DECKER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Side by side Decker and his brother stood, knee deep in the thick snow, before an assemblage of other young men and boys. Today we take our first steps toward glory, thought Decker, eyeing those that may be lucky enough to accompany them.

Enough had gathered that the need for words had become pressing. Decker looked toward Titon, hoping he would address the crowd—this was after all a plan of Titon’s sole invention.

Decker had continued to grow both in stature and spirit. Though not yet fifteen, he was near his father’s equal. The same could not be said for his older brother. Although not a weakling for his age, Titon was still a runt by Galatai standards. Had Titon a different name and different brother, perhaps it would not have been so embarrassingly blatant, but the two brothers, when standing abreast, made a pair hard not to comment on—a comment more wisely made in silence to oneself.

“Hello, men.” Decker recognized his brother’s words as a thing their father often said to silence his men, but they failed to carry the same authority as when the son of Small Gryn spoke them. Many in the group continued to talk among themselves.

“My brother Decker and I have summoned you here to…” Titon struggled for words while speaking over the chatter. Brilliance and book knowledge, Titon had in abundance, but neither seemed to serve him now, not with this rowdy bunch in attendance. “We have summoned you here to go south with us. South to slay Dogmen and bring home their provisions for our families.”

“What do you know of the South, boy?” asked a faceless voice from the rear of the group.

Titon was visibly taken aback by the question. He had witnessed the many times his father’s men had cheered and raised axes at the mere mention of heading south. He clearly was not prepared to be met with skepticism or apprehension.

Decker watched Titon from the corner of an eye, but mostly he tried to read the faces of those before them. Things looked bleak, as the few who had shown Titon any courtesy at all with their silence still nodded in agreement with the question put forth. He allowed his brother to continue, hoping his wits would see him through this ordeal.

“I know my father used to lead men such as us to the South,” said Titon. “Each time he had returned, it was with victuals to last for months and stories of the battles with those Dogmen brave enough to take up arms and die with some modicum of honor.” He now had more power behind his words. Titon always spoke proudly of their father…in public.

“Aye, but you are not your father.” This time the voice was not faceless. It was Arron, the son of the clan’s tanner. “You can keep your victuals and modicums. I don’t think they will help us to kill Dogmen.” Arron was fifteen, same as Titon, and was a bit over-serious for his age—something that may have come from years of being teased for smelling like soured piss, the hallmark of his father’s profession.

Decker saw where this was headed. He did not have his brother’s intellect, but he had a better understanding of the way men acted in packs. And this pack was about to turn on a leader deemed unfit to lead. The results for Titon would be embarrassing at best, violent at worst. The young men grunted their approvals of Arron’s objection.

“Enough!” Decker’s booming voice silenced the grunts. “My brother offers you glory in battle and you quibble over his words? Winter approaches, and we are not ready. We need the Dogmen’s mutton and cheese that the older men have been unable to acquire. Who here wishes to suffer through another winter with an empty belly?”

The usual raiding parties had been met with poor results as of late. After the tiring and dangerous descent snaking through scree-covered bluffs to where the Dogmen villages used to sit, the real task of finding the Dogmen began. The villages they came upon were either abandoned or sacked, and where the villages were deserted no greenery grew. The Dogmen, it seemed, used some sort of poison to spoil the land, making it difficult for the raiders to advance southward with nothing to forage or hunt along the way, and returning empty handed from raids was fast becoming the norm. That the son of Small Gryn no longer led the raids was a cause for great concern among the elders. But their father had not left their mother’s side for more than a day since she’d taken ill, and he’d remained in power all these years due only to the overwhelming respect he commanded. The time has come for a son of the son of Small Gryn to lead, thought Decker.

Some of the boys not yet old enough to attend the raids voiced their approval of Decker’s speech, though it was like to have more to do with their awe of Decker than the content of his argument.

Arron had not been swayed. “The older men have experience raiding these Dogmen, and most of us have never so much as seen one. What makes you think we will succeed where the others have failed?”

Decker smirked and looked toward his older brother. The stiffness in Titon’s body seemed to have gone, encouraged by the fact that the men were asking a question he knew how to answer. It was Titon who had conceived of the unconventional strategy that would allow them to attack Dogmen villages much farther to the south. It was Titon who had first needed to convince his younger brother that the strategy had merit, and of that Decker was thoroughly convinced.

Decker turned to Arron, staring him down. “They did not have a Titon.”