I wrote two more novellas with Yanko, all three set in the family salt mine, and put them together into a set called The Swords & Salt Collection. That was that, or so I thought. The stories weren’t hugely successful (novellas are often a tough sell), so there wasn’t a monetary reason to write more, but in those opening adventures, I’d left a lot of threads open for the possibility of more stories, and I’d hinted that Yanko might become a powerful wizard who had a grand destiny waiting for him. About a year after I finished the novellas, I started writing Warrior Mage during National Novel Writing Month. By the following spring, it was ready to go.
As I mentioned in the boxed set introduction, Warrior Mage isn’t really a complete story in and of itself, even though it’s around 100,000 words (or a 400-page novel). From the beginning, I’d imagined the four or five books that would become the Chains of Honor series as parts of one continuous story, much like some of the fantasy trilogies (and even longer series) I’d read in my youth. You hated the cliffhanger endings, especially if the next book hadn’t been published yet, but in the end, you got this sweeping, epic adventure that spanned continents and in which there was time for the often young protagonist to grow up, and—as is frequently the case in fantasy—to grow into his or her power and figure out his place in the world.
That was very much my vision for Yanko and the Chains of Honor books. Thanks for checking out the first one!
Part I
1
Yanko stifled a groan, trying to blink away the sand in his eyes and spit out the dirt plastering his tongue. Pain shot from his hands to his neck as his arms were nearly twisted from their sockets. He tried to ignore the titters whispering from the rows of young men and women watching him, but embarrassment flushed his cheeks. He couldn’t see them—he couldn’t see much more than people’s shoes at the moment—but he knew his father and uncle were watching too. Probably with their faces buried in their hands.
“How’s that taste, kid?” the behemoth grinding his knee into Yanko’s back asked.
Kid? Yanko was eighteen now, the same age as most of the other Stargrind applicants. Just because this hulking thug had been in prison or chained to the oars in a longship for long enough to grow a beard down to his chest didn’t mean Yanko was the anomaly here. He shifted his hips, trying to buck the big man off him, but with his arms pinned behind his back, he couldn’t find the necessary leverage. His opponent only shoved him deeper into the dirt of the training arena.
“Tastes fine,” Yanko rasped around the dust in his throat. “A little nutrient depleted perhaps, but nothing some enhanced compost wouldn’t help.”
“What?” The thug jostled Yanko, as if he had been speaking in a foreign language.
“Doesn’t anyone study the earth sciences these days?”
“Earth magic is for old women and simpering slugs.” The brute’s head lowered, so he could growl, “Which one are you?” in Yanko’s ear.
Before Yanko could come up with a witty reply, not that one had been poised on the tip of his tongue, the proctor’s red and black boots came into view.
“Do you yield, White Fox?”
Yanko swallowed. He wanted nothing more than to stretch down into the earth with his senses and create a quake that would hurl his tormentor into the harbor for the sharks to munch on. But magic was forbidden in the dueling portion of the exam, and he couldn’t have summoned the necessary concentration, anyway, not with dirt caking the insides of his eyelids. There was a reason even experienced warrior mages had bodyguards.
“Yes,” he whispered. He had no other choice.
“What?” his tormentor asked, twisting Yanko’s arms more painfully behind his back. “I don’t think anyone heard you.”
That drew more titters from the crowd, but thankfully the proctor said, “Enough, Sly Wolf. Let him up.”
Sly Wolf. What a clan name for that thug. He was about as sly and cunning as a lizard of burden. If not for his strength and superior reach...
His opponent stood up, and blood rushed back into Yanko’s fingertips, the sensation almost as painful as being pinned. He shook out his arms and told himself not to make excuses for his performance. He had done well in the earlier rounds—far better than he expected. There was no shame in second place.
Or so he thought. When he risked a glance toward the logs where the applicants’ family members and tutors stood, he spotted his father shaking his head and muttering something to his uncle. Yanko bit his lip and looked away. What had he expected?
