The ill favored boy was the only survivor from his village. As the other children became accustomed to his, hunched, silent form, they ceased to fear him and soon took to tormenting. They called him Shadow Ridden and delighted in knocking him down and throwing small stones at him when the grownups were not watching. For their part the adults came to fear and hate the boy as well. Many had friends and relations in the destroyed village and asked in whispers how it was that he was spared to be found wandering in the burning wreckage among the corpses of people and animals horribly torn as if by beasts but not devoured.
His only allies were the local priestess and the strange old man who dwelt in a tumble down shack on the edge of the forest. To the priestess the boy’s strange silence and obedience was a welcome respite from the irreverent chaos of the other children and she delighted in singling him out for special teaching and tasks. The old man was only grudgingly tolerated by the villagers himself and was grateful for the strange boy’s whispered warnings of planned pranks and vandalism.
As for the shadow ridden boy, he hungered for companionship and if the priestess’s well intentioned attention brought down the other children’s wrath on him or his friendship with the old outcast brought on dark glances and whispers from the adults, at least he was not alone, swallowed up by the murmuring shadows that clung at his heels alive with memories of his family’s panicked cries of horror and fire.
For a while it seemed as though this state of affairs would endure. Over the course of three winters, the boy grew from a sallow wretch to a lanky ghost, pale and haunted by the present as much as the past. The lives of the village’s humble farming folk were often harsh and brief and the burden of adulthood was mercilessly loaded on half grown youths. His life became a long and painful blur of muddy fields, weeds, vegetables, grain, and harsh rebukes.
But there came a day when the lord who lived a day’s journey to the north came to the muddy little village. He was young, having taken on his father’s mantle a scarce two years earlier, and so handsome in his crimson doublet and jet black hose that many pretty, young girls found themselves locked in the cellar by their fathers. With the lord came a small army of men at arms and knights in armor, for he was raising the levy to march with him in the service of the king to make war in a distant land for reasons even he could scarcely explain.
The farmer in who’s hay loft the pale, unwanted youth lived, was not a cruel or unjust man, but his own son, only two years older, was very dear to him and when the cry went up, his choice was easy. The sheriff who came seeking recruits was presented with the scrawny boy, and while he suspected better material was to be had, the day was late and his feet and back were getting sore, so he clapped the lad on the shoulder and said they’d see to it he’d get up properly.
