Brinn gasped, raising his sword. But when he looked more closely, he saw that he was mistaken, that it was only that single warrior alone in the dust.
“Huh?” he said. “Where did they—?”
“Who?” the warrior asked.
Brinn lowered his sword again. “But if I don’t take the treasure,” he said softly, “won’t you? Then there will be war anyway.”
“I am not here to take the treasure,” the warrior said. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to.” And somehow Brinn knew without question that the man was not lying.
“Who are you?” Brinn demanded suddenly. “Why are you here?”
“Let’s just say I have an interest in where the treasure ends up. I happen to think it should stay exactly where it is.”
“Maybe I will leave the treasure here,” Brinn said, oddly relieved. “Who needs it, anyway? Wealth makes one a king, not a warrior. What I came for was the horn! And I can still take that back to the village!”
“And then people will know the Troll in the Labyrinth has been defeated?” the warrior asked.
“Yes!” Brinn said proudly. “And then they will be able to come safely into the Labyrinth, and . . .”
And eventually someone might still find the treasure, Brinn thought.
“Oh,” he said.
“Yes?”
“But if I return empty-handed—” Brinn started to say.
“Yes?”
He didn’t finish what he was thinking: Then people won’t think of me as a great warrior!
“You never answered my first question,” Brinn said. “Who are you?”
But when Brinn looked again, the warrior was gone.
“Wait!” Brinn said, turning all the way around in the coliseum-like canyon. The dust was settling at last, and the sun was setting too, beginning to dip down under the rim of the canyon. But the warrior was nowhere to be seen.
Brinn looked down. There were footprints in the sand— his own. He could trace them from the side of the canyon, where he had hidden, to the dead troll and the cave. Then from the entrance of the cave through the place where the cloud of dust had been.
But from the warrior there were no footprints at all. It was as if he had never even been there.
“He wasn’t here?” Brinn asked aloud. “He was only a . . .?”
“Ghost,” Irontongue said, speaking aloud the word that Brinn wasn’t sure he would ever be able to bring himself to say.
It was a long walk back to his village, so Brinn set out that very evening. He wished there had been some way for him to seal the treasure inside the cave. Unfortunately the boulders were too heavy for human arms. But he had buried the fortune in the sand as best he could. And the story Brinn was formulating—a horrifying tale of defeat and woe about his encounter with the Troll in the Labyrinth—would act as a barrier of sorts. For a few years, anyway.
Brinn had only just begun the journey out of the Labyrinth when Irontongue asked him, “But now how are you going to prove you’re a warrior?”
“Don’t laugh,” Brinn said. “But I think maybe I just did.”
“That’s just what I was thinking,” said the sword, who, as usual, insisted on having the last word.
BRENT HARTINGER
BRENT HARTINGER has been writing books since he graduated from college in 1986, but he didn’t have any luck getting them published until 2001. That year, his luck definitely changed, and he has since sold nine novels to various publishers, including three teen novels (The Last Chance Texaco, Geography Club, and its sequel, The Order of the Poison Oak ) and two fantasy novels (Dreamquest and the upcoming The Fifth Season). Brent also writes screenplays and plays, some of which are adaptations of his novels.
Of all the genres and mediums in which he writes, Brent most likes writing fantasy—preferably fantasy for young people—which is why he is so thrilled to be included in this anthology.
Brent lives outside Seattle, Washington, with his partner, novelist Michael Jensen. He loves meeting people and talking about the process of writing, and often speaks at schools, seminars, and conferences. Visit his Web site, “Brent’s Brain,” online at www.brenthartinger.com.
AFTERWORD
Josepha Sherman
IS THE IDEA of young heroes and heroines strictly fiction? No, it certainly isn’t. The fictional heroes and heroines in this book definitely have their parallels in history and folklore. In fact, in many of the world’s cultures, young people, boys and girls alike, were expected to become warriors, to help protect their tribes and sometimes to show their worth as potential husbands or wives.
The pre-Christian Celts of Great Britain and Ireland actually wrote into their law codes (or at least had the law codes memorized before the days of writing) that for the protection of each clan, every noble family must have at least one child trained to be a warrior. If a family had no son, the daughter was trained to be a warrior. There seems to have been no taboo against a warrior woman marrying and raising a family, since there were always servants (or slaves) available to do the “traditionally female” daily work of cleaning, mending, and cooking. Indeed, women warriors could gain as much honor as the men. In the mythic cycle centering about the great Irish Celtic hero Cuchulain, the hero is trained in arms by the greatest warrior of all, the woman Scathach. Some scholars even think that at one time Scathach, too, had a cycle of stories about her, but none of those stories still exist.
The Vikings of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark also had a long tradition of teenage warriors. Boys were more often trained to be warriors than were girls, but there were girl warriors as well, who were sometimes called Shield Maidens. One of these young female warriors is Hervor, who learned how to fight while still a girl living in her maternal grandfather’s house. Hervor avenges her father’s death, then joins a band of Vikings and has many adventures as a warrior before finally settling down and taking a husband. Other young women warriors who sailed with the Vikings ran away from home rather than be forced into marriage. Among those were Sela, Stikla, and Alvid.
