Gods & Dragons: 8 Fantasy Novels

by Daniel Arenson

  “Not if it’s just a scratch,” the long-haired swordsman said, and raised his sword lazily til its tip pointed directly at Draneck’s eyes. His nonchalant tone was betrayed by the flaring of his nostrils and a quick shift of his hips to set himself for the match.

  The guardsman raised his hand between them then jumped back as he slashed down. “Begin!”

  Garet could barely see the swords move, they flashed back and forth so quickly. Steel rasped and rang as the two young men jumped about the ring, each trying to drive the other back against the spectators. The speed at which they attacked and avoided each other reminded Garet of Mandarack’s quickness in battle. These two men had the speed of a Shrieker! The crowd cheered each attack and gasped at close escapes.

  Draneck slipped, his foot catching on a crack between the stones, and the other man lunged at him. Draneck desperately twisted his body so that the tip of the sword lanced past his head. He slammed his own sword’s bell-shaped guard into his opponent’s blade, forcing him back. Even in the back of the crowd, Garet could hear their breath coming like bellows as they kept up a continual exchange of thrusts and blows. Draneck had recovered his balance and now the two men slowed their pace. They circled each other, sidling cross-legged, looking for an opportunity to dart in under the other’s sword. The young man who had mocked Salick took one such opportunity, trying to reach around Draneck’s blade and stab him in the side, but he paid for it when Draneck circled the blade tightly, flung it to the side and then, with a twitch of his wrist, sliced back across the man’s forearm.

  Draneck jumped back and lowered the tip of his sword. Between gasps of breath he asked, “Yield, Shoronict?”

  The guardsman had stepped between them, one hand raised and the other on his own sword’s hilt. Everyone looked at the blood dripping from the young man’s arm to stain the stone beneath his feet. Without a word, Shoronict turned and pushed through the crowd, leaving the circle. Draneck raised his sword and jabbed it into the air above his head while the people surrounding him slapped their hands in congratulations. He gave a low, exaggerated bow to his admirers, a nod of thanks to the guardsman, and strutted over to the Banes.

  “So, Salick, you’re back,” he said. His face was red with the effort of his win, but he held himself tall, chest thrust out. “Well, Cousin, did you see? Shoronict has been bragging of his skill with the sword since he joined the duelists last spring.” The young man smirked. “Let him brag now!”

  Draneck smile faded as he caught the look on Salick’s face.

  “Cousin,” she scolded, “does my uncle know that you’re fighting duels in the street? What do you think he will say about this match?”

  Draneck tapped the flat of the blade into the gloved palm of his left hand. Little drops of blood fell off the tip of the sword to the pavement between them. “I’m a third son. Father has two other, duller sons to make into merchants.” He wiped the sword blade on the leather of his boot and slid it back into its sheath. “He’s already given in to the inevitable and allowed me to join the Duelists Guild.” He touched the silver-chased hilts of his fencing sword. “How else do you think I could afford something like this?”

  Salick shook her head. “Dueling just causes trouble. Doesn’t the Guild get enough excitement protecting traders?”

  Draneck sneered, “Not enough missions for us all, and the higher ranks keep them for themselves,” he said. His tone turned savage as he looked down into his cousin’s eyes. “You know how it is, Salick. If you’re not a Bane, you have to live a very ordinary life in Shirath. The only chance for any fun, any excitement, any glory is to become a Duelist.”

  “There are the games in the Banehall plaza…” Salick began.

  “The games!” Draneck said, one hand slapping his forehead. “You know as well as I do that nobody plays in the games after they grow up.” He looked down, breaking contact with Salick’s eyes. “I’ve grown now. I don’t have to listen to my father or to you. You’re not a lord’s daughter anymore, and I will be much more than a poor cousin.” He turned and left without another word. Salick raised her hand but did not call out.

  “Come on, Salick,” Marick said softly. “The sun’s almost down.”

