I soon learned Tuo the foreman was all bluster, harsh but fair. I mopped and scoured the floorboards, directed by his terse orders, until my hands were raw. By the afternoon, Tuo brought me to the galley to stand in line with the other men for the mid-meal. The foreman’s bulk blocked most of the mens’ simmering glares. When I reached the opened wall where the cook was standing behind, I was given a bowl of one salted herring piece and thin crackers hard as wood with a tankard of warm brew.

Tuo growled, “Wait for me.”

Once he received his meal I followed him to the long tables all placed into one line, benches at either side. I sat at the very end away from the others, across from the foreman, who ate his rations with surprising quietness despite his size.

I was the first to speak. “So you’re my keeper then?”

The large man scoffed. “Keep up that attitude, boy. See where it gets you, and you won’t be seeing much where you’ll be going.”

I was quiet, for a moment. “Why not kill us with our families?” I asked softly.

Tuo finished the last of his dried crackers with the thump of his drained tankard over the table. “You can ask the world why you were born in it, boy – and still wonder why until you die in it. You speak as if you’re not afraid of death. Do you really want to test that?” He nodded at my silence. “Good. It’s best you learn quickly that this is your home now, and your life rests on whether you’ll stay in the captain’s graces. Back to work, then.”

I continued the tasks he gave me under his watchful eye: carrying barrels and crates, hoisting up the pulleyed bathwater, and other lesser duties. At the end, my back ached even with Tuo’s aid.

After eating the same meal for supper, I lay in a hammock that swayed with the ship’s movements. The foreman rested in a cot beside. We were nearest to the captain’s quarters. With the lanterns’ light extinguished, I drifted into a darkness heavy from my exhaustion.

Tuo awoke me with a kick to my hammock. I snarled and raised my fists, springing up to the floor, ready to fight. The foreman merely snorted, standing a foot away.

“If we wanted you dead, you would be,” Lei Teng said, resting in the shadow of the dimly lit hall leading to his quarters. He stepped into the lantern light. “How is the boy, Tuo?”

The other man grunted. “He’s a quick learner and hard worker.”

The captain nodded. “We’ll see about that. Follow me.”

I tread in his steps, past the bunkhall into a smaller chamber. Dark stained straw matting covered a square of the floor. A presently exposed squared opening let in the sunlight overhead. An array of wooden weaponry was held in racks at each side, and at the entrance wall were several hardwood dummies, their own version of Muren.

“I’ve seen your ability unarmed,” Lei Teng said, moving to hold a wooden sword. “But what of your skill in arms?”

He flicked his wrist out to throw the training weapon at me, to which I stepped aside and caught its handle. The man held his own training sword, beckoning me to the matted square. I walked over to face him.

He laughed then. “The way you wield the banto – your teacher truly did not train you in weapons?” His smile twisted into a sneer. “Perhaps why he fought with a wooden staff. A lowborn with a lowly weapon, dying a fool’s death.”

I rushed forward with an overhead strike to which he batted aside. We circled each other, the man’s sword pointed down as Wei had done.

“Anger is good!” the man declared. “It keeps you alive and on the offensive!” He began a flurry of blows that I was too focused on striking with my own force before he tripped me to fall with a hard thump to the padded floor. “But when faced with a foe of any skill, your anger is likely to make you charge into their sword.”

He held out his hand. Hesitant, I reached to take it, only to be kicked back to the ground.

Lei Teng said then, “You lose in training, you lose in battle. You become helpless to the whims of others – to me. Do you want that, Drinn? Do you wish to be forever a thrall, or do you wish to never again be helpless as you are now?” He stepped back. “Choose.”

I rose with my wooden sword, the banto. It was a solid piece of hardwood, awkward in its unfamiliar weight. I knew from fighting Tadaki over the years until I had finally caught up to his height of the longer range from a taller opponent. Tadaki. His father, Shun, who was willing to sacrifice himself for my sake… I clenched the sword until my finger knuckles paled with my tight grip in futile anger. I relaxed my hands, circling him as he turned to keep facing me, a smug smirk across his face. He was stronger, and faster too. Sheer force and speed would not overcome him, not what I was capable of at least. I would have to win through whatever means necessary – I knew then what I had to do.

