Standing on a mountainside, Biriam looked over his future and balanced it against the blade of his axe. He wished, would that I am remembered. The edge was chipped — blunted and carved with the lives it’d ended. He called it Ambition. Biriam honed it, polishing the blade, working it with whetstones, hoping with each swing to carve his path into the future.
“Wake up,” curled a coarse tone. “Sunrise.”
Biriam sat up amidst furs and fleece. Darkness ebbed and thin rays of morning intruded from the tent flaps. He loathed the morning; awakening brought an urge to flinch, intuiting a boot colliding with his ribs to urge him to the day’s work. But those days were shorn away on the edge of his axe, sacrificed to Ambition. Yet still in the in-between waking moments they stirred.
He shoved aside the tent’s flap and surveyed his warriors.
Striding among his men, family bought by coin and the shared dreams of Biriam’s future, he sipped from a water trough which reflected crimson skies the shade of the evening’s soil. He thrust the metal cup into the hands of Garades, a red-haired youth from Nador who’d pledged a blood oath to the gang and was all but Biriam’s battle-brother. “Drink well,” he said.
Garades smiled, clapping his war-leader on his ox-wide shoulder. Biriam met the smile, held it in like a breath. He prayed it would never tarnish like the metal cup had.
He loved Garades, loved all his battle-brothers with a heart forged in seeped, shared blood. The youngster passed the cup back, and Biriam passed it to another: Perius, the fleet, the horse-rider. “We push forward tonight again,” said the warlord. He knew any one of his family would give their lives for his dream; their dream.
And yet, he’d sacrifice any upon the edge of his axe-blade to achieve his Ambition.
During the long afternoon, when the sun crawled, he sat and schemed their siege. They’d watched the caravans for months as they extracted materials from the starfall. The wagons brought their goods behind the walls of an encampment two leagues distant, where the students of the gods kept them.
Perius drew in the sand, parting grains with a sharp-tipped stick. On one side, the fields and hill and Biriam’s warband; on the other, their destiny. “They call themselves Lions,” he said, crouching by the pictogram.
“We’ve killed lions before,” laughed Garades. “I’ve seen Biriam choke the life from one.”
“Probably a cub,” Perius joked. Amusement rippled through them.
“Be serious,” scolded Biriam. The fighters, like children, hushed at their father’s word. “These are no cubs we fight.”
He didn’t need to remind them of the severity of the mission. Had it been any other, he’d have welcomed the levity. But for this, he would brook no nonsense.
The warlord Biriam’s past was a millstone, a weight paid in shed blood. Even into his fortieth year he kept his hair cut short, like he had in his days in the Athenian military. A half-decade of banditry had followed. Many of the oldest in his family came from those days, and they’d fostered hopes of assailing mercantile roads for a comfortable life. Yet still, Biriam dreamed of more.
The evening met Biriam’s crew drenched in blood. His axe-blade led the way, severing dusk and night as the sun slipped low. A cry rose from his ranks, the fighters eager for more. They’d planned for a siege, one which would shatter the encampment’s defenses. Bitter bile rose in the warrior’s throat. “Break the walls!” he screamed.
To his left, a battle-brother clashed with a defender: Adros, an older comrade. He’d joined Biriam’s retinue shortly after the star fell, had sworn his blood oath soon afterward. Adros, who amused the band on spring evenings plucking drunkenly on his lyre. His opponent was formidable. Adros fell, his body ripped from shoulder to gut by spear-point. Biriam clenched his teeth, steeling himself to hold firm, urge forward. A section of wall collapsed into rubble beneath his charge. He rose, buoyed by rage, cresting a wave of his battle-brothers.
As the wall fell, he smashed Ambition against the skulls of two defenders, severing them like eggs, spilling crimson yolk. He laughed, remembering Adros. “These are no lions!” he yelled — it was performative, he knew, emphatic boastful confidence to drive his fighters on. “They call themselves the Society of the Lion, but look how they die!”
In his youth, they’d called him the Beast Biriam, for his brutality. Death walked with him, close enough his family knew to stay several steps aside lest they be struck down by his Ambition. They wouldn’t be the first to do so. Such had marred his youthful days in service of Athenia’s King, a savagery which earned him the loathing of his fellows-at-arms, a winding road of butchery which led to exile. Now, among his family, he retained his discipline — but not at the expense of his rage.
As the robe-clad Lions died, he beckoned his family. “In, through the break!” he bellowed, “Now!”