“The winner of the combat stage of the test is Sly Wolf,” the proctor announced to the crowd.
The champion grinned through his beard and thrust his muscled arms upward in victory. The other applicants chanted a hasty chorus of the appreciation song, but it sounded forced. Understandable. Sly Wolf had pummeled many of them too.
“The next stage of the test is the obstacle course.” The proctor extended a hand toward the harbor where an ancient lizard skeleton the size of a great whale rose out of the shallows, its bones long ago preserved and strengthened so they would stand up to people clambering over them. Floating platforms, swinging ropes, and stationary whirlwinds of air waited to challenge the applicants. “You are allowed to use the mental sciences during this portion of the test. It is a physical event, but it’s unlikely you’ll pass without calling upon them. You’ll have ten minutes to finish, but remember, only the top ten applicants will be accepted into Stargrind this year.”
Sly Wolf stalked toward the beach, and the crowd skittered aside to let him pass. Most of the students were leaner, like Yanko, with little hope of reaching six feet in height. There had been speculation that Sly Wolf had Turgonian ancestors, but only pure bloods were supposed to be allowed into the elite warrior mage academy, so Yanko doubted that was true. The man was just a freak.
Yanko picked up his practice blades from where they lay in the dust of the arena, a saber and a kyzar, the short stabbing sword used for finishing an opponent. Alas, it hadn’t found the opportunity to finish anything against Sly Wolf. Belatedly, he wondered if he should have simply used the saber and tried the one-bladed, side-forward attack style the Turgonian prisoner in the salt mine had shown him. It came more naturally to him, but he hadn’t dared stray from the two-bladed Nurian style, not in front of the proctors.
After dusting off his weapons and putting them away, Yanko hunted around for his hair tie. At some point during the fight, his topknot had tumbled free. He probably looked like a woman shambling around with his shoulder-length black hair dangling about his face.
He spotted the red silk band and as he bent to pick it up, someone jostled him from behind. Hard.
“Better not dawdle, White Fox,” a female applicant said, holding up a sheet of paper. “You’re in the first round.”
Yanko grimaced at that revelation. Since he had advanced so far in the combat rounds, his arms were weary, and he had hoped the proctors would put him at the end, so he would have more time to rest.
“Maybe he expects his mother to show up to help him pass,” a man who looked like the woman’s brother said, glowering at Yanko as he spoke. “Or is she too busy sinking Nurian ships and thieving from good people?”
Yanko wanted to snarl that he had no idea where she was—she had left when he had been less than a year old, and he had no memory of her—but he forced himself to keep his mouth shut. He turned his back on the pair and tried to tie his hair up as he strode toward the beach, but the brother was not done talking. He trotted after and shoved Yanko in the shoulder, keeping him from putting up his hair.
“Only honored families wear their hair up,” the brother said, snatching at the silk tie.
Yanko kept him from getting it but did not dare retaliate. There had to be proctors watching, and any fighting with other applicants, outside of the dueling event, would get him kicked out before the exam even ended. “My family is still moksu,” he said and started walking again, though he watched the troublemaker out of the corner of hi
s eye.
“Some bureaucrat made a mistake then,” the brother said. “You’re delusional if you think they’re going to let the son of some pirate bitch into Stargrind.”
Yanko kept walking, though his cheeks were flaming for the second time in ten minutes. He was almost running by the time he reached the beach, but that wasn’t a bad thing because the proctor standing on an observation platform out in the water was already calling the first three names, including Yanko’s. Fortunately, Sly Wolf wasn’t in his heat. Not that he thought the big man could keep up with him—Yanko had always been one of the fastest runners in his village, and he thought he had the mental and physical agility for this—but the brute might shove his opponents into the water, just to be difficult. A fast time was everything in this event, and falling into the harbor would mean a delay.
