Half-Breed

by Anna L. Walls

  The man presented him with a formal salute, and as soon as Canis returned it, he waved him to the side to wait and Leonard left.

  Canis stood by the wall and watched until the instructor brought that particular lesson to a halt. He then waved Canis forward. “I have been informed about your injury during your test. Since you will miss some of the first hour of this class, you will make up the time after class.” He then waved Canis to pair off with a student who had been matched with the instructor before.

  The next hour was spent learning a complicated offensive form.

  In the last two hours of the class, the students were supposed to use what they had learned in the first half of the class, but Canis had missed the first hour, the defensive half of the lesson, so the instructor was right at his shoulder, showing him the moves and making corrections as they went. Having been present for the offensive lesson, Canis did better during the last hour of class.

  After the class was over and the other students had left, Canis waited to get his instructions from the teacher.

  The teacher waited for a healthy count of ten after the door was closed before he said anything to his newest, and by far youngest, student. He had seen few people wait with such stillness, but he refused to be impressed by the Master’s pet.

  “My name is Master Stanton and that is how I expect you to address me whenever you wish to speak to me. Apparently, you consider yourself skilled enough to take my class so don’t expect any coddling. No boy this far short of shaving should be allowed past the first test, but you have been allowed to take both the first and the second in as many days, and after only a few months of instruction. Nothing but favoritism could have allowed you to actually pass either test. The standards of this school must be sadly slacking. Maybe Dagon is getting old. He has informed me, though, that you will be allowed to take the third test as well. I think both you and he are fools even to consider it. You are too small.” He sighed and narrowed his eyes then with a tightening of his mouth, he continued. “Since you are being considered for the next test, it is my obligation to inform you that it will bear little resemblance to the last two. At some time of Master Dagon’s choosing, you will receive a message. That message will contain the instructions for your test. For your information, the test will take place within this building and you will have a limited time to complete the task. This test is designed for a man to complete, not to mention a student with more years of training under his belt than you have. I promise you that I will not let the standards lapse for a child.”

  Canis took in all the information Master Stanton laid out, disregarding the obvious slur that fairly dripped from the last word. He had never had things handed to him easily and didn’t expect it now. His injury concerned him most. Not since his first night with the slave caravan had he ever had an injury like this, one that slowed him down or interfered with his movements so much that favoring them or not was a conscious decision.

  Stanton spoke again. “We have already covered the defensive part of the lesson you missed; there’s no point in going over it again, so to replace that we will spar for the rest of this hour and for every makeup hour until the healer clears you as sound.” He drew his sword and saluted.

  Canis watched the tall man as he spoke. It was obvious to him that Stanton didn’t like him very much. That information came through in more ways than just what he said. His entire body language spoke of detest, and his scent spoke of anger. Then again, the likes and dislikes of other people was only information to be aware of and filed away.

  The blades in the school were all alike in one respect, they were all little better than blanks of varying lengths and styles with a variety of hilts and guards attached, and Stanton’s was no different. Long and straight with only a slight curve near the tip, it sported only a cursory cross-guard; apparently, Sword Master Stanton preferred to rely on his skill to protect his hand.

  Canis returned the salute and their match began. By the time their hour was over, Canis’s back was screaming and his foot was throbbing.

  The Third Test

  Canis was out of his casts and his bruises were gone in less than three weeks, but he didn’t get his message until yet another two weeks had passed. Slipped under his door sometime during the night, was a folded and sealed parchment. He thanked his mother for teaching him how to read, though it was possible she had no idea. He read:

  Agent Canis;

  Master Dagon has been kidnapped and is being held hostage somewhere within the school. You have six hours to find him and extricate him from the school to a carriage that will be waiting to remove you from the area. You must consider every hand within the school to be set against you.

  Lord Santos, King of Chicago.

  He knew that the message was simply the initiation of his test, but he wondered if the signature was real. Why would the king be interested in his test? He tucked the parchment inside his shirt, strapped on his sword, and donned his cloak. He wasn’t exactly sure why he bothered with the cloak, but he liked the impulse, so he didn’t take the time to discard it again. He left his boots behind. He was very good at hunting, and boots would make far more noise in the halls than he wanted to make.

  Making use of a skill no one knew about, Canis ghosted through the halls of the school quickly. The students and their teachers all would expect him to search every room in order to find his quarry, but Canis had a much more efficient method.

  Less than an hour after stepping out of his room, Canis was on the fourth and topmost floor of the school near the back. He expected Dagon would be difficult to find, but he didn’t expect to follow his scent to such an odd location.

  He peeked around every corner he came to, and here he discovered two students from his class standing outside a door at the far end of the hall. They stood at leisure on either side of the door talking with each other in low voices.

  Dagon and Stanton were here too; to a degree it was all to be expected, but then he smelled blood. The smell of blood took away the limits of the contest and made the hunt real and very dangerous. Then there was the muffled sound of something hitting flesh and a stifled cry of pain from the direction where the two students stood guard. They only glanced at the closed door before continuing their quiet conversation.

