By Stephen Woods
His name was Toh’Hev, and he was ready to die.
The blackened earth crumbled under his bare feet. The sickening smoke filled the air, parting before him like a stage curtain opening for his final performance. He had once been a lord, had once lived in the city amongst the wealthiest men and women in the land, but he had given that up for a simple life. But with simplicity comes complexity, as certainly as water quenches fire and the earth comes with the moon. His village had been set ablaze, his newfound family, the people of Hev’Ko, had been driven from their homes. The men who had committed this sin were old rivals from his younger years, men he had been foolish enough to anger.
Toh’Hev walked with head held high, hair in the fashion of Hev’Ko men; sides cut short and the top left to grow long. His strong jaw hid the fact that his teeth were clenched tight, and his grey eyes that used to be described as innocent now held a cold certainty in their depths.
The smoke was disturbingly pungent in his nose, and he turned his head vainly in an attempt to clear it. His family, his people, his wife, his unborn child, they all lay behind him. Certain death lay ahead.
His old rivals, the men who could destroy all that he loved, had offered what they no doubt considered a diplomatic solution – his life for that of his people. His life for his tribe. His life for all that he loved.
He’d had to hold back the other men and women from stopping his suicide mission. He held his head high again, his eyebrows setting in a deadly serious frown. This was his mess, his responsibility, and he was willing to sacrifice himself to fix it.
He walked clear of the smoke, the black ash turning to green grass beneath his feet. Green growth lay everywhere, glowing with life, in contrast to the burnt desolation behind him. He was growing near, his time was running out.
Toh’Hev was the name he had taken upon his rebirth among the Hev’Ko, but before that he had been Miguel, foolish noble lord. He was glad he would die Toh’Hev.
Over his normal clothes he wore the dual white sashes that the Hev’Ko wore to battle. The first sash to show he was ready to fight. The second to show he would fight until victory or death took him. The loops in his belt were both empty. His rapier and axe left behind, but he was just as formidable an opponent with his bare hands as with a weapon. But he went to die, so the belt loops sat empty.
He splashed through a trickling spring, the black ash that stained his feet washing away in the clear water. It was refreshingly cool against his skin, and he wished that he could pause to wash his face. But he was close now; their camp couldn’t be more than a hundred feet further through the trees.
“To walk through ash and grass and water. To see death and life and clarity.” He whispered as if quoting poetry. “Life is hard and death is soft, and yet when faced with both, it is death that seems the one made of stone.”
He reached his destination. His two old rivals from a life half forgotten shared a grin between them as he approached. They stood with their arms hanging lazily at their sides or resting against the pommel of a rapier. Even from a distance he could see that their hands were soft and fleshy from the pampered nature of their city lives; so different from the stiff leather calluses on Toh’Hev’s hands.
He had worked for the right to become Hev’Ko. He had worked till his hands bled, and then worked until they were torn, and then worked again as soon as they were bandaged. These men had not worked a day in their lives. These men had not plowed fields day in and day out, had not chopped firewood from sunrise to sunset, had not butchered cattle, hunted deer, built homes, pulled laden carts of hay, or fought off a pack of wolves with nothing but a blunt knife.
They did not have the experiences that Toh’Hev did, the experiences that had hardened him into a man of the people, into a man who would help any who asked, a man who had seen hardship and worked on through it. He could read these two men with their expensive clothes and trimmed mustaches and beards, and what he read was not two men, but rather two coddled babes.
They strode forward; there was no litheness or stealth in their walk, just arrogance and clumsiness. Armored men with short swords and spears had encircled Toh’Hev, cutting off any route of escape. As if he would run.
“Miguel, it has been a long time,” the first of his old rivals greeted him, a man named Manuel.
“Where is Miguel? All I see is a filthy savage,” the other said. Toh’Hev thought he was Raul, if he remembered the name correctly. His forehead glistened with sweat.
“I have come unarmed, a lamb to your slaughter,” Toh’Hev replied, his cold grey eyes staring deep into the soft faces of the two men before him.
“Why, yes you have,” Raul mocked, a glint in his eyes as he tilted his head with a teeth-flashing grin.
“Mm, oh that’s right, we had some sort of agreement about his fellow savages, do you remember Raul?” Manuel said, with a similar filthy look in his eyes.
“Why yes, I believe the agreement was that we kill Miguel and spare the others, wasn’t it?” The mocking tone in Raul’s voice made Toh’Hev clench his hands into fists.
“What? Kill Miguel and enslave the others? That sounds like a very good agreement, those barbarians across the sea always have need of more slaves don’t they?”
“Why, yes they do, good thinking Manuel.”
Raul and Manuel were no doubt waiting for a look of horror from Toh’Hev, but he was not the soft man he used to be. Where once he might have worn his thoughts and emotions on his face, he now wore a warrior’s mask, wooden and frightening. The last thing that you see before death takes you.
Toh’Hev stood without emotion or response, waiting for the right moment.
Manuel was first, as his smile slipped and he lowered his brow in hidden worry. Toh’Hev struck, and Manuel fell clutching the red hole in his throat, his eyes wide in surprise.
Raul held a look of pure horror as Toh’Hev turned to him. He also fell, two blossoming red roses of blood against his stark white shirt. The men who were supposed to be guarding him were slower to react than he thought, giving Toh’Hev time to bring down three more men with his small silver knives.
Only a fool would have come completely unarmed, and he’d had no doubt in his mind that Manuel and Raul thought him the fool.
A spear point burst through his chest, but he fought on. As long as there was breath in him he fought on. He wore the twin white sashes, and he was bound to honor what they represented. He danced among the armored men in a whirlwind of spears and swords and knives. Yet no matter how many cut and stabbed and sliced him, he fought on. He barely needed to guide his small knives, their blades finding flesh wherever it was exposed.
He fought. He killed. And he cried. He fought for his family, for Hev’Ko and his wife. He killed for them as well, but for each stab, for each slash, he felt the wound as if it were himself he was killing, their blood his own. He cried for himself and for his sin. These men would die for nothing. He at least would be able to say he had died for his family.
He moved in a wave of pure instinct, performing moves he had not been taught, dodging killing blows that he had not known were coming. He knew that as long as there was still an opponent, he would fight.
The last man fell, blood flowing from two clean slices across his throat.
Toh’Hev did not realize he had fallen onto his back until he was staring at the sky, the rush of battle oozing from him, like water from a sieve. His body was mangled and bloodied beyond repair, the white sashes tainted red from his enemies as much as from himself.
“Death is softer. You sin, and you kill, and you love in life, but in death you are set free from all of these. In death you can live without fear. In death you can do better than live. In life you can do worse than die.” As his final whispered words slipped past his lips the clearing where the fifteen dead bodies lay grew quiet. Deathly quiet, but for the rustle of trees in the wind…
Hard and Soft is a short story I wrote way back in 2012, and as one might expect with something old, I don’t remember enough about writing it to say much here, but luckily I posted it on an old blog a day after writing it with the below paragraph.
Starting to write something you don’t care about is incredibly freeing. That sounds kind of bad, but what I mean is that when you just start writing something without caring about the results, or where it’s going, can be quite cathartic. Or at least that’s what I took away from writing this over the course of a few hours last night.
Thanks 2012 me.