This Vice Chief’s generosity bore our family other gifts too. Soon after the SS returned from the deployment where Father had saved his life, he came to our home one evening for a dinner. And not any ordinary dinner. Mother had banged around in the kitchen almost as frantic as she did over her wardrobe, ending it stuffed in a dress never to be seen again, and in front of a meal so large my boyish brain anticipated the Conqueror’s entire army.

He was a noble-looker, the type whose gray feathered hair and blue eyes made you wonder why he’d ever signed on to shit next to men with blade wounds stitched by other lugs; squatting over the same trench, dug by men for whose wounds there was no fixing. He left us with a chest that chunked when it hit the floor, and he sang Father’s praises until the night drew me weary. Right before he departed, he brought me from his carriage a baby lamb, black as midnight. My best guesses were it was either some custom of warrior etiquette—a gesture of giving life to the seed of the man who saved his—or a grand display of appreciation for Mother’s cooking.

Though I was informed of every glorious detail, it was still hard not to wonder if Father had really dashed into that ambush to save him not for duty or for that brotherly love soldier-types love to go on about, but rather to quench a bloodlust. Truth is, that Vice Chief knew my father in a way I never did. I would be false to not say that a lifetime ago I wished to see this man, to sit on his knee and partake in his celebrations, to wear his giant helmet and be tossed in the air. Bruises simply meant I received something different.

My experiments on our neighbor’s cat brought a particular salvo, and the manner in which I returned the feline only heated the beating. Around that time, stable work lost a lot of its demand. To fill the gap, Father took an avid interest in denouncing my hopes and daily endeavors. That damn cat was all it took. The alchemy kit was pried from my hands, only to be shoved against my chest a moment later. I wept without restraint when I was ordered to break all the vials. Afterward I assumed the usual stance and held firewood above my head until my shoulders screamed. Somewhere in this memory I recited the piece of martial jingle I’d recite a thousand times: the SS creed. As an adult my mind has shunted all but two stanzas:

One rider, ten riders, or riders score

Through pain, through cold, through plain, through moor