by Damien Lake
“Naturally,” commented The Peacock in a vibrant, self-confident voice. He sounded as though he were about to sing. “A rapier is the deadliest of blades, only to be used by the deadliest of men. It is a fearsome weapon that can never be mastered by clumsy hands! Brute strength and brawn are meaningless. Only skill and a sharp mind can draw out its true powers.”
Cork, unaware of Marik standing behind him, piped in, “But the blade is far too thin! I could break a twig like that with my sword easily, even if it is fine steel!”
Dietrik, his rapier propped on his shoulder, laughed while The Peacock snorted with derision. “Again? Well, if I must, then I will demonstrate a final time. This time pay attention to how I move my blade and try to fathom, difficult as it may be for you, I know, why I am doing so!”
He raised the hilt in his limp-handed style, the blade drooping to the ground. Dietrik, smiling, lashed out, far slower than usual. The Peacock blocked by raising the blade at an angle to Dietrik’s slash. Rather than meeting the blow with a barrier of steel, he created a path for the momentum of Dietrik’s blade to follow. Along that line did Dietrik’s blade travel, the blow deflecting to the side.
A second strike followed the first, this time from a different direction. The Peacock captured the overhead blow in the same fashion Chatham, Marik’s first sword instructor, used to. By slightly angling and raising the hilt upward he caused the blow to slide to the side.
“Only a true fool,” The Peacock announced for Cork’s benefit, “takes a blow fully with the intention of stopping it cold.” He brushed a hand up his forehead, sweeping the dangling locks up. They fluttered back into place while he continued the gesture, holding his hand open above his head. “Tell me. Have any of your blades survived multiple battles before? Or have you never been in legitimate combat long enough to mar the steel?”
Cork flushed. “I’ve been in plenty of fights!”
“Fights,” The Peacock repeated. He placed one finger alongside his nose. “Ah, but fights and combat…they are hardly the same, are they not? Or haven’t you come to learn this yet?” With a cock of his head to the right while flicking his hand dismissively to the left, he indicated what he thought of Cork.
Before Cork could explode, Dietrik spoke up. “You might consider holding whatever response you have long enough to let Marik sidle on past you, chum. He looks a mite tired.”
Startled, Cork spun to find Marik gazing at him through tired, red-rimmed eyes. A hand shot to the back of Cork’s head, nervously scratching as he stammered, “Oh, uh…uh, sorry, I guess. I, uh…I didn’t know you were waiting…”
“Why would you?” Marik replied in a heavier tone than he’d meant. He stared at Cork until the man realized he still stood in the middle of the aisle.
Cork’s jumping aside seemed a prearranged signal for the gathering to break. Marik hated how Cork’s gaze traveled all around the room, settling on everything except him. At the earliest opportunity the new recruit slipped over to his own cot where he began endlessly rooting through his closet.
The Peacock shrugged, announced he intended to discover whether any of the taverns in this mercenary town were high-class enough to serve mead, and swept from the room in the same graceful movement as his hand brushing aside his dark locks. Bancroft, Edwin and Talbot followed. Chiksan laid flat on his bunk, staring up at the rafters without saying a word.
Marik sat heavily on his cot. “I should have expected that,” he sulked. “No one wants to stay around when the mage shows up, especially not after Tollaf’s stunt this afternoon with Caresse. I guess I can’t blame them, though.”
“Are we in for another bout of ‘woe-is-me’?” Dietrik demanded. “In case it escaped your notice, Arvallar and I had finished making our point when you showed up. You can hardly credit our ending to your arrival.”
“What about that, then?” Marik gestured at Cork.
Across the way, Cork had stopped his rooting so he could mutter to a form sitting on the next cot over. “That’s all well and good for defending against other rapiers, but a real sword could still break them.”
For the first time, Marik noticed Wyman sitting cross-legged on that cot, who must have been watching the demonstration from his perch. He had dug a ten-copper coin from his belongings. It flicked through the air in a rotating spiral, deftly caught one-handed while he listened to Cork. Dexterously, he rolled it across his knuckles to rest on his thumbnail momentarily before flicking it upward endlessly.
