The Son of Martianus
Martiani Filius
Dusk was shrouded the day into darkness, covering
the evergreen forest with its massive mantle and
filling it with stars. Within the dark and cold entrails
of the forest, like the wind, Hadrian ran desperately,
fretfully turning back to make sure nobody was
following him.
He was a boy of ten summers a few weeks past, the
son of a Goth harlot and a Roman lord. His real father
never knew of his existence, Hadrian believed, but at
times wished to have known of him. His mother spoke
highly of his father in both Gothic and Roman
tongues, he remembered. The boy was fluid in both.
She loved his father much because of the way she
always spoke of him, with sweetness in her voice
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filled with much hope. The man was her everything.
Many times, she lost herself in her own thoughts.
This is what love had done to some who believed in it;
it made them their own slaves in their own minds.
It was his mother’s story, a fairy tale that did not
end well in the end. His father was missing his left
thumb, his mother had told him. That was the only
thing that stood out in his mind’s eye: a father
without a thumb, huh.
“Your father will come back for us one day,” she
was so naïve. A foolish woman, he will never come
back.
Tragically, a Roman general murdered her because
he thought she belonged to him. She was the most
attractive woman the eyes of Rome had ever seen. Her
life was ended by a foolish man with a hunger for
power. Some men think this way, not knowing the
destruction they leave behind by their own
thoughtless actions. Left all alone in this world,
Hadrian was always starving and unprotected,
stealing food from Roman markets when his belly
became unbearable. At night, he snuck into Roman
temples and slept within their warm walls that
smelled of incense and other queer stuff.
Two years ago, a group of orphaned thieves named
Insurgi, or the Rebels, took him in as one of their own.
The group of thieves was no older than ten and two.
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Hated and feared, the leader of the clan was an
arrogant boy of thirteen winters named Gregorius.
That night, he ran as if the wind were his only ally.
He was fast as a gazelle and could see his own breath
as he ran, and that was when those thoughts came to
his mind.
It was his seventh spring when he walked within
the marketplace, searching for a victim. It was when
he saw a Roman lord handing a gold coin to the owner
of a linen store, paying for a very expensive fabric he
had laid eyes upon. The boy stood right beside him,
reached within the Roman’s pocket, and pulled out a
few gold coins. As soon as the Roman noticed this, he
looked back and stared at the boy with furious eyes.
The boy knew the meaning of such a gaze and ran
through the crowd like a frightened deer, from store
to store, sliding underneath a horse that was pulling
a laden dray, knocking over a stand filled with clay
vases; the owner even cursed him and his
descendants. As Hadrian dashed through the brick
street of the city, he tripped upon the city ditch
conduit that carried garbage into the sewer. He did
not have a bad fall but still hurt his ankle in the
process.
Right beside a carpet store, on the other side of the
meat store, was a dark alley. He limped his way into it
and made certain nobody was following him. When he
opened his fisted hand, he found within it three gold
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coins shimmering by the lit part of the alley where the
faint rays of the sun had successfully made their way.
He thought of the things he could get with those
coins: fresh food, new clothes, a horse, sharp swords,
wine, a dwelling, perhaps a place with guards and
soldiers willing to protect him at all costs. He kept
thinking foolhardiness in that young head of his.
Suddenly, he felt a big hand on his shoulder. It felt
like a massive octopus ready to cease him, and then
another hand clasped his neck, clutching at him with
much strength. His heart raced. He could not draw
any breaths, and the pain he felt that day could not
compare to anything he had ever endured in his hard
life as an orphan. The alley was dark and dank, and
when the boy felt the first strike, it was in his left eye.
For a mere instance, he saw a lightning flash across
his face. No thunder followed it, though—and then,
he stumbled to the ground on his back. His head spun,
air knocked out of his lungs after he received a sudden
kick in his midriff. The boy did not remember how
many strikes he received in his head that morning.
Too many to keep count. He heard clearly the words
that were uttered as he lay upon the brick ground of
the alley:
“If you ever want to steal from somebody,” said
the man in the Roman tongue, “you must know the
consequences of such action.” The man left the boy
there, bleeding, dying in the dark alley.
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For almost an entire day, nobody else walked into
that alley. The boy could have died there alone, and
nobody could have missed him. The people of Rome
could have just continued with their lives. But he was
not going to die there. He was determined to live.
