The Ethical Swordsman

by Dave Duncan

There were four men on the other end of the rope.

  sir niall

  “I put you under Lord Hedgebury’s orders until further notice, Sir Niall.” Fur-robed again, the Queen swept majestically out the door.

  Grand Master was much displeased with the new Blade, but he had to escort the Queen to the second acceptance meeting, so he had no time to tear strips off him—and very little authority over a sworn Blade anyway. All he said was, “Your swearing-in will be recorded in the archives. What name do you want on your sword?”

  All candidates, by the time they were bound, had been pondering that vital question for five years and had decided on some wonderful pun or whimsy. Niall was no exception. “Denial.”

  Grand Master thawed enough to flash a thin and toothless smile. “Good one,” he said. “May she serve you well.”

  “Wait!” Niall said, turning to Lord Hedgebury. “What sort of fighting am I going to be doing?”

  “Blade odds, if you’re lucky.”

  “Blade odds” was an Ironhall term, not an official one. It meant two Blades or three laymen, the odds a Blade was expected to accept if necessary. In practice, when his ward’s life was threatened, his binding would make him accept any odds. The great Durendal had once bested four laymen on open ground, but that was the stuff of legend.

  Niall turned back to Grand Master. “Then I’ll need a single-edge, but with a point.”

  “That’s what I told Master Armourer last night,” Grand Master said smugly. “He assured me that that was exactly what he had ready for you.”

  The thud of the door left Niall alone with Lord Hedgebury, who took up the wine bottle. “Have some more of this to warm you. We’ve got a long cold ride ahead of us.”

  “I haven’t finished this drink yet, my lord.”

  “Call me Stalwart.”

  That felt good, coming from a peer of the realm, and Blade hero.

  Stalwart filled his own goblet while eyeing Niall disapprovingly. “If you had talked back to her father like you did to her, he’d have shortened you by a head.”

  “Her father wouldn’t have baited Hereward, Crystal, and the others the way she did. The fat man knew how to handle men. She doesn’t, not as well. He wanted Blades willing to die for him. She was testing to see who would stand up to her.”

  “I admit it seemed very unfair.” Stalwart took a drink. “But she had other reasons, which you don’t know.”

  “She trusts you, my lord, and you have scared her out of her wits about Neville Fitzambrose. She thinks she needs me to deal with him? Me?”

  Stalwart smiled; he seemed a very amiable man for an ennobled ex-Blade. “Self-confidence is a great virtue until it gets you dead. I knew Ambrose well. He liked to play the lute, which he did very poorly. I also know his daughter. I couldn’t say this earlier, Niall. She’s clever but impulsive, strong-willed but stubborn. She hasn’t realized yet that there’s a world of difference between being Queen matrimonial in Baelmark and Queen regnant in Chivial. Baelmark has no parliament, for example. I’m scared she’ll do something stupid right off the mark.”

  “Like throwing Durendal into a Bastion dungeon?”

  “Not that. Blades love him, but a lot of stuffy aristocrats hate him for a stuck-up bastard peasant. I’m thinking of the ship of state. The monarch holds the tiller, lad. A sudden gust of wind or an extra-big wave, and the helmsman has to react quickly and correctly. She asked me why she didn’t get a bigger cheer last night and I told her it was because of Durendal. She snarled at me! If she can just get through her first year without a catastrophe of some sort, then the country will take her to their hearts. If she blunders, then keep a careful eye on Thencaster, because that’s where the trouble will collect. “I may be totally wrong about Neville. Hope I am. But I’ve known him for years, and I’m sure he won’t be able to resist all the pressure and flattery he’ll get. Is that the warmest cloak you’ve got?”

  “It’s the only cloak I’ve got.”

  “Have you any personal treasures to collect?”

  “Not a cookie.”

  “Then let’s put iron on the road.”

  Stalwart led the way to the haberdashery. The sight of his diamond star and cat’s eye sword—named Sleight, significantly—were quite enough to persuade the haberdasher that Sir Niall required the best cloak in the school’s wardrobe. He probably got it, although it was no better than the one he turned in for it. It was a hideous mauve colour.

