A Stranger to Command

by Sherwood Smith

  Shevraeth said, “What were you told about that incident?”

  “A couple of versions. The most reliable, usually, is from Mad’s cousin in the other first-year colt House. He doesn’t like Van. Thinks he and his gang are way too full of rank-swank. They order the others around as if they were rads. Mad’s cousin said Van and them were rabbiting you, but you ignored it, quite rightly. Then Van back-chatted an order. Absolutely dead-center-target against the rules, and you gave him a welter for it.”

  “I lost my temper and hit him as hard as I could.”

  She sat back, her sandwich forgotten in her hand. His tone was impossible to parse but his downward look, the slight length to his upper lip, made it fairly clear how angry he was with himself.

  She said, “You hit him once. You were within the rules. He’d broken two of them, flouting an order and answering back. If Keriam thought you were going to make a habit of losing your temper, things might be different. As it is... well, you might not like ’em, but we do have rules. And none of the rules say anything about how hard you can hit.”

  Shevraeth’s head dropped. She did not know whether he was hiding remorse or disgust. She sensed both. “I could tell you some grim stories about some of the Regent’s pet bullies in the bad old days, and what they got away with. You can probably imagine. The rules now are strict enough, only three hits. The rads deal out what are called stingers, or a breeze in boy-slang. If you give out welters, then they’re going to want to know why.”

  He opened his mouth, shut it, shook his head.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “No, it might seem as if I judge when I only mean to question.”

  “I’ll take whatever you say as meant.”

  “All right. So these rules regulate violence against one another, but isn’t that another way to validate it?”

  She pressed her lips together. Retorts were too easy, and she’d promised. So she thought through her response, then said, “The oldsters would all answer with the usual jaw. You know, ‘War is a violent business.’ But the king doesn’t want war, he wants defense. So let me answer you with a question.”

  His expression was now wary. He would never suspend a sandwich in the air—his manners were too fine for that—but he had dropped his hands to the table, loose, a graceful curve of fingers that she had to force herself to look away from.

  She said, “Does it hurt less when you use sarcasm as a weapon instead of a wand?”

  His lips parted. He was about to say that he never used sarcasm as a weapon, but he knew he did. He always had when young, because he was so frequently the smallest, the weakest, he’d in fact prided himself on using wit as a weapon, darting his words with precision and skill, because his physical strength was so spindly.

  And as for the incident with Marlovair, he remembered quite distinctly his corrosive tone, meant to be corrosive, when he said, You, presumably a thinking being...

  “No, I don’t suppose it does.”

  She changed the subject to their next command problem, and it wasn’t until he was walking alone in the simmering, moist heat held down by the lid of tiny cotton-puff clouds obscuring the sky, that he wondered why he couldn’t tell her what he really thought. And though he contemplated this question all the way to the Puppy Pit—passing by the first-year colt territory, their voices carrying on the night air, their braying laughs sounding so... so young—he could not find any satisfactory answer.

  What did he know? Though his striking that obnoxious boy had been deemed justifiable by the Marlovens, he could not permit time and distance to justify his own reaction. And time would, he knew enough about human nature by now. And distance. What might happen in the future, if his father somehow put him in charge of, say, the Renselaeus Riders? He wouldn’t ever experience any such punishment at home. Nor would it happen here—he was too careful, and supposing he did go mad and break the most fundamental rules, he suspected Senrid would get rid of him before putting him against a post like he’d done to his favorite Forthan. And in a way, it would make sense. Forthan’s sufferings had been felt by almost every boy and girl witnessing. They were unlikely to empathize with a foreigner in the same situation.

  And so, though he had no inclinations whatsoever toward self-destruction, he waited until the scrubs were finally asleep, and Marec and Lennac out for their free time, then he walked out beyond the courtyard where sound would be muffled, the hated stick in hand. Mother, he thought, I betrayed my own honor in forgetting my vow to you. Then, drawing a deep breath, he used all the force of his arm to whack the wand down across the inside of his other arm.

