I recoiled from the sound, my ears aching. Every­thing had gone dark, and I tripped and fell over some­thing invis­i­ble in the dark­ness, as I backed away from the tor­rent of anger that I could still hear.

My first mem­ory… what was that now…?

The voice was my father’s, and I knew he was angry at me. But why, I couldn’t tell. He seemed to be angry so much these days…

I heard his loud foot­steps boom­ing as he stomped through our small house, audi­ble even above his inces­sant rant­ing. Before long, I heard my mother’s voice raised in anger too, although I couldn’t make out who she was angry at, or why.

Sud­denly, there was a harsh sound of flesh impact­ing against flesh, and my mother’s voice could no longer be heard.

I sat on the floor, and cried. I must have cried myself to sleep, for I remem­ber noth­ing further.

I remem­ber… My par­ents… I never under­stood at the time, why my father was always angry… It seemed he would come home every day enraged, and would take it out on my mother or I…

I was sent away to school. My father parted with a sum of money, and sent me and my few belong­ings away on a coach across the coun­try­side to the next town, where I was to be edu­cated. My mother wished me luck when I left, but even she looked sub­dued. My father just glared at me and turned away.

My mother’s name was… Luciana. My father… his name… my… father’s name…

I was bul­lied mer­ci­lessly at school, by my peers and by my mas­ters. I was repeat­edly told that I did not have the intel­li­gence to be at school — and the knowl­edge was daily beaten into me. After­wards, I would be made fun of for my many cuts and bruises. When it came to a fight, as it often did, I had nei­ther the will nor the strength left to defend myself. Many times, I was hit and kicked until I fell unconscious.

I… I hated that place. I’d rather have died…

Twice a year, I went back to see my par­ents for a month. Rather than wel­com­ing me home, my father would often beat me within an inch of my life for my con­tin­u­ing fail­ures at school. My mother, though… I hardly saw her any more. She hardly spoke to any­one, least of all my father or I, and kept her­self hid­den from sight vir­tu­ally all the time. No longer did she try to inter­vene when my father beat me up.

It was a few years later that I decided. I decided I couldn’t take it any longer.

Life at school and at home had been get­ting con­tin­u­ally tougher, as I was grow­ing older and still fail­ing to meet the expec­ta­tions of my mas­ters or my father. I was six­teen years old, and my time at school was com­ing to an end. How­ever… I couldn’t face return­ing home. Every­one would know that I had failed at school, and I dreaded what my father might do to me.

One night, as the nearly-full moon shone through the win­dows of the dor­mi­tory and I lay awake in bed, nurs­ing my many wounds, I decided that I would have to leave for good. I pre­tended to be fast asleep when the dorms were inspected at mid­night — then, a few min­utes later, I dressed in my day­time clothes, opened the win­dow, and dropped lightly onto the grass out­side. I closed the win­dow qui­etly behind me, so that the cold would not wake any­one who might notice that I was miss­ing. At school, we woke for break­fast at six in the morn­ing — I had just less than six hours to get as far away as possible.

Rather than try­ing to climb the walls at the front of the school, I ran — keep­ing as close as pos­si­ble to the build­ings — down to the woods at the bot­tom of the school field.

I was for­tu­nate that my father had been wealthy enough to send me to an out-of-town school rather than one of the dirty inner-city ones — but of course I wouldn’t have seen it like that. Not then.

The dew was thick on this cold and clear March night, and by the time I had got far into the woods, my feet were numb. Just as well, for it meant that I noticed the stones cut­ting at the flesh of my feet less.

Despite the pain, the fear, and the ever-growing agony in my mus­cles and lungs, I kept on run­ning. After all, there was noth­ing else to do, noth­ing else in my head, except for the need to get away. In the end, I ran for much longer than until dawn. Some­how, after I’d been flee­ing for so long, it didn’t seem a big deal just to carry on. My legs and feet were beyond the pain now, and I felt in my mind that noth­ing else mat­tered. I’d lost my grip on real­ity, and my head was blank. So I did all that I could do… I con­tin­ued to run. Even­tu­ally, the for­est gave way to grassy plains, and a whole val­ley lay out before me. But down the dark tun­nel of my vision, I couldn’t see it.

I lost track of how far I’d come, how long I’d fled from imag­i­nary pur­suers. Even­tu­ally, I just col­lapsed. The tiny part of my brain that was left think­ing log­i­cal thoughts won­dered if it was the end — won­dered if I might die here, alone.

But I didn’t… I couldn’t. I’d got so far, and I couldn’t give up and let all the pain I’d endured be for noth­ing.

