by AC Cobble
As the hand grips changed for different strokes, so did the footing. Saala would kick Ben’s feet until they were in the proper position. Sideways with one-handed grip, strong hand forward, sideways with two-handed grip off hand forward, centered with two-handed grip, neutral position, and on and on.
Saala explained, “Holding onto the sword is a basic need of course. Having the right footing is fundamental. Without the right footing, nothing else I can teach you will matter.”
After two bells, Ben’s arms were aching with the effort of keeping his sword point up. His hands were blistered and would have been bleeding if Saala had not wrapped rags around them. He was barely keeping his grip one out of five times.
Saala scolded, “You are getting worse. That is enough for tonight. We will continue again tomorrow night and every night until you are sufficient.”
It had an ominous ring to Ben’s ears. They sat down with the group and dished out the last of the rice, beans, and sausage the girls had cooked. It had been a fairly easy day of travel, mostly downhill with only a few rolling hills to deal with. The next day would be the same.
Ben was battered and bruised from the fight the night before and the sword practice with Saala, but he was in high spirits. He felt like he was on the cusp of something amazing, camping out on the open road in good weather, with good company and the promise of adventure. He couldn’t think of anything he’d rather be doing.
Lady Towaal and Meghan were the only ones who didn’t seem to be in a good mood and had both retired to their bedrolls early. Lady Towaal had her perpetual frown. Meghan was still upset and quiet about the events the night before. Rhys produced a small silver flask and stretched out with his head on his pack, quietly staring up at the sky. Swaying pine trees framed a clear, starry night.
Ben was left around the fire with Amelie, Meredith, and Saala. Since Lady Towaal was not paying attention, now was his chance to find out what this strange group was doing together.
In between bites of dinner, Ben casually asked, “So, Amelie, what is your part in this journey?”
She looked at Saala, who just shrugged, before answering, “I’m going to the City also. Like Meghan, I will become an Initiate at the Sanctuary.”
“Oh, I am so sorry! Were you forced to go too?” asked Ben.
“No, I, well, no… I am not being forced.” She hesitated then finished, “It’s complicated.”
Obviously there was more to it than she was letting on, but Ben didn’t want to spoil the opportunity to talk, so he didn’t press. He turned to Meredith and asked her, “Meredith, are you also joining the Sanctuary?”
She blushed and replied, “No, I am only accompanying La…I mean Amelie.”
Ben smiled and nodded. He caught her slip, but again, played it slow and didn’t comment. At least one of them really was a lady. Was Meredith also a lady or some sort of assistant? He scooped another spoonful of rice and beans and thought that everyone’s role was starting to come together. A lady would have bodyguards, even if she was travelling with a mage.
Amelie spoke up to take the attention off of her handmaiden, or whatever she was. “What have you heard about the City, Ben?”
“Not much really,” he answered. “Just what the stories tell. No one from Farview has ever travelled that far, and the merchants that come our way mostly trade in this area. I’m sure what I know is more fantasy than reality.”
“The City is a place of fantasy. I have never been there myself, but I have spoken with people who have.” She snuck a look at the back of Lady Towaal, who was lying a good distance from the fire and wrapped tightly in her bedroll in the cool night air. “The Sanctuary is there, of course, and it’s a major commercial and political center. The City is where kings meet. At least, that’s what they say. The markets there are said to be full of exotic items from places you’ve never even heard of. My mother has a device from there that she places in the bath and within moments the water is as hot as if the maids just brought it in.”
Ben blinked. Nothing like that had even been mentioned in the stories. The idea that someone would use magic for something so—practical—was a little disconcerting.
Amelie sighed and continued, “Not that I will be likely to see any of the markets. As an initiate, you spend most of your time studying.”
Ben stuck another thick branch in the dwindling fire and asked, “How, I mean, what happens at the Sanctuary?”
“They train us to be mages. In exchange for payment or more often service to the Sanctuary, they will teach us what they know.” Amelie grinned at Ben. “It’s not as exciting as you think. Real magic is nothing like the stories. There are no rain storms called out of a clear blue sky, no speaking with animals, and I’m told there is definitely no flying.”
“No flying? Then it hardly seems worth it!” exclaimed Ben with a grin.
Amelie chuckled and Ben watched tension drain out of her body. He hadn’t noticed it before. Despite her brave face, she was scared of what was coming. He didn’t know if it was the training itself or the mysterious circumstances she was in, but Amelie was definitely dreading something that was to come.
They turned the conversation to lighter topics and started to wind down for the night. Ben was burning to know more about the City, but they had a long way to travel, and his thoughts skipped toward the other places of story he would see. They would be in Fabrizo in two more weeks, and that was a place some residents of Farview had actually been to. It was still exotic for Ben though, and it seemed more real.
The next two weeks continued like that. They slowly came down from the mountainous terrain near Farview and Murdoch’s into rolling hills and flat coastal plains. The weather got warmer, but stayed pleasant. For Ben, it was some of the best days of his life.
