by Jocelyn Fox
“Now not bordering on treachery,” said Murtagh breathlessly.
“Calm down,” said Ramel absently. He found his mind still and clear, and he contemplated Rye’s questions seriously. “Perhaps you are right,” he said slowly. Her eyes widened and she leaned even further toward him. “I choose to serve as a page, and stars willing, I will serve as a squire and then as a Knight.” He nodded. “But no one should be compelled against their will to serve a master…or a mistress…they do not choose. That would be…” He stopped himself.
“Say it,” said Rye, her eyes alight with a strange fire.
“That would be slavery,” Ramel finished quietly. Rye was so close that he could see every individual lash framing her pale eyes and feel the faint warmth of her exhale wash over him as she sighed. He swallowed hard, wondering if this was what it was to want a woman: caught like a spider in a web, entangled in silken threads of desire, feeling both frozen and scorched at once, wanting something so very simple and yet so impossible as touching her hand.
“You are not so very young as you seemed at first, young knight-to-be,” Rye breathed.
“Ramel,” he whispered.
A faint smile curved her lips. “Ramel.” Then something flickered in her eyes and she leaned forward. He froze, every muscle in his body tensing as her scent surrounded him. She smelled faintly of forest and dark earth, as though she’d spent so much time in the Northern wilds that its scent had soaked into her skin. With one hand, she slid her fingers lightly through his hair, and then she kissed him gently on the forehead before she sat back and settled herself a very definite distance from him.
The feel of her lips against his skin sent a shudder racing through Ramel, doused quickly by the realization that she had kissed him on the forehead like a child. He was grateful for the remaining shadows as he felt his face heat. Murtagh studiously pretended to be searching the forest for any signs of the gauntlet.
“There are few things I feel guilty about,” said Rye quietly, looking over at Ramel, “but stealing your innocence might be toeing the line.” She lightened her words with half a grin.
“You can’t steal it if it’s freely offered,” pointed out Ramel in his best jocular voice, adding an arched eyebrow for emphasis. “And technically I’m not under a vow of celibacy until I’m a squire.”
Rye chuckled. “And that, in itself, Ramel, is enough to give me pause.” She smiled. “But you’ll do just fine after you have your Knight’s sword, believe me.”
“See? I’m telling you, the ladies love swords.” Ramel nudged Murtagh with the toe of his boot. His friend leaned back and grinned.
“Well, Walkers have a much rarer skill set,” countered Murtagh. “We aren’t as flashy as Knights and Guards, but I wouldn’t count us out.”
“Maybe I’ll just learn to Walk too, then,” said Ramel jauntily.
“You should,” said Rye. Both the young men waited for her to continue. “A broad skill set is never a bad thing, especially when you will face the gauntlet.” She nodded to the forest. The rim of the sun limned the horizon with molten gold, the sky now blushing pink with the sunrise. The pools of shadows lapping at the trees receded, and in the growing light the forest looked picturesque and beautiful. But Ramel knew that somewhere within its depths, the Knights and Guards were putting the squires through unfathomable tests of endurance, strength and mental agility. They were testing those who wished to join their ranks, body and spirit, pushing them past the breaking point. He wondered if any squires would die during the gauntlet this year, and then pushed the morbid thought firmly away. Instead, he directed his mind back to the subject of the Northerners. Another question occurred to him, and he turned to ask Rye, but the words died on his lips.
Rye was gone, leaving as silently as she’d appeared. No sign of her presence remained save for a few bent blades of grass.
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t miss that conversation,” said Murtagh.
Ramel flipped open the box of meat pastries and looked to see if there were any left. He triumphantly grabbed the last one. “You were the one who seemed a bit frightened by what she was saying,” he pointed out around a mouthful.
“You would be, too, if you had any sense,” replied Murtagh with a sigh. “But I suppose everyone is entitled to their own thoughts.”
“Are we, though?” Ramel asked seriously.
“I expected the topic of conversation to be guessing what trials the Knights and Guards have concocted for this year, not…this,” said Murtagh.
