seeing. My life burned away before me and stole my thoughts, keeping my mind in a haze of smoke and pain, scorching away the rest of the world. I swayed, my legs feeling weak, my stomach knotted, ready to expel the meal I had shared with Lila just a few short hours before.

Baba.

The thought ripped through my mind, driving away the smoke, the uselessness, the weakness. My legs grew strong again, my mind snapping to singular focus. I had to find Baba.

There were tracks in the snow, dusted with ash and scuffed by the rapid movement of feet. Three men, big, strong, quick for their size, but slower than they could've been. They'd come to the smithy, ignoring the house at first, going inside before two of them came back out and set fire to the thatched roof of the smithy and the house. They left after, one limping and bleeding, the other sure and strong.

I bolted to the door of the smithy, the strong, thick wood charred and hot, too dense to catch all the way. Smoke drifted through the work space, hanging in the air like an acrid, stinking fog, waving lazily in the disturbance created by my entry to the place. The tools all survived, most made from steel as they were, what wooden handles there were had been turned from hardwood, treated and cured until the fire of the forge wouldn't catch them alight. It would certainly take more than burning thatch to ignite them.

I found her by the back door, propped against its frame, one huge, gnarled hand pressed over an oozing wound in her gut. Blood seeped slowly between her fingers, pooling beneath her thin, bent body. Her face was ashen, pale, breath wheezing weakly between her lips as blood bubbled in the corners of her cracked mouth.

She was covered in blood from head to toe, her white, wispy hair matted to her scalp with it, her clothes soaked and stained almost black with it. It couldn't all be hers. She would've been dead twice over if it had been. She was nearly dead as it was.

I knelt beside her and whispered her name. Her eyes fluttered open, weak and drained and blind. The hand that wasn't holding her blood inside came up, touching my face weakly. I had never known Baba's hands to be weak. Her hard, impenetrable callouses were rough against my cheek, the scratchy surface brushing aside my tears as water clouded my vision.

"Seth," she rasped. It struck me how odd it was that she called me by my name instead of "boy". "Kradd the Bone Man. Made him an axe, the fuck."

"Why?" I couldn't imagine a reason for Baba to have anything to do with the Bone Man, let alone make something for him.

"He offered double what the work was worth, and to stay the hell away. He lied, on both counts, I suspect. Your blade is safe, waiting and longing for you to finish her."

"Hush, Baba, rest. You need to rest," I began to weep again, my voice breaking as I clutched that ancient woman's giant, gnarled hand to my face.

"No, boy. I need to talk. You need to finish that blade, make her whole. Carry her and use her, bring what order you can to your world. She will help you. Go and get your woman, bring her here if you will it, live as the two of you wish."

I started through my tears, eyes wide and blurry. Baba laughed, a gurgling, wet, painful sound that ended in a bloody cough.

"Of course I know, boy. You reeked of her last week, and reek of her now. I can smell it even over the char. Live well, treat her well, fight for her and fight with her. I'm dying now, boy."

"No," I choked.

"Don't be stupid, boy. You know it's true as well as I do. I've lived longer than any I know of, long enough to see you grown and ready for the world. I wonder if the world is ready for you, and that is something I am damn proud of.

"Don't waste your time mourning for a woman so old the trees can't remember her birth. Start your life, make it what you will. And bring Kradd the Bone Man's head to my grave. That son of a bitch owes me for an axe."

She fell silent then, breath rattling in her lungs, and lifted her other hand, dripping blood, to my face, cupping my cheeks in her hands. I leaned forward and kissed her wrinkled brow, feeling her last breath against my neck as it rushed from her. I held her hands to my face, gripping them tightly, unwilling to let them go as tears fell from my cheeks and splashed against her hair.

I cradled her body against me, realizing for the first time how truly tiny the old woman was. She had always seemed so large in my mind, so strong even as I knew she was bent and ancient. She weighed next to nothing, whether because she always had or because the great weight of her soul had left behind only a husk in its wake I did not know.

After an hour or more of holding her, weeping over her, my tears were dried up, the last of them falling onto her brow and running through the deep, valleyed wrinkles. I lifted her, standing with her cradled in my arms and carried her to the work table. I laid her out and lit a fire in the forge, pumping the bellows until the blaze roared and fought back the cold, the black smoke of the forge rising and mixing with the gray, acrid smoke from the house, blowing away in the wind.

I washed her body, cutting away the bloody clothing, scrubbing away the blood, both hers and that of whoever had fallen victim to her wrath. I cleaned the great, gaping wound in her belly, stitching it back together with fletching twine. Kradd had killed her with the very axe she'd made for him.

I wrapped her in a blanket from the box in the corner of the forge, covering her from head to toe. She lay there, patient and waiting as I took up a pickaxe and went out the back door of the smithy.

It was there I found the man whose blood had covered Baba. He was the third of Kradd's party, the one who tracks did not lead away. A cheaply made, shoddy sword protruded from his skull, his own blade jammed upward under his chin, the pommel pressed against his throat, the point sticking a foot and a half out of the top of his half-shaved head. His entrails lay in a pile between his feet, long cold and caked with ash.

