A Stranger to Command

by Sherwood Smith

  “Put it on.” He tossed the medallion to Shevraeth’s desk. As Shevraeth hung the chain round his neck once more, Senrid said, “I was in Sartor. Atan is sending people home.”

  Atan. The queen of Sartor, mentioned so casually by her nickname, as if a casual friend.

  “I discovered your father was there, and offered to transfer him to save him that long journey, or a smacking fee for magic transfer, and he agreed. And so I discovered, only because I don’t trust any transfer Destination I don’t know, that your ancient one in Renselaeus has a very new, and very lethal, ward on it.”

  Shevraeth stared, not knowing even how to frame a question, this ‘ward’ business was so far out of his experience.

  Senrid gestured impatiently. “Never mind what it means. Except that you cannot use it until someone can remove that ward. So your medallion will transfer you to the next Destination I know of, which is at the port in Mardgar. I don’t have time to find another closer.”

  Shevraeth shook his head. “If I can’t get myself home from a few days’ ride, then I’m hopeless.”

  Senrid grinned. “That’s what I thought you’d say. Your father asked about you, of course. Said he left the letter case behind for your mother to use. I told him you were a total disgrace, you’d become fat as an alderman in charge of the guild dinners, and you were afraid of horses. He seemed satisfied.”

  Shevraeth snorted a laugh.

  “I’ve got to get back to it. Two people are waiting for me somewhere else, but I wanted to get that done. No use wasting all that training, just to have you transferred from home to some dungeon somewhere, or even killed. But who in your Remalna would have access to that much magic?”

  It was a rhetorical question. Shevraeth hadn’t been home since the spring of ’39, and New Year’s Week was almost on them, bringing them to 4742.

  Senrid dashed out, leaving Shevraeth to tap his pen and frown at the record written by the long-ago king Valdon. It was a rhetorical question that was going to have to be answered. Some day. Along with so many other questions.

  o0o

  . . . your father is now home from Sartor, darling boy, as perhaps you are aware. Sartor has a hundred years of interrupted trade to recover from, and there are rumors of more trouble with Norsunder that I fervently trust is the usual “they say” without base. Your father reports that the young queen is desperately trying to continue her education in governing while events develop rapidly. He also said that the arts are beginning to thrive again, at least. Despite events, and the slowness of arranging anything even as relatively simple as new trade deals, he enjoyed himself in a way that has become almost impossible at home, alas.

  I miss you more than you can know, but I do not want you feeling my motherly emotions as a burden. So I talk out my motherly fuss at that painting of you here in my room over the fireplace, and wonder how you have changed, and look forward to having a new one painted. Your father said that you are to learn something about the weaving of yeath fur cloaks. You are (according to the rumor we carefully let circle around court) off on a mountaintop researching the clipping of yeath fur, as we are considering raising yeath on our mountains here in Renselaeus...

  o0o

  “That’s an impressive stack of books.” Stad smiled down at Shevraeth’s trunk. “I didn’t know anyone could write that fast.”

  “I didn’t either,” Shevraeth returned, running his hands over the dozen books he’d spent the winter copying out. Including the entertaining but sensible Take Heed, my Heirs! “What’s the word?”

  “We stay here, of course. More to the point, we only rearrange bunks if we want to, so you needn’t pack and drag unless you’ve got a hankering for a noisy corner.”

  Shevraeth kicked his trunk lid shut and waved at the two windows between which his bunk was positioned. Plenty of air when the weather was fine, but when it was cold, he wasn’t right under the draft that forced some of the boys, during cold snaps, to sleep with their heads at the foot and their feet at the headboard. “One good thing about these winter-overs is we always get the best racks.”

  Stad grinned. Then jerked his thumb castleward. “Keriam will have us over tonight to set out radlav duties.”

  Shevraeth studied that smile, which was broad, almost a laugh. Stad’s eyes crinkled, and—

  Oh. “And so you’re what, demoted to stable chores, right?”

  Stad laughed, because now he could announce what before would have been swank: “No, but my first command will be to assign you there for a month.”

  Shevraeth laughed with Stad, reflecting that he found the joke itself less funny than the idea of the joke. Odd, the unsubtle cracks that Marlovens thought were the height of humor.

  Stad added, “Evrec and I just got back. I really thought I was ruined last year. Dared not speak up.” He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, but they were alone at this end of the barracks. “King made a deal with Van and the brats last spring, which kept them riding in line. He let ’em practice up that stunt riding display.”

  Shevraeth did not say that Senrid had explained that last summer. He nodded, made appreciative noises, and listened as they walked to the mess hall, while Stad aired the ideas he’d been thinking about all winter, but had kept to himself until his appointment was official. As soon as the first parade and transfer of command was over, he and Evrec, who was Thanar Valdlav, had an enormous amount of extra work waiting for them—which they were itching to get at.

  Shevraeth was amazed at how happy Stad was to be taking on this hideous number of extra chores. The rank could be best translated as More Hard Work Than Anyone Else.

  But so would kingship. More work, and the stakes were far higher if you erred.

