by JD Hart
It was this age-old ritual that chafed Marcantos to near the point of exploding. Since arriving in Cravenrock, he had watched these masters coddle their lowly apprentices. And each morning, he fumed as the pupils learned nothing about real combat.
One particular master instructing an apprentice on how to wield a mace drew his attention. The apprentice moved like she carried a sword, not a heavy, blunt weapon. Her footing was wrong, making her swings weak and inaccurate. With a bashing weapon like a mace, she should twist more with her hips, her shoulders following through to give the weapon more force on impact not needed with a cutting weapon. The apprentice’s attacking thrusts were so far off, the instructor hardly needed to move to avoid being hit, yet he did nothing to correct her.
Marcantos knew his unsettling anger at the master Warriors in the ward was misplaced. His experience and mastery of combat should have kept him above such irritation. But what started as a pebble of annoyance cascaded into a landslide of rage. A violent torrent of energy coursed through him until he could no longer deny the emotions whipping at him, struggling to control him. It was time those below understood what it meant to be of the Warriors Order.
He left the balcony and exited his bedchamber. The large mass of brown fur next to his bed, unscathed by its bond’s irritability, never stirred. Marcantos skipped gracefully down the single set of steps, passed through the southern end of the keep’s main entrance hall, and proceeded into the dusty ward. Crossing to the northern side, he rummaged through the weapons rack until he found five particularly pathetic practice swords.
By that time, everyone in the ward was aware of Marcantos’s arrival. Practice dwindled until they gawked curiously at the grandmaster’s presence. Returning to the center of the ward, he turned the worst of the five swords pommel up and drove the point into the ground. Marking off ten paces to the east, he drove another sword into the ground. He then proceeded in a circle around the first sword, stopping to the north, west, and south, repeating the same action.
Returning to the center of the makeshift circle, he signaled the four master Warriors to step forward. They reacted without hesitation, confusion painting their sweat-streaked faces. Once they drew near, he stated softly, “I want you to go to a sword and draw it. When ready, I want you to try to kill me.”
Uncertainty belayed the confidence the four masters had exuded moments before with their apprentices.
“Do it now,” he commanded.
Clear that Marcantos would offer nothing further, the four took positions near the swords.
“Oh, I forgot to mention,” Marcantos interjected. “If I sense you are not seriously attempting to kill me, or if you pull your attacks, I will gut you like a fish.” He smiled pleasantly at each one.
Murmurs echoed across the ward. Guards stopped to gawk from the parapets above.
To those looking on, Marcantos’s actions surely seemed risky. But without their personal weapons to focus the elemental forces of Water and Air, they would be forced to fight using melee skills alone. Besides, since his arrival, he had been observing the masters’ fighting styles. The tactical advantage was his.
In front of Marcantos was a Warrior he called Huffy—a big man who preferred intimidation over finesse. He was hotheaded, his actions dictated by emotion. Huffy would strike first, fast and hard.
To his left was Doughty, a strong, dexterous man of average frame. This one reminded him of himself. Doughty had picked the most advantageous position, with Hemera at his back. Unafraid to take risks, he fought with a precision that spoke of many hours of practice. This, of course, would be his downfall.
To Marcantos’s right, in the tactically worst position, was Anxious, a thin fellow with eyes that never settled. The man would not know how to take advantage of a situation even if it were served to him with a flourish on a silver platter. Anxious was impetuous. He fought like a man cornered, even when on the attack.
And behind Marcantos was Foxy. His play on words for this master Warrior delighted him. The only woman master at the keep, she was lithe and pretty in the face, pure poetry in practice. On the field, what Foxy lacked in precision of weapon skill, she compensated for with the genius of a skilled and aggressive tactician.
Marcantos squared his chest at Huffy, knees bent. He rested his hand on the pommel of the sword, its blade biting the dirt. The anticipation of battle drove his anger away. His heartbeat slowed; his mind emptied. His consciousness ascended into the Mental plane, where he, like all those of the Harmonic orders, accessed Harmonic Sight. In his mind’s eye, the Mental forms of his four opponents flared and wavered about him, shuddering with anticipation.
