Merek's Ascendance Read online

  Merek’s Ascendance

  by Andrew Lashway

  Chapter One: Family Struggles

  Merek Quinn’s father shouted an obscenity so loud Merek felt it punch him in his dream. He snapped awake, scared and breathless, only to discover that his father was still in bed and simply cursing in his sleep.

  Merek, only 17 years old, slept on the hard wooden floor with nothing but a thin cloak to use as a blanket. Across the shabby, broken down cottage, his father Harold and his mother Malkyn slept in a small bed, both sleeping as far from each other as the bed would allow. The cottage itself, a deep brown, was adorned with few objects. There was a tub that his mother occasionally did the dishes in, as well as a cabinet that leaned to the left. The dishes were always piled on the right side to keep it balanced. That, the bed and the dirty, ill-used fireplace were the only objects in the cottage.

  His father shouted again, shaking Merek from his thoughts. What the man was dreaming about, Merek didn’t know. But whatever it was, it was clearly upsetting. No matter how Merek tried to ignore it, he couldn’t sleep through his father’s nightmare. Merek still wondered how his mother managed it.

  He gulped down a sigh that so desperately wished to escape before throwing off the cloak and getting to his feet silently. If he made any noise to awaken his father, the older man would be angry.

  He slipped through the cracked door into the mist of morning. The sun was not far off in rising, heralding the beginning of Merek’s chores whilst his mother tended to the cottage and his father headed off to work in the mines. This left Merek to tend the farm by himself, which was made more difficult every day by the lack of sleep he got.

  Regardless, Merek never complained as he headed out into the field with plow in hand. Spring was nearly over, and the reaping season would soon be upon them.

  His overworked muscles throbbed as his weathered hands pulled and pushed the hoe. Sweat poured into an untended cut on his right brow, but he had long ago become accustomed to such a sting. Occasionally he had to move his bangs out of the way of his hazel eyes. His uncut black hair lay in greasy locks on his shoulders, which were revealed to the merciless sun. Only from the waist down was he clothed in a dirty pair of brown trousers, sweat stained and spotted with flakes of blood. His body was toned, strong from years of physical labor. It was lucky the nearby forest provided berries and mushrooms to eat, for he got little food from his parents that was worth eating.

  Merek worked for an hour before the sun crept over the hills and he heard the general calamity that was his parents waking up. His father shouted for Merek, who was dutifully plowing the field by hand in the rising heat. Answering the summons, Merek walked as slowly as he dared back to the cottage just for his father to tell him to go out and do what he was already doing.

  “Where were you?” were the first words out of his father’s mouth.

  “Plowing the fields, sir,” Merek replied dutifully.

  “What have I told you about telling lies?” his mother snarled, practically spitting at him.

  “Lies are for the weak and those who don’t deserve compassion,” Merek quoted. He had made the mistake of forgetting his mother’s definition once, and his father hadn’t taken kindly to his momentary forgetfulness.

  “Exactly,” she replied, “so what were you doing?”

  Merek lifted his hands, showing them the dirt encrusted on them in a wordless defense.

  “Get to your chores,” his father said, reaching for his pickax.

  “Yes, Father,” Merek replied, immediately realizing his slip and desperately hoping he was the only one.

  He was, of course, mistaken.

  “What was that?” his father said as his mother shot daggers at him from across the bare room.

  “Yes sir,” Merek corrected.

  “That’s better.”

  Without daring to stay and tempt his nonexistent luck, Merek headed back into the field with the rising heat. He lifted the worn, rusted gardening tool from the dirt, and resumed his duties. He had a lot of acres to go before he could spare the time to even go get breakfast. While his mother would probably cook eggs acquired from the market for her and his father, Merek was given a bowl of… well, he honestly wasn’t sure what was in it. It most resembled gravy that had been left out to stew for weeks.

  Needless to say, Merek never touched it. His actual breakfast was waiting in the nearby forest.

  After another hour of tending the field, Merek took a short break to pick some berries. He had learned some time ago to tell the good berries from the bad, though this discovery had nearly cost him his life and his father’s outrage.

  Merek shook away the memory, instead reaching for the blackberries hanging from a bush.

  “Hello my friends,” Merek said to the berries as he picked some from the bush, his voice strummed with the customary accent of those that lived on the Moors. “Fine weather we’re having today.” The sun was climbing steadily into the sky, and clouds were flying in to shade Merek from the rays. The forest had a gentle breeze tickling the leaves, its coolness refreshing Merek as he looked around. He knew this forest well, but there were still miles and miles of undiscovered greenery to explore. They lived in a rather nice spot between fen and forest, and Merek enjoyed the best of both worlds, more or less.

  “I could live out here,” Merek said as he ate another berry. “There’s that waterfall I bathe in.” He bathed every few days, as it was a practice he had learned from a traveling merchant who had been all but disgusted at the sight of his family. “I could sleep in the trees. It would certainly be more comfortable than sleeping on the floor. Might catch the knights training more often. Though I’d have to do something for when it rains…”

  Even as the words left his mouth, he knew he wouldn’t follow through with it. His family, his whole world, was in that small shack. As small and fragile as it was, he couldn’t bring himself to abandon it. So, after putting a few berries into the pockets he himself had sown into his pants, he took the only action he feasibly could have taken.