The journey was along a broad well-travelled road and was mostly downhill. At the end of each day they would make a quick camp. Ben and Saala would work on sword practice and the girls would cluster around Lady Towaal with their heads together. Rhys turned out to be a capable hunter and would leave to scout the area, collect firewood and return with rabbits, birds or something else to supplement the dry goods they’d brought with them.
Saala never commented on it, but Ben could feel himself improving with the sword. His arms were getting stronger and he rarely lost his blade when Saala struck it. He could not move with anything close to the grace that Saala had, but he was more comfortable with the blade and had progressed to learning defensive forms. The girls no longer laughed at his clumsiness. That was most important.
Without pressing them, Ben slowly drew more information from his companions during the quiet nights around the campfire. It turned out they all had some mystery though.
Rhys was always friendly and willing to talk, but when Ben probed for more detail on something, Rhys kept on in a rambling, distracted way that eventually led away from the answer and into another topic. Ben found out that Rhys wasn’t in the employ of Amelie like he initially suspected, the man had come with Lady Towaal. He was a resident of the City and the only thing he liked to talk about were the alehouses, of which he had encyclopedic knowledge. Before the two weeks on the road was up, Ben felt like he knew more about the City’s drinking establishments than he did about the Buckhorn Tavern in Farview.
Ben liked Rhys, and he was a great travelling companion because of his endless entertaining drinking stories, but Ben felt there was more underneath the surface. Rhys was the only one who ignored Lady Towaal’s pointed suggestions and glares, despite the fact that he apparently worked for her. He also carried what looked like a well-used long sword and two wicked long knives, but never participated in Saala and Ben’s sword practice.
Amelie was the next most talkative in the group, but she also kept her secrets. The difference was that on the second day, she flat out told Ben she didn’t want to talk about her family. He respected her intentions, but over time, he was able to draw out small details and paint a picture in his mind. She was from the city of
Issen, and Ben got the impression she was somehow related to the lord of that city. She was going to the Sanctuary at the behest of her father. Lady Towaal had arrived in Issen with Rhys in tow to take her. Amelie’s father sent Saala along to keep her safe until she was officially enrolled as an initiate.
Meredith kept silent and seemed to struggle with her role in the group. Over the two weeks, it became clear she was Amelie’s handmaiden, but Amelie admonished her to not act like it while they were travelling so they wouldn’t raise suspicion. Meredith wasn’t going to study at the Sanctuary, so she didn’t need to listen to Lady Towaal’s lectures each night, but she listened many times anyway. The other nights she would assist Rhys with the camp and the cooking. Unlike Amelie and the others, she had a little chip on her shoulder when it came to Ben and Meghan. She was from a big city and lived in a palace with lords and ladies. She made it clear she considered Ben and Meghan country bumpkins.
Lady Towaal herself had very little to say to Ben. To her, this trip was business and she had no interest in making friends, particularly with a boy from a small town in the mountains. She wasn’t rude, just direct. Aside from the lessons with the girls she rarely spoke at length to anyone, she just made imperious directives to the group as a whole. She’d glare around the fire and bark out something like, “We leave at first light.” Ben found it was easy to follow her commands and pretend she wasn’t there the rest of the time.
Saala and Meghan were the only two that didn’t seem to have secrets. Ben would walk with Meghan while they were on the road, but the two of them rarely spoke. Farview was too recent to reminisce about and neither of them knew what to expect in the future. They both enjoyed the comfort of a familiar face though. Both of their lives had been turned upside down.
Saala’s natural state was silence, but he readily answered questions when Ben had them. Ben quickly found out that he didn’t know what to ask. Saala said he spent most of his time travelling and he didn’t keep a permanent home. The concept was foreign to Ben. He found the idea of hitting the road and moving toward a new horizon each day to be invigorating.
The most interesting piece of information Ben got from Saala was how he became a blademaster. A large part of Ben was still that boy who sat on the edge of his chair in the Buckhorn Tavern picking apart every word of a story about blademasters and their adventures. The opportunity to get the real details from an actual blademaster was a thrill he wouldn’t have believed possible.
Saala said he was from a wealthy family in the country of Ooswam. Ben was afraid to admit to Saala he had never heard of Ooswam. Saala caught on and explained it wasn’t part of Alcott—the continent they were on—it was far south of Fabrizo and Farview, past the Blood Bay and the South Sea. Ben kept to himself that he didn’t know enough geography to know what that meant either.
Saala explained that when he was young, his parents sent him to a boarding school where the sword was one of the subjects. In Ooswam high society, poetry, painting, music, and swordplay were all pastimes of the wealthy. It was expected that young members of society would become adept at all of these skills. Saala admitted he had little to no skill in poetry or music, but he had surpassed all of his peers with the sword. Ben gathered there had been some sort of falling out between Saala and his family and he left Ooswam to travel the world and learn the sword from masters anywhere he could find them.
The actual process to become a blademaster, it turned out, was quite simple. One just had to defeat a current blademaster in front of reputable witnesses. Once you defeated a blademaster, you had the right to wear a blademaster’s sigil on your weapon and scabbard.