  Then they crossed the courtyard to the stables, unseen because everyone else was either in the flea room or at lunch. One vital item remained absent.

  “What about my sword?”

  “That will follow, I promise. Master Armourer has to inscribe eighteen swords before midnight.”

  “But I’m leaving first!” Royal prerogative or something.

  “But you are on a secret mission! We don’t want to draw attention to you any more than we have to. That’s why I didn’t come to Ironhall with the Queen. I rode in after dark.”

  To escape the attention of the sheep on Starkmoor? Niall hoped it was only Stalwart who was crazy, not the Queen also.

  Delusional or not, Stalwart had brought a fine spare with him, a splendid chestnut three-year-old mare named Pepper. Pepper was a much better mount than anything the school possessed, and quite willing to swear eternal friendship with Niall in return for a double handful of oats.

  They rode out of the gates, into the bitter moorland winds. Conversation was impossible. All a man could hope to do was keep his hat on, his cloak tight around his neck, and his horse pointed in roughly the right direction. Having a fourth hand as well would have been useful to wipe away the tears. After about twenty minutes they paused at Shelter Rock, which might have been designed specifically to provide a brief respite from such weather. It also provided a final view of Ironhall itself, faux castle made tiny by distance and barely visible through snow lifted by the wind.

  “There it is!” Stalwart said. “Four hundred years it has stood there, and I expect it will still be there four hundred years after we have gone. You can never really leave it, you know. Ironhall is always there, deep inside you. It moulded you, body and soul, taught you sword craft and honour, made you the man you are and ever will be.”

  Bull turds! Niall’s father had taught him what honour was, not Ironhall. At the end Ironhall had turned him into a spy. He was conscious of a door closing on his youth. From now on he was an adult, earning his living. This should have been a glorious sensation, but being paid for spying was not. Ugh!

  On the lee side of the tor they descended to lower ground and were better protected, able to talk.

  “Cat?” Stalwart said. “Grand Master told me a lot about you, but he never mentioned a Candidate Cat. He must have told the Queen something, though. Spit it out.”

  “A soprano, just a little crazier than the others. Nothing to do with me, Stalwart.”

  “‘Spit it out!’ I said. I’ve got to send you into serious danger, and the more I know about you, the less the chance that I’ll overlook something, or misjudge something.”

  He was a nosy little man.

  “It was when he was still just the Brat,” Niall said reluctantly. “He hated the hazing and decided he would do something notable in the hope that the sopranos would be sufficiently impressed by it to stop tormenting him.”

  “Fat chance!”

  “No. It did work in his case, because it very nearly killed him. As you know, the Brat usually has to eat in the kitchen, but one night the sopranos had him trapped under their table and were feeding him scraps. That’s how he heard the Litany reading, which that night was about a certain hero who had climbed the cliff at the back of the quarry, all the way up to the battlements. He decided to do that. Next morning, he tried.”

  Stalwart howled. “Death and Fire! It’s impossible. I had a rope ladder!”

/>   Even so, he must have been crazy back then, too.

  “Cat didn’t know that. The Litany was amended later to include that pertinent detail. Cat did very well at first, but of course the ashlar wall at the top would have balked him completely. As it was, he got stuck halfway up the rock face, perched on a ledge the size of a dinner plate. He might have stayed there until he fainted and fell off, but a band of seniors happened to ride by. We yelled at him to hang on, and headed for the gate at full gallop. I chanced to remember some ropes they had hanging in the stables, so we grabbed those and raced to the observatory. Master of Rituals was busily working away at something when we burst in on him, yelling like maniacs, and went storming up the spiral staircase, out onto the ramparts. We tied one of us on a rope and lowered him down until he could load the Brat on his shoulders and—”

  “That was you?”

  “Had to be. It was my idea.”

  “Spirits! You’re even crazier than I was at your age.”

  “There were four men on the other end of the rope.”

  “But that rope had been hanging there since forever, and they must have scraped it over the edge of the stonework as they pulled you up. It’s a miracle it didn’t all just crumble to dust.”

