The nursemaid's hands shook as she set the squirming bundle back in its crib, her heart a wild flutter in her throat. Six months of caring for the Aaryn heir and still the child unsettled her to her very marrow. She took a shuddering breath, smoothed trembling hands down the front of her rumpled dress, and went to face her lord.
Jon Aaryn looked up from his writing desk as she entered, a frown already furrowing his brow. He set aside his quill with a careful precision, light glinting off the silver peppered through his dark hair. "What is it, Etta? Is my son well?"
Etta twisted her hands in her skirts, the words sticking in her throat like burrs. How could she explain the unnatural stillness that would come over the babe, the way his eyes would follow her every move with an intent focus that belonged on no infant's face?
"He...he is healthy, m'lord," she managed, dropping into a clumsy curtsy. "Eats well, sleeps through the night. It's just..." She trailed off, biting her lip.
Lord Jon leaned forward, his gaze sharpening. "Speak plainly, woman. What troubles you about my heir?"
The words burst from her in a rush, as if a dam had crumbled in her chest. "He don't act like no babe I ever seen, m'lord. He's got a stare like an old soldier, like he's seein' things ain't there. An' the way he holds hisself, stiff an' straight like he's standin' at attention..."
She saw something flicker in Lord Jon's eyes, there and gone too quick to name. His hands tightened on the arms of his chair, the knuckles whitening. "Go on."
Etta swallowed hard, her mouth gone dry as old parchment. "I swear by the Seven, m'lord, I heared him speakin' the other day. Not babble, but real words, strung together like...like some kinda prayer. But not to no gods I know."
Lord Jon was silent for a long moment, his face carved from granite. When he spoke, his voice was cold and flat as a frozen lake. "You will speak of this to no one, Etta. My son is...special. Chosen, mayhap, for some grand purpose. It's not for the likes of us to question."
He rose, his tall frame unfolding like a banner on a windless day. "Tend to your duties. I will visit the nursery anon."
Dismissed, Etta bobbed another curtsy and fled, the cold weight of Lord Jon's gaze heavy on her back. In the nursery, the babe lay rigid in his crib, fists clenched white-knuckled at his sides, eyes staring unblinking at the ceiling. She shuddered and began to pray.
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Six months afterwards...
I strained against the swaddling bounds of cloth and flesh, every fiber of my being focused on the simple, monumental task of rising. Months of grueling effort, of hurling this weak, soft body against the unyielding ground until bones bruised and muscles screamed, and still I could barely sit upright under my own power.
Gritting teeth that had barely broken through tender gums, I levered myself up on shaking arms, the crib bars a looming portcullis I yearned to breach. The world tilted and spun, my head a leaden weight on a neck as limp as boiled leather. I snarled, the sound absurdly high and thin in my ears.
This body was a cruel jape, a prison of impotent flesh that mocked my every attempt to impose order and discipline. How was I to carry out the Emperor's will trapped in this squalling lump of meat? The very thought was heresy, a betrayal of the deepest tenets of my training.
A memory flickered, unbidden - the brutal foundries of Krieg, where weakness was hammered out and obedience was forged in the unrelenting fires of discipline. I could feel the sting of the lash, hear the bark of the drillmaster's voice. "Frailty is sin. Hesitation is death. Only in the purity of service is redemption found."
With a grunt, I forced leaden limbs to obey, jerking my body upright through a sheer triumph of will. The crib yawned around me, a vast expanse of bars and blankets as remote as the towering hive spires of Vorga III. I scanned the room with eyes that strained to focus, noting entrances, obstacles, potential threats with the cool precision of a lifetime's battlefield experience.
There. A gleam of wood and metal, crudely shaped and scaled to a child's hand. A toy sword, cast carelessly in the corner of the nursery. Every instinct screamed to reach it, to feel even that pale simulacrum of a weapon in my grip once more.
I lunged, chubby legs churning, and felt a savage burst of triumph as my hand closed around the toy's hilt. Muscles unused to such demands spasmed and twitched, the sword wavering in my grip like a stalk of wheat in a gale, but I held on with grim determination.
Slowly, painstakingly, I forced this treasonous body into a poor approximation of a guard stance, the toy sword thrust out before me like a talisman against the darkness. I could almost feel the weight ofreal steel in my hand, hear the crunch of rubble beneath my boots as I advanced on the enemies of the Imperium. For a moment, the nursery faded and I stood once more upon the ramparts of Vorga III, chainsword snarling and Hellgun blazing as I cut down wave after wave of shrieking cultists.
A scream shattered the illusion, high and piercing. The sword slipped from my nerveless fingers, clattering to the floor as this body's weakness reasserted itself. I felt the cold sting of failure, more piercing than any blade, as I crumpled back onto the blankets like a puppet with cut strings.
The scream went on, wild and unhinged. It took me a moment to realize it was coming from my own throat, torn from some primal depth beyond my control. I raged against it, against my own frailty, but it was like trying to hold back the tide with shaking hands.
Through tear-blurred eyes, I saw a flurry of movement at the nursery's edge. Servants clustering like frightened hens, their faces pale and strained as they whispered behind upheld hands. I caught snatches of their hushed conversations, a buzz of words that battered against my ears like fly wings.
"Unnatural," they murmured, voices tight with dread. "Ill-omened. Cursed, mayhap, or touched by the old gods in some dark way."
