The Apprentice, Chapter 3

This poor kid

I’m back today with another instalment of the Apprentice, the fantasy novel that I wrote a number of years ago. Our protagonist is in the throes of a difficult childhood, which he compares to the life of a cursed Count, surrounded by death and being the cause of the misfortunes of his loved ones. We all feel a bit like that sometimes, I think. It can seem like, no matter what we do, everything turns out badly, or that disaster follows in our wake. That is certainly how this poor kid sees things. Is he right?

Chapter 3: Greysteel and the Birds

We moved to the town of Pitch Springs when I was nine years old. I had a hand in the reason for that too. As I explained earlier, the farm where we lived in my youth was my whole world and it really was big enough to seem like that to a little boy. My world began to decay around the time of my eighth birthday.

When I arrived back to the farmyard after one of my daily chores, feeding the sheep in the western field, I came upon my father arguing hotly with a man I knew only as the Meat Man. He was the man who would normally pay my father for the sheep who were ready for slaughter. He came around several times during the season to pay my father for the sheep that had been driven to him. He was holding a bag of coins up to my father and my father was shaking his head. The Meat Man indicated one of the scrawny beasts which stared through the fence at them, chewing, chewing, chewing. Then he pointed to the yellow and brown pastures beyond the yard and proffered the bag again. My father’s gaze followed his pointing finger and then he looked up to heaven, closed his eyes and held out his hand to receive his meagre payment.

The Meat Man left that day and we did not see him again. The state of the farm declined further and further after that. The very grass died and the fields dried up and blew away. The animals had to be sold off piecemeal just to keep body and soul together. My father began to sell off the farm field by field in the end, until all we had left was our farmhouse and no form of income other than that brought in by my sister working for a local washerwoman. My world was falling apart and so was my father. A man weaker than he might have turned to gambling or drink but his belief in justice and the law was so absolute that he accepted the misfortunes that had befallen him since the death of his beloved wife and my murderous birth; he accepted it and found a way to support his family without his farm.

It emerged that there were many things that I did not know about my father’s past. It became clear that my father was not always the meek farmer and caring husband and parent the casual glance might mistake him for. It transpired that my father was a warrior of some skill and renown who had hacked, shot and strategised his way in and out of the worst battles of the War of the Twins long before I or even my sister was born. He had hidden this well. There was not a single weapon in our house used to fight anything more sinister than a fox or a bail of hay. There were no ornamental shields or plundered loot. He never once spoke of this former life to us. When he determined that he would return to soldiering after all these years and told us of his decision, I could not have been more gobsmacked if he had told me he intended to take a fish for a bride and honeymoon under the waves.

The last day of our lives as farmers was marked by a terrible event. My father had been transporting all our worldly possessions on a wagon to our newly purchased townhouse for the last three days. The final load was a large and precarious one containing a dresser, father’s rocking chair, several crates of crockery and metal goods, a saddle, four candlesticks and the kitchen sink. I was to sit atop it all the way to town, a great adventure which I had been eagerly anticipating. When I attempted to place my foot on a candlestick to heft myself up on top of the rocking chair which sat on the top of the load it shifted and caused the sink to fall off the back of the wagon. It took an hour to rearrange the contents of the wagon to a state of stability and father told me I could not sit on top. I was downcast and walked around the farmyard that was no longer ours, lightly kicking stones and fences and troughs. My father, noting my reaction, decided to make it up to me.

“Come up on Greysteel with me. We shall ride into town, father and son together on my stallion. You will be the tallest boy in Pitch Springs when you arrive. The other boys will never forget such an entrance.” My jaw dropped. My father had previously never even allowed me to touch his great grey mount. He was his prize possession. His compassion overcame his protectiveness, I suppose. I never felt more love for him than I did then. So, he reached down to me and hoisted me up onto the horse’s back, just in front of him on the saddle. I felt like a knight atop his proud steed. I remember looking back and up at my father, grinning as though I had just found my sister’s stash of boiled sweets. My father looked on, head held high. Even after everything, he never lost his sense of pride in himself and his family. I don’t think he ever did, at least not until the very end.