I walked past him and set to work, the pickaxe biting into the frozen earth over and over. It took hours to chip away the earth, to dig a grave fit for Baba. Sweat poured from my back even as it froze on my arms, my fingers numb from cold and the jarring of the pick.

The inferno that was my home died down as I worked, becoming little more than a smoky pile of rubble held in place by four small, strong stone walls. I sifted through the ash and crumbling bits of burnt memories until I found the strong, battered green steel box that had been jammed deep under Baba's bed for as long as I could remember.

I lifted it, feeling it's surprising weight, wondering at what it held. The metal was hot, still holding the blaze in itself. I welcomed the heat, letting it bleed into my frozen hands as I carried it to the smithy.

It scraped against the wood of the table as I lay it carefully beside Baba's wrapped body, carving a furrow in the hard surface with its weight. It was locked, an ancient, shining padlock that was far more intricate than anything I'd ever seen before, the word "Master" etched in the surface above the key hole.

Masterful it was, but even that wondrously forged lock could not withstand a few sharp blows with a forge hammer, and it popped open. I lifted the lid of the box and beheld to wonders that Baba had kept locked away my entire life.

There were pictures, ancient relics of a life long gone, showing Baba as a young woman dressed in a sort of armor alongside a half dozen others in the same gear. One picture showed her in a dress of an intricacy I had never seen before, white as snow, with a length of cloth behind it that dragged the ground and pooled behind her. She stood next to a man, tall and strong, with proud features, wearing a black suit of soft-looking clothes, a flower pinned to his chest.

Beneath the photos I found the armor from the pictures, softer than I'd expected, but heavy all the same. Under that I found the most fascinating thing I'd ever seen. I knew from reading the books that Baba had collected that it was a rifle, an ancient relic of the time before. A machine-gun, capable long ago of spitting wads of lead and copper in incredible numbers over great distances so fast that the eye couldn't follow them. It was useless as anything other than a club since magic had reached its fingers into the world, but she had kept it all the same.

I unwrapped Baba and dressed her in her armor, taking great care to place it on her correctly, guiding her lifeless limbs into sleeves and greaves, sliding the heavy, dense cloth of the breastplate onto her body, strapping the helmet gently onto her head. Once she was girded, I carried her to her grave, laying her gently within, placing the rifle beneath her folded hands.

I covered her with earth, slowly shoveling until she disappeared beneath, filling her grave once again until the only evidence that it had ever been there was a small hump in the ground. The sword in her last vanquished enemy's skull pulled free with a sharp tug and a well-placed boot, and I jammed it into the frozen ground at the head of her grave, driving it in until half its length was out of sight.

It wasn't enough to mark the grave of Baba, not by a long measure, but it would serve until I could forge something more fitting. I stood before her grave, the old woman's blood still on my hands, dry and brownish red, tightening on my skin as it dried, and I wept again.

She had been harsh, hard, and unforgiving, but she had raised me well. Never once had she struck a blow or uttered an unkind word that I hadn't earned, nor laid upon me a compliment that hadn't been bought with hard effort, sweat, and sometimes blood. She had taught me everything she knew, and showed me how to learn what she did not. I could never replace her, and I didn't care to know what I would have been without her.

Slowly, my grief and sadness came to be replaced with anger, a slow, simmering thing that began as a flash of heat in my gut and a deep, spreading cold in my heart. It grew and fed upon itself, becoming a fire in my belly and a hard, unforgiving bloom of cold, iron hatred in my chest.

She had given me two last things to do, and I would have to do the first before I accomplished the second. My blade needed finished, and Kradd needed seen to.

I felt her before I saw her, a bright, hungry, longing consciousness reaching out to touch my own, feeling my mind, recognizing it, calling out to it. She was in the store room, waiting on the shelf where I had left her to rest, impatient, ready, aching to be complete, yearning to be held and used, to fulfill her deadly purpose. My skin tingled as I reached out, the hairs on my arms standing on end as my fingers closed around her and lifted her, feeling her weight, her balance.

I carried her to the forge, passing the fire and the anvil, crossing to the long, wide, flat stone mounted on its own small table. It was the first in a series of stones, each equal in size but the rest finer by stages until the last was smooth to the touch. I spent hours with my blade, running her along the stones, polishing away the blackness of the quench, the roughness of her edge. She went from smoky and dark to a sort of dull gray, scratched and imperfect, but clean.

From there she became a dimly glowing steel, brighter than before, her edge smooth and free of nicks. Next she began to catch the light, and I could see the blurry outline of my face in her surface. Last of all, slowly, with great care and long hours, she shone, bright and clear, my face showing in sharp focus along her length, all the way to her edge.

I did not make her razor sharp. She needn't be. A fine, tapered edge was all I required, all she needed, all she wanted. Any finer and she would grow weaker, and weakness was something neither of us would tolerate.

I wrapped her pommel tightly, first with cured sharkskin from the lacquered box that Baba kept on a high shelf in the store room, then with silken cord from the same box. I had seen her use these things only once, and she had shown me only once how to do it. She had used them on the finest blade I had ever seen her make, and I knew she would have offered them for my blade if she yet lived.

