A Stranger to Command

by Sherwood Smith

  The king said, “Here! We’ll observe the rules, Gharivar!”

  Anderic stamped in frustration, then flashed the sword point to the ground and stood at a semblance of military attention, breathing heavily.

  Savona felt sick. Could the fellow not see the danger?

  Obviously not. Time to end the farce.

  To protect Anderic as well as to assuage his own feelings, he was going to win, but it couldn’t be a clever win, it had to be by accident. Anderic was slower, now. He was as out of shape as Savona, but it was too late: the king leaned forward, watching every move.

  Savona found his moment, stumbled, dropped his point after a feint, and plowed it up Anderic’s arm. He then dropped the blade, and stood there wringing his hand, trusting the king to halt the fool if he tried a lunge.

  But Anderic was too surprised by the scrape. He flung up his sword, gasping for breath, and stared aghast at his arm.

  The king said, “Hold! First blood to Savona.”

  “No!” Anderic cried. “It was an accident—no count!”

  “I call it first blood,” Galdran said.

  “But your majesty, that’s no win! The fellow can’t even fight,” Anderic retorted. “I swore to let some of his hot blood, and that’s all I’ll—”

  “I declare the honor of the court satisfied,” Galdran stated.

  “Anderic,” Debegri said from the doorway. “His majesty called a win.”

  Anderic swayed, blinking rapidly against the sweat in his eyes, then once again flashed down his point.

  The king stood up. “My lords, are you satisfied as well?”

  Savona bowed, not trusting his voice; Anderic said woodenly, “By your command, your majesty.”

  The king said, “You are all dismissed to make ready for supper, which I will host. Afterward we will game, and everyone, I trust, will be in charity.”

  This time everyone in the room bowed.

  As they started out, the king said, “My lord Gharivar. You will wait. Is your wound deep?”

  Savona forced himself to keep moving. Renna drifted up next to him. As soon as they were outside the salon, he whispered, “What did it look like?”

  “Like he’s an expert. He made it look like he was chasing you, toying with you.”

  Savona cursed under his breath.

  Renna said, “Do you think—? No. He’s a friend of his cousin...” A puzzled, anxious look followed. She couldn’t believe anything bad would really happen. Not really, despite all the whispers and gossip. People liked to gossip, put the worst face on stories, didn’t they? Reasonable people didn’t do wicked things, and she’d always refused to listen to such stories. Stop it by stopping your ears, that was the civilized way to handle nasty gossip.

  By evening, though, they all knew that Anderic Gharivar had been sent home to recover from his wound.

  Two days later Baron Debegri was seen storming out of the palace to the stable, his servants racing behind. In his wake the word spread: Anderic Gharivar had suffered a riding accident on a tricky hill, fell, and broke his neck.

  Renna found Russav Savona sitting in the farthest part of the garden, hands between his knees, staring down at the half-frozen stream, his breath a steady puff.

  He looked up sharply. His stricken face caused her tight control to break.

  He held out his arms. This time there was no thought of passion, or pleasure, just the warmth of human comfort.

  “My fault, my fault,” she cried into his shoulder.

  “Mine,” he said, his voice husky. “I should have let him knock me down.”

  “He was stupid,” Renna cried fiercely. “He was arrogant and stupid. He wouldn’t listen. He argued with the king in front of everybody. He—he—I danced with him because he was the baron’s friend. I let him kiss me once, because he made me laugh. He—he liked horses, he said, and—”

  “Renna, it’s not your fault.”

  “I shouldn’t have flirted with him. He took it seriously.”

  “He wanted to. He was ambitious. He wanted to marry your family, not you. You told me so yourself.”

  She drew in a shaky breath. “I can’t believe—”

  “Believe it. But believe all of it. It’s the king, not you, who caused that. And it wasn’t your flirting, or mine. It was because Anderic lost his temper, he looked too good fighting in Galdran’s eyes, but above all he dared to argue.”