Ramel shrugged, deciding it was easier to feign nonchalance. “Doesn’t matter to me. What do you think about the blue smoke, then?”
As Murtagh began thinking out loud, trying to build a task that would require blue smoke on the part of the Knights or the squires, Ramel listened, but Rye’s words still echoed in his head.
Your freedom is an illusion.
He took a deep breath, gathered all her treacherous ideas and swept them into a corner of his mind. He would think about them, yes, but he vowed he would never speak of them again, not even to Murtagh. He realized his friend was waiting expectantly.
“Sorry,” he said with a grin. “Just thinking about that kiss she gave me.”
Murtagh shook his head. “Wasn’t even a proper kiss, so I don’t know what you’re mooning over.”
“It was more than you got, that’s for certain,” replied Ramel with a cheeky grin, and as the sun rose over the forest he let himself slide back into the content dream-like state that Rye had shattered with her passionate words…but every so often, he caught a faint echo of her scent in the air around him, speaking of the Northern wilds and wolves.
Chapter 12
They had tried to prepare themselves, but their studies, their sparring, their rune-workings and their physical training sessions all seemed like child’s play. None of it came close to the reality of the gauntlet. Finn didn’t know what day it was, or how many hours had passed since the start of the hellish trial. He wasn’t sure if the sunlight filtering through the leaves of the trees was an illusion or if the day had truly dawned, and he didn’t have the energy to spare it actual consideration.
Two dozen squires had walked silently into the forest at dusk, Knight Balaron solemnly leading them into the trial that would determine their future. As darkness swallowed the forest, the Knights and Guards appeared and disappeared like ghosts around the small group of squires. All the Knights and Guards wore expressionless black masks over their faces, their garb simple black trousers and a black shirt. The lead taskmaster wore a red mask, bellowing out orders, directing them to their next ask before the last was even finished. It was impossible for the squires to distinguish between their tormentors as they were put through hours of brutal physical training. They lined up their wooden swords and shields and their packs as instructed, and then the faceless Knights and Guards descended on them. Time lost all meaning as they ran through the forest, swam across a swift little river and then climbed a cliff with fingers still numb from the cold water. Finn lost track of how many push-ups they had performed, how many sprints to a particular tree flagged by a certain masked Knight, how many times they lifted a partner onto their shoulders and trudged up a steep hill, only to run down the hill and perform the task again.
The darkness made every task more difficult and perilous. On their third swim across the river – or perhaps it was their fourth, Finn thought hazily, he couldn’t rightly remember – he glimpsed one of the masked Knights dive into the water from one of the small silver boats that they skillfully paddled alongside the throng of swimming squires. Finn focused on finishing his own swim, pushing his already-aching body against the cold current. When he reached the far bank, he saw the little silver boat dragged up on the bank, and the Knight kneeling beside a pale squire coughing up river-water. Finn thought to himself that of all the ways to die, drowning didn’t seem so terrible. It seemed like it would be rather peaceful.
Finn tried to stay close to Kieran, but the constan
t activity and controlled chaos of the gauntlet gave the squires barely enough time to breathe, much less keep track of one another. Finn’s focus narrowed to surviving the moment and completing the next task set before them by their masked taskmasters without falling behind or failing. At some point during the night, a cold driving rain drenched the squires to the bone; Finn glanced at one of the masked Knights and saw that he remained dry. With a sinking feeling, he realized that the torrential rain tormented only the squires, a special storm cloud centered over them engineered by one of the more advanced rune-casters among the Knights. In that moment, he felt a keen sense of despair, a feeling that this trial would never end and he would spend eternity with an aching body, numb hands, soaked clothes and ears ringing with the shouts of their taskmasters.
