by Joseph Malik
“Do you think you have enough armor, boy?”
Sir Dahl, a knight of the Order of the Stallion, was today’s instructor. He noted the animosity between the new face and a few of the younger soldiers.
“We’ll see, sire,” said Jarrod.
Sir Dahl picked a tall, raily student with an open-faced helmet as his dummy and, using wooden swords, went on to demonstrate a combination low feint and cutover.
He demonstrated a few more times. Jarrod paid little attention, checking out the others in the stable. Basic stuff. He knew two dozen variations on the maneuver already.
He was looking for the biggest guy he could find, partially to show them that he was not to be screwed around with, and partially to see where he truly lay in the order of things.
Combat athletes on Earth fight in weight classes because when it comes down to grunts and bruises, the larger combatant always has the advantage. Jarrod had seen a nature special about a starling using its maneuverability to fight off a hawk, which was all well and good; on the ground, however, a larger fighter has physics on his side.
From watching pairs of warriors sparring earlier in the day, Jarrod had already gathered that the majority were brute-force fighters. Fights were ugly and awkward with a lot of crashing, a lot of bashing, and a lot of knocking the other guy around and making an opening in his defenses.
It all made sense to Jarrod, and he’d expected as much: swords rarely pierce mail, so armored combat would be a matter of breaking his opponent into pieces inside his armor or wearing him down, not out-fencing him. Good odds presented themselves that the bigger fighters would be the better fighters.
Or at least, he reasoned, the bigger fighters would be held in the highest regard.
He didn’t have to look for long. The one who’d christened him “Northboy” was one of the biggest—at least tallest—and a rider with a swan pin. He pushed the others aside and squared off on Jarrod as the circle broke up.
He wasn’t as big as Carter, though. And Jarrod could give Carter a long, unpleasant afternoon.
Jarrod pulled on his helmet and buckled the chinstrap. He had his longest practice blade with him. He’d swiped his articulated gauntlets from his field armor and he wore them here, over a set of Persian-style leather bazubands.
“Nice gloves,” said the big fighter.
“Tell your mother,” said Jarrod. “Maybe she’ll make you a pair, too.”
Hoots and catcalls from others who’d assembled.
“Ready, Northboy?”
Jarrod smacked himself in the helmet with hilt of the sword a couple of times to seat it, and replied, “I have a name, good sir.”
The rider settled into a stance, behind a large roundshield. “So? You won’t remember it after this, anyway.” He carried his weight a bit too far back, and might as well have announced that his first move would be a deep, low lunge.
Jarrod took his usual stance, reversed, blade forward and low, the shield close to his hip. “You will.” He bit at his mouthguard, seated it, and they saluted.
The lunge came, deep and low and quick, followed by a fleche. Jarrod pivoted and the fighter ended up behind him, swearing as the tip of Jarrod’s blade skipped off the back of his helmet.
“Nearly,” the fighter commended. “You’re fast.”
“Faster than you,” Jarrod grinned as his opponent engaged and pressed, swinging hard. Jarrod’s shield interposed and he relaxed, gauging a rhythm and limbering up. The big guy wasn’t quick, but he covered well and made good use of his reach, making counterattacks difficult. He was driving his blows hard and using the edge of his shield to knock Jarrod around. Which made sense; a big enough guy could bash his way to a startling degree of success.
Okay, chump. Let’s go to school.
Jarrod fused the tip of his blade to the inside edge of his shield and closed in.
By doing this, his sword functioned as a second shield, in a manner that also kept his sword hand protected.
He had theorized—and, at one time, written—that this was the reason that Viking-era swords had had no crossbar.
He’d met with a great deal of pushback in historical circles regarding what he was about to do.
He moved forward with sword and shield together, rotating the sword along the shieldrim in quick slashes: first along the inside, then flipping the shield backwards—a trick that can only be done with a center-held roundshield—and slashing along the opposite side. The shield kept his blade out of sight the way a pitcher keeps the ball inside his glove until he throws.
Speed is a function of perception. Jarrod’s opponent had no idea if the attack was coming on his left or his right until the moment the blade appeared, and with three-quarters of the visible motion removed, Jarrod’s blows seemed so quick as to appear magical. The tall rider couldn’t attack or even counter, because he could only guess where Jarrod’s sword was. He retreated under a string of shouted profanities.
Someone whistled, and the fighting around them stopped.
Sir Dahl weaved his way over to Jarrod, tapping shoulders to move the others. “You!” he pointed at Jarrod.
Aww, crap, thought Jarrod.
Lu-u-u-cy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.
“Your name?” asked Sir Dahl.
Jarrod let his sword down. “King’s Rider Jarrod, Son-Lord of Knightsbridge. Sorry, I—”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, sire.”
“Hoy!” he shouted across the group. “Form a ring! I want you to see this!”
As the others formed a circle, Sir Dahl said, “Do it again. Just as you did.”
Jarrod toed the rider’s sword out of the mud and tossed it over to him. The rider caught it and Jarrod motioned for his opponent to resume the position he’d had.
Once again, Jarrod began his semicircles, at half speed.
“Hold, there!” Sir Dahl spoke loudly as Jarod froze.
