A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

VOLUME ONE - PART ONE: THE SEIZING OF GREAT POWER

Dedicated to all the boys and girls struggling out there. Your day will come - stay strong!

Chapter 1 – The Cursed Child

As with the forging of all swords, it began with flames.

In a single night, everything that our young hero owned was taken from him. Under the cover of darkness, eight-year-old Beam, hiding behind the only piece of furniture in their tiny dirt hut – a table – was pierced by a spear.

He knew not where the spear came from, only that it pierced his side and grazed his liver. Dark blood welled up from the wound, and it was only a few moments later that he lost consciousness.

When he awoke, he had nothing. Not even his health. With his stomach covered in dirty bandages, he lay upon the hard, dusty earth of a foreign place.

Even before anyone had told him, he knew his predicament. The fact that he was here, in a place that he didn't know, with no familiar faces around him, and with his wound tended to, could only mean one thing. He'd been picked up by medical profiteers. Renege merchant doctors that went from battlefield to battlefield, searching the corpses for anyone yet alive that they might put in their debt.

Of course, a child had no money for which to pay them, leading to a fate that to many was worse than death. Slavery, until he could pay off what he owed.

It took him four years to rid himself of that debt, and escape the poisonous clutches of those travelling wartime merchant doctors.

It took him another year to find a village that would let a stranger like him in, and give him work.

And then another year after that before he could afford a hut of his own in which to live, and enough food to get him through the week.

And yet another year after that before he grew bored and dissatisfied.

And so, just after his fifteenth birthday was when Beam had enough respite from the misfortunes of the world to feel the flames of ambition licking at his heart. It was a curse that the village Elders knew well. The callings of the Dark God Ingolsol, inviting a mortal with potential to pursue a reckless path, hoping for their failure, so just before their blossom could bloom, the raven could feast on their potential.

So begins our tale, in the village of Solgrim, south of the towering Black mountains, in the centre of many rolling plains.

…

…

It began on what should have been an ordinary day – a pleasant day even. At least, compared to what he had endured in the past.

Spade in hand, three feet beneath the ground, he dug.

He was used to his job by now, and his movements appeared effortless. He stabbed his sharp spade into the hard earth using hardly any of his strength, and then he tossed the mud over his shoulder with an ease that approached contempt.

Two hours into his eight-hour shift, he was already covered from head to toe in mud. This was his second hole of the day, and yet he continued to work tirelessly.

"Oy, Beam. Leave the hole for a second, I need to have a word with you."

Beam didn't hear him. Every single person in their twenty-man cell of diggers was at least 5 years his elder. He didn't have anything in common with any of them. Every single one of them had been born in this village, and very few of them had ever seen true conflict. The majority had families to go back to, and reasons to work as hard as they were forced to.

That was not true for Beam. The only reason he worked was for sustenance. And to keep a roof over his head. In short, he worked to go on living. He figured he owed that to his family, for it was he who lived in their place. He had to live as best he could so that they wouldn't worry about him, even if that life was tough and even if he had to endure the worst of conditions just to continue it.

He was determined to struggle, no matter what, for he valued the life that he had kept. His goal was to go beyond mere struggle and to get to the point where his family could even be proud of him. But progress was slow and the days were hard. After two years in the village, he still didn't have a lot to show for it.

"Beam! I said I want a word." The foreman said again.

Beam still didn't hear him, even as he shouted. He was completely lost in his own thoughts, only continuing to work. He worked shirtless, the large scar on his stomach rippling with every movement of the spade.

He liked that scar. He was proud of that scar. Because that scar meant he lived. That scar was proof of the suffering that he had endured. But that scar wasn't enough.

At first, for many years, the hollow hole left by the death of his family had run deep. It had left him with aching wounds of the heart that none could tend to, save for time.

He'd loved his family deeply. His mother had been kind and caring. She'd made sure that he'd never wanted for anything.

His father too, in his own way had expressed his own kind of concern for his son's well-being, and made sure he was protected.

His little sister who followed him around like a puppy, showering him with unconditional love and reverence… He might have missed her the most of all. For her to be slaughtered so ruthlessly – the very thought of it still brought his anger to the boil. For those raiders to be so callous as to cut down a harmless child without a second thought… There could be no better cause for vengeance. No better reason for taking up the sword.