  FORTY-FIVE

  As promised, Keriam summoned the entire second-year senior class to his office. The radlav assignments were distributed, few of them causing any surprise. Shevraeth found himself in charge of the knife throwing for the upper school. A first-year senior would replace him in the lower school. Then Keriam reaffirmed the orders about the new games, which were to follow the pattern set up by the king last summer. The strategy was retreat. Fast, and unseen. There would be watchers posted on the walls and towers, and anyone spotted earned defaulters, from the lowest pups to the second-year seniors.

  “So it’s more than a game, then?” Gannan asked, after exchanging uneasy glances with a couple of the seniors who were not in the command class.

  Everyone else sat there looking attentive.

  Keriam said, “It’s serious enough that the time has come for the last part of the game strategy, which is the news—and you are not to speak of it outside this room—that this is not, in fact, a game at all.”

  The silence was so intense that the distant sound of little boys shrieking as they chased one another on one of the fields drifted in the open window.

  “Norsunder is on the move. If the game bell rings an unscheduled game, you will know that it is the real threat. You will then drop everything. You will tell whoever you are supervising—you can see we cannot plan farther—what is happening, but you will reassure them that they all know exactly what to do. And you will lead the retreat to your cover. Right then, no stops in the barracks, nothing.”

  Silence, except for a few shifting uneasily.

  “You senior rads are all going to pick a retreat route as well as whatever cover you favored last summer. You will stock your cover with a cache of supplies. The king will establish a communications link with you himself. Dismissed.”

  Somber-faced, eager to talk away from the listening ears of command, they thundered out, some of them moving stiffly in the year’s new boots.

  Keriam waved at Shevraeth to stay behind.

  “I want you to know that, had events been otherwise, you would have given Evrec a close run for Thanar Valdlav. This means you would have had your pick of aran radlav positions in any of the Houses. But the King says you have to remain on detached in case we are forced on the academy retreat.�
�

  Detached, nickname for the support rad at any given drill, House, or overnight. Whoever the lead rad was, then, would have to command. Shevraeth was only lead on one: knife throwing, and that with two other seniors in rotation.

  “So if the retreat is sounded, my group goes with the master in charge, or if it’s a group with no master, the primary rad?”

  “Yes.”

  Shevraeth said everything that was proper, then left, feeling complimented, but mostly relieved. He did not want to be in command if the real retreat did happen.

  And so, once the first day’s inspection was over (Stad looking unwontedly serious as he made his way around the Houses) Shevraeth took up his new position in the knife court, facing a wary-eyed line of new seniors in their fitted tunics and belts, all of whom obviously thought they were quite adept at knife throwing. He wondered if it was the presence of the presiding master that kept them in a quiet line, at least pretending to watch as he stepped to the mark to demonstrate.

  He underestimated the effect of his skill. Shevraeth’s years of throwing while his mind cut free and considered other things enabled him to nip up a knife from the rack and fling it with a casual crack of his wrist to thud squarely in the center of the target.

  None of them could do that. They were quite determined as they demonstrated two throws apiece, one each hand. None of them could throw without taking that extra heartbeat to line up eye and hand. Shevraeth assigned them practice with handle throwing (taken from their belts) and blade throwing. By the end of the session their squint-eyed focus had dissolved into laughter and jibes when some of them threw wild, or worse, sent the knife knocking sideways into the target, to clatter ignominiously to the ground.

  Not laughter and cracks including Shevraeth. Of course. It was more around him. But all in all, he thought as he walked them over to saber practice, it had gone better than he’d expected. Now to see if they took it out on him while he had to serve as post-target, as Gannan took command of the group.

  Gannan put them through warm-ups, then paired them up for some fast drills. Shevraeth pulled on the padding required of all the post-targets. He took up a stance behind the hacked, splintery wood of the man-sized post stuck in the ground, two pieces to either side to represent arms.

  Acting as post-target was not easy, despite the protection of the wood—because the entire purpose was to attack that wood. Shevraeth pulled on his gauntlets and picked up the heavy steel saber that the boys would attack.

  One by one the boys came at him, long steel in hand for the first time, instead of the willow swords they’d been using for the previous years. Shevraeth extended the sword round the post, and initiated a bout. The post was not for refining technique, it was practice for the brutal part of sword work: block, extend, block, and he jerked his blade up as though in defeat, and the boy brought the sword down at the post with all his strength. He had to be fast and precise to simulate, as much as possible, real battle. In other words, killing the enemy.

  Most of the boys’ first blows glanced off the wood, as his own had last year. A lifetime of learning to pull one’s blows made a real strike difficult, especially when one hadn’t time to think about it.

  By the end of a long session a few of them got the steel to sink far enough into the wood to raise a thin, acrid thread of smoke. The others sent up cheers.

  The first one to achieve a hot hit was Marlovair.

  Shevraeth was awash in sweat. He didn’t know if Marlovair’s strength, focus, and determination was a result of the new atmosphere of seriousness that had settled over the academy, or because Marlovair was, at one remove, striking at the foreigner. Oh, well, he suspected he did know the answer to that.

  o0o

  I apologize for the long silence, my son. We had one of the king’s spies with us as escort, and so none of us dared put pen to paper or reveal this gold case in any way. Here is the gist of it: rumors from refugees out of Sartor say that Siamis and even the evil Detlev have been seen in both Sartor and Sarendan. It makes sense that, if they strike, it will be at the heart of the world. We already know that Detlev is terribly adept at using our own symbols against us, and Siamis twists these same symbols, as well as people, to his own ends.