Yanko removed his dusty tunic, tossed it on a log, and waded toward the starting platform, which hovered a foot above the water at the back end of the giant lizard’s tail. One of the other applicants who had been called floated across the choppy waves, a breeze whipping at the layers of his elegant green and gold clan robe. There was no reason to wear so much clothing for this, but the dress was a reminder that Yanko had never had wizard’s robes in his life. Such garments, often with magical protections woven into the fabric, were expensive, and Yanko’s family might have been prosperous once, but that had gone the way of their status.
“Wasting his energy,” Yanko told himself as the student passed over his head and alighted on the platform, not a droplet of water spattering his robe.
“He’s got it to spare,” said the short, wiry man wading out alongside Yanko. “That’s Temaris Gold Hawk. They say he’s been making fireballs since he was two. And making a stoat’s prick of himself almost as long.” The man flashed a quick smile at Yanko. “I’m Tam Tam.”
“Yanko.” It was the first time anyone had smiled at him that day, and he nodded back in appreciation. “Ferret god’s luck to you.”
“Thanks. I need it. Crowds make me nervous.” The wiry man waved toward the dozens of vibrantly painted war, fishing, and merchant ships tied to the docks and the dozens more sailing in and out of the harbor. Whether the craft were at rest or not, the wooden decks were full of observers. The city of Red Sky stretched along the beach, and people were out on the flat roofs of the white stucco buildings, as well.
Yanko wasn’t worried about them, but he understood the feeling of being nervous. He could sense his father’s and uncle’s eyes boring into the back of his head as he waded into deeper water, his family’s expectations almost palpable in the humid sea air.
With the water chest deep, they reached the platform. Yanko stretched to grab the edge and pulled himself up. The wooden square wobbled when he stood up, and Gold Hawk, a tall, lanky young man who didn’t appear old enough to grow chin hair, gave Yanko a disdainful frown.
Yanko ignored him and focused on the white vertebrae stretching across the harbor in front of him, sloping up to the massive hipbones and rib cage. Even with the feet anchored in the sand a few feet below the surface, the skeleton rose nearly thirty feet over their heads. Only one of them could run up the bone tail at a time, and he intended to be first. Three women in clan robes stood out on platforms underneath the rib cage, final-year students at Stargrind, Yanko had been told. Each of them had been assigned one of the applicants, with the instructions to make the course difficult. Yanko hoped to get to them quickly, before they could craft too many obstacles to hurl at him.
“I suppose you’re quite proud of your swordsmanship,” Gold Hawk said, still sneering down his nose.
Yanko glanced at the proctor, hoping the man would start the test soon. He didn’t want to chat; he just wanted to get this over with. Maybe if he was accepted, his father would finally be proud of him, finally have faith that Yanko could do the one thing the entire clan had been wanting him to do since he had shown magical aptitude at three years old: become a warrior mage, distinguish himself in battle, and redeem his family’s honor.
“They’re not going to let you into Stargrind even if you pass, you know,” Gold Hawk said.
Tam Tam had also pulled himself onto the platform, and his brow furrowed in confusion at this. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“He’s a White Fox,” Gold Hawk said.
That didn’t smooth the other man’s brow. Yanko hoped the test would start before Gold Hawk explained it. In truth, he hadn’t expected anyone here to know who he was or about his family’s disgrace, except perhaps for the proctors. Applicants came from hundreds of miles away, all over the Thousand Fjords region, and Yanko hadn’t thought his family was that well known.
“The son of Captain Snake Heart Pey Lu White Fox,” Gold Hawk explained further.
“Oh,” Tam Tam said with sudden understanding. Yes, here on the coast, there wouldn’t be many people who hadn’t heard of the more infamous pirates. And Snake Heart, commander of the Midnight Fleet, certainly qualified as that. Tam Tam’s smile vanished, and he regarded Yanko with new wariness.
“Applicants,” the proctor called, his voice magically amplified. “Ready yourselves.”