  The resulting pain made his knees buckle, a lung-seizing bolt of agony through every nerve. His heart labored until he managed, with effort, to draw in a shuddering breath. Just like Marlovair. It took all his remaining strength to walk to the barracks, but walk he did. He used his outgrown cambric shirt from the bottom of his trunk to staunch the beading blood until it stopped. And though Marlovair had no doubt drunk a healing mug of listerblossom that night, dispensed from the first aid the senior rad always brought, Shevraeth did not grant himself the same respite.

  At dawn he rose after a long, ceaselessly pain-throbbing night, and oversaw inspection, and then walked the boys to breakfast, and then he went to his day’s work, making the same effort that he’d seen in the Marlovair boy that second day of the game, only now he knew in every bone and muscle what it felt like. And as the pain gradually began to fade away each day, he knew he would always remember.

  He had no idea that the very slight favoring of his hurt arm, the tension in his riding, the marginal falling off in his speed at drill, was witnessed by those who watched the boys and girls for unspoken troubles, and it did not take long to figure the probable cause. But because he said nothing, nothing was said to him.

  THIRTY

  “Well,” Mondar said, gently fingering his puffy lip. “It’s like this, see—”

  “They started it first,” Tevac cut in, using his most earnest, pitiful-victim voice. His gaze flickered from one to the others of the three rads, who stared at him in disbelief. “They did, they did! And we were just upholding the House honor, y’see, after their sneak-attack on our boots—”

  “Those rotten eggs,” Mondar put in, scuffing his heels on the courtyard flagstones. He added helpfully, “You two were on the colt run, Lennac at lance practice, so, you know, Stalgred was our commander—”

  Tevac elbowed him hard, his face held stiffly straight forward, as if that would hide the movement. “Stalgred wouldn’t let us use the stream to clean ’em out,” Tevac said in an injured tone. “I can’t believe any animals were anywhere near, drinking out of it.”

  Mondar continued, “Really rotten. Stenched us right out of our tents!”

  “Worse than horse farts—”

  “Worse than dog runnies!”

  “You can skip past the comparisons,” Lennac ordered.

  Tevac gave up trying to jolly the rads, who were totally incapable of understanding what was funny. “They knew no one has a cleaning frame on a run, so they laughed when we had to wad ’em out with grass! And we had to wear ’em anyway, and they stank worse’n—well, they stank!”

  “And they were still laughing when we got back—and they got everyone laughing at us! On the parade ground!”

  “Not a single sound, but real obvious—”

  “—so’s everyone else was laughing, too!”

  Tevac watched closely. Shevraeth and Marec had been back from the colt run by then, and from their expressions they remembered the smirking looks, the muffled snickers, nothing outside the rules, but still very, very evident. What he didn’t know was if Stalgred had told them the reason. In his experience the rads all blabbed among themselves, but didn’t tell you what they knew unless they were about to drop on you.

  “But we couldn’t do anything on the parade ground,” Mondar said, testing the terrain. “So there we were—”

  “—everyone laughing—”


  “—we had to defend ourselves—”

  The earnest voices rose, loud and shrill. Silhouettes bobbed in the darkening barracks windows on the other side of the courtyard (obviously trying to hear the defense) then, on a surreptitious gesture from Tevac, abruptly ducked down again.

  The rads took no notice.

  “So.” Mondar was winding up to a martyred finish. “I felt we just had to defend our honor—”

  Lennac snapped his fingers.

  Mondar and Tevac clapped their mouths shut.

  “Let’s sum it up. This feud with Scout-hound House began with the eggs, you say?”

  Mondar and Tevac nodded vigorously, eyes round. Innocence unjustly accused, absolutely, totally, completely. Then Tevac said tentatively, “Maybe with the oatmeal.”

  “I remember the peppered oatmeal. Unprovoked, you say?”

  Two less certain nods. Tevac’s eyes shifted as he considered possible holes in his defense.

  Shevraeth murmured, “Permit me to jog your memories. Was there not something about the baths, the day Marec and I were with our House against the seniors?”

