A Stranger to Command

by Sherwood Smith

  Let me observe only that it is given to few to be able to transform human interests into matters of kingship with justice and with grace, especially the grace to deal well with those whose place in life requires daily attendance on the monarch. It is these long days in court that most tellingly show the human being beneath the shrouding of symbolism.

  Too much humanity can mean too much familiarity, which is harmless enough. Yet such a ruler can become a nonentity—or a jest—if he cannot enforce his will. Either that, or he becomes a tyrant...

  From Russav Savona:

  . . . your father told me he’s going to claim hip problems require him to withdraw to rest at Renselaeus, and so I’m here to scrawl out whatever nonsense I can think of before he returns. I wonder if it’s true? About his hip—you see I am writing fast. I realize now that, long as I’ve known your father, he’s never actually told us outright how he got wounded—and why the healers cannot restore him completely. Do you know? Or should I not ask? I can wait until you get home—there is no burning desire to uncover the details of something that was apparently grim enough to inspire him, in later years, to send his only son to that haven of rest and relaxation, Marloven Hess. Or has your endless drill become a matter of mild effort and maximum tedium, as have the card parties Galdran has come more and more to favor? You shall see, when you come home at last, how skillfully I lose. I try not to imagine a lifetime of this tedium wearing us away.

  No. Scratch unpleasant matters. Move instead to more amiable topics. Such as the regatta last night. The Marquise of Merindar might be like ice down the back of the neck, but one has to admit that when she gives a party, she gives the best. Strange, how mage-fire displays and music work on people! Last night Tamara kissed me. Today she hates me. No jokes about mage-fire, Danric. Though I will admit one is nearly as much fun as the other, especially if she’ll kiss me again when we make up the quarrel. What caused the quarrel? My observation—I thought safely neutral—that Renna will probably be the first of us to marry. Now, you ask, how could that spark Tamara’s own style of lightning and thunder? I mean to find out, even if it brings on my sorry head more of Tamara’s lightning and thunder...

  The Princess wrote lightly of similar subjects, describing the masquerade where Savona had only mentioned it. No subject to distress her son. But at the end:

  My reading has offered this insight: the greatest periods of theater in Sartor and Colend appear to have coincided with periods of greatest social reserve, when unguarded expression cost you status and even place. The free play of emotions upon the stage apparently was so beguiling that courtiers who were said to be so sophisticated and subtle and long-seeing followed players off the stage, expecting their stage characters to be the same as real life...

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Not that Shevraeth quite understood what she meant. He would think about it, of course. His mother never talked nonsense, except in court. But his mind wanted to linger on kisses rather than court masks and stage emotions, as he and the other boys trudged through the hot morning to the wargame site. He’d always expected Savona to be the first one with any success at romance—not that he’d thought about kissing girls except as a vague and remote possibility, belonging to the hazy future.

  But that caused him to think about kissing Senelac as he toiled through the shimmering heat beside Marec, the first-year colts chattering ahead of them, shoving and head-cuffing and elbowing one another to the sounds of nasal, voice-cracking laughter. Their own House and the other second-year colts followed behind, their voices a degree lower, the rough-housing less emphatic. Why did younger boys notice the heat less? Or maybe it wasn’t the heat so much as constant shorted sleep...

  Shevraeth shut them all out and reviewed his plans once more. After they’d agreed on the basics, he and Marec had by mutual consent stopped talking about it, so they could face one another in the field with some measure of surprise.

  Shevraeth’s intention was to lay out the basic strategy in as few commands as possible. He’d noticed that too many orders left the smaller boys confused if events didn’t follow the plan, which happened more often than not. He’d keep it simple, see what happened, and then decide what to do next.

  By the time camp was set up and the blinding-bright rays of sunlight were straight overhead, his mind was sharply focused on the here and now.

  For the first time, he was in command. As he faced the rows of boys his own age and a little younger sitting in the sun-hardened dirt before their tents, it seemed utterly amazing that he was standing here, trying to formulate words (though the past few nights he’d lain awake far too long doing just that) to convey his strategy.

