“Don’t worry, Alicia,” Moreen said gently. “I only kept some of the money in the Dragoenix, and most of that survived anyway, hidden and buried beneath my room. I’ll give that to you two as a kind of severance pay, then I’ll get the rest for myself and Brit. There’s more than enough, thank God.”
Alicia nodded, relieved. Moreen didn’t bother to mention that part of the surplus was due to money that had been set aside to pay wages for the workers who had died in the fire. Some had already been given to the families of the deceased to help them get by, but Moreen always kept more in reserve than was strictly necessary, a practice that now left her in strong financial stead.
“Moreen?” Deeta asked. “Do you think, well, if you ever rebuild the Dragoenix or get another place… um, you’ll be needing experienced help, right?”
Moreen smiled kindly. “It may be a while, if ever, but if I ever have another inn, Deeta, you and Alicia both will always have a place there. Never you fear.”
Deeta smiled in relief, and even Alicia’s grim countenance softened in gratitude.
Moreen embraced each girl in turn, then left in search of her recovered strongbox.
- 3 -
The door closed behind the trainee, sealing him in the room with the three paladins. Quinn jo’Gary looked at the young man and smiled reassuringly.
“Relax, de’Valderat,” he said, motioning to an empty chair. The stone room was bare of decoration and was used for small meetings and study sessions by trainees. The only furniture were the four chairs and one table. The paladins all sat on one side, the trainee sat in the proffered chair across from them.
“This is an informal conversation we have with all our trainees,” Quinn said. “Normally this would have been part of your entrance evaluation, but since you joined late in the session under special circumstances, it was obviously delayed. Your uncle testified on your behalf, which was enough to satisfy our requirements, but still, we like to speak with each trainee to get a sense of the man within.”
The young man’s eyes widened slightly at the word “testified,” but he was otherwise calm. Good. As a Yellow paladin, Quinn liked to see self-possessed young men joining the Prismatic Order.
“I understand, sir,” de’Valderat said.
“Please, if you would, tell us about yourself,” Kerry Hawken, the Green paladin to Quinn’s left, said. “Your childhood, your education, any training or skills you have. Anything you feel we might need to know.”
The broad question was intended to elicit a variety of responses based on what type of person was before them. Different types of people thought differently, and they answered accordingly. A clever man who could think on his feet answered one way, while a more deliberative man answered another. An educated man answered differently than a rube, a noble differently than a beggar, a city dweller differently than a farmer. What someone found important in their life told you something about their character, and character was a key quality in any man seeking to become a paladin.
The trainee began simply and honestly, corroborating much of what they already knew from his uncle’s testimonial. Son of a thief, raised as a thief, lived on his own for years – the young man described his life in plain terms, giving them a sketch of his short life. He was reasonably well-educated for his age, but it was clear he valued practical “street” knowledge above that gained in an institution. For all his time on the streets, he also had a sheltered worldview, which Quinn found odd. Some level of combat training from an elf, which was good, but Gerard would take the trainee’s measure with a sword on his own, of that Quinn had no doubt.
As he spoke, the Violet paladin to Quinn’s right took notes on a clipboard. George Wren detested these interviews, Quinn knew, but he was also insightful in his observations, which made him invaluable to their training and evaluation process. When de’Valderat looked to be winding down his narrative, Quinn waved him to silence.
“Thank you,” the Yellow paladin said, “your honesty is appreciated. We’ve seen our share of former criminals in these halls, and some of them have gone on to be well-regarded brothers in our order. Please be assured no one will hold your past against you here.”
The trainee nodded, and Quinn noted a twinge of relief in the young man’s eyes.
“Now, that said, I’m sure you can understand when we ask, what brought you to us?” Quinn asked. “We do ask the same question of every young man seeking entry to the Prismatic Order, but my curiosity is particularly piqued by those who have, shall we say, checkered pasts.”
The young man hesitated, and Quinn saw uncertainty radiating from a dozen minor cues in his body language.
