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Dichotomy: Soldier
Prologue
Fading Madness Productions

The words that destroyed twenty-year-old Kier Blackwatch’s life had a sort of simple elegance.

“Lord Blackwatch, you’ve been ordered to return home immediately.”

Young, brash, and outgoing, the young soldier laughed at the words. “You’re confused,” he told the messenger. “My father is Lord Blackwatch. I gave up my right of firstborn to my brother Iain.” He’d smiled with the natural charm that came with Blackwatch genes. “Lieutenant Blackwatch will do nicely.”

Years later, Kier could never recall the face of the messenger who had spoken to him. Like most of the details of the next several weeks, the man’s features had been lost in an obscure haze. But Kier remembered his eyes: dark brown-gold and unremarkable, save for the fact that they were the first to study him with intense pity. “I’m sorry, sir. You’re being ordered home because your father has died.”

For a moment, Kier said nothing. Then he shook his head. “My mother and brother are heirs to the estate, so-” he started to argue, suddenly desperate to fix this mistake of being called Lord Blackwatch. Focusing on a minor error was easier than immediately accepting that his gentle, soft-spoken father had lost his life without warning.

The compassion in the messenger’s eyes intensified, but he straightened his shoulders with military precision and lifted his chin to speak clearly and carefully. “Lord Blackwatch,” he said quietly. “You have been ordered home to take control of your estate.”

For minutes that felt like lifetimes, Kier stood and stared, unable to process what he’d been told. He was fourth in line to be lord of his estate, after his father, mother, and brother. Some part of his mind refused to take the fact that he was now lord of Blackwatch and follow through on what that meant. The messenger grew uncomfortable under his blank gaze, but then a hand closed on Kier’s arm and pulled him away.

Somerled Montgomery led Kier to the stables and readied Scead and his own horse. Then he turned, grasped Kier’s hands, and studied him for a long moment. Kier and Somer were of a height, but where Kier was broad, Somer was slim-built, almost thin. “Let’s go, Kier,” he said, and all but lifted the new Lord of Blackwatch into the saddle.

The next several days passed in a blur. For the first time in his life, Kier would have been in danger of driving Scead to collapse. The black stallion was young and strong, but Kier's pain and desperation drove them both too hard, too fast. Somer saved Scead, running alongside and taking the bridle, forcing Kier to stop and walk, even to sleep a few scraps of nightmare-filled hours. Still, they moved faster than any messenger could have; Somer’s horse was of Blackwatch stock as well, a gift from Kier’s parents.

By the time he and Somer reached the estate, other soldiers had already arrived and begun cleaning up. Lieutenant Wynn Leofwine, her uniform blood-stained, her too-fair skin covered in soot, and her eyes dark-smudged with exhaustion, ran out to greet them. She spoke quickly, explaining, trying to prepare her friends for what she had seen, what they would see. Her shaking voice and fluttering hands gave more away than her words: you can't be prepared, there's no way, I'm sorry, I can't help you. Kier insisted on seeing, in a dead voice that sounded like a stranger's, and so strode forward with Somer to his right and Wynn on his left.

Somer felt Wynn's pain, when she nearly crumbled under the shock of Kier's emotions slamming over them both. Kier heard nothing, save a loud hollow ringing in his head.

Burnt bodies littered the ground, but each had been covered as well as possible: some with blankets, others with the dark jackets shed by various soldiers, some by bits of wood or leaves. The cold air and scattering of snow kept the scraps of flesh remaining on the blackened, skeletal remains from spoiling quickly, but a strange, metallic stench permeated the air and seeped into clothes and bones.

The twisted remains of trees and destroyed vegetable gardens were wet and dripping; a water Companion had arrived with her major and dealt with the last, smoldering remains of an inferno. Holes had been dug, but it would take more time and more workers to dig enough burial sites for each person; there would be no mass burials in Helmriche.

Kier stumbled through the wreckage, barely recognizing the faces of the children and teenagers who had escaped the back way, listening without comprehension when Rhys and Circe told him about Iain sneaking them and the children out, only to return for Leland and Emeny Blackwatch. He stared, dumbfounded, at the sodden black remains of Castle Blackwatch. The roof of the old, drafty little stronghold had collapsed in on itself, though the ancient stone walls still stood. He touched the blacked edges of the circles of fire that had destroyed his home, family, and livelihood. Black soot stained his fingertips.

