The Lessons of My Fathers

Gallows hill lay about a mile outside the city of New Jerusalem along the Great Northern Road. The road was not as grand as the trade road east but it did steadily climb into the northern mountains making the gallows visible to all who approached the city no matter the direction. As they approached steadily, riding double on the back of one of the castle’s finest geldings Amber’s eyes were drawn to the splendidly ominous scaffold that climbed into the brilliant blue sky and cast an angular silhouette along the path of the wide dirt road.

 

The two girls had been let out of their morning exercises early. Garrock had read the notes from their K’Satria parents laboriously, lips moving, nodding here and there as his poor reading skills conquered each word and as he finished he slipped the notes away into his pockets. With this done he looked up into the bright blue dawn sky and nodded again. “Wait here.” He rasped and then turned to head inside the leaning hut that served as his living quarters while the two girls stood out front.

 

He came back with a round loaf of rough bread, broke it in two parts and gave each of the girls a half. The girls looked at the weapons master questioningly but he gave no explanation. Instead, he gave them instructions. “When it’s over both of you will put these beneath the cook’s shoes. Mind you do exactly as I say or I will clout you into next week.” They would not understand why they had been given this task until they arrived.

 

They left immediately and when they reached Gallows Hill it was nearly two hours before the first of the spectators and four hours before the hanging so the place stood completely deserted except for the ravens. The birds were everywhere. They roosted noisily on the hard wooden bar that overhung the trap, they set in a row along the edge of the platform and they jostled for position on the stairs. As the young girls stopped there in front of the stairs leading up to the platform a realization suddenly dawned on them. “They leave the bodies for the birds….” Judy muttered with a note in her voice that might have been disgust or might have been excitement.

 

Amber nodded. “Let’s go up.”

 

Judy looked at her friend with open horror and then breathed out in barely more than a whisper. “Up there? What if-”

 

Amber cut her off with a gesture of her hand. “We’re years early. No one will come.”

 

“Alright…” Judy relented.

 

They tied their horse’s reigns and walked slowly towards the stairs. The birds took wing as the children approached cawing and circling like an angry mob of dispossessed peasants. Their bodies were dark black and stood out in contrast against the bright blue dawn sky and as the girls took their first steps up onto the gallows with the birds circling overhead Amber finally began to feel the enormity of her responsibility in the matter.

 

This wood was not noble like she had thought it would be, it was not part of the awesome machine of civilization like she had expected but merely warped pine wood from the forests of one of the inner baronies. Now it was covered with splattered white bird droppings from the ravens. It was splashed everywhere, the stairs, the railing, the platform and it stank. This was not noble. This was not honorable. No one should have to die like this, especially not a friend.

 

The girl turned to look at Judy with startled, terrified eyes and she saw Judy looking back at her with the same. “I can’t...” Judy whispered with real fear in her voice now. “Amber I can’t do it.”

 

Amber shook her head slowly and continued to climb. There was a lesson here she realized. Not a bright, shining thing but a lesson none the less. It was something old and rusty and misshapen but it was a true lesson and the reason that their parents had sent them up here. With her stubborn and meticulous doggedness Amber grasped it and held on to whatever it was refusing to let it go without fully examining it. “You can Judy.”

 

“I won’t sleep tonight if I do.” The younger girl said almost on the verge of tears.

 

“Then you won’t.” Amber replied not seeing what that had to do with it. Judy grasped Ambers hand with such mute agony that Amber’s own doubts began to come back and she wished, if only for a moment, that they had never gone to the west kitchen that day. Her father had been right. It was better not to know. Better that every man woman and child in the city dead and stinking than this but still...still…Whatever half buried truth she was holding on to, dark and rusty as is was she would not let go of it. Not now.