  Mondar grinned—until Tevac elbowed him even more forcefully in the side. Mondar woofed softly, and his eyes watered as he hastily assumed a solemn expression.

  “As in taking their togs away? And throwing them in the stable-yard midden pile waiting for the wand?” Marec reminded them. “You have to realize, even if we didn’t see it—” He closed his mouth lest the laugh escape.

  “We did hear about it,” Shevraeth said gently, his court mask at its blandest.

  Mondar snickered uneasily.

  “It does seem interesting that these disasters all appear to happen when Marec and Shevraeth are away with their House,” Lennac observed. “And I am out in the fields with the seniors.”

  “In-teresting,” Marec repeated. His tone was not promising.

  Tevac checked the rads’ faces, saw equal degrees of flat disbelief, and scrambled to rescue the situation. “Well, the clothes just needed to be wanded. They were perfectly all right. Unlike our stomachs, after they peppered our oatmeal. That was before the egg attack, you’ll remember.”

  “You know for certain they did it?” Lennac asked.

  Tevac snorted in scorn. “How could we not, the way Nath was crowing at archery practice. So we had to do something. You know, on account of honor.”

  Marec turned away. Lennac said with a blank face, “And you will instruct me in how your honor was upheld at the, ah—”

  “Spectacle?” Shevraeth murmured, gaze lifted to the sentry wall, the ever-ready guards pacing against the emerging stars.

  “Yes, thank you, the spectacle of an entire House of boys, wearing only towels, hotfooting it from the baths to their barracks? Also, maybe more important, was this foray before or after the eggs-in-boots reprisal? You seem to be wavering a little on your report of the sequence of events.”

  Tevac’s gaze had gone diffuse, as if the sadness he contemplated lay beyond the rim of the world. “We got our honor back in how loud everybody laughed, especially when Dorthad dropped his towel.”

  “You know what they’re calling him now?” Mondar snickered again. “Moonrise Dorth—” He caught another elbow prod straight in the solar plexus that knocked his breath out.

  Tevac said pleadingly, “You were there! You saw how the entire mess hall laughed when we ate that oatmeal—”

  Lennac tapped his wand on his palm.

  The scrubs shut up.

  “If I let you gas on we will be here another month. Here’s what it comes to. Stings turn into raids, which turn into skirmishes, such as that scragging outside the stables after mess this morning.” Lennac indicated Mondar’s split lip and Tevac’s rapidly darkening eye. “This year is not going to end with all the scrubs going home with black eyes and broken limbs, do you hear me? So your new orders are the same ones Scout-hound House are hearing right now. You will leave them alone here, on overnights, and on the summer game. You will leave their clothing untouched. And the food. Nothing will happen to their tents. Or their wooden weapons, so the snap-vine oil I saw under Kandac’s cold weather uniform during inspection, for example, will not be greasing anything but your own gear. Mess hall. Any problems, any, and you go to mess-gag for the remainder of the year. Am I understood?”

  Two palms thumped skinny chests.

  “Dismissed.”

  In relief the two raced inside to report their version of the rads’ reactions to the other boys crouched beneath the windows, doing their best to hear.

  Lennac glanced up at the magic-lit torches as the castle bell tolled sunset, echoed within moments by the city bell tower. “That should settle them down,” he said to Marec, then turned his thumb toward his chest and then at Shevraeth. “He and I have orders to report castle-side.”

  Marec raised his brows, but said nothing as he returned inside to a relatively quiet, meditative barracks.

  Shevraeth and Lennac walked swiftly through the leaves skittering over the stones, chased by a cold wind that promised rain soon, coming out of the north.

  “You know what this summons is about?” Shevraeth asked, hopping over a startled cat that scrambled across their path.

  “No,” Lennac admitted, turning one palm upward. “But I know who. It’s not Keriam, but the king.”

  “Ah.”

  They saluted the sentries on the wall above, then dashed into the mossy old archway leading from the academy to the castle, their boots ringing on the stones.

  Lennac took the lead. They did not go inside the Residence, as Shevraeth had gone before when he was interviewed by Senrid. They made their way to Keriam’s tower, the wind strengthening as thin gray clouds streamed overhead.