“Sir, as I told you, my father was a thief,” de’Valderat said, “but more than that, he was a man who lost his family. His parents, his sister, then my mother, and until recently, he believed my uncle was lost as well. He compensated for this loss by pushing away the things he loved most, rather than risk being hurt again. I grew up as a thief, fending for myself, because I didn’t know anything else.
“Then I met my uncle, and I saw a man who embraced the things he loved, though it sometimes tore him apart. I saw what a man could be like who devoted his life to something greater than himself, and I looked ahead in my own life at what I had devoted myself to – absolutely nothing. I couldn’t see myself as my father, and before I met my uncle, I didn’t see myself as anything, really. I planned on just living each day as I had before, doing whatever needed doing to stay alive and free.
“It wasn’t until I met my uncle that I realized those things weren’t enough. Maybe I’m not meant to be a paladin, maybe I’m not meant to be anything, but I realized I don’t want my life to end with me being nothing. To be honest, sir, this just felt right to me when I thought about it, like when you see a shirt in a store, picture yourself wearing it, and like what you see.”
Quinn smiled and nodded. The interview proceeded for a few minutes, then they dismissed the trainee back to his barracks. He stood and was nearly to the door when Kerry called for him to stop.
“I feel you should know, de’Valderat,” he said reassuringly, “we’ve sent a representative to the Men for Mankind Coalition asking them to forget their little vendetta against you. There’s no formal reply yet, but you can rest assured we’ll deal with it. We protect our own.”
“Thank you, sir.”
When the trainee was gone, the three paladins briefly conferred, with George recording their impressions alongside his own notes.
“I know we’ve had thieves before, a few thugs, and even one former assassin,” Kerry said, “and I’m sure one criminal more wouldn’t hurt things, assuming he pans out. I just worry sometimes what the cumulative effect is of allowing so many people with shady pasts into our midst.”
George snorted.
“That man is no more a criminal than I am a dwarf,” the Violet paladin said. “He’ll thrive here, mark my words, and he’ll make his mark on our order.”
- 4 -
The next evolution of Danner’s training began several hours before the next morning’s dawn. The group of trainees was jarred awake as a group of paladins burst into their barracks and bellowed for them all to get out of bed and pack their survival gear. The trainees were dogged by the paladins’ harsh voices, and biting comments snapped at the heels of those who were too slow to suit their instructors.
Danner’s light-sleeping habits had allowed him to get an early jump on his fellows, and he was on the ground and rifling quickly through his gear before the first paladin reached his bed. Flasch was at his side a heartbeat later, sorting through his own chest of equipment. Danner glanced to his other side and saw Trebor buried to his elbows in his trunk, but his face lacked the urgency of the other trainees. When he finally stood, he had his gear a little too neatly packed away in a backpack and several pouches attached to his war belt.[36] The belt was three inches wide, but it sagged around his waist with the weight of two full canteens and a few other pouches. Trebor caught Danne
r’s appraising gaze and quickly turned away.
Danner put the finishing touches on his own gear and tossed it onto his bed. He slid into the heavy boots given to him by the paladins for training, then slung his equipment across his shoulders. As he lined up next to Flasch, Danner buckled his own war belt around his waist, then stood silently awaiting orders. He didn’t have to wait long.
“Well, good morning and cheerful Decaday to you all. Congratulations, trainees, you managed to roll out of your soft little beds and get dressed nice and pretty in just under six minutes,” a harsh voice said. “That’s only a full minute slower than the worst batch of puke-faced babies I’ve ever had the misfortune to train, and only four minutes slower than it would have taken the seven of us to slaughter you to a man in your beds. People bent on killing you probably wouldn’t come in screaming to give you warning. Where we’re going, you’ll have to do better. Now get outside and form up in the courtyard.”
As Danner ran past, he risked a glance at the source of the grating chastisement. The imposing paladin wore the red cloak of courage settled across his broad shoulders, and his harsh face looked as if he’d been put in a meat grinder and had come through much the worse for wear. Deep scars of every imaginable shape and size crisscrossed his face, destroying what handsomeness he may have once possessed. His lips were set in a perpetual scowl, and his eyes were squinted and rock-hard.
