by Guy Antibes
Vish thought he heard a shout in Peleor’s voice. The roar of the crowd made it difficult for Vish to hear. He felt the sharp point of a knife penetrate his mail shirt and stop. He turned around and looked at yet another thug. He couldn’t use magic in a crowd of this size and doubted if Peleor could either.
Vish pulled his knife out and ran it across the hand of the man whose knife had hung up on the cloth of his cloak. Peleor’s doing or his mail shirt? The man punched Vish in the nose and all judgment left his mind as the dagger easily parted the man’s hard leather vest and plunged into his midsection. Vish slid the knife across and then pulled it out. He had read in a book on self-defense, that a long cut would be more effective than a single plunge of the knife.
His opponent grabbed his stomach and crouched down. The crowd drowned out his cries. A little space developed, so Vish quickly hid his knife and slipped through the crowd, stumbling out into the street. Men stood at the entrance to the hall gazing at the continuing complaints as Peleor grabbed Vish and led him around the building.
“There is Sulm,” Peleor said, pointing across the square.
The tutor stood talking to a man in a hooded cloak in the darkness. The guard entered the square carrying torches and passed the two men. Vish recognized Fenakyr’s face in the fleeting light of the torch. The guards proceeded to the packer guildhall.
“Can you stop Fenakyr and Sulm?” Vish asked. “I want to put an end to this, right now!”
“Only if we move closer.” Peleor said.
Vish followed him around the edges of the square, away from the entrance.
Voices began to emerge from the guildhall along with men running and yelling. “Someone’s been killed!” “The city guard is here!”
Men began to flow out of hall as if a dike had collapsed. Peleor urged Vish to run. Fenakyr fled one way and Sulm another.
“Sulm,” Vish said to Peleor as they passed the road that Fenakyr had taken and spotted Sulm in the distance.
“A little closer,” Peleor picked up speed, leaving Vish behind, but then Sulm suddenly stopped.
The tutor stood, his legs encased in shafts of ice. Peleor swayed on his feet from the effort. “That spell saps me of all power,” Peleor said.
“I’m alive, Sulm,” Vish said.
The tutor’s eyes widened with fear. “You were killed. I heard them call out.”
“Not I. I killed your assassin.” Vish lifted up his shirt, showing the mail. “I didn’t trust you, Sulm, and now you’ll pay for what you’ve done.”
Sulm’s forehead shone with sweat despite the ice holding him in place.
“How much did Fenakyr pay you?”
“Fenakyr? I don’t know who you mean.”
“We saw you talking to him just now. He went the other way and we followed you. Vish pointed him out to you when he visited his father after the hunt. Even I remember that. You’re pathetic,” Peleor said.
“You’ve failed Fenakyr twice, now. Perhaps they won’t give you another chance and neither will I,” Vish said. The pain of such betrayal turned his face hot and the only way he could erase the hurt was to plunge his dagger into Sulm’s chest.
The tutor gagged and tried to speak, but his lips moved like those of a dying fish. They both left him standing in the street, the ice still holding him up.
Peleor looked back and muttered a few words. The ice holding Sulm up had not yet begun to melt. “That will be an interesting case for the guard. Help me walk for a bit.” The sorcerer staggered and Vish supported Peleor as they made their way back to the Imperial Compound.
A block away, they shed their cloaks by boxes of trash.
Vish wiped his bloody knife on his cloak and stuffed their disguises deep into the refuse.
The enormity of the night’s events crashed down on Vish. “What have I done? I killed two people tonight, including my old friend.” Vish had to sit down. He looked up at Peleor.
“He tried to have you killed, twice,” Peleor said. “He would have done it again, if you let him go.”
Vishan shook his head. “I don’t know that. I could have warned him off or cut his hand to remind him or something else.” He remembered the woodcutter in the hall and reconsidered his statement. “I was caught up in the moment. I thought of the look on the assassin’s face and the angry words of the toughs in the street. I didn’t want to face them again.” He put his hands to his face and felt the dampness of tears.