Eventually the driving rain slowed as the runes creating the storm cloud above them in the treetops of the forest weakened and then died, flaring for a moment before vanishing. Finn’s relief at the sudden lack of stinging rain vanished as other runes flared into life on the trunks of the trees surrounding the small clearing. Fog rolled across the ground, accompanied by a biting cold. Soon Finn couldn’t help the trembling that wracked his tired body. The Knights and Guards appeared like wraiths in the fog. The red-masked Guard – Finn knew it was a Guard, he recognized the voice, though he couldn’t remember the Guard’s name – instructed them to line up in a single line, shoulder to shoulder. Finn glanced down the line and realized that out of the twenty-four squires who had followed Balaron into the forest at dusk, only fifteen remained. He spotted Kieran at the end of the line, his face haggard but a determined spark flickering in his eyes. Finn took encouragement from the sight of his friend unbowed by the trial. A bit of determined pride sparked warmth in his chest – not enough to still the trembling of his numb hands or ease the ache of his raw and frozen throat, but enough to make him raise his chin slightly and await the next set of orders with shoulders drawn back and head high.
The red-masked taskmaster dropped them into front leaning rest, the thick white fog rendering the squires blind to all but their own hands in front of them. The sound echoed and warped weirdly in the wet, cold fog. Finn coughed as he breathed in the thick air, struggling to breathe in the rune-conjured mist. The fog wrapped around them and separated each squire from the rest of the group; though they’d been shoulder to shoulder, now it felt as though each of them were utterly alone, trapped in their own nightmare of a never-ending gauntlet. And then one by one they realized that they were alone in the fog, spirited away by some trick of the rune casting, though the head taskmaster’s voice still echoed around them with his commands.
Finn finished the set of push-ups demanded by the disembodied voice. His body had gone from aching to numb. He wasn’t sure if it was the cold or if he’d simply been pushed beyond the point of feeling pain.
“Take up your sword and shield,” said the taskmaster, the order ringing through the mist. Finn couldn’t see the ground, so he nearly tripped over the sword and shield hidden beneath the flowing layer of fog. He groped on hands and knees until he found the hilt of the sword. His breath caught in his throat as he hefted the blade: it glimmered silver even in the dim light. This was no training blade with a dull edge. It was a sword fit for a Knight. His heart pounding in his ears, he quickly fitted the shield to his left forearm, tightening the straps until it fit snugly. His arms ached at the weight of the sword and shield, but fire raced through him at the feel of an actual blade in his grasp. As his exhausted mind worked through the implications, his throat tightened and his pulse quickened at the realization that his masked opponents would bear real weapons as well.
This was how squires died in the gauntlet. The Knights and Guards did not hold back in this test of skill, endurance and grit. Finn felt utterly alone as he took a fighting stance, his blade ready as he surveyed the fog-laced darkness around him, slowly turning in a circle, his eyes straining to pierce the gloom. His breath plumed out in a frosty cloud. He jumped slightly when the clash of blades erupted at a distance, instinctively raising his sword, but no masked Guard or Knight leapt out of the trees to attack him. He began to wonder if they’d just left the squires alone, if part of the test was seeing how long they would remain on guard. His tired mind began turning in circles. Was it better to remain here, jumping at every shadow and waiting for the attack, or should he try to find the other squires, banding together against their taskmasters? Would they fail the gauntlet if they tried to work together, or was that what the Knights and Guards expected of him? Could he even escape the isolating fog cast by the runes? Finn couldn’t muster the energy to feel any emotion. He felt empty, drained, exhausted by however long they’d been enduring the trials in the forest. Perhaps it had only been a few hours, though in his head he scraped together the memories of all their tasks and knew it had to be past the first sunrise, perhaps even into the second night. But he couldn’t allow himself to think of the end. Not with a real, sharp blade in his hand and the choking fog writhing about his feet.
A flash of movement in the darkness caught his eye. Finn whirled and brought up his blade just in time to block the savage arc of a masked Knight’s sword. The shock of stopping the Knight’s sword vibrated painfully up his arm, making his bones ache. His mind emptied of all conscious thought as he focused entirely on surviving the Knight’s onslaught. He caught one blow on his shield and heard rather than felt something pop in the shoulder of his shield-arm; rather than pain, his arm just went numb and felt strangely heavy. Finn gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep the shield in position. The Knight almost broke through his guard, but then whirled and disappeared, leaving Finn panting and fighting the urge to lower his shield and blade.