  He got back to work.

  He worked tirelessly, though his muscles disagreed with his actions each passing hour. Finally, as the sun was beginning to set, he properly farmed the last acre of land. His father would be home within the hour, so Merek hurried to the stream to get whatever water into his belly that he could. Any water in the shack would immediately go to his father for the hard work that man had done in the mine.

  Almost immediately, Merek heard the familiar growl that was his name. His father was home, and the long night was about to begin again.

  It began abruptly, if nothing else.

  “You didn’t plow the back field,” was the first thing his father said. “Your mother said you disappeared instead of doing your chores.”

  “I just went to pick some berries,” Merek replied toeing the familiar line between defense and keeping himself out of trouble, “and I did plow the back field.”

  “Are you saying I’m a liar?” his mother said, her voice reaching a decibel so loud she’d soon be rendered mute.

  “No ma’am,” Merek said, “you must have just not watched when I plowed it.”

  That was also the wrong answer. But considering any answer at all was the wrong answer, it didn’t worry him very much. Nothing would come of this argument, the same as nothing came of every night’s argument.

  It was not the first of his wrong assumptions of the evening.

  “What did you say?” his mother hissed.

  Merek felt his temper rise, the need to defend himself rise, but he stamped it down, just as he had done for years. “I plowed the field,” Merek said, his tone apologetic as he tried to pacify the woman. “You can check it yourself, if you want.”
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  “Do something with the boy,” his mother said, turning away while raising her head to the ceiling, as if asking the sky for some compassion.

  “Considering you didn’t do your chores,” his father said, “no dinner for you tonight. Just be happy I’m still letting you sleep inside.”

  Merek said nothing, though in his mind he snarled, it wasn’t like I was going to get anything worth eating anyway.

  “What was that?” his father said, raising his voice as if he had read Merek’s thought.

  “Nothing, sir. I said nothing.”

  “That’s right. And you’d best keep it that way.”

  For all of Merek’s control, for all of his experience and his conditioning, even he couldn’t maintain such rigid control over himself.

  His fist clenched without his consent.

  It was such a little action, one that meant very little. His eyes didn’t narrow in anger, his knees didn’t bend, none of the usual things that happened when Merek grew angry and started to punch trees in the forest. His hand simply formed a fist, squeezing so tightly he could feel his nails start to dig into the flesh.

  Unfortunately, he was not the only one to notice.

  “You want to throw a punch, boy?” his father said, his voice dropping so low Merek had to strain to hear him. “You think you’re man enough to take on your own father?”

  “I… I don’t want to fight you, sir,” Merek replied. But no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t unravel his hand.

  “Damn right, you sad little disgrace. I get nothing but disrespect around here.”

  His other fist clenched, and Merek couldn’t do anything about it. “I meant no disrespect.”

  “Oh stop quibbling, you bucket of waste. Get out of my sight.”

  “Yes sir,” Merek said, turning to the door and seeking to escape this place. The worst was past him, for now.

  “Nothing to say for yourself?” he heard his mother say, her voice high and mocking.

  “As if anything I could say would matter,” Merek replied, instantly biting his lip to control anything else from escaping.

  “You stand there in clothes we provide, in a home we provide you, and you have the nerve to threaten your father? To neglect your chores? Have you no respect?”

  Merek said nothing else. He couldn’t risk a further increase in their rage, no matter how much he wanted to defend himself.

  “Look at me, you ungrateful chicken.”

  This order came from his father, and it wouldn’t be ignored. Ignoring the contrary orders of leaving his sight and looking at him, Merek half turned to face the older man.

  No sooner had their eyes met than an open palm greeted his left cheek.

  The pain bled slowly from his cheek into the rest of his face. The burn was enough to bring tears to his eyes, tears that he refused to even acknowledge. After years of being told much the same, years of being told he was worth nothing, Merek consciously balled his hands into fists. Tonight would be the end of this, one way of another. Merek would stand for it no more.

  For all of their shouting, for all of their scathing and hurtful words, they had never before struck him, and he would not allow them to do so again.

  “I’d watch your aim, if I were you, ‘Father.’”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” he replied, closing his palm as he stared at his only son. He took a step forward, his eyes narrowed at both wife and son. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

  “It means…” Merek hissed before partially calming himself. “It means I’m done with this. I’m done with this farm. I’m done with sleeping on the floor. And most of all, I’m done with you. I’m leaving. And hopefully, I’ll never see either of you again.”

  “Ha!” his mother shrieked. “And where will you go? No one will take you in! You have no friends!”

  “Oh, I’m well aware of that, seeing as you never let me have any. You never let me go to school. To this day, I can’t read.”

  “An education would have been wasted on you,” his father retorted, “You don’t have enough brains in there to even remember to do your chores.”