“Your father kills his enemies all the time. Look what he did at the Hunt. He ordered your brother and Fenakyr to rough you up a little bit.”
“And I nearly died.”
Peleor nodded. “Exactly. In a sense it’s kill or be killed. You’ll have to face worse someday. At least now you know you’re capable of it.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like killing another person. I didn’t want kill Sulm, not really,” Vish said, looking up at Peleor, who still swayed from exhaustion.
“Good. It’s good that you don’t like it, but there it is. Sulm died for a good reason. He arranged for you to be assassinated, twice. You’re a target and these last two attempts on your life won’t be the last. Feel bad about having to do away with your old tutor. Just don’t hesitate if you have to injure someone to survive. If you do, you won’t.” Peleor put his hand to his head and fell to the ground.
“Are you all right?” Vish asked.
“I can make it to your house. Let me stay the night and I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
Vish helped Peleor to the compound and up the steps to his house. Princess Yalla entered the hallway. “I know you are recently a man, but I’d recommend you two not making a habit of spending the night drinking.” She turned to Peleor. “I believe the time has come for you to return to your residence. After tonight, I’ll have other uses for the room.” She swished her silk robes and left them looking after her with their mouths open.
As he undressed, after helping Peleor to his sister’s old bedroom, Vish took off his clothes. His hand felt sticky and he drew it back from his shirt. There was blood, but not much. He took off the mail coat and looked at the wound in the mirror. He had to smile. His mother never looked at his back.
He picked up the mail shirt and noticed the deformed rings that stopped the knife’s progress. Vish sat down in shock. He thought the assassin’s knife hadn’t penetrated very far, but it did. The wound was nearly half an inch wide, and maybe the same in depth. The cut had already stopped bleeding, but he’d have to clean up the caked blood that surrounded it. Without Peleor’s help and his old coat of mail, he’d be dead.
He vowed that Fenakyr would join Sulm in due time.
~~~
CHAPTER SEVEN
~
A MESSENGER STOOD IN THE ENTRYWAY to Princess Yalla’s home with a summons for Vishan Daryaku.
“A message from the Imperial Army Command to Prince Vishan Daryaku.” The messenger bowed, placed the message in Vishan’s hand and left.
Evidently, the time had come for Vish to enter into his father’s service. The emperor had unexpectedly waited two extra years. Vish, now seventeen and eighteen inches taller than when he became a Man of the Empire, now faced the role his father had decided for him. At least he hadn’t been re-tested by the Sorcerer’s Tower.
He wondered what they’d make of him now? With Sulm’s ‘disappearance’, Peleor taught Vishan all he knew except for illusions, glamours as Peleor described it. Vish supposed the Peleor felt the need to hold something back.
Vish could now encase a man’s body in ice, throw flames at least ten paces and a myriad other things. Peleor had declared him a man of power that rivaled his own. Vish had observed Peleor’s strength and had kept his demonstrations just under his tutor’s. His suspected his own strength now exceeded Peleor’s.
It didn’t matter. They’d most likely be separated if the message drafted him into his father’s service.
Prince Vishan Daryaku,
An escort will arrive tomorrow one hour past sunr
ise. You will travel to the Peshakan Military Outpost for training in the Imperial Army. You are allowed one change of clothes in one bag. The army will provide all other clothing and essentials.
General Horakon
Red Division
Imperial Army
“What is it, Vishan?” Princess Yalla said, not able to look over his shoulder any longer.
“Peshakan Military Outpost. I’m to leave tomorrow at dawn.”
The princess growled with displeasure. “And I can’t even provide you with a proper send off. The Emperor has called me to spend the night with him. I leave in an hour.”
“Do you know anything about this outpost?”
The princess had an angry look about her. “It’s where your father sends his boys to see if they can make it in the army. You might spend a few years at Peshakan. It’s a place of testing. Harsh and unforgiving, as I understand it.” Her face softened. “You’ll make it through, my beloved son. You are my tough one.” She pinched his cheek.