  “Much of it did. I hadn’t foreseen that. I discovered it when I had the Brat draped all over me and it was too late to back out. We got showered with hemp dandruff at every heave. The Brat was nicknamed ‘Cat’ that evening and of course the name stuck. Cat he will be until they hang his sword in the Sky of Swords. He’s a sharp little nipper, though.”

  “What did they call you?”

  “What did Grand Master call me? Never mind!”

  Stalwart roared with laughter. He was obviously a schemer, for he had masterminded Niall into this conspiratorial pit. But he did have charm.

  They rode on in silence for a while before he said, “Then that’s the main reason Malinda wants you for this job.”

  “Because I’m crazy?”

  “Call it, ‘Nerves of steel’.”

  “Brain of feathers, more like. It took me ages to get to sleep that night.”

  “Ages?”

  “At least ten minutes.”

  They were riding east. The wind slackened, but the clouds were threatening rain. They could eat in Blackwater, Stalwart said. The road was in horrible shape, with frozen ruts hidden under snowdrifts, then flooded sections. The Queen had to be a very tough lady to have withstood a coach trip over it. The horses went slowly, and the riders did not push them. That left them time to talk.

  “Thencaster is up north, on the Wylderland border? How long until we get there?”

  “Four, five days’ ride. We have some things to do first and some people to see on the way. And watch how you say, ‘Wylderland’. It’s ‘Wylderland,’ not ‘Wylderland.’”

  “Huh?”

  “Ironhall has its own dialect. All those thirteen- or fourteen-year-olds pick it up faster than flu. One of the things we liked about you was that you were older when you were accepted. It shows in your accent. You haven’t quite lost that Grandon twang. That’s why the Queen was baiting all of you in the flea room. She wanted to hear each of you speak.”

  Stalwart then launched into a lesson in dialect. You could tell a Blade by the way he said eye and oo sounds, he said, and listed half a dozen words to watch out for. Having been a minstrel as a boy, he had a trained ear for such things.

  Niall exploded. “Well, I wasn’t, and I haven’t. I’m death by the minute with a sword, but I’m useless at this spying nonsense. Why do you want a Blade anyway? Why not an inquisitor? That’s their business! It’s what the snoops are trained for.”

  Stalwart gave him a sad look. “You told the Queen she might have enemies even in Ironhall, and now you suggest she should trust the Dark Chamber?”

  Niall said, “Sorry.”

  Stalwart already had a room booked at the better of Blackwater’s two inns. He made a beeline for it, leaving Niall to see that the horses were cared for, and telling him to order a meal sent up.

  “Dinner for three,” he said, “if you’re at all typical, you’ll eat two men’s portions.”

  Once up in the room, Stalwart changed into dry clothes. Niall had none, so he draped his wet garb in front of the cheerfully crackling fire and wrapped himself in a blanket off the bed.

  That done, they settled down to quenching their thirsts with ale that Stalwart admitted was fair quality for a roadside tavern. He also explained why he was so anxious to stay out of sight. “It’s this damned star old Ambrose gave me. All the time I was around the palace I had to wear it, and even now, since I was dubbed, it must appear at any formal function, like today, even. So it was always, ‘Who’s the brat with the bling?’ My face is known to far too many people, and if word ever gets back to Thencaster that I have been seen anywhere near Ironhall this year, then you’ll be a cold corpse on the doorstep.”

  That seemed highly unlikely to Niall, but his glumness was waning. The ale was great, and he had forgotten how good non-Ironhall victuals could be. By the time he had done gnawing the last rib, rinsed his hands, and begun to dress in his almost-dry clothes, his companion had made himself comfortable beside the fire and begun talking business.

  “I have obtained a glowing testimonial letter from a highly respected noble, Baron Whinscar, recommending his former secretary, Master Neal Cleaver. That’s you. He attests that you write a fine hand, your spelling is always reasonable, and you can sum. You are also clean around the house and so on.”

  That ‘Neal’ annoyed Niall a lot. Obviously Hedgebury had been arranging all this with supreme confidence that the man in question was going to accept the Thencaster assignment. And he hadn’t! In the end the Queen had bought him by dangling a hope of vengeance on Ephraim Morley.