Yanko and Tam Tam crept to the edge, making the floating platform wobble. Gold Hawk rose into the air. He might be able to levitate up the tail, but the rest of the course involved ducking and climbing through bones and supports, as well as dodging attacks.
“Begin,” the proctor announced at the same time as he flung a firecracker into the air. It exploded in fiery blue and red sparkles, drawing cheers from the nearby ships.
Yanko barely noticed it. He had leaped for the tail as soon as the proctor spoke. Tam Tam jumped immediately after him and landed just behind him on the bone bridge, jostling him as they nearly dropped onto the same vertebra. Yanko didn’t know if it was accidental or intentional, but he did not let it slow him. He charged up the ancient bone knobs, hoping to make it to the top before his competitors caught up with him.
One of the wind vortexes that had been hovering at the surface of the water rose, and wind battered Yanko, nearly blasting him from his perch. Then one of the bones grew so slippery, his cloth shoe slid off it. His leg pitched over the side, and he almost followed, but he contorted his body and flailed his arms, catching the tail before he fell. Tam Tam leaped over him, taking the lead.
Growling, Yanko raced the rest of the way to the top, then slid down a rope that bucked and swayed, as if it, too, was the victim of a nearby whirlwind. He struggled to use his body weight to make it swing out the way he needed to in order to reach a platform hovering under the skeleton’s hipbones. But it was too far.
Though he hated to pause, he slowed down enough to summon his concentration. He corralled some of the wind gusting across the harbor, trying to keep it away from the temperamental vortexes that someone was controlling, then gave himself a great push in the back even as he leaped from the rope. As he flew through the air, wondering if he would reach the platform, he glimpsed a black fin protruding from the water underneath him. A shark? He had been joking earlier; they shouldn’t truly be in the shallow water of the harbor.
Fortunately, he made it to the platform, landing on all fours. That was a good thing, since it tipped precariously, almost hurling him into the water. He scrambled for the center, expecting it to stabilize, but it tipped in the opposite direction. Suspicious, he checked the students responsible for making this difficult. Not surprisingly, one with her raven hair in long braids was focused on him. Yanko had to steady himself enough to leap for another rope, this one dangling more than ten feet away, but with the platform rocking and bucking, he would be lucky not to end up hurled out to the deck of one of those ships.
He wished he were on land, so he could call up a swarm of bees to harry her, but the air was devoid of insects. Even the seagulls had left the area. Shooed away by one of the proctors? Yanko was doubtlessly one of the few who had studied the earth sciences and could commune with animals, but maybe they knew that. Or maybe he was wastin
g time thinking about this. Indeed, Tam Tam had alighted on his platform.
A gust of wind slammed into him, knocking him into the water. At least Yanko wasn’t the only one being picked on. Gripping the edge of his rocking perch with both hands, he focused on the platform underneath the braided woman. Hers was, alas, attached to the sea floor with bamboo poles. He ran his senses down them, searching for a weakness. If he could distract her, she would not be able to harass him until she recovered.
The bamboo appeared secure, sunken into concrete anchors at the bottom, but myriad sea life touched his awareness. Having grown up in a village in the mountains, he hadn’t been to the coast often, and he had only tried to communicate with a fish once. It had been an alien experience, more akin to dealing with reptiles than mammals, but he reached out to some of the bigger ones near the platform supports and tried to implant the idea that it would be delightfully fun to leap out of the water and fly over that platform...
Most of the fish ignored him—or he was simply ineffective at conveying the idea of fun to them—but two small silver ones flew out of the water, one smacking the woman in the face. It wasn’t a great attack, but it was enough. It startled her, and she squealed. Yanko’s platform stopped rocking.
He didn’t hesitate. He took a running start and flung himself toward the rope. Tam Tam had already dealt with his obstacle and was on an adjacent rope.
Beginnings: Five Heroic Fantasy Adventure Novels Page 107