“I can only take one change of clothes.”
“Take the toughest that you have with no regard for style. Don’t bother with your mail shirt, you grew out of that long ago and they’ll issue a new one to you… much heavier. Everything thing will be tougher, heavier, harder. So will you be when you return.” She put her hand to his face. “Let me know how you fare.”
She looked outside. “I must spend the rest of my time preparing for my night with the Emperor.” Yalla hugged her son. The ferocity of her embrace surprised him.
“I’ll be okay, mother.”
She nodded her head, but he could see the tears in her eyes. She waved them away. “Know that I love you as a mother, Vishan. Our relationship has always been at arms length as befits a Princess and her princely son.” She sniffed and wiped a few tears away. “I wished it might have been different. Go with my love.”
She ran into her rooms leaving Vishan alone in the entry hall, the letter nearly forgotten in his hand.
Vishan spent his last evening telling stories to his two brothers. He’d miss them most of all.
~
The monotonous landscape rolled by. The Peshakan plain bordered the southern Duchy of Cuminee. The Duchy remained independent despite its proximity to Dakkor. The Cuminee people had little to add to the empire other than their supply of raw silk, which they shipped to the entire world.
Vish reviewed in his head what he had learned about them. They were a race of dark skinned people with yellow or orange hair, generally frizzy. They prized scholarship and were great historians, inside of their few cities, but outside most of the people were nomads, ambling through the grassy lands hunting the large animals that inhabited them or cultivating fruits and grains for which the rest of Dakkor had little taste. Most perceived the Cuminee culture as barbaric except for the nobles who owned the large silk plantations right on the southwestern coast far from the border. Fights for dominance among the tribes could disrupt the interior and northern sections of the duchy for generations.
Sulm had always told him that the Cuminee people lived in their own little world and that was fine with everyone else. The Duke let the barbarian element of the Cuminee people run rampant on the plains. The tribes regularly raided other tribes. A range of mountains protected the Duchy of Pish to their east so that meant the barbarians would go north into Dakkor on raids from time to time. The attacks were made on the settlers, who eked out an existence on the more arid Peshakan plain of southern Dakkor.
As the military transport wagon continued crossing the plain, Vish didn’t relish spending the next two or three years riding back and forth in the dust and dirt. The plain wasn’t a desert, but it seemed there wasn’t much between farms and the small dreary towns that dotted the land. Even the foliage looked more gray than green except for the few patches of cultivated farms that seemed to freshen up the land from time to time. Even though they traveled inside the transport, road dust had settled on their clothes and hair. Vish kept rubbing his face and hands to knock it off from time to time.
He wished Peleor had accompanied him. The man still plowed, sowed and harvested the small farm his parents had left him. Vish hadn’t even gotten a chance to say goodbye. He still had his thoughts and all of the books he had nearly memorized in his head. Perhaps the outpost might have a library with something new, although Sulm had once informed Vish that the military section in the bookshelves in his room would be the envy of any general.
Vish didn’t trust all that Sulm had once told him. He thought back to the night he killed his former tutor. Fenakyr still roamed free in the Imperial City and in his barony far to the north from where Vish would learn the arts of war first hand.
He looked at the five other occupants of the military wagon. The conveyance could hold fifteen or twenty. Three of them stretched out on the seats, sleeping, or tried to anyway. Four soldiers and one junior officer. None of which showed the slightest inclination to engage Vish in conversation other than the necessary comments and requests while eating at the inns that supplied them with lodging and food along the way. Vish had thought they’d be spending their nights at roadside camps, but he didn’t mind a good meal and a soft bed after the hard seat and knocking about in the poorly sprung wagon.
The drivers told them just after they left a ramshackle tavern in the middle of nowhere that they’d spend the next night at the outpost. After two and a half weeks of travel, arrival at his final destination was much looked forward to. He looked forward to walking on land again, no matter where.