“So what?” Dietrik retorted. “Give them time, mate. Say hello in the mornings, go about your business, and they’ll come around as they get to know you aren’t a mage in the strictest sense of the word. Speaking of which, how did your day with the old man go?”
“Huh,” Marik grunted in return. “He’s on a new crusade. Tollaf spent the first candlemark foaming at the mouth about how inadequate I am. He told me that if he waits for me to completely master the entire first stage of a mage’s apprenticeship, he’ll be dead of old age before I’m ready for the intermediate training.”
“I thought that scrying bit of yours is a higher level working.”
“It is, but I learned that special. Sort of like jumping ahead. Anyway, he’s decided to focus mainly on the most general mage skills and bumped me up. He’s trusting to Lor’Velath that I’ll learn the rest on my own, ‘when I finally see how blasted foolish I am’.”
“So you are now…what? Still an apprentice, yes?”
“Yeah, but between a beginner and a real mage.” He paused to consider. “Like a journeyman, in a way. Tollaf’s started me on the ‘basic’ skills needed for intermediate apprentice training.”
“You should be happy, I imagine. The scrying is all you ever wanted to do anyway.”
Marik nodded fiercely. “It’s about time he stopped wasting my life with all that other nonsense. I’m never going to be a battle mage. Looks like he’s finally accepted that.” He picked up the flint striker he kept on his small bedside shelf and struggled to summon forth light from the three-wick candle. “What did you do while the old man worked me into the ground? Getting to know the new men?”
“Indeed,” Dietrik admitted, smiling. “Most of them have a wheelbarrow of questions. Since Sloan appears less inclined for instruction than Fraser even, I thought I’d be nice and fill them in about the town.”
“Giving them the Grand-High-Hayden-Approved Tour, is that it?” Marik grinned in amusement.
“Not that far. They can learn their own way around for all of me.”
“So what’s the story with your pet noble?”
Dietrik winced slightly. “You better not say that around him. That’s what started off that whole episode with Cork. I spent time talking with Arvallar this afternoon. He’s as much a noble as you, and will challenge anyone who accuses him of it.”
“Then why is he working so hard to look like one?”
“It is the way he is, I suppose,” Dietrik said with a shrug. “Cork asked him why he wanted to carry around a skinny blade like a rapier ‘out here in the real world’. He started on about how a genuine sword, like his own, could never be a match for it on the battlefield.” He paused to smirk. “That rankled under Arvallar’s skin, and he called Cork out right there for a practical demonstration. I stepped in to intercede because I was interested to see how well he wields it.”
“Two rapier men in the same unit,” Marik shook his head. “They’re rare enough in the band. How did we end up with both of you?”
Dietrik spread his hands. “Because we are lucky? Ah, there…see?”
He glanced to the aisle to see the young boy striding past, eyes fixed, oblivious to them. The boy carried something on his far side. Marik lacked the enthusiasm to strain his eyes and make it out. Whatever it might be, it looked half the size of the kid’s body. “You learn about him? What’s a young brat like that doing in the band, let alone our squad?”
“I was talking—” Dietrik began, but the boy stopped a cot away to whirl on M
arik, interrupting Dietrik’s response with an angry challenge.
“Ask me right out, why don’t you?” he demanded forcefully, his voice cracking, striving to abandon its childhood pitch and deepen into a man’s tone. “Too afraid to talk to others? Need your friend to scout us all out for you?”
Surprised, Marik fumbled with his answer. “Wh-what? Uh…no! I mean…” His tongue twisted around itself until he limply finished with, “I’m Marik. Uh, and you?”
“I know,” the boy replied, then swung the large burden around to face Marik. It turned out to be crossbow. Large in a fully grown man’s hands, it dwarfed the boy. Marik wasted a single moment being impressed that the boy could lift it at all before realizing that it was cocked, loaded, and pointing straight at him.