In a clatter of slashing wood, the captain parried away my attacks until the blunted sticks grated past each other, neither of us willing to take a step back. That was when I dropped my banto in favor of wresting his away to bring him down to the blood stained mat. The flat of his open palm hit my chin, snapping my head back until my vision flashed, but I did not loosen my grip – for I was prepared to take his blow to give my own. I held onto his other arm and through my hazing sight hurled the man’s body over my shoulder, felling him. His legs immediately swept me to crash to the matted floor.

I scrambled to smother him but the spearing heel from his leg to my gut sent me sprawling back. I staggered up, the point of his sword resting at my neck.

His hardened face slackened to his usual smirk. “You don’t give up, do you? I could continue, or you can kneel and follow my way, so that you never have to kneel again. Choose.”

I knew then at that moment that pride was an illusion, taken away by anyone’s whims with greater power. I swallowed what pride I had left and knelt before the captain, head bowed so that he would not see my hateful glare.

“I was once like you... once. You will learn humility,” Lei Teng murmured. “You think strength is earned? It’s only wielded by those who take it. Stand.”

He would show me the forms of Battō, the way of the sword. I’m not certain why he chose to bring me in as part of his crew. What I do know is that I would not have survived without his teachings, or Wei’s. Though they were different teachers in strength, I feel they were two parts of a whole, for one would always be needed to enforce the other. After my training, foreman Tuo stood waiting just outside to charge me with more work for the rest of the day.

When it was time to rest in my hammock I thought of my parents. My body ached, my bones heavy, my skin chafed raw, yet my mind wandered of the many endings my mother and father could have or not had. Then I remembered the fires that swept over the village, and the smoke churning skyward from the blackened remains of those burning. Their screams still bled into my mind, and in my darkest thoughts I wondered how many raiders I could kill before they killed me.

I howled in silence, my hands flexing into fists, snarling at my own cowardice in lack of action and the trapped helplessness of my fate. I glanced at the foreman sleeping beside me in his own cot. His eyes were open, staring at me. He turned away. Soon his snores gusted out with the others’. I was weary, addled, and succumbed to darkness once more.

The coming days repeated as the day before. I would wake at sunrise to train with the captain until I would work under Tuo’s watch. It was not long before we would reach the Free City, mentioned by the raiders, though I knew it was anything but freeing.

***

The old man sighed. “It’s time to return, Ryo.”

The horizon bloomed pink from the orange sun, ebbing down as a yolk into the world.

The boy winced, for the curiosity stirring within him was cut off by his grandfather’s words. He was quiet as the man stood to take the oars and row back to shore.

Eventually he asked, solemn, “Did you ever tell pa your story?”

The man was quiet for a moment. “No, I haven’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?”

“Sometimes the path you tread isn’t what you want for your children. I was a fool, however, to think I could control anyone’s fate, especially his.”

Ryo looked down then. “Is that why pa is still fighting, and why Ma gave me away to you?”

His grandfather paused. “Your mother never gave you away. You are here for your own protection – and training in the ways of our line, so that you may be prepared to face the life ahead of you.”

“I don’t want the life ahead of me.” The boy looked out to the Kaiyen, sparkling orange and pink from the sunset. “I want to stay here with you.”

The old man smiled. “We can’t expect things to go our way for everything, Ryo. Then the world would never be at balance. When the sun sets and the moon rises, it is not up to us to decide their time, only act upon their coming.”

The ayul plowed through the soft sands, and the man stepped into the lapping water, holding in one hand the bucket of their catch. He passed it to his grandson before dragging the boat to rest alongside the others on the pale sands.

“Now, let’s bring what we’ve caught to your aya and ayo for supper,” Drinn said, calling the titles of his grandson’s aunt and uncle.

Ryo nodded, lugging the bucket with both hands. They trudged along the beach, their sandals soon filling with sand.

The boy asked, “Can you tell your story after dinner?”

“How about tomorrow morning, when you begin your training?”

“Really?” Ryo looked up, excited.

“Yes. The hour after the morning meal is when we shall train at my home. I will bring you there.”

“Hai-de, grandpa,” the boy agreed. He chattered then of how they should prepare their supper, and Drinn listened, offering suggestions of his own in kind. He loved the boy, and hid his somberness of wishing he could take his coming trials and all its pains – though he knew they only had a waning number of years to foster his nature and decency. So he smiled and laughed with his grandson, for such moments were better spent in fondness.