1 The swamps of Ariltuan

A miry jungle marks the border between Diumcili and the swamps of Ariltuan. All along, for miles, are palisades punctuated by twelve towers inhabited by border patrols. The Diumcilians call these “Doomed”, for the simple reason that these warriors are trapped in the mud all day long without any possibility of getting out. These towers are named after the Eleven Graces praised by the Federation: Courtesy, Discretion, Constance, Patience, Sacrifice, Dignity, Compassion, Sympathy, Humility, Serenity, and Bravery, plus Reward, the tower located to the north, near the city of Suhugan and the Hab River. According to some, being transferred to Reward is the only possible salvation for a Doomed. Fortunately, this is not entirely true.

The task of the Doomed is simple: to repel all the dangerous creatures that come out of the swamps. Adrièges, milfids, brizzias, borwergs… Until you see with your own eyes what kind of beasts live in these swamps, it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine them.

Most of the towers are not made of stone but of wood. They are simple watchtowers from which one watches the silhouettes that move between the mists of the swamp. Oddly, no one dares to look much at the other side, towards the meadows of the Cantons, perhaps because it always reminds us that beyond, there is a civilization that has forced us here. This is painful, just as it is painful to see a man feasting at a banquet when you are starving.

There is a saying among the Doomed that he who looks away from Ariltuan has his days numbered. Well, we spent our days scouring the swamps with our weapons at hand. One of the good things was that we had complete freedom to do whatever we wanted, as long as we patrolled the area properly and didn’t let any monsters through. We were Xalya warriors from the steppe, from a distant land, more dry than wet, hot in summer and cold in winter. Sent to the Border by the Council of Titiaka after a foiled attempt at an uprising, we had had to adapt to the mists and torrential rains, to the cold winds that swept through the Communes and made the tower sway. At night, the cries of the beasts were unleashed. And that was when the hunt usually began.

Time was running out. Three years had passed since the Dungeon of Xalya was destroyed by three clans from the Rocdinfer steppe. Three years since my father ordered me to kill the leaders responsible for the massacre. I had only killed one, and he was already Doomed by disease, but it had been a long time since revenge had any meaning for me. The truth is that, at the Border, there was no stronger desire than to be alive the next day.

The Council of Titiaka had placed us on death row, between the sharp teeth of the swamp orcs and the threatening spikes of the federal army. Still, strange as it may seem, we lived relatively happily. In three years, we had had time to adapt and accept our situation with patience. Six times we had tried to abandon the tower. To tell the truth, this was a rather respectable number compared to the other Doomed. The first attempt was a few weeks after the two federates who had been with us in the barracks for five months had been sent to another tower. The captain had tried his luck north, along the border, hoping that the other Doomed would be complacent and not turn us in. We had quickly learned that the majority of the Doomed not only lack the courage to try to escape but also do not let others try. The other neighboring patrols do not have the same family spirit that we have. They haven’t known each other since childhood, they didn’t grow up together, and many of them are there because they were given the choice between the Arena and a Doomed life and they preferred a slow death to a quick one. There is no real friendship between criminals. Some become even more ferocious animals than the orcs. As Makarva says, our tower is a haven of peace surrounded by hells.

The last escape had taken place a year ago. The captain had taken us straight through the swamps, planning to cross them to the Hab River and from there to the Bladhy Desert. We didn’t even last a week. No sooner had we repelled an orc attack than the milfids appeared, followed by a huge, raging brizzia that crushed Sashava’s right leg. We had returned to the tower with three men badly wounded and one crippled for life, and since then the captain seemed to have given up on any other major undertaking. I myself had no doubt that going anywhere else was preferable to the Border… anywhere else but the swamps of Ariltuan. On that point, we all agreed. Even the captain.

We had to admit it: his resignation relieved us more than it discouraged us. At least for the moment. I, at least, was more than tired of so many failures. Besides, having to explain our little escapades to the border inspector was not a particularly pleasant task; the last time I had to ask Boron to receive him because the mere sight of him made me gag. The man in the white uniform was a fussy man, making sure we had everything we needed to keep us alive, checking that we were doing our job, and threatening to take us to the Council whenever we grumbled about any of his recommendations. Then he would leave us alone for three months.

No, I don’t think we will ever return to the Rocdinfer steppe. The savages stole our land from us, and sometimes you have to accept defeat and make a new start. Even some of my companions who still have family somewhere in Hareka are beginning to lose hope of ever seeing their children, wives, or parents again. I myself have given up on seeing my sister Fayrah. I had left her in Dazbon, with two pieces of silver and two friends, and on the fifth attempt to escape, I had come to the conclusion that if she was still alive and happy, I would not help matters by entering her life again anyway. Sometimes you have to end your dreams to keep from going crazy. At least that’s what I had to do. If I am lucky enough to find my sister, I will rejoice in due course; but there is no point in dwelling on a wish that may never be fulfilled. It is as useless as if a child, wishing to be an old man, wasted his time waiting for the years to pass without having the certainty that he will not die before realizing his dream. Inventing fables is a good thing, we all do it, but only a hero or a fool would feed the same vain hopes by seeing them fail one after the other. It’s a bit like trying to flap your arms and hoping you’ll fly away.

However, I have not stopped longing for freedom, on the contrary. I yearn for it every day and I enjoy all the freedom that is granted to me. A man can lose his dignity if forced too much, he can betray his allies as I did, but there is one thing a man of the Eternal Bird never gives up: to rise again, no matter how many times he is knocked down.