Then, lightning split the sky in half, and a loud
thunder struck the night. It began to rain, hard rain,
raindrops that were as big as rocks, and they hurt his
skin, his bruised face. It even rained sideways after
the wind gushed from east to west. Almost
unconscious, he remained there, wet and cold, with
labor breaths, shivering.
After he came to his senses, the rain had stopped,
and he knew the morrow had come. He felt dizzy and
sickly with a fever. Slowly, he got to his feet, and a
sharp pain shot in his left leg as he tried to walk his
way out of the dark alley onto the brick street of the
city. When he saw his face reflected upon the water
canal, he did not recognize the person gazing back at
him. His left eye was closed shut, bruises and
scratches to his brow, cheeks, lips swollen, and a line
of spittle mixed with blood extended down to his
breast.
When he was a boy of four, he recalled staring at
the fire of the hearth in his home. He was fond of fire,
beautiful it appeared when it danced redly for him,
destructive and mysterious. Just like him, the flames
were always hungry, devouring everything thrown at
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it. The warm feeling of fire he felt very deep within his
soul, a queer connection to the flames, an angry urge
to explode, to tell the world he was going to punish
those who had refused to acknowledge his existence.
He felt so small compared to everything around him.
Regardless of the injuries he had sustained, deep
within, he was fond of pain. There was something
special about pain when he fought children of his own
age, and most of the time, Hadrian lost the quarrel to
them. There was a feeling of accomplishment,
though, a feeling of being acquainted with his own
body that he did not concern himself with pain. It
made his existence more… meaningful. He could
never explain that, but it was something he carried in
his blood, in his flesh.
When he opened his sweaty, bloody hand, he still
saw and felt three gold coins in them. It was very
queer that he was able to keep them. Perhaps they
were his reward for enduring such punishment.
Although the scars he carried on his body for
months had vanished, he never forgot what had
occurred that day. It took more than a year for him to
return to the same marketplace where he had almost
perished due to such a beating because he stole from
strangers once again.
He ran through naked branches and thorny bushes.
From the black foliage, he had noticed that night had
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finally fallen and was thankful for it, for he could
easily become part of it by allowing the forest to
swallow him. Hiding was what he knew more than
snatching coins from strangers, a survival tool he had
learned before he could tell his first lie. As the night
aged, it was becoming difficult to see a few feet ahead
of him. The leaves of the trees around him hid the
moon, feeding the night with more darkness. He had
to survive. He always survived. That meant if he could
not see where he was going, neither could those who
chased after him. They could not be able to catch him.
That was what really mattered.
At all costs, Hadrian wished to get away from those
two savages, but it appeared that the more he ran
away from them, the more they drew closer to him.
“Damn you, boy!” coming from a few yards
behind him, a hoarse voice suddenly screamed,
drawing his presence even closer.
It frightened the lad even more, but it made him
muster strength to keep on going.
“Stop where you are!” an even farther, distinct
voice followed.
They have not given up, the boy thought. They are
going to kill me if they catch me. He felt as if he had
been running for hours, and he thought he would not
be able to get away from them.
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Although Hadrian was weary, he did not cease
running, for he knew he could be in tremendous
trouble if he fell into the clutches of those two wild
men. Surely, he would face a terrible end if they
caught him, worse than the beating he had received in
that gloomy alley three years past. He always knew
Goths were not fond of Romans. But he did not know
why. Perhaps the quarrel between them had been
forgotten, and now they just hate each other for no
sound reason.
Exhausted, he hid behind the trunk of an old fallen
hemlock to catch his breath, thinking he was about to
faint. Not enough air. The steaming warmth of his
own breath was seen under the moonlight that
started to creep within the branches and leaves of the
trees, white as mist. Gasp. Gasp. Gasp. He gasped for
air.
A man with unkempt long hair as blonde as the
rays of the sun, his mouth almost entirely covered by
a beard, wore animal skin and boots, carefully
approached his prey. “We just want to know the
location of the gold. That is all!” he said in a passive
voice.
“And open your throat with our knives!” another
man shouted. He had a big, rugged face and flat nose,
and one of his front teeth was missing.