The tiny window that the drivers communicated with their passengers slid open. “Half an hour. Look sharp!”
Vish didn’t know what to do other than grab a few handfuls of water from the water skins that hung from the roof and splash them on his face. He threw more on his head and ran his fingers through his dark hair. His hands looked muddy from the dust, but more light washings eliminated that. He let his hair grow after becoming a man and it now flowed past his shoulders. The other men’s hair were cut short, but they did much the same thing with the water from their skins. The sleeping men slowly rose up to yawn and stretch in the cramped confines of the cabin.
The men didn’t look bothered, so Vish let their even temper soothe his nerves. However his breathing increased as the screech of wooden brakes indicated they had arrived at the gates to the outpost.
The wagon door opened and the men filed out. Vish let the others precede him, and then he stepped out of the transport and gazed at the outpost. It didn’t look like much. The stone walls looked like they had been gouged from the dirt that surrounded the fort. He couldn’t even detect a difference in color.
“Daryaku! Over here!” A man with markings of leadership on his uniform beckoned. He joined him.
“I will give you some leeway since you’re new. Generally we get your kind when they’ve just turned to men so you’re a bit older and I’ll expect you to pick things up a bit quicker. Stand straighter… as straight as you can, with your arms at your sides and your face looking straight ahead.”
Vishan knew that the man wanted him to stand at attention, which he did. He’d seen palace guards standing that way since he could remember.
The man grunted. “That is attention. Put your arms behind your back and spread your feet shoulder width.”
He’d seen that too. “That’s called ‘parade rest’ if we’re marching in front of officers and ‘at ease’. Good, good. You already know some basic stances.” His instructor walked around him and then punched him in the side of the face, knocking him down. Before Vish blacked out, the man leaned down and spoke in his ear. “And that’s what you’ll get if you give me any trouble, Prince or not.”
~
The sun peeked over the windowsill and its light poked into Vishan’s eyes. He woke to a splitting headache and rose up on his elbow.
A voice from behind spoke. “I see you’ve recovered. Sergeant Vaka has killed his share of young men doing that. He’s only given permission t
o do it once, so you won’t have to worry about that again. He has a lot of other versatile ways to inflict pain in his bag of tools, however.”
The voice behind him came into view. “I’m Healer Tosytan. You’ll be fine enough to join the others at the midday meal. I took the liberty of taking your measurements and procuring a couple of uniforms. They may not fit perfectly, but we don’t get tailors all the way out here.” The man blurted out a laugh. “Don’t worry about your uniform. You’ll fit right in. I see you haven’t lived a totally sheltered life. Scars on your arms, chest and shoulder and a small incision in the small of your back. No medical operations?”
“No,” Vishan said, sitting up. He only had small clothes on. “I took your civilian clothes to the quartermaster. You won’t get them back until you leave us.”
“Yes, Healer Tosytan.”
“Good. Every address is formal; don’t forget that, unless you are talking to those of your own rank. You address Vaka as Sergeant Vaka and no other way. You should address those below you the same way. Guardsman Tinker, Guardsman Miller, until they give you permission to do otherwise. You know what I mean?”
“What rank am I?”
Tosytan laughed and gave Vishan a ceramic cup filled with a milky white liquid. “Drink it up, all of it.”
Vishan complied, but it tasted awful.
“Something for your stomach and your headache.”
He nodded and handed the cup back to the healer.
“You are a Flag Bearer to start.”
“What’s that?” Vishan furrowed his brow. He’d never read about such a rank in his books.
“Something an Outpost Commander came up with long ago. You are only good for one thing, holding the flag of your father’s empire for this unit of the Red Army. It gives you the right to wear an officer’s uniform and little else.”
“What about my training?”
Tosytan shook his head. “You’ll get more training than you ever wanted. A Flag Bearer only puts on his fancy uniform when riding out of the outpost. When you’re in here you are at the bottom rung and that includes everybody on the post. Even the Captain’s whore.”
