Name:Grub
Pseudonyms: none
Age: young child
Race: unknown, human
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It was said the captain's adopted child - who at that time was known by the unforutunate name of Grub- refused the wagon on the march. That he walked the entire way, even as, in the first week beneath the year's hottest sun, fit and hale soldiers stumbled and fell.
This is perhaps invention, for by all accounts he was at that time no more than five years of age. And the captain himself, from whose journals much of that journey and the clash in which it culminated is related in detail, writes very little of Grub, more concerned as he was with the rigours of command. As a result, of the future First Sword of the Late Empire period, scant details, beyond the legendary and probably fictitious are known.
Lives of the Three
Moragalle
HoC mmpb p 739
Duiker : 'He saw a child, no more than eighteen months old, wandering lost, arms outstretched, dry-eyed and appallingly silent.
Duiker rode close, leaned over in his saddle and swept the child into one arm. Tiny hands gripped the torn fragments of his shirt.' (HoC UKTpb, p.601)
Duiker to Keneb :‘You! Take this child!’
The man reached up to close his hands around the silent, wide-eyed toddler. ‘Are you Duiker?’ the captain asked.
‘Aye.’
‘You’re to report to the High Fist immediately, sir – there, on the lefthand
tower—’
‘That bastard will have to wait,’ Duiker growled. ‘I will see every damned refugee through first! Now run, Captain, but tell me your name, for there may well be a mother or father still alive for that child.’
‘Keneb, sir, and I will take care of the lass until then, I swear it.’ (DG UKTpb, p.601)
The historian did not notice – nor did anyone else – the arrival of a captain of Blistig’s garrison. The man had been about to speak with Duiker, to inform him of the safe delivery of a child to a grandfather. (DG UKTpb, p.637)
'The toddler had come from nowhere, unseen by any until he arrived to stand in the very spot where the Adjunct had first stood, his oversized rust-red telaba trailing like a royal train. Blond hair a tangled shock above a deeply tanned, cherubic face smeared with dirt, the child faced the ranks of soldiers with an air of unperturbed calculation. A strangled cough from among the soldiers, then someone stepped forward.
Even as the man emerged from the front line, the toddler’s eyes found him. Both arms, buried in sleeves, reached out. Then one sleeve slipped back, revealing the tiny hand, and in that hand there was a bone. A human longbone. The man froze in mid-step.
‘Is he yours, Captain?’ Tavore demanded, her tone brittle.
‘As good as, Adjunct. An orphan from the Chain of Dogs. The
historian Duiker placed him into my care.’
‘Has he a name?’
‘Grub.’
(HoC UKTpb, p.272)
Sinn : "The Chain of Dogs made you, Grub. It built you up out of dirt and sticks and rocks, and then it filled you with everything that happened. The heroes who fought and then died, the people who loved, then lost. The ones that starved and died of thirst. The ones whose hearts burst with terror. The ones that drowned, the ones that swallowed an arrow or a sword. The ones who rode spears. It took all of that and that became your soul."
Grub gestured. The ground lifted suddenly into the fire's path, in a mass of roots, humus and mud, surging upward toppling trees to the sides. A thousand twisted, brown arms snaked out from the churning earth. The writhing wall engulfed the rolling sphere of fire, slapped it down as would a booted heel crush the life from a wayward ember. Thunder shook. The earth subsided, the arms vanishing, leaving nothing more than a slowly settling, chewed-up mound. Clouds of steam billowed and then drifted, thinning as the darkness returned once more. (DoD)