 

“For the first time…I hate our childhood Amber. I wish…I wish for the long boots of age.” Yes Judy was right. This life that they had both been born to that took children and turned them into killers. It was hard and unfair. They were not like other children, they may not really even be children at all and yet…this hanging was necessary wasn’t it? If their parents caught this wizard, Erricson, if they stopped the rebellion that would end it…wouldn’t it?

 

“I know exactly how you feel.” Amber said finally.

 

Judy gave a harsh laugh as they walked up onto the platform and looked around. “I doubt it. I think you were born grown up Amber. I think the only hope you have for experiencing childhood is reaching extreme old age for there are none more childish than those trying to recapture youth.”

 

“There may be some truth in those words…” Amber said as she walked up to the noose and ran her hand along the knot. “…but there’s even more truth in these: What sort of K’Satria will you be if death holds such a grip on you?” Her mind was still working on uncovering that truth and she only now was beginning to think that she had it, at least part of it. Picking up the loop of rough hemp rope the girl slipped it over her head and stood their looking out over the hill feeling the rope resting snuggly against her neck. Finally she began to speak. “To be a K’Satria means being willing to stick your own head into the noose…”

 

“Hey Amber, come on!”

 

Amber ignored her friend’s protests and continued. “…with the confidence that through your skill and training, you’ll be able to extract it again.” Slowly the princess slipped the noose from her head and held it out to Judy. She could see her friend was reluctant, she could see that the younger girl didn’t want to do it but Amber also knew that it was necessary. That if her friend ever hoped to complete her training she would have to conquer her fears. “Try it.”

 

Reluctantly Judy stepped forward, took the noose and mimicked Amber’s motions of slipping the knot over her head. “See.” Amber spoke again as her friend trembled. “This is an instrument of death. It’s no different from my bow, Allan’s slingshot or even the blades we will bare one day. Are you going to fear seeing your enemies cut down before you as you drive through them like a storm? If we are going to be K’Satria we must learn to make death or instrument.”

 

The ravens that had flown were beginning to calm now and a few had begun to take their places back on the railings. Had they not been distracted by their conversation perhaps the girls would have been able to prevent what happened next but at that moment they were otherwise engaged. “It’s not the same Amber.” Judy replied. “It’s not the same and you-“ Judy’s voice was cut short as the trap below the noose suddenly opened causing her to stumble back. Had she been standing directly over it the girl would have surely fallen through but with lightning quickness Amber shot forward and grabbed her friend to steady her.

 

With a jerk Judy threw the noose off and together the girls fell back on the platform with Judy sputtering and shivering. As they looked around they noticed a raven that had landed on the trap’s lever and apparently thrown it.

 

“Are you okay Judy?” Amber asked with open concern but the younger girl shoved Amber off of her and jumped up to shoo the bird away.

 

“Damned creatures! Harbingers of death! You’ll have your pickings soon enough.” The bird cawed and took flight and Judy turned back to Amber. “I’ll be fine after I beat you senseless now come on. This place is beyond morbid. Let’s get out of here.”

 

Amber walked over and tore two long splinters from the wood of the platform’s railing. She brought one to Judy now and placed it into her hand. Judy looked at it and then turned her face up to Amber’s with a curious expression. “You hand me a piece of wood. Why?”

 

Amber wished to answer something witty or wise, ‘Oh the luck of the gallows’ or something like it, but instead the girl shook her head at Judy. “It’s for both of us to commemorate the day. You said that you hated your own childhood and you may well be right about my lack of one. So now we make it official. This day, we leave our childhoods, such as they are, behind us.”

 

They walked away from the gallows together and set down to wait for the crowd. In an hour or so the first of the town folk began to gather most of them families coming in large broken down wagons and carrying their breakfast with them. Amber felt her stomach growl at the sight and it made her wonder again where the honor and the nobility was. She had been taught of such things all her life and was now forced to wonder if they had just been lies all along or maybe only treasures buried deep by the wise. She wanted to believe the lessons of her youth but it suddenly seemed to her that Rygar in his dirty whites walking around his steaming kitchen and yelling at the cookboys had more honor than this. She fingered the splinter from the gallows with sick bewilderment. Judy lay beside her, her face drawn and impassive, and together they watched as events unfolded.