  Each keeping to their own thoughts, the Banes left the plaza and walked up the swell of the great bridge to cross the river.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A NEW LIFE

  Nothing in the Shirath Banehall was what Garet had expected.

  It was worse.

  Atop the Banehall roof, he could see almost the entire city of Shirath, save for what lay hidden behind the great Palace across the river. Unlike the roofs of the ward buildings, which were divided by high walls into easily patrolled sections, the balustrade of the Banehall roof was barely waist high. Garet knelt against it, feeling the grit of mortar and stone against his chin, gazing longingly at the vista beyond the walls. The clouds above were flat and white, the first sign of fall in the foothills. He wondered what autumn would be like here, with no tree higher than his hip allowed to stand inside the walls, and every strip of green boxed in and pruned to within an inch of its life. Maybe if he could get out into the fields surrounding Shirath, help harvest the spring-planted wheat or the last of the apples from the orchards beyond, he might feel more a part of this place. But no, he thought bitterly, as he had been told, there are few things that a Black Sash does, and many they do not.

  Without rising, he turned slowly. Looking west gave him a strange feeling. Three more cities stood beyond even his vantage point, somewhere along the Ar. When he had travelled the prairie, he had felt as if the whole of the South was waiting for him. Now he wondered if he would ever be allowed to leave this city again. Looking east did not help. That way lay only memories and regrets. To the north and east were nothing but the distant hills lining the river valley, as dark and oppressive as the hills in which he had been born. With a sigh, he leaned back against the wall.

  He fingered the material of his sash and remembered how proud he had been to put it on in Old Torrick. Now, he wanted nothing more than to tear it off and send it fluttering down onto the faces of the people below. The clothes he had thought were a key to a free and adventurous life had instead become a prison of ritual and regulations. Even now, in the few precious, unsupervised hours he had each week, he was avoiding his ‘duties’. According to Farix, the Gold in charge of the dormitory room Garet now shared with five other Blacks, all years younger than himself, each hour not spent studying, exercising, or attending the needs of higher Banes should be spent in memorizing the numerous lists of Shirath Banehall Masters and their deeds. He should now be crouched at the desk beside his narrow bed, reciting these lists over and over again because, as Farix would daily remind him, he needed to pass tests that most boys his age had passed years ago, and if he ever wanted to catch up, he should “apply himself.”

  The thought of going over those lists again had driven Garet to the roof. The pages lay folded within his vest so that, if he was caught, he could claim that he had only been looking for a quiet place to study. Marick would be proud of me, he thought with a smile. He desperately wished the young Bane was here with him now. But both he and Dorict were busy training with the other Blues, and they barely had time to wave to him at meals.

  With an even deeper sigh, he lay flat on the roof and looked up at the thin curtain of clouds. He missed his friends. The other boys in the dormitory were half in awe and half contemptuous of him. They envied him his role in the killing of three demons, although none quite believed the rumours that he had dispatched one on his own. His ignorance of their customs, expressions, and traditions, however, made him seem like a halfwit to them. They had also seen how Master Adrix had treated him when he had arrived that first evening.

  He could feel the heat on his face just thinking about it. When Salick had led him into the dining hall, Adrix had waved them over and questioned him in minute detail about his trip. For over an hour, he had tried to silence the grumblings of
his stomach while those about him, Adrix included, ate. The Banehall Master, a muscular, florid man who bellowed his questions, pointed his finger at Garet when he had finished the interrogation and had said, “Midlander, we have rules here, rules that were set down by the first Banes!” He leaned back and continued, loudly enough to be heard by every Bane in the room, “One of those rules is that no one is taken into the Banehall without the approval of the Hallmaster.” His eyes were pitiless. “I have not yet given that approval. Remove that uniform.”

  A gasp had gone up from some of the Masters at the head table. Behind him, Garet heard all talk cease among the lower Banes. Mortified by this attention, and fearing that he was to be expelled from the Hall, he had raised trembling hands and pulled the sash off to lay it on the table in front of Adrix, but the Hallmaster was looking at Mandarack, who sat several seats to his right. Adrix had a tight smile on his lips, as if he had just scored a private victory over the older man. Garet was struggling to loose the top button of the black vest when a woman to Adrix’s left broke in.