When he dug into the wet earth to bury what was left of his family, he shoved both lover and friend away with a snarl.

Justice fell swiftly after the Blackwatch Massacre. Kier’s first job as lord of Blackwatch was overseeing the burials of over a hundred people. The second, placing orphans with family members around the estate. The third, appearing at the trial and execution of Major Alder Osbearn and his Companion.

Osbearn, the second son of a well-known noble family, was captured only a few days after the massacre, riding north along the river. He and his Companion, standing so close that their arms touched at all times, both insisted on their innocence at trial. No one at Blackwatch Estate had seen the attackers. The children, led by Rhys, Circe, and Iain, had escaped out the back of the castle and over the pastures, and so couldn't see who set the fires through the smoke and snow. Still, the evidence piled quickly against Osbearn and his Companion, from witnesses seeing them crossing to the estate, to the Companion’s wild fight when they’d been arrested. In Helmriche, it was believed that only the guilty fought against the King’s Guard; Companion Osbearn had set two of his captors on fire before he and his Master had been taken into custody.

The black circles, the king’s researchers testified, were evidence that the fire had been the result of a Cildisc’s fire power. How else would they be so clearly managed and controlled? No one could throw a burning branch and manage the sort of damage dealt by the attackers at Blackwatch Castle. The degree of damage proved that the Cildisc in question had to be a Companion, and Osbearn’s ability to manipulate his Companion’s power was well-known.

Parts of the trial had taken place with the king’s inner circle, and despite being married to the king's cousin, not even Kier had been invited for those proceedings.

Osbearn remained thoughtful, calm throughout the proceedings. He protested the charges, but supplied an alibi that only his Companion could corroborate. He’d been on a month-long leave from the army, and claimed he and his Companion had been traveling along the river for recreation at the time of the massacre. Companion Osbearn, lacking the rights guaranteed to his master, spoke rarely, but stayed very close. Osbearn only lost his cool exterior when Companion Osbearn’s sentence was read.

Guilty.

When the guards tore Companion Osbearn away, the major's calm vanished. He screamed, fought and reached for him with sudden, desperate fury. Tears stained both men’s faces, but Kier felt nothing from or for them. In those weeks after the murders of his parents, his brother, and a hundred others he’d known since birth, he could feel nothing but his own numbing anguish.

Executions were rare in Helmriche, and largely private. Kier had been required to oversee the execution of Osbearn and his Companion, as the only surviving member of the nobles murdered by the pair. He couldn’t move past his own fury and pain to feel anything about their deaths. It had been swift, painless. They’d been given a tea to calm them before being expertly decapitated with a single blow.

Kier’s parents had burned to death in their own home, as their sixteen-year-old son tried desperately to reach them, only to be engulfed in flames on the first floor.

Justice was served with incredible efficiency. Only one question remained unanswered: why Osbearn and his Companion massacred the men an women of the Blackwatch Estate had never been answered in open court. He didn't know them, had met them only once in passing at the Palace. He wasn't in competition with their son, a mere lieutenant, for military honors. He didn't appear to be insane. Why, then, had he performed this horrible act, then pretended not to know anything about it? It had been centuries since a Master and Companion had turned on their country. The king and his inner circle, citing the protection of Helmriche at large, had dealt with the motive in closed session.

The Blackwatch Estate was small and unimportant. So much so, that only two months after the massacre, the king reinstated Kier in the army and sent him with Somer to train one of the largest groups of new recruits in a century. Kier hadn’t fought the assignment, despite the fact that lords were not meant to serve in His Majesty’s Armed Service. Lords and ladies were supposed to turn their attention to their own people, and leave the country at large to those without estates to run. He wasn't needed. He believed in Rhys and Circe’s ability to run the estate.

He had no right to be in charge of the people he had failed to protect.

Eight years later, Kier Blackwatch, Lord of Helm Eodor, nearly ran his horse to ground again as he raced to the location to which he’d been summoned. This time, there was no Somer to keep him in check, only intimate knowledge of Scead’s limits and Scead's own stubbornness kept him from allowing the stallion to collapse from exhaustion.

Kier had seen Osbearn and his Companion die.

There should be no more black circles.