by Dave Duncan
trample you into the mud."
"With respect, sire, perhaps not! I mean,"
Grand Master added hastily as the royal temper
glinted, "that "Raider" is certainly a
foolish name, but I cannot at the moment recall
whether it was ever formally approved. I never chose
to be called Vicious."
"You didn't?" The King did not like to be
contradicted. He had probably been saving up
some pointed observations on the subject of Sir
Vicious.
"No, sire. I wanted to be
Lion. I was entered in the rolls as Lion, but
the sopranos had already named me Vicious and it
stuck. When the time for my binding came, I had
grown into it. Candidate Raider is unusually
tall. Even when he was the Brat he was big, and
he has very, hmm, very red hair." The ground was
especially treacherous here, for Ambrose's hair
and beard had a decidedly bronze hue.
"Oh, that one!" Ambrose said with welcome
signs of amusement. "Year by year as I've come
here, I've watched that flaming red head moving
up, table by table. I'll be interested to meet its
owner at last."
"Hmm, yes, sire. At first sight they
called him the Bael, of course, because of his
hair. This was while the Baelish War was still
raging, and stories of atrocities were drifting in
almost every week--piracy, raiding, slaving. He
wore it long when he arrived, so the first night the
sopranos hacked it all off him. Naturally!
I mean, how could they resist? But it took six
of them to hold him down and when they thought the scramble
was over, he did not agree. One can start a
fight but it takes at least two to stop it.
Raider wouldn't stop. He broke one boy's
jaw and knocked teeth out of several others."
"Broke his jaw?" The King raised his tawny
brows. This was exactly the sort of childish
tale that impressed him. "How old was he then?"
"Thirteen, sire."
"Broke a jaw at thirteen?" Ambrose
chuckled, releasing a gleam of the royal charm.
"No milksop, obviously!"
"Far from it, sire. That was only the beginning.
By the time his term as the Brat was up, he'd cowed
all the sopranos and most of the beansprouts, and
I don't remember anyone else ever managing
that. He sabotaged their clothes and fouled their
bedding with horse dung. He woke them in the
night .... They could gang up on him, of
course, and they did, but they couldn't stay together in
a pack all the time. Whenever Raider could get
one of them alone, he would jump out and take his
revenge. One-on-one he could pummel any of
them. I have never seen so many black eyes and
split lips. It was a reign of terror. They
were scared of him, and it's supposed to be the other
way. They named him Raider, sire!"
Ambrose roared out a thunderclap of laughter that
seemed to shake the building. "Feels good
to tell me that, doesn't it? All right, we shall
issue a royal pardon to Candidate Raider for
being Candidate Raider. He obviously earned
that name. If he ever goes near the coast with that
hair they'll lynch him. They have long memories
for those evil days. You suppose his mother was raped
by a Baelish raider? Tell me more about this
demon." He reached for a pie.
Grand Master breathed a silent prayer of
thanks to the absent Durendal. "But the point is
that he isn't a demon, sire! He's affable,
courteous, sociable. Self-contained, inclined
to be meditative. Very popular and respected.
We find this often. No matter what their
background, once they've been through their testing as
the Brat, as soon as people start to treat them like
human beings, they begin to behave like human ..."
He recalled another of Durendal's tips:
Never lecture him. "Yes, well,
Raider's a future commander of your Guard,
sire. I'll stake my job on it."
This threat to the royal prerogative caused the
porcine eyes to shrink even smaller. "You will, will
you? I'll remember that, Grand Master. By the
eight! I don't recall your predecessor ever
making so reckless a prediction." He emptied
the drinking horn and bit a chunk out of the pie.
Hoare was grinning, so he had guessed what was
coming.
"He made this one, sire. He made it
several times. A superb judge of men. And he
was taken from us before the night of the fire. It was
Raider who ran back into the building and made the
rescues. Two knights and one candidate are
alive today only because of him."
The King must know all this. Grand Master's
reports on the seniors were officially addressed
to Commander Montpurse, but he certainly passed
them on. Ambrose could probably quote them
word for word if he wanted to.
"So he's lucky and he's foolhardy. How
is he with a sword, hmm?"
"Adequate."
The royal scowl darkened the room again. "Is
that the best you can say about this paragon?
Adequate?"
"I am confident his skills will not be found
wanting." The truth was that the fencing masters
refused to commit themselves on Raider's
swordsmanship. Fencing was an obsession
for most of the boys, but not for him. He was
easygoing, even indolent, practicing no more than
he had to and frequently letting his opponents
score--he admitted he did that, although holding
back was regarded as a major breach of the code.