  “Master Adrix!” she cried out. “Is this necessary? I trust Master Mandarack’s judgement that this boy has shown the qualities of a Bane. To treat him this way in front of the whole Hall is shameful!” Two crutches leaned against the table beside her and she grabbed them as if intending to stand and face the Hallmaster.

  “Yes, Master Tarix,” Adrix replied, his eyes now back on the shaking Garet, “we know where your trust, and your loyalties lie.” He had then lazily waved a finger at Garet. “Continue, boy.”

  With the vest finally unbuttoned, Garet had slipped it off his shoulders and laid it on top of the sash. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Master Tarix pull herself up on her crutches and limp slowly out of the room. With Adrix still staring at him, he had no choice but to begin to unbutton his tunic, but was stopped by the light pressure of a hand on his shoulder. Mandarack stood beside him.

  “Hallmaster Adrix,” the old Bane said, his voice as dry and calm as ever, “if you wish to review Garet’s circumstances, I invoke my right as a Master in this Hall to meet on the matter after supper.”

  Several Masters had rolled their eyes at this. Adrix scowled but said nothing.

  “Salick,” Mandarack said to his apprentice, loudly enough for everyone in the dining room to hear, “take Garet to a guest room for the night.” He scooped up the vest and sash in his good hand. “And return these to him tomorrow.”

  Salick, seeing the chance, had taken the clothes quickly and pulled Garet out of the dining hall. She turned left outside the door and escorted him up a narrow staircase to the third floor of the Hall. There, she had deposited him in a bedroom facing the river wall. Before she left, she had turned as if to speak but said nothing. She clasped Garet’s vest and sash to her chest and looked at him, eyes flashing and the corners of her mouth pulled down. She had left, but not before he saw tears rolling down her face. Was he indeed going to be thrown out in the morning? After a very short time, Dorict had brought him a heaping plate of food and a mug of cool milk, but Garet could not eat.

  After a restless night, Salick had roused him early and given him back his clothes as if nothing had happened. She spoke little to him as she guided him to a dormitory for Blacks on the other side of the building. To Garet, the Banehall was a warren of training halls, dormitories, corridors, and staircases. Old Torrick’s Hall would have been lost in it, Garet realized. And now, after a month of living here, he was still getting lost, to the exasperation of Farix and the amusement of his roommates.

  Farix had been cool to Garet since Salick introduced them that first morning. Although some Banes, even some Masters, would give him a kind word or an encouraging pat on the shoulder in the corridors, Farix obviously looked to Adrix for the slant of his opinions. As a result, Garet received a bed with broken slats under a lumpy mattress. His belongings, not that they were very valuable—an old shirt, a pair of canvas pants, and tattered leather shoes—were lost for days before Farix dropped them at the foot of his bed, a look of disgust on his face.

  “Burn these, boy, or keep them out of sight—and smell,” he said, while the others giggled behind the Gold’s back.

  The remaining days had been no better. Farix had refused to believe that he could read and so had him copying his letters out like a rank beginner while the other Blacks laboured through the Demonary. The Gold was so obstinate that Garet hid his own copy of the book, with its corrections, under his mattress when Salick returned it to him on one of her rare visits.

  The physical training was not difficult. They ran around the Banehall’s exterior for an extended period each morning before breakfast. Every afternoon, they would lift heavy clubs of wood or stone, rolling them around their shoulders or waving them above their heads. Used to the work of the farm and kept fit by the trials of his journey from the Midlands, Garet found this practice easy. His dorm mates did not. They had been raised in the comfort of a city. Most had done little or no hard physical labour, for the work teams that went daily to the surrounding fields and pastures were made up of adults only. No child could run quickly enough—or at all—if a demon was spotted, Garet supposed, so why bother training? The five other boys in his room, all less than twelve years old, had done nothing more arduous than play kickball or wash dishes before becoming Banes. They coughed and wheezed after every run and moaned when hefting even the lightest club.