  At any rate, the king was frightened enough. More to the point, the people have been clamoring in greater numbers so that even he cannot silence them, and he has sent all his forces to protect the borders. That means he is left unguarded (against us!) in Athanarel, which means he has sent us home, after a stirring speech about our duty to protect our own lands as he protects the borders. That suits us all. As if released from prison we have all ridden for our homes. But he sent ‘escorts’ with the chief of us, presumably to see us there, and our spies have departed.

  So we are home, for the duration, in Renselaeus. Russav will cross Shevraeth to spend time with us when he wishes. For now, at least, it seems the border between Savona and Shevraeth will not be watched.

  Now to you. You are old enough, we feel, to make your own decision. If you can do good in the place that has given you its training these past years, stay. If it comes to defending our home, I can command. Were you here, it would take time to establish you in the place I have held so long, and that is not the ideal in a time of trouble. People trust what they know. Eventually you will indeed take my place—I trust at a more sedate pace. But if you desire to come home, you will, I assure you, be welcome, and you will take your place at my side. Choose the duty you can most effectively execute: that is, finally, all we can do in life.

  Last, know waking and sleeping that I love you, as does your mother, and Russav sends his affection and wishes for your welfare.

  o0o

  Though there was now little chance Shevraeth would be leading a retreat, he still obeyed the orders, thinking that his trees (though rejected by absolutely everyone) could well provide a fallback, simply because they were so rejected. Surely the Norsundrians would expect Marlovens to take to the hills, or fields, or even caves if they made it all the way to the east, but never to trees.

  When presented to Stad in this way, Stad agreed. In fact, he was so impressed with this thinking that he accompanied Shevraeth on a trial run. Shevraeth had begun to doubt his own wisdom late in the autumn as he experimented with moving swiftly and silently above ground. He’d forgotten about foliage, so busy he’d been, but the first leaves of spring renewed the overhead canopy so that the upper boughs were utterly hidden from sight.

  Stad stood below a great oak, peering up the tree Shevraeth had just climbed. “Where are you?” he called finally.

  And a voice echoed from not nearby, but downhill a considerable ways: “Here.”

  Stad whirled, gazing about. “Where?”

  A sudden hissing thrash, and Shevraeth dropped onto the new grass at the bottom of the gentle rise. Stad ran to catch him up. “I did not hear you do that. I listened—I was right there.”

  “I figured out how to move. You stay along the big, broad lower branches. Some of them you don’t even have to crawl, you can run.”

  Stad grimaced. “Run? In a tree? Not I!”

  “Those branches are amazingly broad. But you do have to take your boots off. Thread your sash through the knife loops in each boot, and you can wear ’em over your back and move as fast as you like.”

  Stad grunted in approval. “Unlikely as it is we’d use it—you’re support in every drill court, are you not?”

  “Except knife throwing.”

  “Then you’d tag on with the next court over.”

  “Right.”

  “But I still like this as a fallback,” Stad said, staring upward, thumbs hooked in his belt. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Go ahead and stash caches in these trees. I imagine one could live up here for months,” he added in wonder.

  “There are entire tree cities up north, we’re told. And over on Toar.”

  Stad flicked his hands open in that quick gesture so characteristic of Marlovens. “The dawnsinger
s. Well, if they can live in trees, we can, too, if put to it.”

  “One thing we won’t have to cache is horse fodder.”

  “Horses! Horses in trees!” Stad gave a crack of laughter that rang through the silent glade.

  Shevraeth joined the other rads in stashing supplies in their retreats. Meanwhile everyone kept busy with regular work plus retreat practice two mornings and one night a week as the spring spun away, the days gradually warming toward the lazy heat of summer.

  Not that any of them were lazy—the atmosphere was too tense for that. The seniors, knowing that a single word out of place could be overheard and spread as fast as sound, kept tight-lipped on why the games had gotten so strict, but their tension, their lack of humor when the younger boys, bored by now, slacked off, caused a lot of speculation.

  The boys had finally decided that the king was inventing some kind of new war game; because it was the king’s, they cooperated, though there were rumbles among the first and second-year colts, who were still testing the limits that Jump House had flouted the previous spring. Some bragged in barracks of hiding out somewhere in the academy instead of running half the night or morning, only to run back again.

  Stad told the seniors to pass the word down that anyone who wasn’t counted at the far end of the run would net himself a public beating. This order, plus the sudden disappearance of all the girls and the academy horses, caused a ripple of dismay through the academy.

  Something was wrong, they could all feel it, but the masters (there were only four left now, the others being sent on unexplained errands) and the seniors said nothing, so the younger boys reacted characteristically: some by acting out in crazy ways, as if to force normalcy onto everyone else, even if it meant defaulters and breezes, others becoming silent and watchful, and a few talking wildly.