  Canis took no chances, he darted the length of the hall on silent feet, and launched himself at the feet of the closest student. The man went down loosely, rapping his head hard on the floor and lying still afterward. His momentum carried him into the feet of the second student, but the man had a moment to recover from his surprise. The moment wasn’t good enough. Canis succeeded in pulling his feet out from under him anyway, and then Canis was on him in a heartbeat and had his fingers in his hair. With a sharp jerk that left several strands of the man’s hair in his hands, Canis rapped his head against the floor and left him senseless beside his cohort.

  Without rising, Canis tested the door. It was not locked; few of the doors in the school had locks. Taking care to make no further noise, he drew his sword for the first time and took a breath. This had to be a trap, and the noise of his skirmish couldn’t have been avoided. His opponents within the room would be prepared for him to be short so he hugged the floor and flowed into the room like a snake.

  The smell of blood and fear spoke of the inordinate danger in this room. The legs looming over him told him that his low entry had the desired effect. Like a snake, he struck, imbedding his single fang into the closest thigh. Dull though his sword was, it still had a point. His strike was rewarded with a roar.

  Having never stopped moving, Canis flowed away from the downward cut that came after him, and the light from the window showed him a bright and sharp blade. If this was a test, it was deadly, and he was at an even greater disadvantage. He couldn’t afford to duel even for a moment against a sharp blade, so with a very quick exchange, the sword was sent flying, accented by another roar when he buried the point of his blade deeply into the man’s shoulder.

  He pulled
his blade out with a jumping backspin that carried his hand all the way around to drive the pommel of his sword into the man’s temple, dropping him in a heap on the floor.

  He landed and allowed himself to go the rest of the way down to crouch on the floor with one hand resting on the chest of…Stanton. One hand was ready to use his sword in whatever way might present itself, the other told him that Stanton was still alive, while his eyes took in the rest of the room before he moved. He scooped up Stanton’s sword and used it to cut the ropes holding Dagon to a ladder-backed chair. He had struggled against the ropes and there was blood on his wrists and ankles, there was also blood on his face and dripping from a cut in his hair staining the gray and running down the side of his face to drip off his nose and chin. All the players were here, but this much blood and damage said that something much bigger than his test was going on here.

  Canis lifted Dagon’s chin to look in his face. He needed to know if he was well enough to walk. Though Dagon opened his eyes, he didn’t seem able to hold his head up, so Canis silently thanked the man’s mother for making him small and sheathed his sword. He looked at Stanton’s sword and decided to launch it out the window. He wouldn’t have a free hand to carry it and he couldn’t leave it behind him. He stepped out into the hall to retrieve the weapons of the men out there and did the same with them. It wouldn’t take them long to find their swords again. A glance would reveal the broken window and the swords would be easy to spot lying in the alley, but those same weapons would not be coming up behind him soon. He’d reach the carriage that was supposed to be waiting out front long before anyone else could make it down to the alley, and if it wasn’t there, he’d be out of the building, and he could find a safe place to hide until Dagon was more alert.

  He pulled Dagon over his shoulders, grunting – the man was heavier than he looked – then he made his way down the back stairs that led to the kitchens and the alley. He hurried through the slush of melting snow – regretting the tracks he was leaving behind – and around to the front of the school where he saw the carriage behind a matched team of white horses in shiny black trappings just pulling to a halt. Something was painted on the door too, but Canis didn’t pay any attention to it.

  He pulled the door open and eased Dagon onto the floor of the carriage. Hands from inside pulled him farther in and propped him up on a seat, while a voice from the carriage’s depths said, “Get in.”

  Canis hesitated, but did as he was told. He was alarmed when the man who sat across from him knocked on the roof and the carriage began to move again. He would have jumped out, but because he could, he didn’t. Then the man turned to Dagon who slumped beside him, tipping his chin up and getting a look at the blood-smeared face for the first time. He turned on Canis, furious. “What’s the meaning of this? What did you do to him?”

  The only answer Canis could give was to hand over the message he had received that morning. It was still morning. Little more than an hour had passed since he first read that message.

  “This isn’t the message I sent. That’s not even my handwriting.” He handed the message to the man sitting next to Canis who was keeping a cautious eye on Dagon in order to keep him in his seat.

  Canis eyed the man across from him carefully. He was too thin in Canis’s opinion. He looked to be worried about Dagon, but other than that, there was no way to determine what kind of connection there might have been between any of the three men in the carriage.

  The man continued to study Dagon slumped beside him, then he turned back to Canis. “Answer me, what did you do to him?”

  Canis couldn’t answer, he wanted to, but he couldn’t. He rested a hand on his throat and shook his head.

  “Dagon told you about that, my lord,” said the man who sat beside Canis.

  “Oh yes, I remember now.” He sat back with a sigh. “You will see to the investigation of this, Corbin,” he said softly.

  Canis reached forward and lifted one of Dagon’s limp hands and pushed the sleeve up to show the two men the bloody rope burns. The lord who still had no name grimaced and growled. “Someone will pay for this.”