  “But I have enough brains to remember both of your birthdays,” Merek shot back, “yet I never learned mine. Doesn’t that strike you as a bit wrong, Father?”

  “Why would anyone want to remember the day you blighted the world?”

  Merek didn’t let the sting of his father’s insult show up on his face. He gritted his teeth behind sealed lips before he turned to the door slowly, keeping both eyes on his parents until his hand found the latch. He pulled the door open and finally turned away, pulling the door shut behind him.

  The latch never caught, and before Merek knew it he was on the ground. His father, enraged beyond measure, lifted his fist and slammed it into Merek’s face. It was all the son could do to lower his face, taking the blow on top of his head. He felt the force of it through his whole body, a spike of fire that serve only to make him angrier.

  The eyes of the father and the son met, brown into green.

  “You’re going to have to hit me harder than that, father.”

  “Is that how you want it?”

  “Remember, I’m not the one who made the first blow. But I’ll be the last.”

  His father laughed at the pronouncement. “You’ve never been in a fight in your life. And you think you’re going to beat me? ME?!”

  Merek’s knees bent and his shoulders relaxed, his instincts preparing him. He had watched the knights spar during their training regimens in the woods, and he had taught himself to mimic their motions.

  “Only if you make me,” he replied, his hands held loosely in front of his face.

  In answer, his father charged forward, with his head down. Merek momentarily froze, but he recognized that attack. The knights in the forest had used it as demonstration of a fool’s attack.

  Merek’s knee lifted in exact time as his father’s head reached him, and there was a resounding crack as bone met bone. Merek backed away, rubbing his knee as it throbbed in pain. His father did the same, holding his head and trying to shake off the blow.

  “Alright,” Merek said to himself, “perhaps that wasn’t my best idea.”

  His father put his hands up again, this time more defensive. Merek left his at his sides, instead moving his shoulders back and forth to loosen them up. Working in the fields for hours made him unprepared for this struggle.

  Though now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure he could ever be prepared for this struggle.

  His father edged in, waiting for his chance. Merek simply stared him down, waiting. He had never wanted this. He never wanted it to come to this.

  The first blow was a punch to his abdomen, which Merek could make no move to avoid. The next was a missed shot to Merek’s jaw, which Merek ducked away from. He couldn’t dodge the follow up, which was a clubbing blow to his back.

  Merek’s jaw tightened, and he pushed aside the lingering ice pick of pain. His counterattack was a swift kick to the older man’s legs, which landed in a shout of pain. He twisted, and his other leg kicked his father’s other knee. Both legs ringing with pain, his father backed away.

  “Is that really the best you can do?”

  Merek had no reply but to lift his hands.

  His father was all over him. Clearly toying with him before, his father threw blows that Merek could do nothing to prevent. Every punch he dodged, he ran into another fist. His father was manic, crazy, bordering insane. After only a few seconds, all Merek could do was put his hands over his head and hope to ward off the worst of the damage.

  And inside his own head, all Merek could think was that he hadn’t meant any of this to happen. Maybe, just maybe, he could apologize, and things could go back to the way they were. Not perfect, but manageable.

  But when his mother joined the fray, any chance of reconciliation was cast aside.

  Merek didn’t see her coming until it was too late. He shoved his father away, who
tripped and fell to the ground. The next thing he knew, there was a blur of motion to his right. His mother was charging at him, wielding a wooden spoon. Merek made no move to defend himself, but that didn’t stop her from smacking him in the face with the implement. On instinct alone, Merek grabbed her with both hands around her head and twisted, throwing her across the grass.

  It was just reflex. He hadn’t meant to throw her so far, or clutch her head so tightly. He hadn’t meant to throw her down the hill. He had just sought to keep her from stabbing him, to keep her from hurting him anymore…

  But none of that changed the fact that her uncontrollable roll had ended with the wooden spoon snapping in half. Merek could see the spoon part, the actual round piece. But where the rest of the handle went, he couldn’t see. His mother wasn’t moving, and in the fading daylight Merek could see a crimson stream pooling under his mother’s chest…

  Father and son moved as one, sliding down the hill to get to her. She was still breathing, though blood was spreading quickly across her apron.

  “Oh… oh Gods. Mother? Mother!”

  Merek felt his body move without his consent, his father shoving him aside to get to his wife.

  “Malkyn, are you okay?”

  She could make no response as tears fell from her eyes.

  “You did this,” his father sneered, his eyes wide in rage.

  “We can fight more later,” Merek snapped, “we need to get her to a medic. There should be some in town.”

  “She’ll be dead before we get there!”

  “Not if we go now!” Merek argued, “Grab her legs.” Merek moved to lift her head, but before he got there his father pulled the wood from her chest.

  Before Merek could react, his father jammed the shard into his arm.

  Pain exploded through his shoulder, a burning flame that Merek couldn’t help but scream at. Blood poured from the wound, and Merek fell to the ground.

  “Haven’t you done enough damage?” his father said, lifting his wife into his arms and running down the darkening road. The village was roughly a mile away, not too far. His mother should be alright. She should be…