  Renna sobbed, sniffed juicily, then said, “I didn’t believe those stories. I thought it was all talk, you know, by those who don’t like the king. But he’s the king! His brother Prince Canardan used to play in the castle garden with—with my father—”

  “And Prince Canardan was exiled.”

  The new voice, cold, caused them to spring apart. There stood Tamara, her deep blue eyes wide, her diamond-decorated, (recently ensorcelled) golden hair disheveled. She’d been running; the quick rise and fall of her bosom gave her away.

  Savona kept his arms around Renna, who did not seem to be aware of his grip; over her head Savona’s cold dark gaze met Tamara’s wide blue eyes in challenge.

  Renna was crying again. “Tamara, I didn’t m-mean it to h-happen—”

  Tamara had been about to unlimber a truly corrosive insult about flirts—she’d been thinking it up as she searched the garden. She’d seen Savona leave earlier, and Renna run after. But the looks on the two faces before her were not even remotely lover-like.

  So she said, “I know. We’re all at fault, a little. But Anderic was, too.”

  “I will never flirt again,” Renna said, and Savona withdrew his arms; she didn’t even notice. “Ever.”

  Tamara sat down on her other side. “It could as easily have been the king ordering you to marry him. If Anderic had been quicker to obey, my aunt said, he could have moved in and taken your family’s land within five years. And if you’d refused the king’s wishes, it would have been you who’d have the riding accident on your way home. Even,” Tamara said in a husky, low voice, “if you were not on a horse.”

  Renna covered her face with her mittened hands and cried harder.

  Savona stood up. He lifted a hand, miming the fan pose for Two is Comfort. Tamara she gave him a curt little nod, and he passed quietly along the garden path.

  THIRTY-THREE

  . . . and so I still feel sick about the whole affair. Maybe Anderic would have gotten himself killed some other way. Your mother says he was like Debegri—big, strong, fearless in the games, with a bad temper. But Debegri’s instinct is to fawn and flatter, and Anderic was too honest for that. It’s sickening. Court is full of music, good food, fine art, and rot in the hearts and minds of those in power. Your mother says that our job is to outlive the king so that we will be able to put the kingdom back together. I tell you, Danric, it is that, and only that, which keeps me from throwing myself into the river. I never want to see clown players again, not after having to live like one.

  Shevraeth pitched Savona’s letter into the fire, then wheeled to glare out the senior rec room window at the academy roofs painted in a hundred shades of white and gray and blue shadow. He wanted to be home with Savona—he didn’t want to be home.

  He struggled against the futility of anger. The courtyard was covered in a soft white snow blanket that obscured the stones where countless Marloven seniors had gathered for generations. One of his own forefathers had been out there, centuries ago—he found that difficult to imagine. But it was true.

  The stone walls were ledged with smooth puffy white, and the huge tree that blocked the western sun in the summers, making rec time so pleasant out here, etched its barren branches against the sky, each outlined with glittering pale blue. The rooftops wore their snowy mantle. The world here was quiet, untouched by the destructive hand of man.

  Except... the intent of their training was destruction.

  But for some reason it seemed, well, cleaner than Galdran’s version.

  Shevraeth turned away. He missed Renselaeus—more each winter—but
he did not miss court. And from the sound of it, court was where he would be forced to live. How would his parents resolve these things? For they must have a plan. In Shevraeth’s experience, his parents always had plans, though they did not always share those plans until they deemed the time to be right.

  Come to the defense of the kingdom... What exactly did that mean? Maybe it was time to ask in a letter. Though if he did, his father might tell him one reason, but not all his reasons—until he thought his son ready to hear them.

  The mess bell rang, the echo softened by the heavy snowfall. What would court dinners be like? Sitting on cushions again, smelling the complicated sauces mixed with the fragrances men and women gave off from their clothing stored in herbs or dried flowers. Music playing. Stained glass. He missed all these things. Oh, but there would be King Galdran, who, it seemed, would never get married and busy himself with a queen and eventually a family. Not if he couldn’t find the perfect princess—one to bring wealth and prestige but no mind or will to stand against him.