  Canis then drew a line from his right eye to his mouth.

  “What are you trying to say?” said the man addressed as Lord.

  Canis pointed at the different wounds on Dagon and then drew the line down his face again.

  “I don’t understand. Do you know what he’s trying to say, Corbin?”

  “Maybe Dagon will understand when he wakes up,” said Corbin.

  The carriage ride lasted a good fifteen minutes. Then they turned into a vast walled compound, and drove through the center of what would be a carefully manicured garden in a few months and up to the front of the largest building Canis had ever seen. This building dwarfed the school and the slave house combined.

  Slaves in red enameled collars and dressed in red hose and white tunics, rushed out through the slush to meet the carriage and were sent scurrying again at the lord’s command, to retrieve the healer with all possible speed. While they waited, Corbin spoke at length to a man who was also dressed in red and white, though it was a uniform with loose pants instead of hose. He had a long sword at his hip and a pike in his hand. Canis couldn’t hear what was said, but when he was finished, that man also ran off.

  They stood for a moment and watched Dagon on his way in the care of the healer who, in contrast to everyone else Canis had seen here so far, wore a plain brown dress and tied her long blond hair back with a white ribbon. Then Corbin rested a hand on Canis’s shoulder and guided him in the wake of the lord. They strode through a door large enough to accept a carriage, and it ushered them into a stone monstrosity of a house.

  Inside, the lord strode through a torrent of curtsying ladies and bowing gentlemen all dressed in fine and colorful clothes full of lace, shimmers and rustles. Scattered among those people were dozens of slaves all wearing red and white with shiny red collars. Another slave, this one had the added decoration of a red sash around his waist, glided up to the lord and presented him with a tray that held something in a cup. He took it without thought, then took a seat in an overlarge, ornately carved chair on a raised platform. As soon as he was settled with his cup, the crowd in the room resumed their swarm. The confusion was further magnified by more than one troop of entertainers.

  Corbin had retained Canis at the door to the chamber and as the lord took his seat, he bent down and whispered in Canis’s ear. “Do not touch your sword in that room or I may have to kill you.”

  Canis looked at the man in surprise, but his expression spoke only of seriousness, not malice. He turned back to the odd display in the room full of people.

  The lord sat in the massive chair with his chin propped on a fist and his eyes to the side. He was ignoring the swarm of humanity in all their glittery clothing. He radiated fury and the people gave him a wide buffer of open space. At least most of them gave him space. Canis watched as one woman curtsied deeply in front of him. She was dressed in many folds of gem-encrusted red material that hugged her form to the waist and flowed out wide over her hips to eventually brush the floor like an upside-down rose.

  She must have said something because the lord lifted his chin from his fist and looked at her. Her presence must have reminded him of the rest of the men and women in the room. Slaves were not to be noticed, they were to be there when needed and gone when they weren’t, and the entertainment was little better.

  The lord stood and looked over the heads of the crowd until he found Corbin and Canis standing outside of the room. The woman was still in her deep curtsy. Her legs had to be shaking by now. He waved his hand in a shooing motion. “Leave me. All of you; go,” he said and resumed his seat.

  The people all left by routes that apparently led deeper into the massive complex. The woman who had curtsied to him was the last to go and reluctant to do so even yet. It took another wave of the lord’s hand to send her out of the room.

  When everyone was gone, he nodded to Corbin who the
n guided Canis into the room. When they were two thirds of the way across the polished floor, Corbin halted them, bowed deeply, and then straightened again.

  Canis watched this display without copying it. Slaves bowed to free men but he had never been able to bow to anyone. Who was this man that even free men bowed to him? He didn’t look like the other slaves he had seen here. Canis turned his eyes back to the lord and steeled himself. What will this man, who it seemed free men bowed to, do to me?

  The lord’s expression was still dark, but he seemed not to notice Canis’s lapse. Corbin did notice, and his hand on Canis’s shoulder tried to press him into a bow.

  Canis couldn’t control his response to this any more than he could bow in the first place. He snarled softly, pulled out of Corbin’s grip, and stepped out of his reach. He struggled to erase the action before it was too late, but what was done was done.

  “What was that all about?” asked the lord as he rose and approached them. Corbin was glowering and his hand rested on the hilt of his sword. The lord walked right up to Canis and lifted his chin. Canis kept his hands carefully away from his sword and looked up into the face of the lord.

  “Amazing eyes,” said the lord. “I don’t believe I have ever seen such a color in my life. And no fear, did you notice, Corbin. Will you not bow to your king?”

  Canis’s eyes widened with surprise. This man was the king. He had never seen a king before. He didn’t understand what there was about him that made him a king. He wasn’t entirely sure what a king was in the first place.

  “You actually didn’t know; I’m astonished.” He released Canis’s chin. “I’m your king, Lord Santos Chicago.”

  Canis rested a hand on his own chest and struggled with the only word he could say. “Canis.” He did not bow; he didn’t try.