Son of Soron by Robyn Wideman Page B

your dad while your mother is around. She is so beautiful. Come to think of it, both of your parents are beautiful. I wonder what happened to you? Do you think you were adopted or maybe they just dropped you on your face as a baby?” Ava sprinted behind a tree as she taunted Nathan.
    Nathan laughed and chased after her. He might be bigger and stronger but Ava was as quick as a rabbit and hard to catch. He was getting better at it when she wasn’t using branches to trip him up. Nathan yelled at her as he ran, “You know I am not adopted. How many blued-eyed villagers are there? Just mother and me, and I am much too smart to have been dropped on my head.”
    A few moments later, Nathan was again looking up into the sky, groaning at his bad luck. How did she always manage to trip him up? Did she plant branches in strategic spots before teasing him into chasing her?
    Ava leaned over top of him. “Too smart to have been dropped, eh?”
    Nathan just groaned and admired the sky.
    …
    Soron grew up in a world of violence. Northern Solotine was a harsh and violent land, its inhabitants as forbidding as the land itself. In the north, resources meant more than just wealth, it meant life. Those who controlled the mines controlled the ability to make weapons. Superior weapons often were the difference-maker in battles being won or lost. Controlling the mines meant fighting for them, and Soron had fought often. Soron was Nathan’s age when his father sent him to the mines to learn the secrets of northern steel and how to become a warrior. Lessons in steel and blood came often for Soron. By twenty, Soron had seen, and caused more death than many warriors ever partake in a lifetime.
    Now, he was content to live in the small, peaceful village of Elderwood as a simple blacksmith. But with the discovery of Nathan’s magic and the increasing number of bandit attacks in the area, Soron was putting aside his own aversion to combat to teach Nathan the skills that may well one day keep him alive.
    As Soron reflected on his own childhood, he watched his son work through the progression of footwork, blade block and attack combos he had been teaching him.  “Eyes up, son. If you are watching your feet, you are not watching the enemy.”
    He is too much like me at his age, thought Soron. He enjoys this too much. Training with weapons had always been enjoyable to Soron, as a young boy he always found the physical training to be challenging yet fun. The desire to absorb his trainer’s knowledge and prove his worth as the son of a tribal chieftain had pushed him to be the best. Training was fun. Actual combat was not fun, it was bloody, violent and left a mark on a man’s soul. Soron could still remember the face of the first man he killed. Bloodshot red eyes and a bulbous nose, the look of shock on the man’s face as a boy half his age pulled his sword out of the dying man’s chest.
    I can prepare him for battle, but how do I prepare him for the sour taste of victory? Soron pondered, while watching the boy swing his daggers in a smooth rhythm, like he was moving to the beat of a song.
    The large northern, sword-breaker style daggers were unique and almost never seen south of the Applomean Mountains.  At two feet long, the blades were shorter and wider than a normal short sword. Often northern warriors would use one of the daggers with a large sword. But for Soron’s purposes they were perfect, giving Nathan a strong defensive weapon easily carried yet not completely offensive in nature.
    The daggers featured a thick up-curved cross-hilt and three grooves cut into each side of the wide blade at the base just above the cross-hilt. When a sword would strike the blade, it could slide down toward the cross-hilt until it got caught in one of the grooves. When a strong man turned his wrist, the sword came right out of his opponent’s hand. A very strong man like Soron often broke a poorly made sword this way.
    For Nathan, a strong yet agile boy