In an instant, Huffy traveled the ten paces between them, bringing his sword overhead for a single killing stroke. At the precise moment that Huffy committed, Marcantos stepped to his left, pulling his sword’s pommel with him, the point still in the dirt. The edge of Huffy’s blade whizzed past Marcantos’s right shoulder. Sparks flew from the hard contact with his blade under the cross guard, the other man’s blade carrying through to the ground. Marcantos stepped back to his right and planted his boot on top of Huffy’s steel, immobilizing the big man’s sword.
Marcantos sensed Anxious cautiously moving in from his right, while Doughty skirted toward Foxy. Huffy attempted unsuccessfully to pry his sword from beneath Marcantos’s boot. Marcantos took a moment to smile at Huffy before snapping his left foot into the astonished expression on his face. One.
This was the distraction Anxious had waited for. He charged in aggressively. Huffy’s prone body forgotten, Marcantos slid his fist to the sword’s grip, thumb near the pommel. Anxious thrust hard. Marcantos lowered his leg, pulling his blade from the dirt. His sword protectively positioned between him and the Warrior’s steel, he deflected the point of Anxious’s blade outward. He noted Anxious’s poor thrust, one any master would not have made for a kill. His eyes flashed, the remaining two forms shifting behind.
Snapping his sword upward, Marcantos twisted his wrist, pulling the pommel over his head. The action forced his blade out and up, sliding along Anxious’s extended blade before the man could pull back. Anxious’s arm went wide. Marcantos let his sword’s momentum carry through, spinning to face his two remaining opponents. The hard twist of his hips caused a chain reaction up his spine and shoulders, through his right arm held high to his left, and into his wrist. His sword slashed downward in a pendulum motion left to right. Judging the precise length of his sword from its balance, the tip of his blade etched a thin red line from shoulder to elbow along Anxious’s left arm. Anxious cried out and staggered back. Two.
Marcantos’s sword continued its motion, picking up speed. It arced downward in front of him, then up to his right, intersecting Doughty’s backswing that came in short. The contact was at his sword’s center of balance, so Doughty took the full shock. The report echoed across the ward.
Compact eddies of energy exploded across Marcantos’s mind and he stepped nimbly toward Doughty with a double-loop sword spin, one loop circling his left side, followed by a loop on his right, then back again. The poorly balanced sword forced Marcantos to keep the spinning action tight. Still, the whirling blade drove Doughty back on his heels.
Marcantos sensed Foxy shifting toward him from behind. He extended his arm back with the next whirling loop. The greater arc slowed his rhythm, but the resounding contact of his blade on Foxy’s sword had kept his spine from being severed. Having seen Foxy’s attack, Doughty reversed his backward motion, expecting Marcantos’s attention to be diverted. The rash move would have been effective against a less-skilled combatant. But Marcantos never slowed his footwork. He completed his loop and stepped to Doughty’s right, his spinning arc deflecting Doughty’s blade out wide.
Foxy had recovered from her failed strike, but she could no longer assist Doughty. Doughty’s sword arm extended, Marcantos spun to face Foxy, while driving his sword into a new arc over his head. He drove the pommel down on Doughty’s right hand like a smithy�
�s hammer. Doughty shuffled out of view with a pained groan. Three.
Marcantos advanced on Foxy, deftly whirling the crude sword in his hand. Foxy took a ready stance for his attack, legs wide and balanced. The edge of Marcantos’s mouth twitched. Something different in Foxy’s Mental form forced him to pause. Rather than holding his sword in attack position, he stepped toward her with his blade wide, completely open to her. He could sense eddies of Mental energy shifting about him, and through their haunting motion, she too hesitated. He stepped closer, open to her attack, forcing her to choose. Still, she waited.
