I do not remember ever being given a name.
Though I do remember growing up in the fortress. I also remember the stone floors that were always too cold, I remember the smell of iron and sweat that always stunk in the air, I remember the sounds of steel ringing and clashing all day and all night. I mostly remember the sounds of boots stomping and the sounds orders being shouted all the time. I also remember the sounds of laughter that were always mocking me. But I do not remember anyone ever being sincere and giving me something as simple as a name.
All the soldiers and other slaves had names. They shouted them across the battlements like objects worthy of pride. The nobles carved their names into the stones and stitched them into the flags. Even the hunting dogs responded to names given to them. Damned mutts got a name before me.
You might be wondering what they called me right? I was always, "Hey." "Boy." or "Ugly." That was enough for them, since they couldn't be bothered with anything else.
I grew up inside a fortress that had never known peace nor had it known rest. War consistently pressed itself against the fortress' walls like a second skin. Even at night, when the torches were the only source of light, you could hear distant clashes echoing through the mountains beyond. And as for sleep? We never had anything resembling proper rest nor deep sleep, because the silence never lasted, ever.
By the time I'd turned seventeen, I had stopped counting the years as birthdays. I counted them as winters I'd survived.
I was tasked with hauling water until my shoulders trembled, and carrying stones until my fingers split open, I was also tasked with sharpening swords that I would never be allowed to hold. When soldiers died on the battlefields, I was always the one sent to drag their bodies away before morale could "rot with the corpses," as one captain once said while spitting at my feet.
If I was slow, I'd get beaten, and if I dropped something, I'd also get beaten. If someone was in a foul mood and needed somewhere to release it, I'd get beaten. It wasn't all that complicated.
The fortress constantly fed on war, and I occasionally fed on scraps. Hunger was a constant companion for me for so long that it stopped feeling sharp and painful, it became quite normal. Cold crept into my senses during the winter and yet it never fully left even after. My hands had become very rough over the years, scarred from rope burns and splinters. My back was covered in patterns of old bruises and newer ones layered on top.
I had not always looked this hideous… Before the dogs, I had been a forgettable slave, I was so plain that I flew under the radar. I was nothing special, but nothing offensive either. Then one day, a young knight forgot to secure his hunting hounds. The wild dogs found me alone in the courtyard, carrying a bucket too heavy for my skinny arms.
I remember the weight of them knocking me down to the rough ground. The sky felt like it was spinning beyond my control. The taste of dirt filled in my mouth as soon as my face dug into it. One of the hounds tore into my side, and another chomped down on my face. I tried to scream but my voice drowned in snarls and I choked on my own sobs, the pain I felt was unimaginable.
When I woke up, half my vision had left me, and I'd learned that my right eye was gone.
Half my face healed wrong, my skin was all twisted, I had jagged scars that pulled the skin tight whenever I moved. All the soldiers around me flinched when they looked at me. Some began to mock and laugh harder than they used to.
After that, the cruelty I experienced sharpened. I became something between servant and spectacle, I had fallen lower than the lowest of the low. Men barked jokes at me as I passed, and others tossed scraps of bread on the ground and waited to see how long I would hesitate before picking them up. Once, a drunk guard forced a polished shield in front of my face and made me look at my own reflection.
"Can you see why no one would ever want you?" he had asked.
I had stared at the sight of a warped and hideous looking boy staring back at me. I had one normal eye and one empty socket, and to finish it off, my skin pulled and stretched into something barely resembling a human.
I remember thinking that wanting had never been a part of my life to begin with. The war would not pause for my suffering, that thought was stupid. When enemies breached the outer walls, slaves like me were sent first, but it was not to fight, it was to delay the opposing army, to carry supplies through arrow fire, as well as filling trenches. To stand and die in the places of soldiers who did not want or were too prideful to.
I learned how to move silently, efficiently and with controlled movements, mostly through muscle memory that had developed over a lifetime of suffering.
The fear that I felt on a daily basis became so familiar that it clung to my chest like a second heartbeat. At first it made me shake, cry and shiver, but later… it kept me sharp.
I watched so very many people die, beit boys that were younger than me that were thrown from ladders, or slaves that were older than me, collapsing mid task and dying where they fell. There were also many wounded men begging for water that I was never allowed to give.
Nobody's scream ever changed anything around here, neither had anyone's tears softened anyone's heart towards them. That was the first true lesson the fortress taught me, kindness is a pipe dream that can never be reached here. And yet, sometimes, while scrubbing blood stains from the stone, I would pause… My gaze would drift beyond the battlefield, and past the enemy banners flowing in the wind, and all the way past the mountains that caged us all in.
I would always wonder for hours about what existed out there. I wasn't looking for glory, nor was I looking for kindness. I just wanted something different, I wanted to go somewhere where I was not looked at like a mistake or a slave.
It was a very stupid thought, possibly dangerous even. The thing they call hope was not something slaves were meant to feel. But the feeling crept in anyway, quiet and stubborn.
I did not hate the fortress the way I probably should have. To hate something, you required emotion and energy and I had absolutely none to spare. Instead, I became observant of my surroundings, I memorized and kept tabs on which guards drank too much, which ones were habitual gamblers, which corridors were rarely patrolled at night and also which supply routes thinned during winter. I could never overpower anyone here, but I did have my brains and resilience.
Seventeen years passed like that in quiet desperate endurance. They called me many things, ranging from cursed, ugly oh and let's not forget useless. cursed. But, despite all the insults and beatings, I kept waking up every morning, which seemed to annoy them most of all.
One evening, while carrying some broken spear shafts back to storage, I caught my reflection in a shallow puddle mixed with rain and blood. I stared at the boy looking back at me, somehow the right side of his face looked unremarkable, the left side however, looked like something torn out of a nightmare.
I tilted my head slightly. "If I'm a monster," I murmured quietly to myself, "then I'll keep surviving and enduring like one." My voice sounded rough and unused.Thankfully no one heard me, although no one ever did…
That night the outer gates shook harder than usual. There were many orders shouted with more urgency than ever before. I saw fire light up the horizon in violent bursts of orange. There was something about the air that felt different this day, it somehow felt tighter and panicked.
I moved through the chaos the way I always did, unnoticed and small. But for the first time in years, something stirred in my chest that was not fear, it wasn't hope either, it was something heavier and sharper… I felt that if the world would not give me a place… then maybe I would carve one out of it for myself.
I was a person who did not have a name, neither did I have family. I did not have protection of any sorts, yet I had survived seventeen years in a place that was designed to break people. Deep in my soul I believed that my endurance had to mean something, that it had to matter.
The fortress trembled again beneath another impact, the ground shook and dust fell from the ceiling. Then somewhere nearby, I heard a man scream.
I looked up at the towering walls that had defined my entire existence. For the first time in my life, I did not feel small beneath them, I felt ready. I felt ready for what, I did not know. But I knew one thing with absolute certainty. I would not die here quietly, not now and not ever. And most certainly not as "hey." and not as "boy."
If the world refused to name me, then one day it would remember me… without me ever needing one.
And that was the moment my story truly began.