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Rapidly, the first wild man turned back, gave the
other a scowl, and whispered, “SSSHHH! Imbecile!
We’re trying to lure the boy to us, not frighten him
even more.” But the boy was able to hear that, and
that worried him even more.
“I meant to say,” the other wild man said loudly so
the boy could hear him better, “for you to come out of
hiding. We need to ask you something of great
importance. No harm will come to you, promise.”
The two men, like hungry wolves, split. One
advanced to the left of the fallen tree, the other to the
right, in order to catch their game. While Hadrian
crouched behind the fallen tree—his back resting
against the old cracked bole of the hemlock— he
skewed his head upward and curiously took a glimpse
of the two wild men approaching his way.
Walking toward the boy’s direction, each man held
a razor-sharp dirk that showed silvery under the light
of the moon that had made its first appearance in a
long while. The boy knew what would come next if he
did not wish to run. All of a sudden, one of the wild
men leaped upon the fallen tree and, to his surprise,
discovered that the boy was not there.
“Fuck, little shit!” said one of the wild men.
Hadrian saw a bright light in the distance and,
shortly after, heard the loudest sound of thunder
accompanying the ground as it trembled.
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In the dark and cold innards of the forest, Hadrian
rustled through the black foliage, branches
scratching his face while wending farther in. A surge
of warm air suddenly blanketed him, and his
desperation right away relented. What could it be?
The boy marveled at the sudden change in the
environment around him.
As he kept on walking, from afar, he noticed tiny
specks of lights flickering like embers in the furnace
of a blacksmith. As he walked farther in, the specks of
light became numerous, and the air he breathed was
turning warmer like a soothing bath of heat, of sulfur.
The smell of sulfur intensified. It was bright as day,
and in detail, he could see many trees around him
afire, making cracking sounds as they cooled. Many of
the leafless skeletons of the trees in his midst
scorched into black charcoal. Frightened by the
seared corpses of two elks, Hadrian avoided them,
walked around them carefully, without his gaze
parting them, as if they could come back to life. Their
white teeth were noticeable, appearing as if they were
smiling back at him.
What is that? He observed someone lying on the
ground… a man? Embedded in the earth like the
newborn of Gaia, covered completely in black ash, the
man did not move. Is he dead? he asked himself. But
as Hadrian drew closer, he saw his breast expand,
knew he was drawing breaths, labor breaths, breaths
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of the dying perhaps. He finally noticed that the being
he thought to be a man was a boy not older than
sixteen summers. He appeared older than Hadrian,
but not by much. Bare skin in the hot mud, the boy
uttered a sudden moan of pain.
Right there and then, Hadrian understood he was
standing inside a hole in the earth. Did he cause this?
he asked himself. Almost everything around him had
turned to embers. He had fallen from the sky! Hadrian
could not believe his eyes, inferring that after gazing
into the night, a hole burned into the trees, exposing
the stars in the dark sky.
Frightened, the boy turned around, wishing to get
away from that place, from the young man in the
earth, from the burning trees, from the two dead elks
a few distances away from him, and return home.
Which home? he wanted to get back home, back to his
friends, the only friends he had, the only friends he
knew, return home to withstand Gregorius’s
reproachful remarks and his unfair judgments. But he
was mistaken. He did not belong there, not with his
friends or Gregorius. His home was the world now.
He almost forgot. It took a moment for the boy to
realize that he had been distracted, and moments
past, he had been running away for dear life from two
wild men who wished him dead.
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The sound of burning embers as they popped and
cooled around him, along with rustles of leaves, filled
him with uneasiness. He turned back slowly and then
saw them. The frightened boy did not know how long
they were standing there. The only thing he knew at
that moment was that he had to get away from them.
The two giant, wild men stood before him, their faces
solemn. The young boy’s heart raced like a warhorse
in the middle of a war; eyes opened wide as if the boy
had seen two ghosts. I am dead, Hadrian thought. No
way to run. I can’t fight both of them. I’m only a boy.
Then, the eyes of the wild men widened as they saw
the young man in the earth move in agonizing pain.
At that moment, the wind blew from east to west, and
the air was hot and smelled of sulfur. In unison, four
knees struck the warm, muddy ground below their
feet, and two shining dirks followed right after.
Hadrian took a deep breath and then sighed with
much relief