“Watch it!” Dietrik shouted at the same time the boy pulled back on the triggering lever. The quarrel shot forward so fast it disappeared from sight. Marik heard the loud thunk and felt splinters dig into his neck. His jerking lunge to avoid being killed started long after the bolt planted itself in the wall below his window.
Belatedly Marik lifted his face from his tangled sheets, searching for the little bastard. The boy had dropped the crossbow nose to the floor and placed his foot through the stirrup attached to the front. At the back he spun the cocking winch. Twin handles, one high when the other hung low, twirled rapidly as he cranked. His impressive strength quickly bent back the thick bow. Marik leapt to his feet and the boy dropped a fresh quarrel into the notch the instant the thick rope cleared the stop.
He centered the crossbow on Marik’s chest. Marik froze beside his cot. Fury swelled, overcoming the exhaustion. What in the hells was this scruffy little brat doing?
Marik nearly attacked when a hand gripped his shoulder. Dietrik hissed, “Don’t overreact!”
“Over—” Marik began, his incredulous reply cut off by Dietrik’s harsh squeeze.
The boy raised the crossbow, propping it against his shoulder. “Eh,” he sneered. His glare at Marik held nothing except challenge. He left off there, abandoning the return to his cot in favor of departing the barracks. Marik started after him until Dietrik held him back.
“Let him go,” Dietrik advised. The rest of the men returned to their personal business.
“Go? After trying to kill me?” He could still hardly believe what had just happened.
“If he really wanted to put one in you, he would have. He missed on purpose.”
“I don’t care!” Marik yelled. “What is the matter with him?”
“He is angry.”
“What have I ever done to him? Nothing!”
“I did not say he was angry with you. I’d say he is angry at the world in general. Though you might be a close second. And Colbey, I suppose.”
Marik shifted his gaze from the half-wall to his friend. “What?”
“As I started telling you, mate,” Dietrik resumed while sitting down on his cot, “I went out of my way to speak with him this afternoon along with the others, after he finally cracked his shell enough to speak. His name is Churthington. He grew up in the Hollister Garrison.”
“Hollister? You mean the tower at the end of the bridge?”
“Galemar has always maintained a force of soldiers in the facilities there, yes,” Dietrik affirmed. “His father was a soldier. When the Noliers made their bid for the gold mine they killed most of the garrison during the surprise attack.”
Marik sat on his cot facing Dietrik. “And his family died.”
“Yes. That duke in charge of the Nolier forces headed the invasion personally. Probably because it was so important to their plans. Everything hinged on taking the Hollister Garrison.”
“So the kid must have run.”
“No, you’ve got the wrong flap there. Churt watched the invading knights slaughter his father and everyone else. The men escaping grabbed him up and carried him away with them, but he didn’t want to go. He’s been a first rate shot with the crossbow for most of his young life. You know how children can learn things easier than most adults. Well, after that he escaped from the escapers, then spent the next months in the Green Reaches shooting whatever Noliers he could until one of our army units picked him up. After the war he stayed near the bridge so he could start hunting the Noliers when they rallied back across, but after a year that looked bleak.”
“I still don’t see what any of that has to do with me.”
Dietrik sighed. “You can be startlingly thickheaded at times, mate. What would you have done?” Before Marik could answer, Dietrik continued. “What Churt did was vow to kill the Nolier knights. That might sound laughable to the likes of us, but that’s what he did. He kept hoping to get close enough. Of course he never could pin down their location. Then along comes our heroes,” Dietrik announced with a mocking gesture of the hand, as if he were presenting a horse at a drive fair.
“Hey! You’re not going to tell me he’s mad at us because we beat the knights, are you?”
“As I mentioned, I believe our young shieldmate is angry at the world. He is angry because the chance to avenge his father was stolen by a stranger. As such, he holds little admiration for you. Odd though,” Dietrik mused, “that he would happen to land in our squad out of sixteen possibilities.”
“Odd?” The rage returned, redirected, though no less potent. “There’s nothing odd about that at all! That nasty snake Janus had a hand in this…I can see it!” He punched his closet wall, which made the candle jump on the shelf.
