I wasn't scared of him and, like a glutton for punishment, I made my way up to my feet and asked my mother, "Don't you love me?"
She shrugged, "It's not really a question of whether I love you or not, it's about survival. It was good while you were here, but now you need to leave, as your father says."
"I ain't his father!"
"What?" I stammered out, as my eyes went first to my father and then to my mother.
She shrugged expressively, the torn dress falling off one shoulder with the action, "Why do you think I named you Rollan?"
The last part of this nightmarish puzzle clicked into place. I was the bastard child of one of my mother's visitors!
My mother went on talking, as if she has no clue as to how utterly she had just crushed my world into broken jagged pieces of useless flotsam now set adrift upon an unknown sea. "He only visited once, but he left his mark with you. You take after him a lot with your looks. He was from the Nicationer kingdom of Rollanic so that's what I called you. Now, don't think I'm cruel for naming you so, but naming you after one of the Nicationer Nations helped me to separate from you and keep our relationship within the proper light. You may be my son, but you're also a half breed and thus not of the pure blood lineage of the seven Kingdomer Nations like Ralin and I are."
I needed no further urging to leave. My feet made their way backward from the porch of the house to the horse of the man I had killed. Fumbling, my fingers managed to slip the reins of the horse free of the hitching post and then I swung up onto the saddle.
I quickly turned the horse away from the place of my upbringing and dug my heels into its side as I urged him to carry me away, even as the wind consumed the tears from my face.
*****
I stopped the horse and leaned forward in the saddle, breathing almost as hard as the horse. I'd stopped on a rise overlooking the barren hills that lay before me. It was said that this had once been good grazing land, but no more. The endless droughts and sandstorms coming in off the wastelands to the east had seen to that.
I'd never seen the land looking lush and green, but then I was only fifteen. There were men well over a hundred who'd never seen these hills look as it had been fabled that they once had.