  He was, in short, commanding Marlovens. Only boys. In a game. But still. When he’d taken on his duties as Marquis of Shevraeth, despite the high title and the fortune at his at least hypothetical command, even at age ten he’d known he was only overseeing the smooth flow of events that his father had ordained years ago. Any real problem would be negotiated between adults before a decision by his father. Always carefully explained, of course. But the power of decision had never been his.

  Now he was in charge.

  His gaze rested last on Marlovair’s resentful eyes, his sneer-twisted mouth.

  Keep it short.

  “They are defending,” he said. “We are attacking.”

  The boys stirred.

  “In this game, we’re not just capturing their command, we have to occupy their position. They’re uphill, we’re down, they can see, we can’t, so though we can take prisoners I don’t want us to have to weaken our forces with all the guards it would require to keep ’em. Therefore you go for the kill.”

  Another stir. That meant chalking their wooden weapons, so the chalk marks showed on their clothes. It also promised the prospect of lots of duels.

  “We’ll have most of you strung out to charge, with a second line behind. Make as much noise as possible. Spread out. Because to either side we’ll have two covert teams, one comprising three, and one big one. The small one is a decoy if our main charge gets in trouble. The small team makes a lot of noise so they’ll think you’re all the decoy we have. We split their forces then, using our bigger covert team as flying wedge. You run for the clearing atop the hill, which is where they’ve marked their outer wall. You go for the kill, capture the commander, and squat.”

  Shevraeth saw the smiles—except in Marlovair’s face—and issued his third order, which was his big mistake: “I’ll lead from the back, where I can see. But if you riding captains see the initiative, you take it.”

  It was permissible. It even made sense. From the rear he could see his forces deploy up the hill, and he could signal the decoy, or shift the chargers, or go up the side and reinforce the big covert team if needed. Leading from the front was great on a plain, if your men needed to see the leader at the charge.

  Shevraeth had assumed that if he led—if he was in sight, the implication being the others followed him—Marlovair might not be able to resist trying to lose, to make him look bad. Shevraeth had seen similar games on a social level, at home.

  But here he utterly misjudged Marlovair, who would never throw a game, for any reason. He did not think that far ahead—and wouldn’t for a few years—he only wanted to be winning, and to be seen winning by the second-year colts.

  And so what Indevan Marlovair heard was that the outlander in permitting the riding captains initiative, and in leading from the rear, was afraid to lead. In someone he respected, he might find the sense in it, but in this outlander who swaggered like a rad but scorned the rads’ prerogatives, well, in other words, the outlander was a coward.

  The trouble did not manifest immediately.

  Marlovair was desperate to win, so the game got off to a fast start. Shevraeth experienced a rushing of exhilaration through blood and nerve at the sight of his army launching forward at his command, carrying out his will. They yelled and shouted wildly, and the two covert teams were gratifyingly invisible.


  But the plan began to falter when Marec launched a wedge straight down the middle to break the charge. The outer wings of the charge swept out to flank them, but the defenders matched pace. Everyone spread out, the bushes thrashing wildly, as both sides tried to outflank the others.

  Shevraeth faltered when dust puffs and shivering shrubs spread outward beyond what he’d assumed would be the boundaries—and sure enough, desperate toots on the enemy horn, followed by Stad’s shouts, meant the enemy had stumbled on Shevraeth’s big decoy team.

  Shevraeth launched himself up the hill at his fastest, with the idea of reforming them and running an oblique charge. He’d use his flushed decoys—anything to keep attention away from his small group of coverts, now his only fallback force. But Marec had already twigged to the idea, and sent searchers. By the time Shevraeth—out of breath, his eyes half-blinded with stinging sweat—reached the thrashing shrubs where the defenders were trying to take everyone prisoner, and the attackers to get kill points, another wild and triumphant toot sounded from the other side of the hill, closely followed by a cacophony of shouts and yells.

  He turned to motion for a horn, but the boy with the horn had joined the second wave of chargers. No horn—no one could see him—how could he signal?