“Janus?” Dietrik inquired. “I know he has the final word when the clerks assign new recruits, but what makes you think this might be deliberate?”
“He’s had it in for me since I first arrived,” Marik growled. “He still does. I can see it every time I’m near the old bastard. He loathes me! This Churt brat must have mentioned on his application about that whole story. I bet I know how he happened to learn I’m the one who killed Ronley, too!”
“That’s a tad paranoid, don’t you think? It is not exactly a secret in the band. He could have learned it from anyone.”
“In less than a day? You think he’s been wandering around since he first walked through the gate, asking about that before any other questions about the band? Not too damn likely!” He struck his closet a second time. “I’m going to have to deal with this on top of everyone hating me already because I’m a mage! That…that jackass probably thought it would be amusing to put the kid in the same squad and unit as the man he had a grudge against!”
Dietrik tried to sooth him, but Marik’s ire wrapped around him in a thick blanket. Eventually his friend surrendered for the night, retiring to find a spot of entertainment along the row, leaving Marik to stare at the rafters in dark imitation of Chiksan. His thoughts ran in fruitless circles. They returned relentlessly to the one question most on his mind. Why did the eldest band members choose to single him out?
It was a question without an answer. He rolled over to fall asleep, his last murky thought a pondering of what new ways the geriatric dictators in his life would next select to make him miserable.
* * * * *
Dietrik dodged the slash Marik sent at him. A quick hop to his left stopped short when the smaller man’s shoulder collided with a low-hanging branch. Marik brought his blade around to take advantage of it but his larger sword could not be redirected instantaneously.
The extra split second enabled Dietrik to spin backward. Once he disentangled from the branches, he thrust forward, pulling back faster than a popping ember to thrust again at a slightly different angle. Dietrik’s speed might amaze others, yet Marik easily saw the repeating thrusts that came at less speed than he knew his friend capable of. His chainmail would not protect against the lunging rapier tip the same way it would against slashes.
Marik backed off in order to avoid the invading blade. To counter Dietrik’s move, he instigated a series of swings, each designed to come around into a new slash. Though this simple defense would never connect with his sparring partner, it wo
uld keep the other man at a distance.
Sparring all morning helped Marik ignore the rest of his life. Tollaf wanted him to advance, most likely as the result of whatever conversation Celerity had subjected him to. Toward that end he set Marik to practicing dual channeling, a technique as basic to an intermediate apprentice as ordinary channeling was to the beginner. Marik felt as though he were restarting his apprenticeship all over.
As exhausted as this made him, he refused to slack off in his strength training. Adding to his woes, the barracks was no longer the haven it once had been. Wyman sat alone flicking his coin, peeling apart whoever he looked at with his gaze. Arvallar thought himself above the rest of them and Cork became intensely interested in his boots whenever Marik neared. The capper existed in Churt, who awakened him every morning by firing a quarrel into the wall above his sleeping head. Fresh splinters peppered him as he scrambled to fight free of his dreams.
All in all, he needed release before he trudged back to the Tower this afternoon. His friend had agreed to spar in the Second Training Area’s trees. Of his various battles on contract to date, forest combat had only occurred once. Dietrik could count the battle for the Nolier forest depot as a second experience with tree fighting. In a kingdom as heavily forested as Galemar, it seemed to Marik they should be spending more time in the wooded areas.
Dietrik stayed well back. He drifted through the trees while Marik advanced, leading the fight into denser growth areas. Branch tangles quickly interfered with Marik’s ability to swing in the defensive pattern. Marik paused to reconsider while Dietrik peeked around an oak. The harsh bellow of laughter from behind startled him badly.
“You amaze me, you know? You fight that crappy and you’re still alive after all this time!”
They whirled to discover three overlarge shapes forming a small grove of their own. Beld glared at them with challenging malice, as did the crony standing to his left. Only the third giant, to Beld’s right, looked uneasy. Marik thought he might be the one he’d fought during their last scuffle a few years back.