  When Shevraeth had left for Marloven Hess, he’d had no interest in such things, but now he understood his parents’ references to how the king would play families off against one another by seeming to court their daughters, while he still sent ambassadors out of the country in search of the right match.

  But that was not nearly as odd as the idea of little Renna kissing someone. Renna! When he’d left she’d been exactly the same size and shape as he—a stick—and all she’d ever talked about was horses! When had she begun to notice boys?

  He paced the short distance to the mess hall while thinking about the girls at court. He tried to imagine them not as brats more or less his size and shape, running about or riding in races but flirting. Kissing. Like Senelac—

  Oh, no one was like Fenis Senelac—

  He was halfway down the food line when footsteps broke his reverie. Shevraeth was surprised to discover Forthan’s sober face.

  Forthan piled three or four fresh rye-buns onto his tray, got an extra helping of cabbage-and-rice rolls, a brimming mug of turkey-barley soup, and followed Shevraeth to one of the tables. “I still think the food’s better over here,” he said as they set the trays down. “Though that’s got to be in my head. Since I know two of the cooks, and they rotate between the Guard mess and the academy.”

  “Might be better if they’re cooking for fewer,” Shevraeth offered. He was about to add that his mother had talked about that once—ordering great dinners, and how careful one had to be because cooking for vast numbers could diminish the quality of the food as the number went up—but he bit the words back. He knew Forthan was not interested in the exigencies of ordering food for court parties.

  “Shevraeth, we’re going to be doing lance practice for the New Year’s Convocation exhibition. You saw it last year, right?” On Shevraeth’s nod, Forthan continued, “Why don’t you come over Guard-side and practice with us?”

  Lance drill. Ugh. Nobody had liked it last year—but then they had been doing them on the ground, then on the stationary saddles built along a low wall. First-year seniors began doing them on horseback—and everybody had heard how spectacularly bad most seniors were. Which was why nobody saw them their first few months.

  Forthan flashed his brief grin. “Yes, those with brothers or cousins will be training all winter at home. You get the advantage of learning it right the first time.”

  Shevraeth remembered, with gratitude, the sword-fighting lessons from horseback of the winter previous. “Thanks.” Then, with dismay, “I won’t have to exhibit, will I?”

  Forthan chuckled. “Not likely. We have to look good. Beginners would be bound and gagged before anyone would let them out in front of the Jarls.”

  Shevraeth sighed with relief. “Thanks,” he said again.

  Forthan ducked his head, then shifted the subject. “We’ll be attacking the city every other game this year,” he said. “One out, one in. You’ll be assigned at least one command.”

  Shevraeth ate without being aware of it, his mind running fast. “Whole academy?”

  “Now and then. Sometimes seniors. Some covert, some overt. All surprises, from now on.”

  They embarked on various scenarios, the discussion much like command class; by the end of the meal, when Forthan left as quietly as he’d arrived, Shevraeth’s mind was busy on plans.

  o0o

  Winter passed swiftly. He practiced with the younger guards at lance drill, not only before New Year’s, but also afterward. At first it seemed impossible he’d be able to maneuver the metal-reinforced lance, which was roughly twice the height of a man, while his horse moved under him. Every try left him wringing with sweat despite the bitter air, his stomach muscles aching, his legs and arms feeling like string. If he hadn’t been given a solid fourteen-year-old war horse who was no longer used for the harder runs, he probably would have fallen out of the saddle more than he did.

  He loathed lance practice—he knew he would never charge into battle with a lance. And even if, by some mad chance, he did, he’d never describe the cursed thing in a perfect circle, or do the up-and-overs and salutes. He knew that only the heavy cav used lances, or dragoons—rarely light cavalry, though that could vary—and that in a charge, after which they’d drop the lances and fight with conventional weapons.

  But by the time the snows turned into sleet, then cold rain, and green shoots were seen on the muddy ground and fuzzing the trees, he understood the true purpose of those evolutions: strength. He had gotten used to jamming his feet heel-down in the saddle, his body a slant to support the angle of the lance—and the corresponding strengthening of his body required that he get new clothes, though he’d only had these since late autumn. But it was time now for the white cotton-linen shirt and the fitted tunic of a senior.

