by Duncan Lay
Griff sat down slowly. ‘So that’s the way it is, eh? You have all fallen for the sweet words and false promises of this silver-tongued liar! Well, I shall never agree and you will all rue this day, if you sign up to his mad idea!’
‘Why don’t we talk about the real reason you don’t want a united Vales?’ Huw challenged. Now was the time to make his move. ‘Isn’t it true you would rather bend the knee to Ward than be a part of our new Vales?’
Griff’s face flushed. ‘I am a proud Velshman! But I have a duty to my people. If we are to pay taxes, to you or this Forlish king, what is the difference?’
‘All the difference in the world! Your money will go towards letting Velsh children eat every night, rather than making a foreign king even richer!’ Huw cried.
‘But for how long? Those Velsh children will die when the Forlish ride north. You forget, I have seen your dragons in action. I know that they cannot turn back the might of Forland. If we go to Ward and offer him allegiance — one part in five of what we own — we will be spared destruction.’
Huw spat on the floor. ‘There is your agreement with Forland! Ask the children of Rheged, and the mourning widows and orphans of Gwent and Powys, if the Forlish are to be trusted!’
‘Have you seen those boys who’ll protect us? Not one of them is older than twenty summers. They get a few lessons from an elf and all of a sudden think they can take on a massive army that has destroyed almost every other country in these lands. It’s madness and it will see the Velsh people wiped out!’
Huw could see Griff’s words hitting home but he was happy to have this out in the open.
‘Griff, do you think Ward will allow Velsh headmen to stay in control of villages — let alone ones like Merthyr, which have the iron and the coal and the tin and the copper that he lusts after? No, Forlishmen will rule in your village, send half to their king and take everything else for themselves.’ Huw looked around the table and marked the faces that nodded at his words. ‘We have a choice here, my friends. We can crawl to Ward and give up everything, watch the children starve because our Forlish masters are growing fat off our backs. Or we can stand together. Remember, we do not stand alone. We shall have elven help, as well as elven magic. And we have the terrain in our favour. The Forlish shall march north, thinking to meet and crush us in one battle. But we shall melt away before them, lead them a merry dance through the hills and valleys that make up Vales. The Forlish defeated the other countries because they tried to protect their cities. We have no cities. We send our women and children safely north, then take the Forlish, one slice at a time. After two moons, the weather will be their enemy and they shall be forced to slink back to Forland. By the time they return next spring, we shall have thousands of young dragons and they won’t stand a chance.’ Huw paced around the table, unable to stay still. His father’s tales, Rhiannon’s encouragement and suggestions, as well as his own ideas, came together as one and he tried to give them the greatest performance of his life.
‘We have a chance to change history and give our people the future they deserve. Walk away now and you shall regret it to the end of your days. Stand with me, stand with Vales, and we shall turn back the Forlish and give our people back hope, heart and magic!’
He thundered his words to the roof and the dragons drew their swords as one, shouting out, ‘For Vales!’ just as they had been told to do.
Many of the headmen leaped to their feet, led by Kelyn, Llewellyn and Aled.
‘Death to the Forlish!’ Powell, the defiant young headman from Dale Hill, who Sendatsu had pushed into the role because the rest of the village had given up fighting, jumped onto the table itself.
The remaining headmen, a dozen or so, slowly got to their feet, leaving only Griff slumped in his chair. Huw walked across to him.
‘Join with us,’ he begged him. ‘Join with us and we shall create a Vales for everyone to be proud of!’
‘How can you be sure? How do you know we are not all going to die?’ Griff protested.
‘You could die tomorrow. A cut could make your arm rot off, sickness take you away in a moon. If one of us lives to be fifty summers, then we rejoice. Half of our children never make it past their first year, while so many of our women die in childbirth. And now we want to bow low and lick King Ward’s boots, just to earn the right to keep on living the life we have now. But I offer new hope, the chance to take back what the elves stole from us, the chance to have magic in our lives once more. I say we can go on like this no longer. We must fight for what is ours.’