In ancient Greece, the boys of the land of Sparta were trained from birth to be warriors. Any weak baby was left in the mountains to die. The surviving boys began their military training at age seven. It was a harsh training, teaching the boys to be hardy and resilient, able to live off the land and ignore hardship. Girls were trained to be hardy, too, not as fighters but as the mothers-to-be of a warrior race.
The Cossacks, a martial people from the steppes of Russia, trained their boys in the warrior ways from birth. In fact, when a boy was born, his parents placed a weapon in the newborn’s hand. By the time he was three, he would be an expert rider. Cossack boys would fight war games on horseback, and any boy who showed bravery and skill was praised.
India has its share of legendary young heroes, but three women stand out among them. The first of these is the historical Rani (or queen) Chennamma. Born in 1778, she was trained as a warrior from childhood and, after her marriage to Raja Mullasarja of Kittur, became leader of the women’s wing of the royal army. The rani died in 1829. The second historical figure is Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi. Born in 1834, she fought against the British and their attempts to take over Jhansi, which was then an independent Indian province. Rani Laxmibai was raised as a warrior by her raja father and was as a child already an expert rider and sword fighter. She died in combat against the British in 1858, at the age of twenty-four, but is still remembered in many Indian folktales and ballads. A third young warrior woman is Jalkari Bai, also from Jhansi, who came from a poor family and had to teach herself how to fight so that she could protect herself. She is said to have killed a tiger with her ax when she was about ten. Tradition says that Jalkari Bai looked very much like Rani Laxmibai and was taken under the rani’s wing.
Mongolia is the birthplace of one of the world’s most famous warlords, Genghis Khan, who conquered almost all of Asia and much of Eastern Europe. He was born Temujin, son of a tribal leader, somewhere between AD 1150 and 1170. But his fathe
r was poisoned by an enemy when Temujin was about ten years old, and the boy was made a slave. Temujin refused to give up. He escaped when he was a young teen and, through courage and sheer willpower, began uniting the other Mongol tribes. By 1206, he had united them all, avenged his father’s murder, and become known as Genghis Khan, or “Universal Ruler.”
In the nomadic tribal groups of North America, where food was found, not raised, and other tribes were always potential dangers, boys were trained to be hunters and warriors almost from the day they could walk. In fact, a boy’s first toys often included a toy bow and arrow. Girls were trained to take care of the family and to gather whatever vegetables and fruits were available. However, whenever there are groups of people, there are exceptions to the rule. Some tribes, such as the Cheyenne, had a role for the bedarche, who was a gay boy or man who lived by choice as a female. The tribes who had this custom accepted gay people without any problem. Other tribes did not. In all the tribes, some girls chose to be warriors, either to escape marriage or because they felt a drive to protect their people and gain honor. The Oneida—who are one of the Six Nations, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, comprising the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora—have a legend about a young woman warrior named Aliquipiso. Although captured and tortured by the Mingo, an enemy of the Oneida, Aliquipiso remained brave, pretended to give in, and deliberately led the enemy into an Oneida trap. The Cheyenne people tell of a historic brother-and-sister team of warriors who fought together and protected each other in battle.
The heroes and heroines in this book may, indeed, be fiction—but they do, indeed, have an honorable link to the real world.
Congratulations to Ciara Corbeil
of Oceanside, California—winner of the
YOUNG WARRIORS contest!
WARRIOR— a person who shows or has shown great vigor, courage, or aggressiveness.
I am a modern warrior. My weapons are not only my sword and bow but also my spirit and my elaborately carved words. I lead my own army of four: my brother, sister, and two loyal friends. My character is strong enough to keep any enemy at bay. My followers look to me in times of trouble, and I give them the courage to go on.
In today’s world, many are the choices of right and wrong for kids my age. We are constantly challenged by peer pressure and parental guidance. I am honest and have my own code of chivalry. I help those who have difficulty making decisions and stand by those who find themselves in trouble. My quest is to choose what is “right” even when it feels like I am swimming against the current.
That is why I am a young warrior.
The strong and sassy heroine of “Thunderbolt”
breaks out in her own book-length adventure
by Esther Friesner!
On sale in April 2007.
Pamela F. Service, author of “Lioness,”
brings Arthurian adventure
to a post-apocalyptic world. . . .
On sale in April 2007.
Turn the page for a preview of
Tamora Pierce’s latest Tortall legend!
On sale in October 2006.
Wednesday, April 1, 246
I have this journal that I mean to use as a record of my days in the Provost’s Guard. Should I survive my first year as a Puppy, it will give me good practice for writing reports when I am a proper Dog. By setting down as much as I can remember word by word, especially in talk with folk about the city, I will keep my memory exercises sharp. Our trainers told us we must always try to memorize as much as we can exactly as we can. “Your memory is your record when your hands are too busy.” That is one of our training sayings.
For my own details, to make a proper start, I own to five feet and eight inches in height. I have good shoulders, though I am a bit on the slender side. My build is muscled for a mot. I have worked curst hard to make it so, in the training yard and on my own. My peaches are well enough. Doubtless they would be larger if I put on more pounds, but as I have no sweetheart and am not wishful of one for now, my peaches are fine as they are.
