The wide, thick leather of his father's garrison belt swung down, its heavy brass buckle glinting in the dim light. It cut the air with a sharp whistle before it landed hard across his mother's shoulders. She gave a thin, sharp cry and her body convulsed, a spasm of pure pain that pulled her away from the blow. Another followed, striking with a flat, wet crack that echoed the first. Then a third. The bedroom door was thick, solid oak and shut tight, yet her screams pushed through the dense wood, vibrating through the walls of the small cottage that crouched deep within the South Wood. Cadal heard them from halfway down the path. The sound, a terrible and familiar music, stopped him cold. His mother had sent him to the wild orchards just north of their home to gather apples. She had spoken of baking a pie, a sweet welcome for his father's return from his duties. The apples, crisp and green, were a heavy weight in the small woven basket he carried. Their sharp, sweet scent filled the air around him, a stark contrast to the sounds of misery coming from the house. He understood now. His father had returned early, and he was not in a mood that called for pie.
Cadal let the basket fall. The apples spilled, thudding and rolling into the damp soil and tangled roots that bordered the path. He ran. This was not the first time she had suffered under Ilmor's temper, and a familiar sickness churned in his stomach. He knew the whispers that followed his father through the village of Welclen. He knew what the others said of Ilmor Valsheer. The man's reputation as a bully, a coward who measured his strength only against those weaker than himself, was well established. It had only worsened when he joined the provincial military, his uniform giving his cruelty a veneer of authority. Not even the marriage arranged by the village head had soothed his ill spirit. It had only given him a private victim, a focus for the rage that once had been spread among the villagers.
As he reached the front door, he could hear drunken laughter mixed with the shrieks. His father's voice, thick and slurred, rode on the waves of his mother's pain. "Why are you crying, fool woman? I am not even hitting you that hard. Maybe if you had my supper ready when I arrived, I would not be so disagreeable."
Another brutal smack of the belt sent a fresh shriek from the house.
Cadal threw the front door open and ran through the small main room. He rushed past the tiny room on his right that served as his bedroom and skidded to a halt before the oak door that led to the room his parents shared. He pushed, but it did not give. From within, his mother, Lilora Valsheer, cried out again. Her begging pleas, thin and desperate, scraped his nerves raw.
"Please, Ilmor! No more. I'll… I have a good meal planned for you. There… there will be pie for dessert. Our boy is out gathering the apples for it now."
"Pie!" Cadal heard his father roar. The word was followed by the sound of another blow, louder and heavier than the rest. His mother's scream was cut short, ending in a choked sob. "I hate pie. I have told you that."
The door was locked. Cadal hammered on the wood with a clenched fist. "Stop it!" he screamed, his voice cracking. He struck the solid planks again and again. "Father, please. Stop."
Inside the room, the sounds of violence ceased. His mother's crying quieted to ragged gasps. His father's laughter died. Cadal heard heavy, deliberate steps cross the wood-planked floor. There was the grating sound of a heavy iron key turning in the lock. The door swung inward to reveal the man who for nearly twenty years had dominated the lives of Lilora and her son.
Ilmor Valsheer was a wall of muscle and anger. He filled the door frame, stooping slightly to pass under the lintel. He had a wide chest and heavy shoulders that sloped into arms as thick as young trees. His stomach was a hard barrel that bulged under the sweat-stained leathers of his border guard uniform. His reddish hair was cropped close, a practical cut for a helmet. His hands, gnarled and scarred from sword work and his old life as a wood feller, hung loose at his sides. One of them still held the belt. A slick sheen of sweat covered his flushed skin, and the sour smell of ale radiated from him.
"So, it is this damned thing again," Ilmor snarled. He glared down at Cadal.
Cadal stood nearly six feet tall, but he was not of the same terrible scale as his father. He took an involuntary step back from the doorway and the malice that poured through it. His father? The word felt like a lie in his own mind. Cadal shared very little with the man before him. He was slighter of build, with hair the color of dark soil and a tanned complexion that no amount of time indoors could fully erase. As a youth, he had endured the questions, the taunts, from the other children, all of whom shared the red hair and pale blue eyes of their parents. He and his mother were the only two in Welclen with their strangely bright green eyes, a trait that marked them as other. The sharp lines of his face and the shade of his eyes spoke of a different lineage, a legacy from a line his mother never spoke of, though he had asked before if this man was really his father.
"Don't hit her anymore," he whispered up to the man.
Ilmor leaned in close. The foul and sour odor of stale ale clung to his breath as he gave a low, wet chuckle. "And what will you do if I do not? This woman, your mother, is mine. The village gave her to me. I can do with my property whatever I please. She needs to learn more respect."
"But you're hurting her, father!"
Ilmor's smile vanished. He reached out a hand and clamped it down on Cadal's shoulder. His fingers dug into the muscle and nerve there, a grinding pressure that sent a jolt of white-hot agony down Cadal's arm and made him gasp. "Yes, I am. Pain teaches us all many things. Especially when I'm the one doing the teaching." He leaned closer still, his voice a venomous hiss. "And do not call me that, you sniveling little wretch. I am not your father. Look at you. I swear you must have been some demon's spawn or fairy's creep that stole my real son from your mother's belly."