With the white fog rolling about his feet, Finn countered the attack of two more masked assailants. His body cried out for rest, begged him to simply lay down his weapon and stop fighting. He doggedly forced his feet to leap through the patterns of complex footwork, compensating for his failing shield-arm by crouching a bit lower to keep his shield in position with less effort.
During the third bout, Finn stumbled, dropping his shield from its position. The masked Guard sank his blade into Finn’s left shoulder. Finn heard himself make a small, strangled noise as he felt the sword grate against bone. Unlike when he caught the blow on his shield wrong, this time the pain hit him immediately, a rushing scarlet swirl that roared through his body and eclipsed every rational thought in his mind. The masked Guard pulled his blade out of Finn’s flesh, the sword now painted with blood. Somehow Finn grasped the last remnants of his self-control and pushed away the thunderous pulse of pain. His shield-arm hung uselessly, nothing more than dead weight with the unwieldy shield still strapped to his forearm. He quickly adjusted his stance to defend against the next attack, his breath coming in short bursts and his jaw clenched. After blocking the bloodstained blade three more times, the masked Guard nodded silently to him and melted into the shadows.
Finn stood indecisively for a bare moment and then dropped his sword. He worked feverishly at loosening the straps of his useless shield and finally slid his arm free. The shoulder of his shirt clung wetly to his skin. He bit back a cry of pain as he pulled the cloth away and quickly inspected the wound. He felt colder than ever and thought detachedly that his body was reacting to the injury. While blood slid down his chest in a steady rivulet, the Guard’s blade hadn’t hit an artery. He quickly knelt and burrowed through the leaves on the forest floor with his good hand, scooping up a handful of the dark, wet earth. A grunt of pain escaped him as he pressed the earth into his wound. He didn’t have time to find moss to pack it or rig a proper bandage, so that would have to do. His shaking hand found the hilt of his sword again and he stood.
He fought three more masked Knights, receiving minor wounds from each: a shallow cut on his sword-arm stretching from elbow to shoulder; a painful blow to his ribs with the flat of his opponent’s blade that stung his pride even as he felt one of his bones crack with the fo
rce of the hit; and a stinging cut across his face that very nearly took his eye. He blinked blood out of his vision and realized that the Knights and Guards were placing their blows deliberately, testing his ability to fight through pain, ensuring that his endurance and toughness meant he would not surrender to despair even with darkness and cold and fog rendering his enemies ghost-like.
His last opponent wore the red mask. Finn gritted his teeth and raised his sword. His entire body felt numb and heavy with bright spots of pain mapping his injuries. He accepted the fact that this Knight could kill him if he so chose, but he silently vowed not to die without inflicting some damage, making the red-masked Knight pay a price. The Knight did not carry a shield and stood silently, blade pointed at the ground as if waiting for Finn to make the first move. The squire gathered himself and leapt forward as he raised his blade. He felt blood sliding down his chest again as the wound in his shoulder reopened.
The red-masked Knight met Finn’s onslaught calmly, the only noise the clash of their blades meeting and Finn’s labored breathing. Finn’s body went from cold and leaden to burning and begging for mercy, his muscles barely following the commands of his mind. This would be his final fight, Finn thought as he clamped down hard on the trembling of his hands. He would fight until his body broke from exhaustion, and he was nearing that limit. The realization brought a determined fervor to his strikes; he drove the red-masked Knight back with a furious onslaught, forcing the other fighter to focus more on defending against Finn’s blows than mounting his own attack.
Finn heard his own labored gasps and tasted blood in the back of his throat. He could only push his body to keep up this frenzied pace for a little longer. And then he realized that what he needed to do was something wholly unexpected. Something the red-masked Knight would not think him capable of doing. He knew the Knights and Guards coordinated and observed the squires throughout the gauntlet, so this Knight knew of the injury to Finn’s shoulder. For an instant, Finn doubted himself: he hadn’t been able to move his left arm since after the Knight had sunk a blade into his shoulder. It seemed like eons ago. But then his resolve hardened. He had to end this fight. He had to win, because he had to survive.
