Marcus was being carried like a pig being prepared for a roast. The only thing missing was an apple, but instead it was replaced by a rope. His jaw was pried open and his hands bound behind his back, tied to a large post. His face was not far from the ground as they carried him. Each time the horses climbed up the ridge toward the mainland his faced would scratch alone the dirt and stone.
Marcus studied his captors and their demeanor as they climbed the steep ridge. Their faces were stern and stoic, fear from their commander kept them from deviating from the strict form he demanded from them. Marcus knew what it was like to have an overbearing weight of uniformity and unvarying consistency from when the village elders taught him how to hunt.
“One must never talk louder than trees”, Marcus thought. That was a basic rule. If you deviated from it, you would be punished by not eating. But that was only because there would be nothing to eat. As Marcus swayed between the horses, he recalled the obedient nature that both he and his captors shared. Before Marcus was blessed with being a village hunter, he endured a long test of becoming skilled and experienced. Before he was ten, Gregory, an elder hunter, gave him his first bow. The smooth polished wood, the slight tension when he pulled it back, and the violent snap when he released the string, were once so beautiful but have now become second nature. He had taken for granted the splendor of the bow. Humans have a habit for loving the novel, and ignoring the given.
Marcus was not native to the village. He came from Frederickton, a larger village just outside the Kingdom Gates. The people there were white and all spoke a dialect of English. They were a privileged township because they were able to have books. Reading was strictly forbidden in the Kingdom’s realm. Yet in Frederickton they were able to read books that the King allowed. Nobody knew who the King was or what he looked like, usually that information stayed within the iron gates. But the towns did know when it was a forgiving king or a ruthless king because of the privileges or restrictions that would be placed open them. One could only plead that they were born in an era of a forgiving king, but Marcus was not that fortunate.
Marcus was just seven years old when he was banished from Frederickton. His father whom he barely knew had killed a king’s village Vanguard. Vanguard’s were more like wardens than representatives of the villages. The Vanguard had raped Marcus’ mother while the men were tending the mines for the month. His wife wept and told him that the Vanguard had raped her, Marcus’ father stormed toward the Vanguard who was observing the villagers in the village courtyard. His father rampaged toward the Vanguard, screaming a warrior’s battle cry. His father tackled him and the two tumbled to the ground. His father was large and strong. His shoulders were broad and his chest was burly, the Vanguard was much weaker than him. With his knee on his chest his father beat him with a large rock. Before the other officers could intervene and pull Marcus’ father off of the Vanguard, his father took the Vanguard’s gun out of his holster and shot him in the forehead. No one in the village had ever heard the sound of a firearm before. Many of the villagers came running out of their homes a saw the blood splatter on the ground and the Vanguard lying motionless. The officers came running toward the Vanguard and drew their weapons, aiming them at Marcus’ father. Their red dots looked like scattering insects on his father’s chest. Before they could shoot him, Marcus’ father put the gun up to his chin and shot himself, the blood squirting out of his head like a geyser. His mother tried to run to him, just to hold him one last time, but the officers grabbed her and threw her to the ground and bound her. As his motionless body lay on the ground, the officers grabbed the body of the Vanguard and wrapped it in a white cloth. Then they tied the dead body of Marcus’ father and tied it to the flagpole in the center of the courtyard, raising him up like a flag, and then each had their turn with target practice. An officer had taken Marcus and forced him to watch his father be mercilessly torn by the inertia of their bullets. Marcus did not cry, he watched the faces of all the officers. They were distraught. With vengeance they each unloaded a clip of ammunition into Marcus’ father. That was the last time Marcus saw either of his parents. His mother was executed in the Kingdom’s Court for conspiracy to harm a King’s agent. All acts are considered hereditary. Whether or not a family lineage survives depends on the King’s ruling. Many families have disappeared or been executed, usually in the presence of other villages to make examples. Many times, during ages of forgiving Kings, parents are executed and the orphans banished to remote villages far away from the Kingdom gates. Or they are left somewhere in the wilderness, either to survive or be consumed. Marcus was banished to the low lying village by at the edge of the sea where most convicts and the “social tribulations” live, Sashaport.
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