I am told I am pretty in my face, though my sister Diona says when my fine nose and cheekbones have been broken flat several times that will no longer be so. (My sisters do not want me to be a Dog.) My eyes are light blue-gray in color. Some like them. Others hold them to be unsettling. I like them, because they work for me. My teeth are good. My hair is a dark blond. Folk can see my brows and lashes without my troubling to darken them, not that I would. I wear my hair long as my one vanity. I know it offers an opponent a grip, but I have learned to tight-braid it from the crown of my head. I also have a spiked strap to braid into it, so that any who seize my braid will regret it.
I am so eager for five o’clock and my first watch to begin that my writing on this page is shaky, not neat as I have been taught. It is hard to think quietly. I must be sure to write every bit of this first week of my first year above all. For eight long year I have waited for this time to come. Now it has. I want a record of my first seeking, my training Dogs, my every bit of work. I will be made a Dog sooner than any Puppy has ever been. I will prove I know more than any Puppy my very first week.
It is not vanity. I lived in the Cesspool for eight year. I stole. I have studied at the knee of the Lord Provost for eight more year. Three year of that eight I ran messages for the Provost’s Dogs, before I even went into training. I know every corner of the Lower City better than I know the faces of my sisters and brothers, better than I knew my mother’s face. I will learn the rest quicker than any other Puppy. I even live in the Lower City again. None of the others assigned to the Jane Street kennel do. (They will regret it when they must walk all the way home at the end of their watch!)
Pounce says I count my fish before they’re hooked. I tell Pounce that if I must be saddled with a purple-eyed talking cat, why must it be a sour one? He is to stay home this week. I will not be distracted by this strange creature who has been my friend these last four year. And I will not have my Dogs distracted by him. They will ask all manner of questions about him, for one—questions I cannot answer and he will not.
My greatest fear is my shyness. It has grown so much worse since I began to put up my hair and let down my skirts. I was the best of all our training class in combat, yet earned a weekly switching because I could not declaim in rhetoric. Somehow I must find the courage to tell a stranger he is under arrest for crimes against the King’s peace, and detail those crimes. Or I must get a partner who likes to talk.
I am assigned to the Jane Street kennel. The Watch Commander in this year of 246 is Acton of Fenrigh. I doubt I will ever have anything to do with him. Most Dogs don’t. Our Watch Sergeant is Kebibi Ahuda, my training master in combat and the fiercest mot I have ever met. We have six corporals on our Watch and twenty-five senior Guards. That’s not counting the cage Dogs and the Dogs who handle the scent hounds. We also have a mage on duty, Fulk. Fulk the Nosepicker, we mots call him. I plan to have nothing to do with him, either. The next time he puts a hand on me I will break it, mage or not.
There is the sum of it. All that remains is my training Dogs. I will write of them, and describe them properly, when I know who they are.
As the sun touched the rim of the city wall, I walked into the Jane Street kennel. For our first day, we had no training before duty. I could enter in a fresh, clean uniform. I had gotten mine from the old clothes room at my lord Provost’s house. I wore the summer black tunic with short sleeves, black breeches, and black boots. I had a leather belt with purse, whistle, paired daggers, a proper baton, water flask, and rawhide cords for prisoner taking. I was kitted up like a proper Dog and ready to bag me some Rats.
Some of the other Lower City trainees were already there. Like me, they wore a Puppy’s white trim at the hems of sleeves and tunic. None of us know if the white is to mark us out so Rats will spare us or so they will kill us first. None of our teachers would say, either.
I sat with the other Puppies. They greeted me with gloom. None
of them wanted to be here, but each district gets its allotment of the year’s trainees. My companions felt they drew the short straw. There is curst little glory here. Unless you are a veteran Dog or a friend of the Rogue, the pickings are coppers at best. And the Lower City is rough. Everyone knows that of the Puppies who start their training year in the Lower City, half give up or are killed in the first four months.
I tried to look as glum as the others to keep them company. They are cross that I wanted to come to Jane Street.
Ahuda took her place at the tall sergeant’s desk. We all sat up. We’d feared her in training. She is a stocky black woman with some freckles and hair she has straightened and cut just below her ears. Her family is from Carthak, far in the south. They say she treats trainees the way she does in vengeance for how the Carthakis treated her family as slaves. All I knew was that she’d made fast fighters of us.
She nodded to the Evening Watch Dogs as they came on duty, already in pairs or meeting up in the waiting room. Some looked at our bench and grinned. Some nudged each other and laughed. My classmates hunkered down and looked miserable.
“They’ll eat us alive,” my friend Ersken whispered in my ear. He was the kindest of us, not the best trait for a Dog-to-be. “I think they sharpen their teeth.”
“Going to sea wouldn’ta been so bad.” Verene had come in after me and sat on my other side. “Go on, Beka—give ’em one of them ice-eye glares of yours.”
I looked down. Though I am comfortable with my fellow Puppies, I wasn’t easy with the Dogs or the folk who came in with business in the kennel. “You get seasick,” I told Verene. “That’s why you went for a Dog. And leave my glares out of it.”
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