I felt a howl building in my throat, a denial that was part anguish and part bitter mirth. If only they knew how far their whispered fears fell short of the truth. I was not cursed but blessed, forged in the fires of war and death to be the Emperor's own instrument. That I should be reduced to this, a squalling babe fit only to serve as fodder for peasant superstition...
The howl tore free, ragged-edged and raw with despair. I screamed until my throat felt shredded, until the world smeared into a haze of salt and shadow. I screamed until the nursery echoed with the sound of my failures and the knowledge of all I had lost.
And as the darkness claimed me once more, I clung to one thought with the drowning tenacity of the damned. I would endure. I would grow strong. And Emperor willing, I would one day reclaim the destiny that had been ripped from me on the blasted plains of Vorga III.
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Six years later...
The wind sighed through the Eyrie's lofty halls, cold as the breath of the grave. I stood at the window, back straight, hands clasped behind me, and stared out over the sweeping vista of the Vale. The light had the thin, sharp quality unique to high mountainous places, a merciless illumination that concealed nothing and forgave less.
In my past life, I had appreciated such uncompromising clarity. It stripped away pretense and deception, left only the essential truth of things. A fitting mindset for a soldier, whose existence allowed no softness or self-delusion. Here and now, trapped in this weak, uncoordinated body, it felt like mockery.
Footsteps echoed behind me, tentative, halting. I knew without looking that it was Lord Jon, my...father in this strange new reality. Even after six years, the word sat uneasily in my mind, an ill-fitting garment I could never quite adjust to.
He drew up beside me, a towering presence that made this small body feel even more inconsequential. I kept my gaze fixed on the horizon, tracing the jagged lines of the mountains as they marched into the hazy distance.
"What do you see out there, Verden?" Jon asked, his voice soft, almost hesitant.
I could feel him watching me, searching for some sign of the child he hoped to find. He was a good man, by the standards of this world. Strong, honorable, far more patient with my...peculiarities than most would be. But he could never understand the truth of what I was, the lifetime of war and death that sat coiled behind these young eyes.
"Defensive positions," I said flatly, my voice sounding alien and wrong in my own ears, a reedy treble rather than the gravel-rough baritone I had once possessed. "Vulnerable approaches."
I felt rather than saw Jon's start of surprise, the way his body tensed as if bracing for a blow. I forged ahead, compelled by some impulse I couldn't name to make him see, to force understanding into a world that had none.
"There, along the high passes." I pointed with a chubby finger, the motion clumsy and imprecise. Frustration spiked, hot and bitter on my tongue. "Narrow defiles, easily defended by a small force. Place heavy weapons on the overlooking heights, channel the enemy into kill zones."
The words came effortlessly, drawn from a well of knowledge as deep as the oceans of Vorga III. I had spent a lifetime thinking in terms of fields of fire and force multipliers, of strongpoints and salients. To see the world and not evaluate its military potential was as impossible for me as breathing water.
"And there, the valley floor. Too open, too exposed. Swift-moving cavalry could traverse it quickly, bypass fortified positions to strike at the heart of our territory. Need to establish fall-back lines, layered defenses to bleed them at every turn..."
My voice trailed off as memory surged, a dark tide that swept away the clean lines of the Vale and plunged me into the hell-forged landscape of the past. I blinked and saw not soaring peaks but blasted crags, jutting like broken teeth from a sea of churned mud and twisted metal. The air was thick with smoke and cordite, the wet copper tang of blood. Screams echoed, wails of anguish punctuated by the ceaseless thunder of heavy artillery.
"Establish a perimeter," I whispered, the words tearing at my throat like shards of glass. "Dig in, fortify positions. The enemy is relentless, implacable. We must endure, we must hold the line, we must..."
A hand seized my shoulder, wrenching me around. I stared up into Jon Aaryn's face, my own eyes wide and wild in a face too soft, too round. His expression was stricken, horror and revulsion warring with desperate denial.
"Verden," he said hoarsely, his grip painfully tight. "Verden, what...what are you saying? What enemy, what line? You're not...you can't possibly..."
But I could see the truth dawning in his eyes, the slow, dreadful realization that the thing wearing his son's face was no child at all. I felt a pang then, a distant ache that might have been pity or grief in a softer soul. He was a good man, and he had tried to love me as a father should. It wasn't his fault that what I was couldn't be loved, only used.
"They are coming," I said softly, gently, a final mercy from one weapon to another. "They are always coming. And I must be ready. I must always be ready. The Emperor expects no less."
He released me as if burned, stumbling back with a look of such naked anguish that for a moment I almost understood what it was to feel. Then he turned and fled, his agonized whisper lingering in the chill air.
"What have I fathered? Dear gods, what have I done?"
I watched him go, this stranger who was my father, and felt...nothing. Only the cold, clear certainty of purpose that had always sustained me.
Turning back to the window, I stared out over the peaceful expanse of the Vale and saw only a battlefield waiting to be born. My lips moved, shaping words I had recited a thousand times, oaths of duty and sacrifice that were the only truth I knew.
"What is my life in comparison to my duty? What is my flesh to be torn? What is my blood to be spilled? In life I serve, in death I shall not falter. My eyes are unclouded and my mind is steel. The Emperor protects, and I shall be His shield."
The wind keened, cold as the grave, and I welcomed its bite, embraced the pain. It reminded me I was alive, that I still had a war to fight, a duty to fulfill. Everything else was irrelevant, a distraction from the purity of purpose.
I was now Verden Aaryn, and I would endure. In this life as in my last, I would find a way to serve.
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