  Full dark had fallen when they reached the door and saluted the guards. Lennac dashed up the circular stairs as one long familiar with the place, but Shevraeth followed more slowly. He’d been climbing these stairs to attend command class each week, but it still felt strange in some way he couldn’t define. The strange feeling was heightened as the torches, tattered by the fitful wind, cast shifting light over the ancient stones.

  Keriam’s office was closed. There was another room one landing higher. This one had windows open on all sides, looking back over the castle, the academy, the eastern side of the city where the communal truck gardens abutted the grazing grounds, and northward over the enormous stable yard belonging to the Guard.

  Shevraeth stepped into a plainly furnished chamber. Senrid sat backward in a chair, his chin resting on his forearms. On a plain plank table Sartora—Liere—perched, her scrawny arms locked round her knees, her bare toes curved over the edge of the table.

  She shook with silent laughter as Lennac said, “. . . and then they carried the war to the enemy, making a commando raid on the bath house. The House had to run to barracks wearing only towels. While everyone was returning for midday mess. The stones were hot, y’see, and apparently Tand Dorthad was so busy hopping and trying to spot one of our boys for later scragging that he tripped and dropped his towel.”

  Liere smacked her hand over her face. Her shoulders shook.

  “Their rads had to go wand the clothes and haul them back in the broiling heat. You can imagine how pleased they were at this. We squared it with Handauc—our next run with the pups, we will take their night watches.”

  Senrid grinned, and lifted a hand.

  Lennac glanced Liere’s way, then lowered his voice slightly. “For the rest of the week everyone kept asking the Scout-hound barracks scrubs if they were on their butt-watch or their stink-watch.”

  Liere squeaked faintly, sounding like a one-day old kitten.

  Lennac, familiar with her, said, “Go ahead and laugh, Sartora. You can be sure both boys’ and girls’ sides were howling about it—we could scarcely keep order that night.”

  “That is her big laugh, Lennac,” Senrid said. “Her mighty mind powers, as our mutual friend C.J. says, do not extend to villainous guffaws. Carr
y on. Was the oatmeal a real thing, or did they make that up?”

  “Oh, no. The Scout-hounds got into the mess hall right before we did. Which often happens—or did—their being a few steps closer. Near as we can figure, as the last boy passed down the row he must have dropped a fist of hot-pepper into the oatmeal then gave it a stir so everyone got a stomach-roaring load.”

  “Euw.” Liere shook with laughter again.

  “Right. We all got it,” Lennac said grimly, and Shevraeth’s mouth puckered in memory. “So that’s when I got together with Handauc and Torac, after they breezed their entire House and put them to mess hall cleanup for a week, for food-tampering. While both Houses were busy at ride-and-shoot, we tried to lay down some rules, but our boys as well as theirs keep getting around them.”

  “Summation?” Senrid asked.

  “Han says he’s sure Branid Jath is getting his ideas from his brother over on Guard-side—I remember he was always working up stings, when I was in the Puppy Pit—but in our House, it’s Tevac on his own inventing the ideas, and Mondar is always willing to scout for him or act as his shield arm.”

  “Ah,” Senrid said, rising to his feet. “Skip up to today.” He had begun pacing, quick steps, back and forth from window to door. “Not what happened—Keriam sent me Handauc’s report before he left. What you told them. Try to be exact.”

  Lennac frowned with effort, and repeated his orders slowly, then turned Shevraeth’s way. “Is that right?”

  Shevraeth had been listening carefully. His father might not have put him in the way of military training, but he had been exacting when he required one to listen and then repeat what one heard. “Yes.”

  Senrid flicked his fingers open. “Then let me tell you this. If they break orders, you do what you like with them. But don’t you see, Lennac, what you left out?”

  “Huh?” Lennac’s honest face was puzzled. He rubbed his knuckles against his jaw.

  “Think.” Senrid jerked a thumb toward the window, and the roofs of the academy beyond. “Weren’t you a first-year scrub when Ndarga ran the barracks raid on Regent’s House?”