  Shevraeth plunged into the middle of the wild scramble, yelling hoarsely with the idea of drawing his army to himself, and away from the coverts. All he succeeded at was drawing the enemy, who saw the rumpled red sash he wore as commander and wanted the credit of taking him down. All dove at him, many colliding and falling into the scratchy shrubs as they howled, kicked, and grappled. Shevraeth warded them off, leaped over struggling figures, a surge of anger giving him a brief renewal of strength. Stupid—stupid—didn’t bring a riding as guards, the plan fell apart and he’d forgotten that they couldn’t see him—

  The sickening sensation of impending loss wrenched him when the bushes to his left hissed and thrashed, and three of Marec’s defenders emerged, spreading out with wary control.

  Three of his own boys appeared from above, led by Evrec, and with wild yells launched into them.

  At least none of them were Marlovair, Shevraeth thought as Evrec motioned violently for him to run. If he were captured, there went the game, and so ridiculously early the entire school would be laughing.

  Dizzy with thirst, and furious at his own incompetence, he backed up and thrust himself into a thick bush, which scratched his face and neck mercilessly, but it slowed the two new chasers.

  He forced himself through, ducked down, and ran parallel to the battle, seeking... he didn’t even know what he was seeking.

  Yes. The coverts. See if any of them were left, and reinforce them.

  Oh, but wait, he couldn’t be a single person, he had to collect an honor guard. He looked around in despair, rubbing his eyes—why can’t I see—

  The racing trumpet chords of a retreat sounded from below, quickly caught up by all the trumpeters. Shevraeth threw back his head. Not only had the sun vanished behind the hill, but a layer of cloud had obscured the light. It felt as if the game had been mere moments, but it had gone on all afternoon.

  Cries of disappointment and protest rose from all over the hill, followed by the noise of nearly seventy-five boys stampeding down to camp. Shevraeth’s head now pounded rhythmically but he forced himself to listen to the chatter, in case there was some scrap he could use in reforming his plans for the morrow. He didn’t have to see Pereth, the senior boy in charge of the exercise, to know he’d lost points so far.

  The chatter was the usual, with an odd undercurrent that he finally recognized, the buzzing sound the smaller boys made that was supposed to emulate the sound of a rabbit shivering in fear. A coward.

  He swept his gaze around, and there was Marlovair—and was that the rabbit face? They did that by lifting their upper lip so their two front teeth were bared, a stupid sort of face, but one absolutely guaranteed to start a scrap in the lower school, and even among some of the older boys.

  Was Marlovair’s lip lifted? The light was fading fast, the boys turning into silhouettes in various shades of gray as color leached into shadow.

  Shevraeth suspected that yes, it had been.

  He was right.

  The trouble developed rapidly. The boys went about evening chores, the commanders now back to being rads, overseeing dinner. Shevraeth kept hearing quick buzzes behind him, or out of sight around the side of a tent, followed by snickers that gradually became louder and more daring.

  It was his turn to oversee supper cleanup. He was resolutely impartial in dividing up the chores. Marlovair and his cronies did not react overtly, they dragged their heels, asked for orders to be repeated, and as darkness closed in, their resistance became more obvious. They were watched avidly by the others of their group, who were more than ready for some fine entertainment, and resentfully by the other first-year colt House, who counted up every evidence of Marlovair’s and his friends’ arrogance and swank. Why was the foreigner letting them get away with that rabbit buzz? Could the foreigner really be a coward?

  Shevraeth’s headache had worsened to a skull-hammering intensity. He longed to lie down and shut his eyes, though the scratches on his face and neck were by now hot stings that he knew would torment him all night long. Anything, though, anything, for a semblance of peace.

  It was then that Marlovair became aware of the other colts’ mounting resentment and he chose to switch from covert to overt. When Shevraeth gave the order to clear the last of the dishes, he lagged with deliberate slowness. As if wading through a river.

  Shevraeth shut his eyes. “Put. The. Cook pots. Away. Now.”

  Marlovair whirled around. They stood in the big cook tent, four of them, and him. The light a single lantern, its flickering flame like needles in Shevraeth’s eyes.