Let us dance, he thought, his mind moving with churning funnels of life force. They trembled as he weighed each option, altered shape with each decision, transformed with each step. Hypnotized, he moved into one of the eddies, letting it envelop his mind. He rejoiced in the painful exhilaration of its sudden power. The roar of a great thunderstorm raged about him. The energy of the vortex whipped him about, tearing at him, pulsing through him, tugging wildly. He felt his body surge forward, as if under its own volition, but he had no other sensation, no context for what played out in the Physical plane. A thought nagged at him from the far horizon of the pattern of life around him, like someone waving to draw his attention, reminding him of who he was. No, of who he had been. But he was dancing in the eddy, and it danced in him.
Abruptly, the roar and exhilaration were gone, replaced with an agonizing stillness. His first reaction was one of loss. He hungered to experience those sensations again. He fought against awareness of his body, his breathing. But something soft and damp was pressed against him, something moving with a rhythm not his, drawing him back to the Physical plane. He opened his eyes, straight into Foxy’s. She was looking at him with ... fear? excitement? He realized he was pressed against her, her panting the rhythm he had sensed. He had never felt so alive.
He stepped away, forcing his eyes from hers. Foxy was pressed against the ward’s north wall. She no longer held a sword. Looking down in shock, he found her sword in his other hand. How had it gotten there? His cheeks burned, gutting him of the anger that had gripped him before. Yet he was quenched, content. He stepped back again, nearly stumbling, then scanned the blank faces of those about silent and staring, measuring him.
He shook away his confusion. It had to be the incessant heat or lack of sleep. Returning to the center of the ward, he drove the two swords into the ground, blades crossing in the middle, noting their resemblance for the symbol for comradeship in the Warriors Order. Cosmic providence? Marcantos studied each Warrior in turn, then announced for all to hear. “Train every day like it will be your last, for someday it will be. Until then, challenge your comrades to seek new strengths, new courage, new levels of endurance that cannot be discovered alone. The person standing next to you may be the one you need to save your life.”
With that, he walked from the ward, every eye upon him.
A Tenuous Affair
More eyes were on Marcantos than just those in the ward. In an upper balcony of the keep, two men silently observed the affair unfold below, measuring and assessing from a vantage point that allowed them to see the Harmonic patterns. The older man, General Mikel Grimwaldt, wore the uniform of a grandmaster of the Warriors Order. He had a rugged, round face, wrinkled from many years on the Narwalen Plains near the Borderlands, his white hair cut short. The many medals on his round chest, testimony to his status in the three Realms and his order, were not required to command the respect from those around him, especially from the Warrior at his side.
As Marcantos disappeared into the keep, the general regarded the man next to him. Colonel Dreston Palastar was a stocky man of similar height, but his heft came not from muscle as with Grimwaldt; and Palastar was as soft between the ears as he was in his gut. In every conceivable way, he was an imbecile. Even worse, the man carried himself with such snobbery that the general considered him nothing more than a pompous ass.
It was this deeply undesirable quality that had landed the colonel in his current assignment as Commander of the Cravenrock Keep forces. In the three months previous as Commander of the Kallzwall Castle guard, he had so infuriated the queen’s sister, Duchess Mariette of Narwales, she nearly demanded his head on a platter. Only through the quick actions of a few high-ranking members of the Warriors Order, including Grimwaldt, had Palastar’s miserable life been saved.
But Grimwaldt’s actions had nothing to do with wanting Palastar to keep his head. Grimwaldt would have happily severed the lump on the man’s neck from his distended body. No, he had acted to prevent the Warriors Order from taking a further fall in status within Narwales, the largest fiefdom in the Griffinrock Realm. It would have taken years for the order to recover from such a calamity. Unfortunately, the only position available for the colonel was commanding the Cravenrock forces. All that paled in comparison to Grimwaldt having to suffer the colonel’s presence long enough to give the man a few basic instructions.
