Zai Luran common foot solider number 1-7849, this is who I am. The first of my kind, a commoner raised by the noblemen’s tutors and trainers. Abandoned on the door step of Sir Travin’s Home for Aspiring Knights, I was taken in to quell an uprising of the common folk against the king and nobles, it worked. They promised that others would follow, that there would be a new social class made up of men like me, commoners raised like knights. But seventeen years later I am still the only one, Zai Luran in a sea of Sir Charmaine, Sir Henry, and Sir Alexander. Then the day came that it all changed, the day of the test.
The test is a simple thing one man versus one hundred soldiers, not knights just common foot soldiers but there is one hundred of them. The goal is to last longer than the other team through any means necessary, many great men have died during this deadly game of the nobles. For it truly is just a game to them, they watch it happen in plush seats with wine and hot food, the lives lost mean nothing to them; after all they are just common soldiers. Only once has a noble been killed in this game and the commoner who committed the act was accused of murder and put to death. That was the first time that a man was put to death without a fair trial. But the nobles have added a challenge to my game, they got bored with the same old thing every week; I have to outlast without killing any of the one hundred men who will fight against me. Never in the three thousand years of Vastva history has this ever happened before.
From the ground I can’t see the arena that surrounds me, but I know that they all see me. My picture fills the hover screen high above my head; the whole event will be documented by the hover cam floating near my face for later review. The monotony of “Zai Luran vs. the hundred”, being repeated over and over again, was finally broken by the starting bell. I send a prayer to Willhelm, guardian of tactical maneuvers, and then I’m off running for my life.
The first twenty men are easy to capture, tossing rocks from my perches in the trees I lure them right into my most obvious snares. The next forty or so are a little smarter, or perhaps it is just harder now that it is getting dark, but they too stumble into my carefully laid plans. Most of the rest follow in much the same manner with more tossed rocks and rustled bushes, it‘s so easy that I nearly fall asleep and out of the tree, this would have given away my game as nobody had looked up yet. But then I was shot by one of the last three players and I lost my perch anyway, I scrambled up and sprinted down the nearest path. As I ran I heard more gunshots ahead, rounding the corner I saw the other two players shooting at each other, the path took me between them and straight to one of my more carefully concealed traps. The two who had been shooting each other turned to chase me and as I jumped into the nearest tree they collided with my net which hoisted them into the air. Ninety-nine down only one more to go.
The last man took much more time and nearly a quart of my own blood. A trail of blood led to and over one last trap, my most impressive by far I have to say. A pit with microscopic ropes crisscrossing it, the dark and a few leaves make it nearly impossible to see. Leading him down the path towards it I use the trees to swing up over the pit and to the other side, he rounded the corner and saw me standing in the middle of the path apparently out of breath. He walked right into the pit and was wrapped up in the net laying at the bottom, I had won.
The next morning it was announced, one of the men had died, I had failed. They said it was the last man I caught, they said he was strangled by the ropes of the net. But, I know that man lived. I cut him out of the net myself and left the arena with him, he was alive when I went home. They killed that man so that a commoner would not be knighted, so that the balance would stay the same, the thought makes me sick.
Zai Luran common foot soldier number 1-7849, this is who I am, this is who they have made me. But the time is coming that they will lose all their power, when they will become common. They trained me as a knight, they raised me as a knight, they tell me to fight as a foot soldier, but they forget that I think as a tactician. I see what no one else sees, I hear what no one else hears and what I see and hear is social unrest in all of the common folk. So what I do is bide my time, I wait it out, I persuade people to speak out, I speak out myself on occasion. One day all my time and work will pay off and I will get my revenge.