Garades and Perius hurried to his side. The youngster leaned down, scooping up scrolls which littered an upturned table. “I hoped we’d find fighters here,” he said, “not these scholars. There’s no fight in them.”
Biriam snorted. “Don’t congratulate yourself yet. Some here have turned their stolen treasures to their own benefit. That’s why we liberate it.”
Garades threw the papers down. “Their fortress is a vault. We’ll find what we seek in its depths.”
The gods did not choose the Lions, Biriam decided as the band broke door by door. At his lead, his battle-brothers put scholars and students to the blade, until the paving stones of the fortress ran slick with blood. “Burn the papers,” said Biriam. He closed his eyes; the smell invaded his senses. With each step, he’d feared judgment; he wondered if he’d break upon Hades’ branches. Certainly, if he didn’t achieve his ambition. And if he did, he’d best Hades himself.
Resistance met the fighters as they breached the fortress, delving deeper into its heart. Combatants armed with blades, roused from the suddenness of the invasion, broke like waves upon Biriam’s onslaught. Flames quickly enveloped much of the building’s outer rings, sealing their escape and stemming the rout. They fell like stunted trees broken in thunderstorms. Only as the band pushed inwards did they meet true resistance.
A young fighter, Biriam did not truly remember his name, fell first to the empowered. The man who slew him wielded might unlike any mortal; he was muscled like an ox, blazing each step with impossible speeds. Several of Biriam’s kin turned to flee as the air within the hallways turned thick and black as night, enshrouding them in panic.
“Hold firm!” he yelled, clutching the throat of one who ran from the Lions.
In that moment, Biriam was ready to slit the man’s throat. His combatants needed to fear him more than they feared those who’d claimed the god’s might. It’d take fear for those who trusted him to hurl themselves into death itself; this was the price his ambition demanded.
As the fortress burned, the band met the Lions. Biriam heaved, clefting atwain those who stood against him, but only after they’d first broken themselves against the warlord’s brothers. As the ground grew uneven with the bodies of felled fighters, Biriam wondered how many mortal lives it’d take to drown those touched by gods.
The weight of lives ended balanced on either side of his axe’s edge: his family on one side, those of the Society of the Lion on the other. A cost to be paid, souls to outweigh those who’d stolen the bounty of the starfall. Yes, the Society claimed to protect it; Biriam knew their claims. They’d shuffled away the gifts of the gods, hidden it in vaults like this to study and understand. Yet they’d keep what secrets they’d found from him.
He brought his axe down again and again. He imagined he was hacking apart the lies, bringing mortal judgment to these Lions who thought themselves the gods’ equals like Prometheus stealing the flame. A fire which, as far as the warlord was concerned, should be his.
Few of his family survived the onslaught. Amidst ruin, ashen ground, and bloodied, crumbling walls, the warlord emerged to walk, step by aching step, to the vault. The door crunched and shattered, its guardians rent apart. He laughed, shoving masonry aside. In the center sat several oaken chests, anointed with carved sigils. He pulled a lid open; it resisted to the last. In spite, Biriam tore at it, splintering the wood, twisting the locks. He wouldn’t be denied. Not after coming so far. Not after having paid such a price.
Within were flasks, ornately decorated and hewn from fine calf leather. They smelled slightly of sunlight and honey.
Here, he thought, the nectar, beverage of the gods. He clutched one flask, pulling at the lid. The might of the gods swirled within, the power to do as he willed. He drank in his dreams. With his ambition realized, he’d be the one to divide life and death on the edge of his blade; not the Fates, not the gods.
He drank thirstily, eager to absorb his destiny.
Heat burned within, raging like a fire, like his fury. It swelled to a crescendo. He stumbled, dropping the flask. His body became power itself, shifting, might and strength combined. The roof of the chamber broke apart against the bursting corona of his might. Searing flames ignited in his eyes. Biriam — or the man he once was — evaporated. In an eternity lingering for a fragmented moment, he felt the greater part of himself seared away.
Instead, there was only his purest sense: a singular thought, the center of the flame which had been him. In that moment, he was reborn.
As he stumbled free from the ruins, survivors fled. The faces of those he couldn’t remember fully turned to him in horror, their bodies small, fragile. He brought one of his hooves down upon them. Any kinship he’d once shared with them was half-forgotten, the memory of a dream. He looked into the night and, for a moment, tried to remember what that word which sat on his tongue — ambition — had ever truly meant. Whatever it was, it was meaningless now. All that mattered was appetite.
He howled. Somewhere in the mists, the Fates laughed.