  “So how does your effusive baron explain why he is discarding such a paragon of a scrivener?”

  “Because his fourteen-year-old daughter has become enthusiastic about him. Master Cleaver, being an honourable young man, knows that he cannot hope to wed a lady of a rank so much higher than his own. It was he who reported the problem to her father and tendered his resignation. The baron is confident that no impropriety has occurred, but is anxious to see the young man well established—and very soon, as far away as possible.”

  “I wish you hadn’t mentioned the daughter,” Niall said bitterly. Of course, every candidate in Ironhall believed wholeheartedly in the legend that all women found bound Blades utterly irresistible. The candidates in Ironhall were convinced that Greymere Palace was swarming with delectable maidens, more than eager to welcome new Blades with arms open and bodices ajar. Last night, with the Queen newly come to Ironhall to harvest seniors, the lascivious talk in the dorm had gone on for hours.

  There was something tragic about a man close to twenty-one still a virgin.

  “Sorry!” I forgot that.” Stalwart reached in his pouch and produced a handful of coins, which he held out to Niall. “Go and see the barman downstairs. He’ll fix you up with what you need.”

  Niall pulled a face and looked away. “Thank you, but no.”

  Stalwart stared at him in wonder. “What’s the matter?”

  Niall needed a moment to work out what the matter was. “A properly bound Blade can’t help it. His binding conjuration draws girls like a lodestone draws pins, yes? But I don’t have one yet. I’d be buying a woman, like a jug of ale. That’s smutty!”

  “I suppose so.” Stalwart put the coins away. “You had sisters, of course. Never thought of it like that. By the time I was your age, I was already married to Agnes. Is that really you talking, or are you trying on Neal Cleaver’s skin?”

  “Really me, and damn Neal Cleaver! How did you ever pick such a stupid name for me, anyway?”

  “Who would ever hide a Blade behind it?”

  “Er...” Niall said
. “My lord, you are a lot sneakier than you look.”

  Stalwart laughed.

  Niall just thought about what he was missing.

  Chapter 4

  What sort of fighting am I going to be doing?

  sir niall

  The weather was better the next day, and continued to improve as the two Blades rode eastward, into kinder country. The roads were better, too, so the horses went faster, which made conversation more difficult. Stalwart seemed content to leave talk until a better time, while Niall was fascinated by the change of scenery after so many years of captivity on Starkmoor. He remembered none of the villages or towns they passed, and only a blur of smoke on the skyline warned him that they were approaching Grandon, his birthplace and the capital of Chivial. It was not until he dismounted in an inn’s stable yard and heard the people’s voices that he understood what Stalwart had been telling him about accents.

  The inn was named the Golden Jug, and Stalwart said it was one of the best in the city. As in Blackwater, he already had a room booked, a luxury chamber with two beds. This time he was willing to eat in the dining room, because it didn’t matter who saw him in Grandon. The food was indeed excellent. So were the wine and the rosy glow it produced. Satiated at last, Niall looked around the busy dining room, noting the wide variety of costume. Fashions had changed in the last five years. Moreover, there were ladies and even girls present.

  “If you want to hunt up your mother,” Stalwart said, “then I cannot reasonably refuse you a day or so to do that, but I would greatly prefer that you don’t. I am anxious to get home.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What’yu mean you can’t?”

  “No Royal Guard livery, no cat’s eye sword, sworn to secrecy? I’d have to invent stories and lie to her, and I never tell lies. My father taught me: ‘Lying is cheating, cheating is theft; treasure your honour, because it is your most valuable possession.’”

  Stalwart studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Last moon, I wrote to Grand Master, telling him the sort of man I needed. He must have courage, I said, and an ability to work alone, intelligence, and so on. One thing I didn’t think of, because it’s not a quality one normally associates with Blades, is honour. You are an unusually honourable young man, Brother Niall. After five years’ labour at Ironhall, you very nearly refused binding because you thought your assigned mission was dishonourable. None of us expected that.”