I can’t remem­ber much of the time when I was run­ning away, now… But when I woke up, I’ll never for­get how that felt.

I opened my eyes, then quickly screwed them shut, as the bright mid-day sun had just shone directly into them. My head lolled to one side, and I retched vio­lently, but was unable to be sick. My throat burned like fire, my eyes streamed, and my stom­ach heaved inside me.

Grad­u­ally, I fully regained con­scious­ness, and I sat up. Imme­di­ately I regret­ted it, as I turned and threw up — prop­erly, this time — and then passed out again.

When I woke up for the sec­ond time, I felt much bet­ter. The air was cool, and the sky above me was dark. I could hear the crackle of a fire to my right, but as my eyes still felt sore I didn’t feel like turn­ing to look at it. As well as the splin­ter­ing and pop­ping sounds, I could hear the voices of three men, chat­ting about some­thing. I lis­tened in, and realised they were talk­ing about me…

The man who found me lying uncon­scious near the road was named Zar­june. One of the mer­ce­nar­ies who sat around the fire with him, called him­self “Dark­shine” — I don’t know why. Per­haps that was really his name. The other hired men… They told me their names, I’m sure… but for the life of me I can’t remem­ber them now.

Two days later, at dusk, the car­a­van was attacked. I’d had some pretty bad expe­ri­ences in my life, but I’d never seen men die right in front of my eyes before. Nev­er­the­less… I stayed emo­tion­less. Why death failed to affect me emo­tion­ally, I don’t know — but it didn’t then, and it never has to this day.

The rea­son I recall Darkshine’s name and not those of the other mer­ce­nar­ies that Zar­june hired is not due to it’s odd­ness. Rather, he — along with Zar­june and myself — were the only ones who sur­vived the attack that day. The ban­dits were repelled, of course — but at the loss of the major­ity of the trav­el­ling party.

We kept a low pro­file on the roads for the next week or so, and even­tu­ally we made it to our destination.

It seemed like Zar­june expected me to leave, to go some­where — back to my home, per­haps. He’d never really been the talk­a­tive sort, and in all the time I’d been part of their con­voy he’d never asked me about my past. I guess that’s one of the things I liked about him, really — he seemed to take every­thing and every­one at face value.

In the end, I don’t know why I chose to stay with Zarjune’s trade car­a­van. Maybe… I guess that was it… There was a debt I owed to him, and I had to find a way to pay it back. With hind­sight, I don’t know why he allowed me to travel with him in the end — it’s not as if I had any of the skills of a trader or a mer­ce­nary.

But over the years, I did develop some skill in the lat­ter, and I think I devel­oped myself as well. I found some­thing to believe in, even if it was just one group of peo­ple, ply­ing one of the world’s many trade routes. And although I seemed use­less at first, over time I learned to fight. I wasn’t very good, but I per­se­vered — because after all, I had a debt to pay back, and this was my way of doing it.

In the end, though, I never did get to pay back what I owed Zarjune.

I guess some of Zarjune’s easy-going atti­tude had rubbed off on me in the years I had trav­elled with him. Just as, at first, he never sought to enquire into my past, I was ask­ing Zar­june less and less about what we were doing and why. I was dri­ven by thoughts of the debt I thought I owed him, so noth­ing else really mattered.

This time, of course, I should have asked. I should have asked where we were going, and why. And I should have asked what the cargo was.

But it was too late now. Zar­june was dead. The other men we trav­elled with were dead. I stood amidst the burn­ing remains of the con­voy wag­ons, my clothes torn and splat­tered with the same blood that ran in rivers down the shaft of the spear I held. Stand­ing in a cir­cle around me were sol­diers, dozens of them. Only the impres­sion that the num­ber of corpses that lay around me inspired was stop­ping them rush­ing me right now. It wouldn’t be long, though. They must have sent an entire reg­i­ment out after us. There had been so many sol­diers… so many. And yet… most of them had died. I’d… killed… so many soldiers.

Why? Why did I do it? Anger, I sup­pose. Zar­june and the car­a­van had been more of a par­ent and a home than I’d ever had before. And in the ambush, they’d both been destroyed before my eyes. When that hap­pened… my mind… went blank. There was noth­ing, any more — noth­ing, except for blood, and steel, and fire — noth­ing, except for me, and the enemy. I was beyond log­i­cal thought, beyond con­sid­er­ing why I was fight­ing soldiers.

As the remain­ing men who encir­cled me began to move inwards, my blood-red tun­nel vision nar­rowed, nar­rowed, and nar­rowed more, and the world became insep­a­ra­ble from the blood.

What does this mean…? Am I… dead? Why can’t I remem­ber? Why!? WHY!?