In a land to the north, near the great island nations, there lived a fierce and warlike people. Their ships traveled all the oceans, and they raided the shores of every land the world over. Each warrior among them fought like a man possessed by ten devils, and in their raids they would carry away food, jewels, and the people of the shores they conquered. With all the stolen foodstuffs, they stocked the larders of their kingdom to bursting. With all the stolen treasures, their lands were dressed in decadence. And of those men and women and children they stole, they made slaves.

One such a slave was the strongest warrior of his people. The northern barbarians prized him for the great battle they had fought in capturing him alive. Fully five of their number had been needed to bring him to his knees, and five more to his hands, and yet five more still until his head touched the earth. Thus he sat, bound in more iron than all the other slaves put together, and brooded in the hold of the barbarians’ ship. He was not strong enough to defeat them all, and he was not strong enough to break their iron. This he knew, but still he vowed that their kingdom would fall and he would be their undoing.

He was sold in chains, and his great strength was put to use in many endeavors. When he was not given over to the services of heavy labor, he was made to fight for the amusement of his captors. Years passed in this fashion before, as slavers often will, they determined that the warrior should be bred. A suitable woman was found, another fierce and strong warrior from the perpetually humid southern lands. Many a careless overseer had lost an ear, a nose, or even fingers to her teeth. The two were placed in the same steel-barred cell, and bets were taken as to whether they would kill each other first, or wait until after intercourse.

But the man approached the woman and, in barely a whisper, said, “Our child will be strong enough. Our child will bring them to ruin.” Their pact was made and together the warriors brought a child into the world, a healthy boy as fierce as his mother and as strong as his father with all the determination of both of them together.

The boy was raised by his father and mother to be a fighter, for the barbarians grew more decadent each day, and wished to see a magnificent battle in their slave pits. He was reared in a steel cage, and each parent taught him all they knew of their not inconsiderable knowledge of the ways in which one man might defeat another. They taught him how to face a single opponent, or ten, or even how he might defeat a whole army. And, in secret, they forged swords, a pair of wickedly curved scimitars.

The first blade was called Knowledge, and was forged from the chains of his father, who wished his son to remember always that knowledge could make slaves of men or liberate them. The second blade was called Labor, and was forged from the chains of his mother, that her son might know how labor could be a prison, but only through labor could one gain freedom. The child grew to a man, always reared in steel, and his strength became even greater than his father’s, and his fierceness became even more terrible than his mother’s and his determination was so great that no man could stand before it.

The time came when the barbarians saw the child was at last a man, and they opened the lock on the steel cage, eager to see him fighting in the pits. They had their fight, but in no way they wished, for when the door was opened, the son of the warriors took up Knowledge and Labor and struck down the guards. He fought his way through the great underground prison where the slaves were penned, striking each door open with a single blow. He led the slaves to freedom, and no barbarian warriors, even those as fearsome as ten devils, could stand before him. Before the setting of the sun he had brought the kingdom of the barbarians to ruin, and his parents saw the barbarian kings meet their ends.

He led their freed slaves from the city of the barbarians, out of the northern lands, and for many years his new tribe roamed the desert lands. They faced many hardships, and the swords Knowledge and Labor saw many more battles, but these are all stories for another time. When all the hardships were faced and met, and when all the enemies and monsters and villains that would bind men in chains had fallen before Knowledge and Labor, the warriors’ son and his tribe found a fertile land, and built a great empire there. His swords were pounded into plows and farming tools, and thus knowledge and labor are still used today.