Winning mattered more to them, he said. He had been
ranked as "disappointing." But one day, just once,
he had taken offense at something Wolfbiter did
or said, and then he had given the school wonder a
thorough trouncing with foils, around and around the
courtyard. It had been the talk of all
Ironhall for days. He had been unable
to repeat that performance since and nobody knew
whether he could do so in a real sword fight.
The King had sensed the evasion but he let it go.
"Well, they can't all be heroes. Bullwhip,
Mallory, Raider ... Who's fourth?" He
reached for the second pie. There was gravy in his
beard.
"Wasp, rapier man. Fine swordsman.
Popular, sharp ..." Grand Master hesitated
one last moment, and then said it. "I have reservations
about him, sire."
"What sort of reservations?"
"He's only a boy."
"Shaving yet?" the King asked with his mouth
full.
"Probably not. Wasp is not ready, but there
are a dozen first-class men waiting behind him. It
seems very unfair to hold them up because of him."
That was the rule--candidates must leave in the
order in which they arrived. Awkward though this
ancient edict often was, it did encourage
cooperation in the Order. T
he faster learners worked
hard to help the slow ones. Any other arrangement
would make them compete against one another, leading
to bad blood and feuds within the brotherhood.
Thus was it done and thus shall it always be done.
The King was scowling again. Monarchs liked to think
they were busy people, and Ambrose grudged the time
to come to Ironhall. It was a duty he could never
delegate, for a Blade must be bound by the hand of his
ward. "His fencing is good?"
"He lacks the heft for the heavier weapons, but
with a rapier he's brilliant. He'll be even
better when he stops growing so fast--it skews his
coordination." It was his very skill that was the problem,
of course. He was too young to handle the deadly
abilities Ironhall had given him. A band
of drunken aristocratic fops poking
fun at a boy Blade might provoke disaster.
"I'm sure there's nothing wrong with the man himself,
sire. He's just immature--suffering from a bad
attack of adolescence. He can neither swim with the
tadpoles nor jump with the frogs. One minute
he expects to conquer the world, next minute he's
convinced he's human trash and a total
failure; or his friends have left him behind and life
isn't fair--that sort of thing. We all go through
some of it in our time, but he has a severe case.
His terrible experience in the fire set him back.
And he is an Ironhall swordsman!"
Hoare was pulling faces again.
Ambrose had started on the cheese. "How
old?" he mumbled.
"He says eighteen, but he may have lied when
he came in. A lot of them do and it rarely
matters. He was orphaned by a Baelish raid
--must have been about the last one of the war. He
turned up at the gate here alone. Normally we
don't accept a boy unless a parent or
guardian sponsors him, of course. Wasp
claimed to have walked all the way from Norcaster.
He was in a very weak state--close to starvation,
feet bloodied, incipient pneumonia."
"Are you accusing your predecessor of being
motivated by pity, Grand Master?"
The Durendal gambit again: "I am sure
he was, sire, many times. But he very rarely
made a mistake." The ensuing silence was
encouragement to continue. "And in this case, he may
even have been anxious to find a Brat to replace
Raider before he devastated the entire soprano
class!"
Ambrose munched for a moment, then took a
gulp of ale. "How did the rat pack deal with
him?" It was an unexpected question, a reminder that
a king who looked like a butter churn might yet
have a sharp mind.
"They hardly touched him. Partly, I think,
they were sorry for him. Most of them are here because they
made the world too hot to hold them, but Wasp was
different. More important, Raider was still
resentful and opposed to the hazing. He put the
new Brat under his protection. They have been
staunch friends ever since." Grand Master saw that
Hoare had picked up the hint, so it was a fair
bet that Ambrose would raise the matter if he
tried to shirk it. "Inseparable friends."
"Like that?" It was known that His Majesty
disapproved strongly of that.
"No, not like that, sire," Grand Master said
firmly. "If it were like that, then there would be
jokes and gossip, and there aren't. You cannot keep
such secrets in Ironhall." Not easily,
anyway. "I'm sure they are just what I have
said, very close friends. It is common enough in the
Order. Boys arrive here rejected or
recently orphaned. The school is harsh--it is
no wonder that they reach out for friendship."
The King grunted skeptically. Hoare rolled
his eyes.
Grand Master said, "Wasp's misfortune is
that he was young when he came and he has turned out
to be a slow developer."
