Kune

       Kune had failed.

 Kune surveyed his oxen, his staff in hand. The bright sun was so bright it resembled purple. The great grasslands spread for miles, the grass yellow in the summer. To his east were the great canyons, which wound and twisted into the east. The great canyons were the wall between the great grasslands and the greater east. The oxen were the finest in all the southern lesser lands, the only southern oxen of white fur. Kune’s father had spent decades collecting and breeding lighter colored oxen; now this yoke was his fathers greatest achievement. Perhaps his second greatest achievement. His father's first and greatest achievement was his son. That is what he told his son, although Kune was uncertain. His  father had educated him about two things: oxen and the way of the fist.

      The way of the fist was an art that every southerner knew, yet an art that very few actually did. The way of the fist was used in everything a southerner must do. It is used in farming to guide the scythe in the wheat fields. It was used in hunting wild oxen and wild great birds, as beasts without art are helpless. The way of the fist is even used in herding oxen, as it humbles the oxen and even calms the great beasts.

      Kune's father was a master of the art. He had learned it from one of the walking blades themselves. His  father had forced his passion for the art on Kune. He had taught his son as master to disciple, father to son. Kune, though disinterested in the arts' more poetic forms,  appreciated the arts' effect on the animals, though, its almost dance-like movements, its unearthly patterns, which calmed both man and beast. He also appreciate the power it gave him when he used the forms; the oxen obeyed, the wheat obeyed, the world itself seemed to obey.

Kune lay in the shade of a rock, the only rock within a mile of the grazing grounds. His eyes began to close, the heat intoxicating him into a gentle slumber. The thin dust settling, the Oxen settling, Kune’s mind settling.

Kune’s dream was full of his father's wisdom, mostly about the way of the fist.

"As stalks of wheat are silver to children, so are flashy acts to ones not trained in the art."

"Movement is not made yesterday or of the morrow, but instead a product of thought; it has no time."

"The height of greatness is simplicity; if the art is overcomplicated, it is diluted."

      Kune did not understand all of his father's wisdom. He suspected that his father had taken his wisdom from other men, and they from others, as one of his father's sayings:

"There is not a new thought underneath the eastern sun."

       For as long as he remembered, Kune had been a shepherd. His father would plant the wheat grain, and he would guide the oxen. This is how it has been. It has always been this way. This is how it would always be.

      The fields of Kune's oxen stretched miles. The other shepherds were few and far between. Wild oxen roamed, but not like they once did in Kune's father's childhood. Having the only white yoke, his oxen were quite valuable, and their fur sold for so much that Kune's father almost didn't have to farm. But his father liked the taste of homegrown wheat. He liked self-reliance. He liked simplicity. Kune, on the other hand, wished to see more of the world, to taste, smell, and feel more than what was his world. All of Kune's current world contained oxen, wheat, and more oxen.

      "Mooo". Kune's head snapped up, awaking from his deep slumber.

"Mooo". Kune's dreary thoughts were slug-like.

The oxen... The oxen are hurt.

Kune hastily looked around, his hand closing around his ashen staff. The white-hot sun was blinding, but through the distance.

A dark rider approached, riding a bull oxen. A white oxen.

"That's father's own bull!" Kune gasped, his chest tightening in both anger and fear. It was definitely not his father on the bull.

The rider was wearing dark cloaks, tattered and torn, their face covered by an eastern face mask. The mask was made of dark, burnt wood. It was carved with Eastern markings, the eyes slit like those of the Eastern pagan gods.

      Kune came to his conclusion the moment he saw the man. He must be an eastern raider. The eastern raiders were nomadic people who lived in the great canyons. They were barbaric, feral creatures who stole entire oxen herds. This encounter had been the one Kune dreaded since he first took the role of shepherd. His father had always warned him, told him to stay close to the farm, to stay miles away from the great canyons. His father told him that violence must always be the lesser of two evils. Using the Way of the Fist in violence is both a great sin and a necessary one.

      Arms shaking with fear, Kune brought his body into the first form his father had ever taught him. The Way of the Still-Fist. The Way of the Still-Fist was a form of calming the mind.

"Before a fight, one must decide if they will fight like a stream or a river. No choice is wrong, but one using the art must either draw on the power of emotion or logic."