The rest of the table roared its approval; even those slow to their feet were now waving their fists at the thought.
‘Promise me we will win,’ Griff said quietly.
Huw did not hesitate for a moment. ‘I promise you. I shall not let us lose, no matter what it takes.’
Reluctantly, Griff offered his hand and Huw held it up, to resounding cheers.
‘Now, my friends, to work!’ Huw shouted.
Sendatsu could hear the cheering inside the hall — it could probably be heard across the border in Forland. He hoped it meant Huw had won and they were ready to make Vales into a real country. The noise certainly disturbed the young Velsh dragons, made them pause in their training, and he had to shout at them to get them back to work, marking the ones who had been distracted — and the ones who had seen that as an opportunity to get in a sneaky hit with their wooden swords. Those were the ones to be in the first line of battle.
He wished Gaibun was with him to help him spot those ones with promise, but Huw had asked for one of them to be inside the hall for a demonstration and Sendatsu had let Gaibun take that. Part of that was wanting Gaibun to feel a part of the Velsh and part was not really wanting to take Mai and Cheijun in with him. They went everywhere else. The Velsh Dragon Warriors, both the ones he had trained before and the new recruits, were used to looking after small children — it was what they had grown up doing — and were delighted to adopt Mai and Cheijun as their lucky charms.
They were also the secret weapon that Sendatsu and Gaibun used on the new recruits.
The training was brutal. All the dragons Sendatsu had trained, especially the ones who had made it through the battle at Patcham, were given a small group of new recruits to help, while Sendatsu and Gaibun worked everyone from dawn until dusk. Groups ran until they dropped and practised the basic strokes and blocks until they could do them in their sleep.
When the new recruits collapsed, Gaibun and Sendatsu worked on the half-trained dragons, polishing their skills and pushing them harder, giving them the extra tips and techniques that might just keep them alive in a battle.
The unrelenting work might have broken some of them but Sendatsu and Gaibun brought in Mai and Cheijun. They used them to demonstrate a sword stroke or move, they used them to race against exhausted dragons and they even let Cheijun attack a couple of them with his wooden sword, making the dragon defend himself. That always brought a big laugh — but also a few surprises, as Cheijun inevitably launched himself in ferocious attacks at their ankles and any dragon who thought it merely a joke was often left hopping with pain and the subject of rude comments from his mates.
Just when it looked as though the Velsh would break, the children made them laugh — and they were able to carry on.
Every one of the Velsh dragons pushed themselves to the limit — and none of them shirked any task Gaibun and Sendatsu gave them. At first Sendatsu wondered if Gaibun was pushing them to see when they would break. But when they refused to give in, even after vomiting with the effort, he seemed to back off a little.
Sendatsu had loved the way the Velsh responded to him the first time he had been out here and he had been prepared to bet his children’s lives on their skills by taking them into Dokuzen. He was delighted to see Gaibun obviously experiencing something similar.
The whole experience out here was good for him, good for them all, he felt. Mai and Cheijun were enjoying themselves, loving the attention of so ma
ny people, enjoying the singing and, above all, being with Sendatsu again.
As for him and Gaibun, away from the cares and concerns of the rest of the world, worrying only about training the young dragons, it felt as it had when they were young and the world was full of golden possibilities.
At night, after the children were asleep, he and Gaibun sat together, drinking the green tea they had brought with them, talking about how the training was going at first but then about anything. The only subject off limits was Asami.
‘Did you see that recruit go crazy today?’ Gaibun had asked the previous night as he poured the tea and handed Sendatsu a cup.
‘Was it Gareth again?’
‘That was the name! Sent him flying and he went mad, just rushed at me without a thought for defence or footwork, tried to knock my head off. I swear if he hadn’t had a sword, he would have tried to bite my leg off! I had to knock him out just to get him to stop.’