  “Or what?” Marlovair said. “Will I be cleaning shoes?”

  And his friends snickered.

  Shevraeth’s lips began to shape the words—he was about to send all four to gather everyone’s shoes and go to the stream to scrub them, except it was senseless, it was far too much and so he’d look stupid, he’d lose authority by overusing it. So what should he do?

  Anything he did would be wrong. He should have waited them out... should have...

  But there was no more should have. There were these four younger boys, grinning avidly, and at the mouth of the tent—because tents don’t block sound—more boys, some angry, some curious, all ready to be entertained. The rules kept them silent, but in the air was expectancy, because Marlovair had answered back to an order. You didn’t do that.

  You didn’t do that unless you wanted a breeze.

  So that was behind the scorn, the insubordination.

  Shevraeth opened his eyes.

  His heartbeats stitched the silence into a long seam as all around boys crowded, and Shevraeth remembered, for the first time in weeks, the stupid stick stuck through his sash.

  He almost laughed, though that would have hurt his head too much. He said, “Permit me to comprehend. You want me to hit you?”

  Marlovair stood silently, a sneer on his freckled face. Of course he wouldn’t answer that, and if Shevraeth demanded an answer, he would lose yet more of his diminishing authority, not at the sand trickle by which he was losing now, but in great heaping handfuls.

  Rage surged through him, first hot and then cold, so cold. He drawled, “I am amazed. You, presumably a thinking being, are actually endeavoring to provoke me to hit you with a stick.”

  Marlovair, not quite fourteen, gave the only possible answer for the thirteen-year-old whose sense of right and order has been rattled about fairly severely over the past few years: “You wouldn’t dare.” Then he added with deliberate contempt, “Shevraeth Radlav.”

  Shevraeth’s hand moved before he even thought. The wand snapped free of his sash, and a year and a half of hard training drove his arm up and around so that the wood whistled a curious moaning note. He took a step toward Marl
ovair and struck the wand straight across the boy’s bony shoulder-blades with so loud a crack everyone in sight jumped. The impact reverberated up Shevraeth’s hand, followed by the urge to fling the stick—rub his hand as if to rid it of the horror of the contact with Marlovair’s scrawny body beneath the wood.

  Marlovair’s eyes widened in shock and his skin blanched to the color of paper. He took an inadvertent step forward, then his face flooded with color, and his lips compressed, his eyes gleamed with pain-tears but he glared, hard, and Shevraeth knew if he apologized, the boy won this impossible contest. Even though he’d already won in Shevraeth’s inner conflict, but if Shevraeth backed down now, he’d lose the last vestige of authority, and so he forced himself to put the hated stick in his sash, and forced himself to say—though his throat was so dry his voice husked—“Of course I dare.”

  Then he pointed to the pots, put his hands behind his back, and he gripped them together to hide the shaking.

  And the sound of another wand whistling nearly caused him to whirl; there was another crack—a wand hitting the tent—followed by Pereth saying, “So no one has any chores? I can fix that.” And he issued a steady stream of orders, loading the audience with most of the rest of the evening’s work.

  The sound of scampering feet, rustling clothing, whispers, soon diminished, and from behind Shevraeth came the senior’s calm voice, “Are those pots stashed yet?”

  Marlovair moved with slow, painstaking care; one of his friends wordlessly took the pot from his hands and put it away, as the other two hastily finished stacking the pots for morning. Then, two sidling looks Shevraeth’s way, two looking downward, they filed out, and vanished.

  Shevraeth forced himself to face the senior radlav.

  Pereth said mildly, “We usually practice on our own hand, or leg, to give a good sting.” He smacked his wand against his hand, then thrust it through his sash. “I’ll take over here. You go plan tomorrow’s campaign.”

  Shevraeth made it to his tent before his guts began to heave. At least there was the mercy of the Waste Spell, so he did not puke all over himself. He sat on his bedroll, shivering, retching, and whispering the spell, until at last he collapsed, bathed in cold sweat, his head a fireball of pain, but through it all came the inane taunt of moral defeat, of personal weakness: I hit him. I hit him. I hit him.