A
lways overshadowed by my weaker little brother, I was. Being the eldest offspring counts for nothing when you turn out a woman, but I've made the best of my position. My brother was always foolhardy. Too prideful to run, but too slow-witted for battlecraft.Ronek was always weaker than me in spirit and tact, even as his physique overtook me in my third decade. My father favored him. Call him the first child in his naming, he did, and made me the second place offspring. Tried to teach Ronek how to be strong, and how to be prudent and judicious. But those lessons always missed his target. He never saw that his lessons found their true home as his eldest, as I, learned them in earnest.
My father loves me. Spotted the man's heart inside of me, he did, and sent me to the elder forest. Lopping elderpine is barely a weak man's work, mining and metalcraft it is not, but still it's a man's work nonetheless. Kept me out of the breweries and creches, those elderpines. Chiseled my body to be something of substance. Kept me alert and wary. Made me strong.
But it's no giant hunting.
My brother died to that, he did. In his rite of passage. He was too young for it, sent off at the elder's age he was. At my age. The quad came back with the head of a bigun, and the helmet of my brother. He turned his back and made to flee, the quad says, when a second and bigger one rose up from a hiding ditch in ambush. The helmet's Stonepike engraving run through by a club spur, wide as my wrist.
So the honorable Stonepike house, disavowed the renown of being a Bastion Keeper, it was. Been shamed for raising a weak son, my father has, and stripped of honor and rank. And the next of the Stonepikes, just me, lost the right to forge its lineage further—And my father's got some years left, he has, but none in him for making more sons.
Live a lady and die a dishonored and childless Stonepike, I could, or exile myself as a woman who knows not her place, fight like a man, maybe die like one, and seek absolution for my brother's cowardice. Quad says the bigger bigun dented their armor and chinked their weapons, but they managed to fight him into a crevasse and escape with their bravery and honor. But the one who killed my brother didn't die.
So I'll hunt him down and have his head. No woman ever made passage to manhood in our clan, but out there are tales of women making like men and living strong lives. I know I can earn lineage rights for the Stonepike house.
I'm doing the only sensible thing.
-M