And now he was inconveniencing his sovereign lord,
who was displeased. "You have conjurations to nudge them
along!"
"They are not infallible, sire. Even the
ritual to stop a boy growing taller than
Blade limits did not work for Raider, although it
is one of our standards. There is a
maturation-enhancing ritual we could have tried on
Wasp, but I never risked it when I was Master
of Rituals and I will not allow it now. The
danger is that it invokes only spirits of time, and
such monoclinal adjurations risk perturbing the
diametric complement, which in the case of time is
chance, thus hazarding aberrant and unpredictable
eventualities. The College has records
of children dying of old age before the ..." The menace
in the King's face stopped him.
"You're lecturing!"
"Your pardon, sire!" Grand Master
hesitated and then decided that in fairness to the boy
they were discussing he must tell the rest of the story.
"There is more, sire. His entire family had
died in a fire, understand. When we had the fire
here, last Eighthmoon, he became separated from
the others. I suspect ... Well, there is no
doubt, really. He panicked. When everyone
else went down the stairs, he must have run the
wrong way or hidden somewhere. ... We counted
heads and discovered he was missing--this was after
Raider had already helped the two knights out.
We tried to stop him, but he went back a third
time to look for Wasp and carried him out just moments
before the roof collapsed. There is absolutely
no doubt that he saved the lad's life. The boy
has not quite recovered from that experience even
yet. He needs more time. ..."
"Tragic!" rumbled the King. "But we cannot
let one boy's problems disrupt our Royal
Guard. I do not want tearful tales, Grand
Master, I want recommendations. This is a
difficult situation, one that your predecessor
faced more than once. I look to you for judgment."
Grand Master sighed. "Yes, Your Grace.
It depends entirely on the urgency of Your
Majesty's needs. If Commander Montpurse
requires up to fifteen new Blades,
Ironhall can supply them, and fourteen will be
entirely satisfactory. Probably the
fifteenth will also perform as required and I am just
worrying overmuch, like a mother hen. On the other hand,
if three will tide the Commander over for a couple of
months, then I would recommend that this be Your
Majesty's decision."
"Two months?" the King growled. "Sounds like
the boy needs two years."
"With respect, sire, he will be Prime. That
is a considerable test for any candidate and those with
apple cheeks most of all. I suspect the
Commander could confirm that statement for you." He
glanced around, and the fair-faced Montpurse
grinned and nodded agreement. "Wasp will no
t have his
hero to rely on any more. The candidates behind him
will guess that he held them back and seniors can
make Prime's life utter misery if they
want. So can Grand Master, if he must. I will
guarantee, sire, that within two months,
Candidate Wasp will either have snapped like a cheap
sword and run away across the moors screaming,
or he will have hair on his chin. It may not be
visible to everyone, but it will be there. And in that case,
both Your Majesty and the Order will have gained an
excellent Blade."
For a long, uncomfortable moment the piggy eyes
assessed Grand Master as if he were a juicy
acorn. "And if you're wrong?"
"Minister of Fisheries, sire."
The King leaned back in the big chair and
uttered a couple of deep whoofs that grew into a
sort of deep-seated chortling, a peculiar
eruption that made his bulk shake. "So you can be
ruthless? I confess I wondered if you were man enough
for the job, Grand Master. I am pleased to see
my doubts were unjustified. I need men who know
when compassion is no kindness. Commander, can you live
with just the three paragons for now?"
"For two months, yes sire." Montpurse
had obviously been amused by the exchange. He
must have witnessed many similar sessions. "Longer
than that might be troublesome."
"Then you have your two months, Grand Master.
Bring on your swordsmen. We shall leave the
Wasp in his nest for now."
Ever since the fire in West House, the
senior seniors' dormitory had been a room
in New Wing big enough for two beds but containing
six. Bullwhip's and Mallory's were next
door. Herrick and Fitzroy had to climb over
Wasp's or Raider's to reach theirs. The King's
unexpected arrival had thrown all the seniors
into panic until they realized that they were already
wearing their best outfits, which they had put on for the
Return that morning and had not had cause
to change. All that was required was some washing,
straightening, and combing. Herrick had shaved again,
because his jowls were permanently blue, but now six
men--five men and a boy--were stretched out on their
cots awaiting the King's pleasure.
Herrick chewed his nails. Fitzroy
cracked his knuckles. Mallory was polishing his
boots for the fifteenth time. Bullwhip kept
getting up, looking out the door, closing it,
sitting down again .... And so on. The only
calm one in the place was Raider, silently