Danner saw those eyes flick toward him, and he hastily averted his gaze lest he be berated for impudence. Gerard Morningham wasn’t fond of Danner to begin with, and he didn’t want to give the man a reason to leap down his throat.
“Let’s go, de’Valderat,” the Red paladin barked at him. “Quit trying to think and just do!”
Danner grimaced, but ducked his head in acknowledgement and followed the other trainees to the courtyard.
Their formation was blessedly brief. Sin and San hung like two glowing, half-lidded eyes in the sky, peering through the dense clouds as if curious about the strange goings-on of the mortals below. Danner felt the moons’ presence more than he saw them; his attention was riveted on the paladins briefing them.
“… where we’ll leave you,” Morningham was saying. His voice snapped through the pre-dawn darkness like the sting of a whip, forcing their attention if not their understanding. “It’s as simple as this, children. We’re leaving you out in the middle of nowhere, and you have to find your own way to your new home. You have whatever supplies you have on your person as of now, and nothing more. If you don’t have a compass, you’d better start praying now that you meet up with someone who’s charitable enough to let you tag along. Of course, justice is one of the virtues we teach here, and this is to be a small-group event, so anyone coming back in a group larger than six will find themselves on latrine duty for a month when we get back here. You’ve all been given fair warning now, and the first man who complains gets to be my personal assistant for a week.”
He said that last with a particularly malicious note in his voice, and Danner reinforced his opinion that Morningham was a mean-spirited bastard. Of course, that opinion could have been influenced by Morningham’s apparent dislike of Danner, he admitted privately.
“Search parties will be sent out to collect stragglers after a half-week has passed,” Morningham continued, “and anyone brought in that late will suffer no penalty other than the intense humiliation of failing miserably where so many of their peers did not. Oh, and they’ll be washing dishes for a week. On your way out the gate, I suggest you pick up a map so you don’t get your little selves lost. Are there any questions?”
One hand rose timidly from somewhere behind Danner. He couldn’t see it, of course, but the air itself seemed to cringe as Morningham’s eyes narrowed to glare past Danner’s shoulder.
“That was a rhetorical question, Jorgins. I don’t give a damn what you have to say,” Morningham spat. Then he looked disgusted. “Well if you have a question and the gall to raise your hand, at least have the stones to ask it, boy. Don’t cower down like a denarae slug just because I looked crossways at you. Speak, boy.”
“Wh… what h..happens if the ss..search parties d..don’t f...ff..find us?” a quivering voice asked timidly.
Morningham looked over the rest of the crowd, apparently ignoring the existence of the nervous trainee.
“Are there any intelligent questions that don’t sound like they’re coming from spineless, baby-faced, cowards?” Morningham said roughly. This time only silence. “Good. Collect your maps and load onto a cart outside the courtyard. Dismissed.”
Danner hurried through the gate, following closely behind Trebor and Marc. The three of them managed to be loaded on the same cart as Garnet, Michael, and Flasch, along with a half-dozen other trainees. Mindful of Morningham’s warning, Danner grabbed a map before he climbed in next to Marc. The horse-drawn carts had large, steel loops attached to the front and back at odd angles, but Danner had only a second to wonder about them before his vision abruptly went black.
Dark hoods were pulled over each of their heads, and a pair of paladins stood guard in the middle of the cart to make sure none of them removed the hoods or found some other way to peek. Danner found that it was almost impossible to hear anything from within the hood.
He fought against a burst of panic as he was effectively bereft of his senses. A firm hand on his shoulder quieted his thrashings.
“Easy, de’Valderat,” a soft voice said. “Easy.”
Danner couldn’t be sure for how long they traveled. At one point he felt a thunderous jolt in the cart, and there was a disoriented moment in which he felt weightless. He hung that way for what seemed an eternity, feeling his weight sway and shift as though he was riding a pendulum, then the seat beneath him lurched again, and he was thrown to the floor of the cart.