“Wait. What’s to prevent anyone from putting a blademaster’s sigil on their blade or buying a blade with one on it? How would anyone know?” asked Ben.
“Remember,” Saala explained, “to become a blademaster, you must challenge and defeat one. Most of these challenges take place in the colleges with referees and medical personnel standing by. The contest only goes until one combatant yields, but it is not required to be like that. A challenge can happen anywhere at any time. Without the necessary skill, one is not likely to survive long wearing the sigil in public.”
The closer they got to the coast, the more frequently they passed through small towns. Most were close to the size of Farview and each seemed to have its own commercial specialty. Rhys explained that the towns supplied merchants in Fabrizo with goods that they shipped across the Blood Bay to other large cities. There was one town that specialized in lace and several that made various types of glass. The glass is what Fabrizo was known for. According to Rhys, the glass makers they were passing were among the best in the world.
They had little time to stop and explore these towns because Lady Towaal pushed them hard to make Fabrizo. She did allow a few stops to eat as their supplies were dwindling. Ben found Rhys had been correct when he said back at Murdoch’s that it was mostly fish and wine on the coast. But for Ben, it was an incredible experience. They ate spicy fish stews unlike anything he ever had in Farview. Alistair Pinewood maintained a wine cellar, but he was one of the only ones in Farview who did so. He mostly kept it for himself except for the rare special occasion when he felt like sharing. Usually, it was on his own birthday.
Ben began to think of himself as somewhat worldly, travelling with such experienced companions and trying new things, but the small towns clustered near the coast did nothing to prepare him for the wonder of Fabrizo itself.
They awoke the last morning on the road camped on sandy soil under massive moss-hung oak trees. The air was heavy and had an odd tang to it. In a rare friendly moment, Lady Towaal mentioned it was the humidity and a combination of mud and saltwater in the Bay. They’d be in Fabrizo by early afternoon, and Ben couldn’t wait.
As the day wore on and they approached the city, the oak trees faded away and were replaced by tall, thick marsh grasses. The road was busy with merchant trains coming and going from the city as well as travelers like themselves. Ben observed them closely but was disappointed to see that aside from small changes in their clothing, these people could have grown up in Farview and would not have been out of place.
The little towns almost ran together as they got closer. They passed through several of them in the last few bells before finally finding something new. In the distance, over the tall grasses, Ben could see large buildings rising up. He hopped up and down trying to catch a better glimpse, but stopped when he saw Amelie grinning at him.
Rhys noticed as well. “They’re warehouses, grain silos, and the like. The merchants store their goods there. It’s too expensive in the city. There’s also housing for the dock workers, sailors, and the rest of the grunts.” Rhys slapped him on the back and continued, “That’s where I’d recommend you spend your time in most big cities. Those people know how to have fun, but I think you’re going to enjoy Fabrizo. Nothing quite like it.”
4
Fabrizo
Ben tried to stop himself from staring as they passed the hustle and bustle of the warehouse district. Most of the wagon trains turned off to head toward the massive cluster of buildings. The huge structures dwarfed anything Ben had ever seen. Murdoch’s could easily fit several times over into the largest ones. There were also towering poles bobbing in the distance and Ben realized that they must be ships. Farview had only a few small boats people used for fishing and carrying supplies on the Callach River. He knew about ships, but he couldn’t fathom the size of one that stuck out above the tallest of the warehouses.
He was brought back by the clatter of wheels on stone as the road turned from hard packed sand to large stone blocks. The merchant trains had turned off toward the warehouses but smaller wagons and carts joined the flow on the road. The merchant trading must take place in the warehouse district, he thought, but a city still needed goods and supplies. He noticed many of the small carts were carrying food and other things he suspected they couldn’t make in a city.
Half a league past the warehous
e district he was still craning his neck to see over the marsh grasses and catch a glimpse of the city itself. There were slender towers in the distance but he couldn’t see anything the size of the warehouses.
He was focusing so much on looking toward the towers that he was surprised when they came to the causeway. It was flanked by two sturdy stone buildings and a company of bored-looking guards.
He turned toward Rhys. “Shouldn’t there be city gates or something? There are always gates in the stories. And where is the city?”
Rhys adjusted his pack strap and answered, “We’ve got another half a league on the causeway. Why bother with gates when you have a natural moat? The city itself is on a hundred little islands out in the Bay. Makes it hard to attack. Probably the only reason it’s still an independent city state and not a part of the Alliance.”
Ben wasn’t sure what the Alliance was, but he did remember hearing stories about Fabrizo being an island city. He thought it was some sort of exaggeration or that there were islands nearby. He didn’t realize the entire city was literally a bunch of little islands.
The guards at the foot of the causeway barely looked up when they walked by. The foot traffic going over was steady and Ben supposed his group didn’t look like much of a threat. They made their way onto the stone path and started toward the city. The road was worn deep with ruts from the wagon wheels that constantly passed this way. Ben could see they had dumped sand to fill the ruts in the road which must have been easier than replacing half a league of stone.
From the causeway, some buildings were finally visible. There were a few towers poking up but the rest of the buildings were only a few stories high.