‘Cadel was telling me about him yesterday. Same thing happened to me. The strange thing is, he is perfectly normal the rest of the time, eager to learn and listen. But when he fights, he loses control.’
‘We’re going to have to send him home. We can’t have someone like that. One warrior losing control could doom us all,’ Gaibun said.
‘We can’t send him home. He wouldn’t stand the shame. Would you?’
Gaibun grunted and sipped his tea.
‘Don’t let him fight anyone until the Forlish come and he’ll be fine. There could be a time when we need someone like that,’ Sendatsu said.
‘For entertainment value, if nothing else.’ Gaibun chuckled.
‘Some of the new recruits are coming along very well. If only they could all have real swords!’
‘Indeed. I hear Huw has sent messages around to every village, asking each smith to make three swords. Even with those, and the ones you captured from the Forlish, it will leave us short of what we need. Perhaps we can get Asami and the other Magic-weavers to help speed the process.’
‘They need everything. Swords and some sort of protection.’
Gaibun shrugged. ‘Well, that is what a sword is for. If you can’t protect yourself with that, then all the armour in the world cannot help you.’
‘Some are almost ready.’
Gaibun nodded thoughtfully, drank more tea. ‘I never thought I’d say it but they are good. Of course, most of that is because of the quality of the teachers.’
‘Well, we used to practise every day, for perhaps two turns of the hourglass. You and I did more than that, but probably no more than four turns of the hourglass. We’re training these boys for ten turns a day. No wonder they are coming along fast.’
‘They need to be, if we are to defeat the Forlish.’
‘I noticed you said “we” and “us” when you talked about fighting. So you have begun to believe that we are one and the same?’ Sendatsu winked.
‘I’m not so sure about that. The day I eat some of that roasted sheep is the day you can call me human. And I’ll have to eat a plate of pigs’ wings first!’
‘I’m sure we can find some for you.’
Gaibun shuddered. ‘Even the thought of that is revolting! Thank Aroaril there are a few fish around, and we thought to bring rice.’
‘You should have tried it the first time I came out here. I asked for vegetables and they offered me raw turnips!’
Gaibun laughed briefly then went silent.
Sendatsu nudged him. ‘What is it? Do you feel like crunching on a turnip?’
‘Not likely. But what if we are the same? What if everything we were taught about our history is a lie? How do we go about changing that?’
‘We are the same. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. And we change history by helping out the Velsh, just as we are doing now. But what has brought this on with you? I never thought to hear you talk like this.’
‘Believe me, it is a surprise for me as well! But everything seems so much less complicated among the humans. Everything seems clearer.’
‘That’s what I found the first time I was here. It’s as if, when you have nothing, you can concentrate on the things that really matter.’
‘Perhaps,’ Gaibun said. ‘You know, I had the strangest conversation with my father just before we left. He had been around at your mother’s, which was strange in itself: I thought he hated her — always refused to go anywhere near her. Anyway, I told him I was going to keep out of sight for a moon or so and he agreed that was a wise idea. Then he just went on about the importance of honour and how I should not say that he had been to see Noriko, not that I was planning to do so anyway.’
‘Funny, my mother was equally strange after she had spoken to your father,’ Sendatsu remarked.
‘You don’t think that the two of them …’
Sendatsu looked at Gaibun and then they laughed.
‘Of course not. It’s crazy,’ Sendatsu insisted.
‘Well, you never know. You think you know your parents but you only know what they show you,’ Gaibun said.
‘Still.’
Gaibun chuckled. ‘Indeed. You know, we haven’t laughed like this for years!’
Sendatsu paused for a long moment. ‘It’s because Asami is not here. Without her around, we can just be the friends we always were,’ he said.
‘I have enjoyed that,’ Gaibun admitted. He said nothing for a long while, staring into his tea, then abruptly looked up.
‘I would like to be able to say I’ll walk away from Asami. Sometimes I want to give you the greatest gift of our friendship, to say you can have the one you love, the one I am married to.’