Sir Dahl addressed the crowd. “This! Right here! Two things: first, his sword hand is not vulnerable. Not at any point.
“Second, the shield obscures the enemy’s vision. This is excellent. Excellent,” he directed the second excellent at Jarrod. “The enemy can’t see where the next attack is coming from.” He looked at Jarrod and asked quietly, “What the hell is this sword made of?”
“It’s native to my homeland,” Jarrod said. “Same as my armor.”
“Good stuff,” he commended, then addressed the crowd, “With your sword against the shield, you’re effectively using two shields. You can be much more aggressive.”
“If I may, sir?” said Jarrod. Dahl nodded, and Jarrod addressed the crowd.
“Instead of the usual give-and-take,” Jarrod demonstrated, hitting the rider’s shield with his sword and then smacking the rider’s sword with his shield, “You are attacking nonstop.” He pushed sword and shield together and moved in. “If your opponent hasn’t seen this before, he has no choice but to back up.”
Sir Dahl continued, “This is an ancient technique. A master’s technique from the Lost Years. I’ve only seen this in manuscripts, but it’s a great trick to have in your arsenal. I want to see each of you perfect this by next practice.”
He turned his attention to Jarrod again as the clacks, grunts, and shouts resumed and the group went back to sparring.
“Very well done, King’s Rider Jarrod,” he commended. “You’re Sir Javal’s charge?”
“Yes, sire. His sergeant.”
“You’re the one who threw Loth on his ass?” Sir Dahl asked under his breath.
“Yes, sire.”
“I shouldn’t have had to ask. I’m Sir Dahl of Iron Fields. Do me a favor and help them learn this. Just walk around and help, yes?”
“Absolutely, sire,” said Jarrod.
“Rider Saril, Son-Lord of Red Thistle, Order of the Swan,” said the big rider, blade down and walking in close.
“King’s Rider Jarrod, Son-Lord of Knight
sbridge, Order of the Stallion. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise. Where’d you learn that?”
“I figured that out on my own. It seemed to make sense.”
Saril shook his head in amazement. “I want you as my training partner.”
Jarrod grinned. “Maybe later. I’ve got work to do.”
“I hated you this morning,” Saril admitted from a bath next to Jarrod’s. Jarrod lay back and let the bathing girl pour hot water over his head, reveling in the release from his shoulders and neck.
He intended on getting a bath every evening. The girl had hands of stone as she went to work on his back, soaping by incidence as she worked the knots out. The heat and the massage wrung the last of the day from him.
A rider’s entire day, he found, was devoted to war-making in some capacity. Regulated fight practice had been just a small part of the morning. The remainder had been spent drilling in maneuver warfare, primarily moving in various sizes and types of formations, and learning counters to expected Gavrian tactics. This part, since he was being groomed for command, he watched more than participated.
He’d gone for a nice long run before lunch; killed another hour or so while digesting by bullshitting with other soldiers and riders and dreaming up various dirty tricks, and yet another hour attempting a few of them; he’d thrown iron bars for distance for a while to strengthen his cutting blows; shown Javal and a couple of others the basic hip throw and a proper rear naked choke; gone a few rounds using the boxing gloves with Saril and a tough as hell burly kid with zits named Bevio; and as the day wound down he’d watched as many of the larger fighters attempted to lift various heavy objects while others wagered on the outcomes.
“You work hard,” Saril noted. “You were sweating as hard out there as any of us. Even though you’re obviously a master swordsman already. I mean, you could whip any of us. I know, because I can whip any of them, and you can whip me.”
“On a good day,” Jarrod admitted. “Don’t sell yourself short.”
“Oh, I don’t,” said Saril. “I won the Rider’s Tourney two years ago in wrestling and swordfighting both. But you can do them both at the same time. You fight with your damned feet.” The group had been extremely impressed by Jarrod’s savate skills. “Your opponent has to watch not only your sword, but your shield, your elbow, your fist, your feet, even your head—every part of you is a weapon. And still you outwork me,” Saril finished. “I like that. I don’t understand it, but I like it.”
“Eventually,” Jarrod said, “we all run into someone we can’t outfight—someone more skilled, or more heavily armored, or greater in numbers. In that case, you’d better have another plan, and every moment you get behind the sword may give you a new option.”
Most noteworthy to Jarrod was the skill chasm between the knights and the soldiers. Most of the knights of the royal and martial orders had literally been raised in the saddle and with swords in their hands, with the benefit of expendable family capital to hire trainers. They were good on their feet, they had excellent technique and solid fundamentals, and were immensely fit lifetime athletes. They were the seasoned professionals. There were, however, precious few of them. Maybe one warrior in twenty by his math, and most of them were instructors.
The riders—those who’d earned a place in a chivalric order through skill at arms—were gifted amateurs and many showed immense talent. These were the local-boys-done-good, the minor-leaguers on their way to the pros once they refined their skills. Most riders, and many of the older soldiers, were sergeants. Sergeants answered to the knights, and the soldiers and border knights answered to the sergeants.
The border knights were the problem.