He waited for someone to lift him back into his place, but nothing happened. Then he realized they weren’t moving anymore. He called out tentatively, but received no answer. Finally he reached up and lifted the hood so he could see, expecting any moment to have it crammed forcefully back down to his shoulders. When he was still left unmolested, Danner removed the hood entirely and took stock of his surroundings.
The trainees were still seated in the cart, which lay forlornly on one side of a small clearing with no sign of how it had gotten there. There were no horses, no tracks, nor any signs of the paladins who had accompanied them. One by one, the others removed their hoods and looked around.
“Any clues?” Michael asked. He seemed unconcerned by their seeming abandonment. He wore an air of calmness the way mountains wore mist.
“None so far,” Danner replied. A rush of excitement surged over him, and he grinned. The smile was infectious, and soon all his friends had joined him in the slightly foolish expression.
Garnet shrugged his ox-like shoulders and leapt down from the cart. “Well then, let’s get started, shall we?”
Chapter 22
You’re only as strong as the beer you drink, the tables you dance on, the women you love, and the friends you hold close.
- Drinking Toast
- 1 -
The sun was already climbing in the sky as the dozen trainees in their wagon split off in groups and each decided which way he should go. Three trainees formed one group, two others teamed up, and one decided to go it alone. The loner was Ashfen Diermark, one of the few people Danner decided he could easily learn to hate. Ashfen was selfish and harsh, for all that he seemed to have a strong, natural leadership ability. Other trainees followed him because they knew he’d come out on or near the top, no matter his abrasive methods or willingness to put his own concerns before theirs. Danner thought it strange that no one was following him, then snorted as the trio abruptly “decided” to go the same way Ashfen had gone only moments before. No doubt their group would likewise “decide” to go whatever way Ashfen turned next, whether he wanted to be followed or not. Knowing Ashfen, he wanted to be followed, and sooner or later he’d end up leading the
little group directly.
The remaining pair of trainees watched nervously as the trio trotted off in Ashfen’s wake, then muttered for a moment with their heads close together. Whatever their decision, it involved a lot of pointing at the trees and a brief shoving match. When the matter was decided, the two moved off in the opposite direction of Ashfen and the others.
Danner and his five friends, meanwhile, were taking a few relaxed moments to check their gear and assess their needs, while Garnet worked on orienting their map.
The map was drawn with a clearly-defined compass in the corner, delineating north with a stylized sword pointing slightly slanted away from the top of the sheet. When they first started sorting through their gear, Garnet had planted a two-foot stick in the ground and put a rock on the tip of the shadow cast on the ground. By the time he’d unpacked his hastily-thrown-together equipment and repacked it more securely, the tip of the shadow had moved almost a foot. Garnet put another rock on the new point of the shadow, then drew a line between the two stones.
“There’s north,” he said, drawing a second line perpendicular to the first with an arrow pointing one direction. “Now, knowing that, we can figure out about where we are.”
“How?” Flasch asked. “How do you know that’s north, I mean, not just how do we figure out where we are, though I guess that’s just as important.” He paused for breath, then continued before Garnet had a chance to respond. “Oh, I see, the shadow’s tip moves west to east since the sun goes east to west, then you draw the line and bingo. Good thinking, Garnet.”
Garnet blinked, sorting through his friend’s quick turn of thoughts. Finally he shook his head briskly and then nodded in agreement to indicate the shorter man had reasoned correctly.
“As for our map, here.” Garnet held his map taut between his hands and oriented his body until the sword tip on the map was aligned with his arrow on the ground. “Okay, if we’ve got mountains on our right, and mountains to the north, then we must be here,” he pointed to a general area west of the Delnar Mountains where the stony peaks formed a curve almost directly east of Nocka. “Where exactly will have to wait until we get to higher ground and I can compare the terrain on the map to what we can see. But regardless, we should head this way if we’re to reach the place marked on the map. It’s up here, south of the road from Lokana.”
Hunting The Three (The Barrier War) Page 26