In his other hand, Ilmor still clutched the belt. Cadal was frozen beneath the man's crushing grip. Just past Ilmor's shoulder, he could see his mother. She was lashed face-down to the bed with thick cords of rope that bound her wrists cruelly to the headboard. Her simple, hand-spun brown skirt was the only clothing she had left. Large, terrible welts marred the smooth, tanned skin of her back, standing out as angry crimson islands.
Cadal looked away from the horrific sight, his eyes snapping back up to Ilmor's face. The man grinned behind his short red beard, a knowing, predatory expression. This was different. His father had never tied her up for a deliberate beating. In the past, his temper frayed, and he had simply lashed out, sometimes with the belt, sometimes with his bare hands, but never with such cold preparation.
Ilmor nodded, seeing the understanding dawn in Cadal's eyes. "That is right, boy. Respect. Your whore of a mother came to me with a lie when we were wed. I was promised a virgin—"
From the bed, Lilora's voice was muffled by the bedding. "I have never lied to you, Ilmor. I told you where I came from. But he is your son, I swear I never—"
"SILENCE!" Ilmor roared, his voice shaking the small room. He released Cadal with a violent shove. "I will not hear any more of your lies! May the great Rodgar save us from the loose morals of you Northern sluts. But I suppose that is what you like, is it not? Might as well give you what you want."
Cadal toppled backward, his head striking the floorboards hard. As his vision cleared, he watched his father turn away from him and back toward the bed. He saw the older man wrap the leather belt around Lilora's neck, pulling it taut. He saw him reach for the buckle on his own trousers.
A strange, unnatural heat bloomed behind Cadal's eyes. A low thrumming sound, like a giant wasp trapped inside his skull, vibrated through his bones. With the heat came a fury so pure, so absolute, that it stole the air from his lungs. He lay on the floor, gasping. He knew what was about to happen. This was not the clumsy, drunken coupling he had heard through the door on other nights. This was an act of final violation, meant to humiliate and hurt.
Cadal scrabbled to his feet just as Ilmor reached for his mother's skirt. He did not think. He screamed, a raw, inhuman sound torn from his soul, and charged into the room. One powerful leap launched him onto Ilmor's broad back. He snaked his right arm around the man's thick neck and squeezed with a strength born of desperation and the white-hot rage that now consumed him.
Ilmor's cry of surprise was choked off. He stumbled backward under the unexpected weight, his boots scraping against the floor, but he did not fall. He swung his body, trying to slam Cadal against the wall, but the grip was tenacious. Cadal hung on for his life. He was not weak. Long hours at the village forge, supplementing his family's income, had hardened him. The countless times he had swung a smith's hammer had woven cords of lean muscle into his arms, and now he used that strength, clinging with a grip that his father could not break.
Ilmor staggered backward, a wild beast trying to throw a predator from its shoulders. He slammed himself and the young man he denied as his son against the rough-hewn timbers of the wall. A sharp cry burst from Cadal's lips as the impact drove the air from his lungs, but he dared not let go. His desperation fed his rage, and he squeezed harder. Ilmor clawed at his son's forearms, his thick fingers digging in, trying to pry them away from his throat. A grunt of shock and fear escaped the big man's lips when he found he could not. No matter how he tugged, the grip was like iron.
There was screaming now. Somewhere beyond the heat and the roaring rage in his ears, Cadal could hear it. Two voices. His mother's, a sound of pure terror from the bed, and his own, a guttural, continuous roar he did not recognize as his.
He squeezed his eyes shut and hauled upward with every fiber of his being. Ilmor, his face purpling, realized his immediate danger. His struggling hand abandoned Cadal's arm and fumbled downward, scrabbling at his waist for the dagger belted there. Cadal's eyes flew open and locked on the man's hand as it gripped the hilt.
The sight of the blade was the final catalyst. The heat that had been crackling under his skin ignited.
It was not a thought, but an instinct. Sudden lines of brilliant green flame, the exact color of his own eyes, erupted from the skin of his forearms. The emerald fire did not burn Cadal. It felt cool against his own skin, a part of him, an extension of his will. But it was ravenous. It leaped from his arms and wrapped around Ilmor in a greedy rush, clinging to the man's body like a shroud. The moment the green fire touched Ilmor, it transformed, its arcane hue blossoming into the familiar, furious orange and red of a funeral pyre.
Ilmor shrieked his own pain, a sound that tore through all the others. The man's clothes burst alight, and his struggles became the frenzied, mindless flailing of a man on fire. As Ilmor's shrieks transformed into the death agony of a living torch, the green fire retreated, sinking back into Cadal's skin as if it had never been. Cadal fell away from the burning man, his strength giving out, and landed heavily on the floorboards as the mundane flames cooked the man he had once called father alive.