A knight with no royal order affiliation was effectively an infantry private, albeit a poorly-trained one. Even if he or she had been granted a piece of land by the local border lord, a border knight’s social standing and military rank was negligible.
This led to friction.
It was a symptom, as Jarrod understood it, of the way the border lords were overstaffing their ranks to gain advantage over their neighbors: handing out private knighthood and a few acres of tillable land to anyone who could carry an axe. Some border knights were given whatever land they could run the rightful owners off of. A few were only teenagers, hardscrabble and mean-faced.
These border knights, though, were gods compared to the rent-a-knights in on scutage, most of whom had substandard gear and little to no formal training. Two kids from the Shieldlands, filling in for a pair of border knights that a lord couldn’t bother to spare, had been sent to castle duty without mail. They fought in helmets and quilted arming jacks with leather pieces tied at the shoulder and elbow.
Every last one of the soldiers, and even the border knights—and Jarrod had to give them this—had heart. The kind of heart that Jarrod had seen in boxing and savate opponents who would scrape themselves up off the canvas spitting blood, only to slam their gloves together and do it again. These people were tough. And tough, he knew, goes a long way.
Fighting with axe and shield in Falconsrealm, Jarrod had learned quickly, played much the same formative role as baseball in America. Whereas many American adults can catch a ball in a glove and crush a forty-mile-an-hour meatball over the plate, most Falconsrealm and Gateskeep boys—and more than a few girls—could put up a good enough fight with an axe and shield to make anyone worry.
The royal knights were primarily shock cavalry. The riders and sergeants were infantry force multipliers. And the soldiers and border knights were the grunts, getting the hard work done.
“So, who was your teacher?” asked Saril.
“I had many different teachers. My original weapons weren’t the, ah, war swords. I learned wrestling and dueling when I was younger.”
“The way you move the sword around its balance, I’d think you were used to using a much lighter blade. Am I right?”
Jarrod nodded. “Where I come from, we do non-lethal ritual dueling with long, thin swords. No armor.”
“And yet you know how to fight with a roundshield. Well enough to teach us the ways of the ancient masters.”
Jarrod shrugged.
“They’re grooming you to become an officer. From rider to officer. Directly.”
“So they tell me,” Jarrod admitted.
“Where do you come from?”
“Knightsbridge. A long, long way from here.”
“What, across the sea?”
Jarrod smiled as another bucket was poured over his head. He closed his eyes and laid his head back on the edge of the tub, feeling the blood sprint through his body. “And then some.”
It was late in the evening two weeks—twenty-six days—later.
The locals measured weeks in eighth-phases of the big moon, thirteen days apiece, and referred to them by their numbered days. Each season was one hundred and four days, or one moon, long, starting after the six-day period of The Dark, which made for a slightly longer year than he was used to but all in all it lined up pretty well. Jarrod had gone one step further and broken the season into thirteen, eight-day weeks just to keep himself sane, drawing a calendar in one of his blank books. He called the first day of the lunar cycle Monday, and added an eighth day which he referred to as Sabbath. On Sabbath he didn’t train, using the day instead to rest up, rub out his bruises, and practice his yoga, and claimed it as a religious affiliation. No one took any truck with it.
Jarrod and Saril were skipping down the stairs two at a time toward the feasting hall when a vision of medieval loveliness appeared before Jarrod as he rounded a corner. He grabbed the banister and swung along it to let her pass.
A soft beauty radiated from her cascading dark hair and gentle eyes, and her smile stunned him as he stared, awash in lilacs.
“Wow,” Jarrod gasped, wrenching his neck as she turned to look back at him. Her friends turned also, and giggled.
He hurried to catch Saril. “Saril?”
&nb
sp; “Forget her.”
Jarrod looked back again, but the girl had disappeared around the corner of the stairwell.
“How can I?”
“Trust me.”
“What, is she trouble?”
“Like you cannot imagine. She’s a sorcerer.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“Ask Sir Urlan.”
Jarrod knew Urlan. Tall, thin, cranky. The son of a palace lord on the Gateskeep High Council, Urlan was a landed knight who stood to inherit Three Rivers Manor. He had a gang of cronies around him at all times, and was a dapper young man, a smart dresser, with great charm and influence, and a hell of a lot of money. From fight practice Jarrod knew him to be a good swordsman; aggressive, but not particularly tough. He complained of his bruises loudly and often accused other fighters of employing “cowardly tactics.” He got angry at fight practice a lot.
“Him?” Jarrod stammered. “What does she see in him?”
“They were betrothed when they came of age. Their parents arranged it, I believe. Shortly thereafter, she learned that she could read minds.”
“And then she found out what a prick he is?”
“Precisely.”
“So, you’re saying no way.”
Saril leaned against the door to the feasting hall. “Fall in love with a telepath. Let me know how that goes for you.”
“Erm,” said Jarrod, thinking it over.
“Not only that, but Sir Urlan’s seconds will beat you to death. He’s still pretty sore about it. Are you coming in?”
“Ah, I’m expected to dine with Captain Javal tonight.” The Lords’ Hall was one floor below the feasting hall.
“How did you get that assignment?” Saril wondered. “No offense, sir, but what did you do, precisely, to become Sir Javal’s charge?”