 

In the Amber thought it wasn’t such a big to do and that made her glad. Rygar was carried in an open cart but only his huge girth truly gave him away. He had been blindfolded with a wide, black cloth that hung down over his face. A few threw stones but most merely continued with their breakfast as they watched. A K’Satria whom Amber did not know, she was glad her father has not drawn the black stone to carry out the deed, led the fat cook carefully up the steps. Two guards of the watch had gone ahead and stood on either side of the trap to set it and when the condemned finally reached to spot the K’Satria threw the noose over Rygar’s head and dropped the knot until it lay just above the man’s left ear. The birds had all flown but Amber knew they would be waiting.

 

“Do you wish to make confession?” The K’Satria asked the condemned man.

 

“I have nothing to confess.” Rygar said. His words carried well and his voice was oddly dignified despite the muffle of cloth that hung over his lips. The cloth ruffled slightly in the faintly pleasant breeze and the cook continued. “I have not forgotten my father’s face or the face of my ancestors. They have been with me through all.” Amber glanced sharply at the crowd and was disturbed by what she saw there. A sense of sympathy? Perhaps admiration. Amber decided to ask her father later. When traitors are called heroes or heroes called traitors dark times must have fallen. Dark times indeed.

 

She wished that she understood better and her mind flashed to the bread Garrock had given them. She felt contempt. The day was coming when Garrock would serve her. Perhaps not Judy, perhaps the younger girl would buckle under Garrock’s steady fire but Amber would not. She was destined for the long years and the long rides. That this seemed a good fate was something she would marvel over when she was older but for now she merely entwined her fingers with Judy’s when the younger girl reached out for her as the K’Satria delivering the sentence continued.

 

“The charge be capital murder and sedition. You have crossed the light and I, James son of James, condemn you ever to the outer dark.”

 

The crowd murmured. Some in protest and Rygar spoke. “I never-“

 

“Tell your tale in the underworld maggot!” Said James of James and yanked the lever releasing the trap. It dropped and the cook plummeted through still trying to talk. Amber never forgot that. The cook went still trying to talk. And where did he finish the last sentence that he ever began on earth? None may ever know. The man’s struggled words ended as his neck snapped with a sickening crack but on a whole though Amber thought it was not such a big to do.

 

The cook’s leg kicked out once in a wide ‘Y’, the crowd made a soft whistling noise, the guards of the watch dropped their rough military pose and began to gather things up. Finally James son of James walked back down the stairs, mounted his horse and rode off into the crowd, dispersing it quickly. In forty minutes the two girls were left alone on the shaded hill they had chosen. The birds were already returning to examine their new prize.

 

“It doesn’t look like him at all.” Judy said when the two girls had climbed back up to the gallows.

 

“Oh yes, it does.” Amber said confidently as they paused beneath the crossbeam looking up at the body with the bread in their hands.

 

Judy looked abashed at the comment and then almost as if to prove that she could she reached up and touched one of Rygar’s hairy ankles setting the body swinging on a new course. They watched this for a moment and then rapidly broke the bread taking a moment to spread the rough chunks beneath the dangling feet. When Amber looked back as they rode away she saw hundreds of birds now swarming the platform and the corpse. The bread, she grasped this only distantly, was symbolic then.

 

“It was good.” Judy said as they rode. “It…I…I liked it. I did.”

 

Amber was not surprised by this although she had not particularly cared for the scene herself but she thought that she could understand what Judy was saying. Perhaps the younger girl would survive Garrock’s training after all. There was some fire inside her, the fire of a K’Satria. “I don’t know about that Judy…” Amber said. “…but it was something. It surely was.” She would not fully understand what it was for a few years yet. By that time Amber would be a K’Satria and the long years and the long rides would have begun.