Legacy

This story is by Jade Roscoe and was part of our 2023 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

Discipline keeps my men alive. Other battalions, their winter camps are full of dice and whores and cheap wine, and no one minds the wards at night. Well, I won’t say my men don’t have their fun — I’d have no men at all if I tried to stop it — but they know damn well to show up to their shifts sober. Our wards are up at all times or I’ll know the reason why.

Which didn’t make it easy to sneak out of camp that night, but I’ve spent twenty-two years working my way up to commander, and I know a thing or two. And Ranulf is a hell of a lieutenant, and knew who we could depend on to keep their mouth shut.

Hope was pulling me. When you’ve been at war this long, you forget how hope can grab you by the breastbone and yank.

The stars were buried under clouds; once outside the wards and the watch fires, the night swallowed us up like a trout swallows gnats. We picked our way blind over the ground, tussocks trying to trip us, mud sucking at our boots, until spindly branches were pressed against the clouds, one shade darker. Then Ranulf lit his hooded lantern.

“You remember how the sun would sink into the sea?” he murmured, once we’d had a careful look at our surroundings. Ranulf has a poet’s soul, though he’d kill me for saying it.

“I remember,” I lied. Twenty-two years since we left home together to be gobbled up by the High Lord’s army, lured by promises of glory and chased by stories of what happened to towns that didn’t send their fair share. We thought we’d either find death or a handful of years of fighting and a payout at the end. Twenty-two years later, and I can’t remember what color the sea was back home.

He led me into the leafless trees.

Frost was gathering, and my breath foamed white in the dim light. We were halfway down a shallow hill when the lantern peeled away layers of night to expose another man waiting in the dark — no, a boy, barely of age, with muddy boots and a patched cloak. “You came,” he said, his voice still edged with the high notes of childhood. He wouldn’t even have been born when the war started.

“I said I would,” said Ranulf gruffly, and jerked his head toward me. “This is the commander.”

Hope was doing its best to eat me alive. The boy was holding a sword — a fine quality blade, swirls of gold on the hilt set with small, gleaming blue stones. It’d be worth a fair price even without the legends.

“You know what this is?” the boy asked me, raising the sword to the ready.

His stance was all wrong. Hope’s grip wavered, but I said, “It’s Aergethal.” Light of the North, legendary blade of the Dark-Killer, the sword that brought down a tyrant two centuries past. Everyone knew the legend. The peace lasted for generations, right up until the current High Lord decided that peace was all right, but honor and glory and tribute money were better.

Maybe it was, for him, safe in his city. He wasn’t the one doing the work.

“Your man here,” the boy nodded at Ranulf, “tricked you. He brought you out here to die.” I managed not to smile. Ranulf would no more lure me out to die than he’d sell his own mother, but he’d happily trick a young fool like this. “After I kill you, I’ll kill as many more commanders as needed, until your army is in ruins. Then I’ll kill the High Lord.”

That bright warmth of hope was shrinking, leaving a hollow feeling in my gut. No one who really intended to kill bothered talking about it this much. “And your army?” I asked. It wouldn’t take much, just a few hundred troops with Aergethal at their head, and others would start to join. Some men get used to war, can’t remember who they are without it. Most just get tired. Give them the promise of an end and reason to believe that promise, and they’ll roll those dice.

The boy raised his chin. “I don’t need an army. I have Aergethal.” There was a pause, as though he wasn’t sure what came next, before he stepped forward and swung at me — a slow, clumsy blow. I ducked it and gave him a shove, sending him stumbling.

I glanced at Ranulf while the boy caught his balance. That same hollowness was growing in his expression. “That’s the sword, though,” said Ranulf, almost pleading.

Even if it was, we were too old to believe in legends. Twenty-two years we’d fought together — dusty marches under the pitiless sun, battles with blood to the elbows, squelching days of rain and siege. How could we still hope that someone would show up to save us from the endless grind of war? “Where’d you get that sword?” I asked the boy.

“A wise man in the hills gave it to me,” he said, all snap and snarl like maybe I wouldn’t see his fear. He attacked again, or tried to. I sidestepped him, drew my dagger, circled behind him but didn’t strike.

“Not very wise,” I said. “Giving it to an untried boy.” Hope didn’t want to let go. There had to be some way to use this. “If you really want to get rid of the High Lord, you need more strategy than this.”

“The Dark-Killer’s blood runs in my veins!” snapped the boy. He was breathing hard already. “I’m going to throw down the High Lord and end the war!”

I doubted it. I dodged again, swept his foot out from under him. He went down on his back in the damp.

“Listen to the commander,” said Ranulf, who’d picked up my thinking like he always did. “He could help you.”

The boy scrambled to his feet. “Traitor,” he hissed at Ranulf, and then lunged for me, with no skill but plenty of venom.

I sidestepped again; a quick pull and his own momentum carried him past me. If he wouldn’t even pause to think, he was too damn dangerous to be at the head of an army. I asked a lot from my men, but in return I gave them a hell of a lot of victory. They deserved better than to die for a legend.

Death, always more death. Pyres for my soldiers, mass graves for the enemy, crows for the peasants who didn’t get away in time. Twenty-two years of death, and I couldn’t remember the color of the sea where I’d grown up.

Aergethal could’ve ended it. A strong leader could’ve united a great many men behind the Light of the North, to take down another tyrant and bring back peace. Instead some madman in the hills had given it to this idiot child, who believed that victory came from a legacy and a wish, instead of hard work and strategy and understanding the power of a symbol to sway men’s minds…

A symbol.

The boy was panting, furious and frightened. On his next clumsy swing I grabbed his arm and drove my dagger between his ribs — not with anger, just knowing his death was inevitable. I caught the sword before it could touch the dirt, and let the boy’s body fall off my blade, let his blood feed the ground as had the blood of so many others.

Ranulf didn’t even glance down. He stared bitterly at the sword. “I really thought that was Aergethal.”

“It could be,” I said. I wiped my dagger absently against my leg and sheathed it while I looked over the sword in the dim light. The edge was clean and sharp, and there was a faint suggestion of runes pressed into the hilt. It looked old enough to be the Light of the North. So why shouldn’t it be?

“But this idiot…” Ranulf began.

“Maybe he was just a messenger,” I cut in, holding his gaze. If I was going to try this, I needed his help. It was a harder path than we were imagining when we came out here, but when has life ever come easy? “It’s a legendary sword, right? So it’s been looking for someone who’d know how to use it properly.”

Ranulf stared at me. I could see him thinking, caution and hope battling with each white puff of breath. Eventually he nodded. “Ending a war is a lot of work, commander.”

“True.” I threw my arm over his shoulders, grinning. “I’m going to need a good lieutenant.”