Freedom is a wonderful reality, and I wish everyone could enjoy it. I enjoyed it fully for twenty years, so I feel lucky when I see Doomed who have been slaves all their lives. Like Tsu, for example. The drow was born a slave and served free federate families for over thirty years. Then, who knows how, he had managed to convince his last master, Arviyag, to sell him and let him go to the Border as a doctor; this, I must admit, had been a godsend for us, even just from a practical point of view, since none of the Xalyas had enough knowledge to treat serious wounds. Finally, Tsu, who had not known friendship in the civilized Titiaka, had found it in the worst place we could imagine: in the Border. He had become for us a kind of holy savior who worked miracles whenever we came home injured or when a cursed illness prevented us from even getting up.

Of the twenty-four who had arrived at the tower, only one had abandoned us, a Xalya named Kadayra, Orafe’s brother, whom I did not know personally. During the second year, he had caught fulgurating fevers that even Tsu had not been able to cure. According to the drow, the disease had been caused by an insect; but even if we had spent our whole lives trying to find out which one, we probably wouldn’t have succeeded: our home was a nest of insects of every possible variety and color. We could only hope that the bug wouldn’t have the idea to attack us again.

All of us would much rather face large creatures like brizzias or milfids than insects. The former are half-bipedal monsters about fifteen feet tall, as dumb as can be, and surrounded by dizzying energy. They have a habit of going out to sunbathe on the prairie, especially in the summer, and then they swallow everything that crosses their path. They are very friendly creatures. Normally they are herbivores, but not always: I guess their lack of palate doesn’t help them to distinguish their food very well. They have a thick, rock-hard skin, and swords can hardly kill them. When we found ourselves facing a brizzia, we always opted for complicated maneuvers so that it would return to its swamps and leave us in peace.

With the milfids, it was different. They were perhaps the most bloodthirsty creatures on the entire Ariltuan Border, far more so than the orcs of the swamps. Here, there are no red nadres or scale-nefarious or, obviously, red snakes: everything is too wet and muddy for them. Milfids, on the other hand, love humidity, and the worst thing is that they are intelligent. They act in gangs and always attack at night; they take advantage of the darkness to deceive the guard of the Doomed, evade the ditches, destroy the palisades, and go directly to the livestock of the border peoples. As the captain once said: they are innocent creatures who only want a little blood, nothing more…

That being said, it is not like we were constantly fighting. The truth is, days and even weeks went by without us having to draw our weapons. The federates had equipped us well: spears, swords, explosive material… we had enough to protect ourselves. They paid us to feed and satisfy our little whims, and in return we killed monsters. We would have been perfect mercenaries if only we, the Xalyas, had given any importance to money. We don’t use money between family members. Obviously, what kept us on the Border was not gold, but pressure from the federal forces.

It is not easy to maintain discipline among bored men, and on some occasions, I do not envy Captain Zorvun’s responsibility at all. Sometimes he had to make somewhat radical decisions and punish misbehavior in an exemplary manner: Maef and Shurta had provoked a fight in the village of Rayorah over matters of ‘Xalya pride’, Miflin, unable to pay at the brothel, had been about to force himself on a young girl… ‘I am a man’, my cousin had stammered at the terrible look on the captain’s face. Yes, you are a man, Miflin, we all are, but if we start to slip, it’s the gallows that awaits us, not just a whip. The captain ordered fifteen lashes and forbade the boy to return to Rayorah. Since then, Miflin had become a poet. Human nature holds surprising mysteries.

We have all changed. We would have had to turn to stone not to. Even so, we remembered our origins and principles vividly… and our Eternal Bird; we clung to it as a man clings to his sword when hungry beasts surround him. As the captain says, a Xalya without an Eternal Bird is like a strongbox without a door: without it, ruthless souls rob it. For me, a soul is not strong if it is destroyed by being turned into a rock; it is strong if, in spite of adversity, it manages to remain the same in its essence. And I believe that in this, all of us have more or less triumphed. We have even come to feel responsible for the safety of the citizens of Rayorah. They feared us and some despised us—we were, after all, only Doomed—but many were honest people whose minds were simply not used to being kind to strangers. A bit like the Xalyas. Nevertheless, deep down, we knew that the Rayorahs were grateful for our protection. They were all aware that we were protecting them much better than the previous Doomed. And we were defending them as we had once defended the Xalya lands against the red nadres and other monsters. To tell the truth, our life itself had not changed much. We had only exchanged the steppe for a huge, gigantic, disgusting quagmire… It is comforting to know that wherever you are, you can try to do good deeds. Even after having made terrible mistakes.

Well… three years to go and I’m raving like a wise fool. But, as I once said to Makarva, that doesn’t stop me from having a high opinion of myself. Hey, who doesn’t value the life that is given to them, right? Even the most foolish or desperate person is attached to life. But attachment is not enough: you have to love life from the inside, you have to appreciate it like you appreciate the touch of a breeze or the song of a bird in the morning. This is more or less what I explain to my brothers when one of them has a moment of depression; Pik, Atok, and Zamoy immediately laugh at me, calling me Philosopher: which proves that my technique works.

At the Border, I understood what it was to be happy; maybe because I learned not to ask too much of life, I don’t know. But what the hell! How could I not feel happy when I have twenty-two brothers around me, even though we are surrounded by twenty thousand hells?

Fortunately, things don’t always turn out the way we expected. We could have spent our lives in the Tower of Compassion. I could have grown old, taken Sashava’s cane, and entered the swamp to die, old, white-haired, and full of memories. It wouldn’t have been so horrible, and all things considered, it might have been better. Who knows. Fate is not carved in stone, and it is a consolation to know that. What good would time do if we knew its mysteries? A wise steppeman said that the world spins like a crazy top, that we never know where it will lead us, but that as long as we see it spinning, as long as we live, it will always find a way to surprise us. Or to hurt us. Or to make us laugh. In the end, it always finds a way to kill us. It’s a fact: eternity has never been of interest except to those who cannot enjoy it. Every being has a limited life and does what he can with it. I do what I can with mine.