      Kune, like his father, preferred the latter. He calmed everything from his breathing to his heart rate; his eyes closed. As the rider approached, Kune began his first strike when he was interrupted by a voice.

"Leave the Oxen and run, boy, you are too young to kill."

      Kune was both confused by the raider talking (In the stories, they were mostly mute, as well as the fact that they never talked to victims, simply killed). He also thought raiders would kill men and women, old and young. Why was this one offering him a choice?

      Kune, although scared, respected his father more than anyone else. His greatest fear was failing his father and his father's oxen.

       Kune failed.

      Kune straightened his imagined great height. He gripped his staff, hands tightening until his knuckles were white. He prepared his speech of justice for this Raider.

" You, foolish thei-"

Kune was interrupted by the Raider's sword thrust, aimed directly at Kune's chest. He  would have died if he hadn't been deep in the Way of the Still Fist. His body, even in the calmest form, reacted faster than Kune's mind ever could. With the help of The Way of the Still Fist, Kune stepped out of the way, seeming to move as the blade did. Kune's body settled automatically in a guard stance, his hands up, feet apart.

      The raider seemed surprised. He spoke again:

      "Listen, boy, I will give you one more chance to leave; you cannot fight me."

Adrenaline rushed through Kune like never before. His adrenaline pushed his Way of the Still Fist into another form, the Way of the Iron Fist. This use of the Art was used only in war. Kune's father only taught it to him in the worst of circumstances, if there was nowhere to run. This new form pushed Kune into a tighter stance, his hands tightening, his muscles tightening instead of being loose.

Kune struck, his staff flowing so it would strike like a falling boulder, the head of the staff twisted so it would land on a sharper, heavier point. The staff hit the raider's sword with a loud ring. The raider had blocked the blow, but was left vulnerable for a split second. Kune, under The Way of the Iron Fist, struck in that split second by instinct. His staff flowed again, and this time struck. The staff's blow caused a grunt of pain, and the raider fell off his oxen. The raider oxen, My father’s oxen Kune thought, mooed and ran to his brothers, not used to violence.

      The raider jumped up as fast as he had fallen off, clutching his rib. The man held his sword in his other hand and fell into a form of his own. The Way of the Bladed Fist. The Way of the Bladed Fist was made for war with bladed weapons, although it had some uses with a cooking knife, or a lumber axe as well.

      The raider moved in extraordinarily fast, jerky movements, his blade slicing through the air, its tip creating booms in the air. Kune tried to block, but the Iron cut through the wood, the very tip of the staff slicing off. The shepherd  parried the flat of the blade with his staff this time. The raider was as strong as an ox, and blocking quick thrusts that were also heavy seemed to take all the strength the Way of the Iron Fist could provide.

      The Way of the Iron Fist was a form of war, yet it was also the calmest of the war forms. Its rhythms flowed and sang like the cold, resolved, unbreakable iron. When Kune's staff slipped, it was the Way of the Iron Fist that kept his hand from being cut off. The sword hit his hand, yet at an angle. The cut was shallow, just above his wrist. Although superficial, the pain caused him to drop his staff, immediately screaming in pain.

      Kune screamed as the blade left his flesh. The blade felt as hot as a coal, the sensation searing. He had never felt so much pain in his life. He helplessly collapsed onto the ground. The Way of the Iron Fist calmed his mind, but not enough. He was not a soldier nor a fighter; Kune was a boy.

      Kune looked up through teary eyes at the victorious raider ahead of him, his burnt mask looking like the dark itself. The raider walked up toward the defeated boy, leaning over him. The raider pointed his sword directly at the boy's neck, the point drawing a tiny line of blood.

      "Didn't I tell you to only use violence when there's nowhere to run. "

      Kune jumped in surprise. It was his father's own voice. The raider pulled off his pagan god mask, revealing Kune's father's leathery face. His father's eyes were a clear grey, calm like a lake. They were not the eyes of a murderer.

      Kune felt embarrassment weigh him more heavily than the entire eastern mountains. His father had tested him. His father had dressed up as a raider and fooled him like a chicken without a head. Kune had failed his father, the one he respected the most.

       Kune had failed.

El Fin.