  What a waste of his life! He was already fit; he had proved that on the journey and in his encounters with the demons. What he really wanted to do was practice with weapons, like Dorict and Marick. He had glimpsed them in the smallest of the Banehall’s three gymnasiums, standing in a line of other Blues and swinging wooden poles back and forth in a choppy rhythm. But he dared not even wave to them, as Farix had repeatedly told him that he was still not a real Bane, and that he was not to “bother” any students or Masters until he was deemed worthy enough to speak to them.

  He rolled over and picked up a sliver of stone fallen from the low roof-wall and spun it at the lid of the trap door, left open and leaning against the opposite wall.

  “Ow!” Marick yelped, as the chip skipped off his head. “I thought you might want some company, but if that’s how you feel…” He stood on the ladder, rubbing his forehead and grinning.

  “Marick!” Garet cried, rolling to his feet and hurrying over to his friend. “Sorry! Are you hurt? Is there any blood?” He pulled away Marick’s hand to reveal a small scratch on the young Bane’s head. Biting his lip in contrition, he sat back on his heels and apologized again, “I’m so sorry, Marick. It was an accident. I really do want some company.”

  Marick wiped a drop of blood off his forehead and set his hand on the rim of the opening. “That’s all right, Midlander. If I were stuck in a room with that lot of babies, and with Farix sticking his long nose into my business all day, I’d be driven to violence as well.” He pulled up his other hand, showing that it held the end of a long pole. “Look at what I’ve brought you!” He passed the staff to Garet, who held it up in wonder. “Consider it a birthday present.” Marick announced grandly. His hands free, he climbed up on the roof and leaned against the wall. “You told the great seer, Alanick, that you don’t know when that day might be, so it might as well be today.”

  Garet ran his hand over the training weapon. Two fingers thick and as long as a pitch fork, the pole felt heavy in his hand. He tried to bend it, but it wouldn’t flex.

  “It’s made of ironwood from the hills north of Solantor,” Marick told him. “Even Dorict’s head won’t break it.”

  “How do you know?” Garet asked suspiciously. He ran his hand over the shaft, tapping the wide bronze rings at the ends.

  “Oh,” the young Bane replied airily, “a training accident.” He pulled Garet over to the corner of the roof, where the servants who maintained the Hall had left a pile of canvas and pots of dried tar. “Leave it under the canvas when you go back down.” He looked at the clouds, which streaked half the sky
in wispy sheets but threatened no rain. “It’ll be a month before we get any serious rain. So there’ll be no leaks to repair until then, which means that no one beside us will ever come up here.”

  “Us?” Garet asked, pausing his examination of his present.

  “You need a teacher, don’t you?” Marick asked. “And you’re unwilling to wait for the moldy rules of the Hall to let you start training with weapons, aren’t you?” He waited for a reply, drumming his fingers on the top of the railing.

  “I don’t want to give Master Adrix another reason to kick me out,” Garet protested, but he ran his eyes along the pole and then stepped forward into a guard position, trying to copy what he had seen the Blues do at the beginning of their practice.

  “You were found by Mandarack,” Marick said. “That’s enough reason for Adrix to hate you.” He grabbed the end of the pole and pulled it down into the proper angle. “No higher than the top of your head!” He stepped back and crossed his arms. “Now, you’ll never please Adrix or his toadies, so you’d best please yourself—and your friends. Step forward!”

  Garet took a step forward, pole held steady.

  “No, no!” Marick groaned. “Cross-step, don’t march. You’re not a guardsman on parade; you’re a Bane!” He demonstrated a quick step, his right leg going in front of the other and his left hip pointed forward. “Keep your head at the same level, now. Try again.”

  They practiced walking back and forth across the roof until they heard the bell signal all the Hall to supper.

  “There,” Marick said, clapping his hand on Garet’s back. “Even Tarix couldn’t train you any better.”