The cord was undyed, a brownish white that would stain with the blood I knew would come to touch it. I didn't mind, and neither did she. Her consciousness grew with every stroke against the stone, and it sharpened with every turn of the cord around the rough sharkskin.

She needed a name, and I knew of only one that suited such a perfect weapon. She agreed, and suggested an addition, her mind pushing the word into mine, letting me feel her satisfaction at the two together, her curiosity, a desire to hear it aloud.

"Baba Jedza," I whispered, and her mind writhed with glee and hunger, the low, steady melody that was her thoughts cresting, freeing itself into a song that poured from my own thoughts unbidden.

"Rest now, Jedza," I said. "Tomorrow we give you life."

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Kradd hadn't even tried to cover his tracks, and in the morning light he was embarrassingly easy to follow. His own gait was cocky, brazen. He plowed through the snow as though he had no worry in the world, as though nothing that could follow him could ever worry him. Even if he had been more careful, the limping steps and trail of blood from his companion would have made tracking them effortless.

Two miles from the burned out husk of my home, I found the companion, the long trail of his blood having added up to enough blood loss to kill him. Baba had taken two of them for her own, and it was my task to finish the last.

I didn't know if I would catch him before he reached the rest of his men, nor did I care. The ways of the world allowed me to challenge him for payment.

I tracked him for five miles through the snowy forest before his tracks became but one set among many, and I knew that he had found his band. They had moved southwest, stomping through the forest with abandon, no respect for the land, no thought for stealth. I followed their tracks for another two miles before a horrible suspicion formed and grew and twisted into a terrible certainty.

They were headed for Lila's farm.

I broke into a run, sprinting through the forest, all thought for my own stealth gone, all concern for anything but Lila and vengeance washed away in the hot fire raging in my gut.

The Bone Man wasn't known for friendly visits to anywhere. He didn't come calling for a laugh, didn't drop by just to say hello. He came to take, and kill, and burn. I knew what he would do to Lila, and it fanned fire of my rage, dropped the chill of my hate to new, frozen depths.

I never slowed my stride, running full tilt through the trees. Even at full speed I was quiet, not silent, but far closer to it than Kradd and his men would be. I hoped in my heart that Lila would have heard them coming and hidden or run, but I didn't know. Her father was a noisy, drunken fool, and the animals weren't quiet.

I approached the clearing that marked the edge of Lila's farm at speed, already hearing the shouts and laughter of Kradd's men. At the edge of the tree line a sentry stood, watching whatever the rest were doing rather than doing his job. His laughter floated back through the trees, reaching my ears and covering the soft crunching of the snow beneath my running feet.

Jedza found her way to my hand, her weight a sure extension of my arm, her song clear and strong in my mind, a joyful, savage melody that heightened my senses and stirred my blood. She was hungry, gleeful to be on the hunt, ready to taste for the first time.

The sentry never heard us, never saw us. Jedza bit through the boiled leather across his back, sliding cleanly between his ribs to drink from his heart, stopping it cold, slicing around and through, spinning him as we raced past. He was dead before he hit the ground, his own blade never even reached for.

I broke the tree line without slowing, bursting into view in time to see one of Kradd's men backhand Lila, sending her spinning into the snow, her dress torn, her lip bloody.

"BONE MAN," I roared, my voice pulling strength from a new song that came to me from the earth, the strength of stone and sleeping iron woven into my words. Baba Jedza's voice joined my own, a keening, haunting chant for blood that only I could hear. I came to a halt, my bearskin cloak shrugged to the ground, only by boots and my doeskin trousers fighting off a cold that could freeze, a cold I couldn't even feel. Baba's blood still crusted my arms, the large, bloody handprints that she had left on my cheeks and forehead framed my blazing, raging eyes. My breath heaved from my chest, great gouts of steam pouring from my mouth and nose as I faced the bastard who had killed the only family I had ever known and threatened the future I hoped for.

The Bone Man and his men turned, rooted to the spot by the raging power of my voice and the feral horror of my appearance. They were twelve in all, men older than I, strong and brutal, dressed in leathers that were worn and tattered with long wear and heavy use.

Kradd the Bone Man was huge, a broad, heavy man, adorned in what he claimed were the bones of his victims, but that any hunter could see were as much the bones of animals as they were human. He was vast, with a great, round gut that pushed his wide leather belt to the limit of its strength. His arms were thick as most men's legs, not made of hard definition, but powerful, deadly strong. A great beard spilled onto his chest, framing a scarred, wide mouth. Sharp gray eyes peered out at me from beneath wild eyebrows that had knit themselves together, creating great furrows through his forehead. His lank, dirty black hair swayed about his shoulders as he turned and planted his booted feet wide, the axe Baba had forge for him already in his hands.

"You owe me," I growled. "You owe for that axe, and you owe me the life that forged it."

"You challenge me, boy?" His voice was deep, a booming thing that was well-suited for commanding troops or shouting over the din of a drunken camp. "Do you know who I am?"