  The day before he picked up his new clothes—for there was the dress tunic as well as one for heavy work and one for summer heat—Keriam summoned him.

  It was only when he made his way over to the castle that he realized he had not seen or heard of King Senrid all winter long. He’d glimpsed him once at the New Year’s Exhibition, a tall, dark-haired girl beside him who everyone said was the mage Hibern. Liere hadn’t been there, and Shevraeth didn’t get close enough for speaking.

  He stepped into the Commander’s office, and saw with a shock that Keriam’s curling hair was much grayer. But the Commander’s gaze was as keen as ever as the Commander said, “You have a couple of choices before you. First, would you like to be an aran radlav down in the Puppy Pit?”

  “No.” Shevraeth was afraid he sounded churlish. “That is, it was a valuable experience. Glad I did it. But I think I need the practice being with a House affords.”

  Keriam gave a short nod, one hand open. He accepted these words as reasonable.

  “I should bring that wand—”

  “Not so fast,” Keriam said with his rare, somewhat sardonic grin. “You’ll still be commanding exercises. Also, for that matter, the king wants you in the senior command class. You and Stad will both be in it, and you’ll be in his House, so make certain the two of you match watches so you can get away. We’ll speak to Khaniver, who will be Thanar Valdlav this year.”

  Shevraeth wondered if that meant the House rad was going to be someone who didn’t like foreigners.

  Keriam said neutrally, “Gannan will be aran radlav for your House. He will be seconded by Stad, who will command the academy next year.”

  Gannan—who was not in command class at all. Shevraeth said nothing. At least he was sharing quarters with Stad again. “Marec?” he asked tentatively, not sure if asking about someone else was permitted.

  “Aran radlav in colts,” Keriam said, which was surprising. And, “He will make a superlative master here one day, if events do not force him into the field.”

  Indeed, Marec would be a wonderful academy master. He was patient, even-tempered, never minded explaining things. Would even find several ways to express an idea until the small boys und
erstood. Marec had never talked much about the future—just assumed he would be a captain somewhere. Shevraeth wondered if Marec had ever considered being a master.

  Shevraeth thought these matters over as he walked to the academy. He was surprised that Keriam would come right out and tell him that Stad would be next year’s Danas Valdlav, boy cavalry commander and leader of the school. Though Shevraeth thoroughly agreed. But wasn’t that usually kept secret until right before the spring?

  And who were they readying for Thanar Valdlav, the foot leader?

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Though Shevraeth was secretly on the watch, he was still taken by surprise when the girls came back.

  One day the mess was half-filled with arriving boys; the next the air smelled different, though he couldn’t quite say how, until he heard the light voices of girls blending with the unprepossessing bat-squeaks of scrubs and the nasal rumble and braying laughter of older boys.

  He couldn’t prevent one look: ah, there she was.

  Heat burned through his veins. He turned his back, lest everyone somehow see into his brain. Foremost in mind were the rules about girls within the boundaries of the academy. But right behind that was the never-stale memory of the sweetness of their parting kiss last autumn.

  For a couple of days the girls were busy bringing the horses over from winter quarters, and settling them in. Meanwhile, the Houses were sorted out. Shevraeth was glad to see about half of his old bunkmates from his first year. They’d all reached the age where three years could make spectacular changes in growth and appearance. Vandaus was still pale-haired and short. He arrived with a box of books, allowed now that he was a first-year senior. Faldred arrived with an even bigger box.

  Baudan had grown into a tall, husky boy with ears that stuck out, his voice shifting from a growl to a sudden squeak that made everyone laugh, especially him. Gannan was huge, splendid in build, strong as a tree, and wary and careful now that he was a rad. It did not take long to guess that now that he was an authority, he would not be looking for ways to get around the rules. He’d be a tiresome stickler in the exasperating manner typical of former slackers and cheats when they were co-opted into authority.