Read To Conquer Chaos for Free Online

Then he swung his boot at Conrad’s shin. He usually kicked, rather than hitting out, for one of his hands was wasted with a childhood sickness, and much practice had made the kicks deadly.
    Conrad felt a dazzling stab of pain below his kneecap, and his leg gave way. He went sprawling on the ground.
    “Crawl, then!” said his father triumphantly, and jerked Conrad’s head back on his shoulders by hooking a toe beneath his chin. That hurt, too, though not so badly. “Are you still minded to argue with me?”
    Conrad pulled himself up on his good knee. He saw that a dozen or so youths of his own age, despairing of getting close to the house, had turned to watch the new distraction. Conrad’s father was always good for some amusement, whether it was taunting him in the pillory or egging him on to another fight. One of the youths called out, “Why, it’s Idle Conrad! Did you go to sleep on your feet and fall down there, useless one?”
    “Why not use your soap on yourself?” another put in, and they all squealed with foolish laughter.
    Conrad braced his sound leg under him and launched himself arrow-wise on an upward slant. His head sank in his father’s belly and hurled him back against the crowd beyond. Many people turned, complaining angrily at being pushed.
    “Wish me to the barrenland, would you?” Conrad said between his teeth. Somehow years of frustration had boiled up inside him and turned to pure, clear-headed rage, as the mix in one of his vats would turn to soap of a clean whiteness. “You a father who couldn’t support his family, who begs scraps of bread from his son and barters them for beer so he may wallow in a hog’s stupor till he’s dragged to the pillory! I’ll go to the barrenland if that’s your wish—then you can weep in the streets and no one will pity you!”
    His father made to rush at him, but someone had called for the watchman Gelbay, who came now from his post by the door, brandishing his staff. Conrad waited passively, favouring his hurt leg, for Gelbay was a drinking-crony of his father’s and he could look for no sympathy there.
    “You—fighting with your father!” Gelbay barked. “Disgusting! You’re not too young for the pillory, you wastrel, and that’s where I’ve a mind to have you put!”
    “Do it!” Conrad said defiantly. “I’m tired of slaving for my drunken father.”
    “Pillory! Yes, the pillory!” cried some of the eager youths, but a cautious look came over his father’s face.
    “Perhaps not,” he said, plucking at Gelbay’s sleeve. “For it would ill serve the town to lack for soap next washday!”
    Oh, the beer-sodden hypocrite ! Conrad snapped, “What you mean is that you’d lose the money that keeps you liquored!”
    “Enough of that!” Gelbay brought his staff down stingingly on Conrad’s shoulder. “Get gone—and be thankful that your father pleads for you after what you did!”

    The jeers of the crowd were still ringing in his head as he let himself into the dirty upper room where he and his father eked out their existence. As he’d expected, the loaves that had been in the cupboard this morning had gone; one of them had been eaten, as crumbs on the floor testified, but the others would have been traded for mugs of beer.
    He let fall his sack of soap in the corner and sat down on his blanket with his head in his hands. What point was there in living like this any more?
    Something hard pressed against his chest, inside his shirt. With a start he remembered the soap-carving he had been making. He took it out, his hands trembling. By a miracle it was undamaged, except that a lock of the hair had broken off.
    He hadn’t seen Idris outside Malling’s house, where most other people were, and since unchaperoned girls were seldom allowed out at night in Lagwich, she might well be at home.
    Carrying the carving, he crept down the rickety outside stairs and went to the back door of the next house but one on the same street. He listened for