“I see what you mean, General,” Palastar stated smugly. “He has exceptional qualities and shows great potential. How long did he take to beat my four master instructors? Thirty seconds?” He hesitated, but when the general did not reply, he pressed on. “It is clear why he is the advocate for the Warriors Order. I can’t imagine anyone in all the orders capable of matching his prowess. It seems a certainty he will become Veressa’s Champion of the Realm.” He grinned smugly at the general, expecting full agreement. When what he had suggested struck his slow wit, the colonel nervously amended, “Let it be the Cosmos’s will that day is many years away.”
Grimwaldt waited while Palastar’s smile wilted under his intense stare. He considered rebuking the colonel for referring to the keep’s master Warriors as his own. Of course, Palastar was correct in his assessment, but Grimwaldt made it a point not to agree with a man whose ego exceeded his generous size.
The general retreated to his makeshift personal reception quarters, moving like a Warrior who had fought countless battles and killed an untold number of Anarchists. The portly colonel trailed on his heels. There, Grimwaldt picked through wilted grapes on an ancient stand, then dropped them back on the plate. Artesia, sensing his growing irritation, eyed the general from her perch. The general regarded his bond with narrow, dark eyes and thick brows set over a nose broken many times. He comforted the red-tailed hawk with a gentle stroke. “You are to give Marcantos whatever he asks for, Colonel. Do you understand?” He stared intensely. It was not a question.
“Why, of course, General,” came the meek reply. Palastar bowed respectfully, a nervous smile painting his face.
Grimwaldt hesitated, not sure how to entrust the next instruction in a way that would not send up warning flares. “I have another instruction for you, Colonel, before I leave this afternoon for Loren Canyon—one that is of the utmost importance to our order’s high lords.” He turned nimbly, given his bulk, to study Palastar, not wanting any misunderstandings.
“Of course you can count on me, General.” Palastar stated with complete seriousness. Palastar owed his life to Grimwaldt; he could deny him little.
“I want you to keep an eye on Marcantos’s preceptor, Grandmaster Friarwood, without his knowing. You are to report to me what you observe. And above all, no one else is to be involved in this affair.”
Palastar crinkled his stubby nose in puzzlement. “Of course, General, but is there something specific I should be watching for?”
Grimwaldt considered this course of action. Something about Friarwood bothered him. His prior probes into how Marcantos’s preceptor had entered the Warriors Order had yielded nothing unusual. Still, his concerns remained. While Friarwood had proven to be an exceptional melee fighter and outstanding preceptor, he had not demonstrated the skills a grandmaster should possess. This was highly irregular for someone who had risen so quickly through the ranks.
But Grimwaldt had to be cautious. A Warrior’s blade cuts both ways. The hopes of all the order were riding on Marcantos’s success. A Warrior Champion wou
ld raise their order out of its wretched standing with the Griffinrock crown. Casting suspicious shadows on their advocate’s mentor could be dangerous for everyone involved. Of the three mentors Marcantos had through the years, the young Warrior had developed a particularly fond attachment to Friarwood.
Sure, the colonel possessed absolutely no abilities for handling espionage. But Grimwaldt needed information about Friarwood, and he was short on options. “I want you to report to me, and me alone, anything you find ... unusual about Friarwood’s behavior or his training of Marcantos.” He would leave it at that and sift through any information the colonel sent his way.
Palastar nodded his understanding.
Grimwaldt waved a thick, muscled hand absently. “You may go.” Without returning Palastar’s salute, Grimwaldt walked to the balcony, his hawk bond Artesia on his arm.
The colonel might have been slow, but he was correct in one thing: Marcantos had shown exceptional qualities from a very young age. A noble’s son, he had been groomed to assume great responsibility in one of the orders. By all recorded accounts, his extraordinary fighting skills, combined with a commanding voice and leadership abilities, had not been seen in an orderman in several hundred years. Since the moment of his bonding, Marcantos had been trained to master all forms of Warrior combat as well as handle affairs of state. As a young officer awarded several commands, he had been victorious in multiple Borderland disputes and decorated many times, including once by Queen Izadora herself. He had everything he needed to become the next Champion of the Realm. A Warrior in such a position would elevate the Warriors Order to its rightful place above the other five orders.