‘Gaibun —’
‘Let me finish. I want to say that, but I can’t. Even though you are both my dearest friends and I know it will make you happy, I can’t say it. Because I love her too and cannot stop thinking about her. I still hope she will fall in love with me, the way she always has with you. My head knows three into two does not go but my heart still says there is hope —’
‘We should talk no more about that,’ Sendatsu said. ‘Asami is not here. It is just the two of us and we have a job to do.’
‘All right. I shall say no more. I have enjoyed this time with you too much. It does remind me of the days when we were young, before everything got complicated.’
Sendatsu clapped him on the shoulder. He too was tempted to make some grand gesture, to tell Gaibun that he would stay away from Asami forever more. But that would be a lie.
They went to bed with a laugh but both lay awake, thinking of Asami.
Sendatsu had to drag his mind away from her now, and back onto the training. He called Mai over and had her demonstrate how to flow from a block into a cut.
‘If my little daughter can do it, there’s no excuse for you not to!’ he told them. As always, that had the desired effect — they doubled their effort.
Mai joined Cheijun, making mud cakes under the amused eye of one of the young dragons wounded at Patcham and not yet ready to be back at full training.
To Sendatsu’s left, Tadd was running several groups through a course, making them race from side to side, touching the ground with their hands before getting up and racing to the other side. To his right, Bowen had them darting between tightly spaced wooden pegs, forcing them to use their feet, even when tired. Beyond him, Cadel had others working on the basic strokes until the sweat poured off them.
Sendatsu turned to his front and the score of young Velsh watching him nervously, standing in three lines. These were some of the most promising, the ones selected by Cadel and Bowen as future squad leaders. Their confidence was up, although a few of them were nursing bruises as a result of taking their eyes off their opponents when the huge roar had gone up from the meeting hall.
Sendatsu hefted his wooden practice sword, his bokken, and gave them a grim smile.
‘Front rank, show me what you have learned,’ he ordered.
One by one they rushed at him, determined to show their new-found
skills. They were fast, they were eager and they all had farm-bred strength honed by hard training.
Sendatsu went through them like a hot knife through butter.
The first tried a dragon-tail cut but he blocked that and winded the youth with a return blow that he turned into another block, cut low and then high and sent a second spinning away. The third managed to block one strike but not the second, while the next two were despatched by the zigzag style, a blow to the chest and then to the stomach of the other. The sixth slashed furiously at Sendatsu’s head but he ducked under one cut and sliced up to send the young man flying. On he moved, always in perfect balance and always half a step ahead of the dragons. He sidestepped one last rush and helped the dragon on the way with a kick to the rump.
He inspected the groaning group and offered them a grim smile.
‘Not too bad. But you need to keep your balance. An afternoon with Tadd on balance exercises, I think,’ he told them, to universal groans.
He laughed at their reaction then called them out individually, took them slowly through their mistakes and invited them to try it again. This time they were able to hold their positions and their practice swords for twice as long.
‘I defeated five Forlishmen by myself,’ he told them.
‘I heard it was nearer to twenty!’ someone called out.
Sendatsu smiled. ‘Five is enough. So don’t feel bad about falling to me this time. Work hard and soon you’ll be killing Forlish by yourself!’
He let them go, marvelling that they could smile at the thought of an afternoon being tortured by Tadd, and turned to his children.
‘When will we defeat the gaijin and be able to go home?’ Mai asked.
Sendatsu paused. The Velsh were willing but not ready. He hoped the Forlish gave them more time. ‘We hope we don’t have to fight until we are ready,’ he said slowly.
‘They are ready now. Besides, they have you. Nobody can beat you. You will save them,’ Mai said confidently.
Sendatsu chuckled but her words left him feeling uncomfortable. Apart from his children, he had always sought to avoid responsibility. But now he had to embrace it so he did not disappoint them. For that was far worse than anything else.