Now Greysteel was a well trained beast. He had trotted and galloped through everything from summer breezes to a tornado once. He never lost his nerve. I had never seen it happen and my father described him as the least skittish horse he had ever had. So why did he rear up on the road to Pitch Springs? What caused him to lose his fabled nerve? Me…it was always me. The old curse. The life of death. The Dead Count wandering the halls of his dead castle could tell you how that felt, feeling that everything bad that happened was his own fault.

Here is what happened. The day was fair and warm despite it being autumn now. We had left farmland behind and trotted steadily along the forest road, the last leg of the trip to Pitch Springs. My backside was sore from the saddle and I could not feel my thighs but I did not even consider complaining when my father had done me such a great service. So, to distract myself from the pain I started to whistle. It was a tuneless sort of whistle but melodic enough. I have always had a certain flair for music and even have a rather fetching tenor singing voice that some have admired. “Listen,” my father said as he stopped Greysteel under a darkening canopy. I stopped my noise and listened to that of the forest. A bird was mimicking my amateurish whistle, note for note. I started again when the bird’s call stopped. Once again the bird made an exact copy of my tune and another one took it up afterwards and another and another. It was quite the most wonderful thing I had ever heard. I began to whistle again when my father clamped a callused hand over my mouth. It smelled of leather and oil. That is how I always remember my father smelling even now. “Quiet,” he whispered. “That is the call of the razor-beaked minah. They are in numbers in these trees and you have woken them.”

Of course I had heard stories of this bird. One of the genuinely frightening stories that my father told us at the fireside was about the razor-beaked minah and how they would lure unsuspecting wood-walkers off the path by imitating human sounds and even speech. Once they were good and lost, the flock would attack. They were as large as a house-cat but much more ferocious and they hid in the all-year cover of evergreens until they swooped down to slice their prey to bloody gobs before feasting on the flesh, even as the victims still breathed. It was their common strategy to slice the tendons and peck out the eyes of their dinner to prevent escape. I had never even considered the possibility that the stories could be true and yet here we were faced by that very mythical beast.

“Just be quiet, now, son. They have failed to fool us but when they realise that we are on to them they may try to attack…if they are hungry enough.” He removed his hand from my mouth and I actually slapped my own over my face to stop a single sound from escaping. Tears streamed from my eyes in grief and terror, so certain was I that we were done for. My father felt me convulse as I tried to suppress the sobs. “We are not dead yet, lad. Greysteel here will spirit us away from this trouble faster than you can say “lickety-split.”” He was almost right.
He drove his heels into the stallion’s sides and Greysteel threw himself down the forest path and us, of course, with him. On and on we went, faster and ever faster. Greysteel’s acceleration seemed impossible as did the length of this minah bedevilled forest road. They whistled away, taunting me, I felt, with the childishness of my own inane whistle and then they attacked! They dove and swooped and plummeted in some cases, straight down from the forest. But they were all too slow for my father’s great beast. Greysteel was just about to beat them and emerge into dazzling sunlight when a razorbeak passed right beneath him. It took the little toe from my own left foot but more seriously, it took the tendons from the backs of Greysteel’s front legs. The horse reared up in an effort to stay upright but he had had it. My father tried to hang on but the weight of the two of us forced us off the stallion’s back. I watched the horse fall, ever so slowly, it seemed. maybe it was just in comparison to the impossibly swift escape run he had just attempted. His head hit the muddy ground with a heart-breaking thud and it was followed by the rest of his body. in seconds, the minah birds had swarmed all over my father’s prize stallion and consumed him.

Greysteel’s transformation from steed to meal provided us the distraction we required to escape. My father lifted me as though I were a rag, threw me over his shoulder and ran as fast as though he were unburdened by his treacherous son. When we stopped running, we were not far from the town. It was dark but the road was torchlit. He had let me down to make my own hobbling way. He said nothing but I looked at his face and saw the tracks in the dirt caking it, from his eyes to his clean-shaven jaw.