by Damien Lake
* * * * *
When he swung his feet over the bedside, Marik knocked the little table over and sent the light weights he had worked with for the last eightday crashing across the room. The head chirurgeon sighed while Delmer chased after them.
When he’d first stood an eightday ago, he would have collapsed had Delmer been unprepared for it. The journeyman chirurgeon had placed his hands under Marik’s arms to steady him while he tested his weight and found his legs as shaky as a newborn colt’s. Delmer had caught his charge when he fell, then hauled him back to the bed. The purpose of the exercise had been to demonstrate the need to use the weights so his muscles could be worked back into proper condition. After roughly six eightdays lying on his back, his legs needed to relearn how to support his body.
Marik worked with the weights when unaccompanied by friends, or non-friends like Yoseph, the amazing walking, talking tree stump. Strengthening his muscles; a concept he knew and could support wholeheartedly, unlike the vast effort required to recognize the difference between a B and a D, or why Cs and Ks looked different but sound the same. What was the point in having different letters that did the same job? Or having letters that couldn’t decide what job they wanted to do? A C should stick to sounding like ‘ka’ and stop trying to invade the S’s territory. The CHs, TCHs and SCHs were enough to start a fight over.
Presumably, this was why Yoseph had been assigned to teach letters to a mercenary. Nothing ruffled his feathers.
The time had come to walk. Each time he’d stood since the first, he felt a little stronger. Walking to the head chirurgeon’s office and back would be a good exercise. It would help him determine how much longer he’d be stuck in the chirurgeons’ wing.
Cautiously, he took his first steps. Marik’s balance skewed but he soon corrected it, feeling close to normal. It pleased him that his gait had not been reduced to a shuffle. His steps might be slow and deliberate, yet they moved him at a steady pace.
He saw his destination when he entered the hall, an open door at the corridor’s end. The two chirurgeons walked on either side, ready to support him if his strength failed. Marik had no need of them. His determination urged him onward.
By the time he reached the door he admitted this expedition had been harder work than he’d hoped. Marik panted and his steps slowed, but he entered the office without assistance. He sank into the waiting chair. A short rest would restore him enough for the trip back.
The head chirurgeon claimed his personal seat behind his desk. At great length he explained every ministration they had given him since his arrival in their wing. What did Marik care? He recovered, and that was all that mattered.
Long words later, the head chirurgeon opened a drawer to withdraw a lady’s hand mirror. Its silvered glass gave Marik an impressively sharp reflection to study. They had decided to leave the bandages off today to allow his skin fresh air.
Not so bad as all that. He knew he owed this to the two priests his unit mates had searched hard for. His skin had toughened to a leather-like quality. The effect was uniform rather than restricted to one small patch and therefore less noticeable than it might have been. Hair sprouted in short stubble where it grew back. That would change, including the shadows that would eventually grow into eyebrows.
His lips were the same color as the rest of his face now, which made him look slightly strange. On the whole though, he judged himself to have emerged from the ordeal intact. If anything, he seemed older, an experienced man. Which he was after two separate contracts. He looked seasoned. The last blisters were in remission, and continued applications of salve would see him through. Minor scars left by the blisters would fade over time. In a year, he might be hard pressed to find them.
Marik felt better about life while he returned to his room. His friends had told him he did not look nearly as bad as after the initial encounter, except they were, after all, his friends. Now that he had seen for himself, tomorrow seemed less dark. He made a firm promise to find the priests who had worked hard to help him if he ever again rode so far north, and make a large donation to whatever faith they served.
When he crawled into his bed, the head chirurgeon estimated two days before he could be released.
* * * * *
Wrapped in bandages from head to foot, Marik walked from the chirurgeons’ wing with Dietrik and Hayden. He believed himself strong enough to make the trip to the barracks on his own, except Delmer had insisted his friends escort him. Marik bid the journeyman farewell until such time as he required further care. Without regret, he turned his back on the chirurgeon’s wing. It was a building he would never feel eager to revisit.
They walked across the command building’s backside in the cool air and midmorning sun. Marik heard crowd noises coming from the other side.
“The new recruits are being assigned right now, aren’t they?”
“Indeed,” replied Dietrik. “I was watching the mockup battles on the north slope yesterday from the wall. It’s a real shame you weren’t in any condition to join me.”
“That exciting?”
“Some of it was interesting. You might have been most interested in one battle I saw.”
“Why’s that?”
“That big monster friend of Beld’s made another go at entering the fold.”
“What, that huge one we knocked down the slope? What…uh, Dellen, wasn’t it?”
“I believe so. Beld and his little crew went out to shout their encouragement from the top.”
“Huh. I’ve been hoping an enemy would do me a favor and he wouldn’t return from the summer’s fighting.”
“No such luck there, I’m afraid.”
“Did his friend make it in this time?”
Dietrik grinned wickedly. “No, I am happy to report. He was so paranoid about being attacked from above he never bothered looking downhill. A quick little fellow dashed right past and ran up to his red boulder. The officers were not at all impressed.”
“Good. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow.”
“On the other hand, it put Beld in a foul mood. You’re in no condition for a rematch, so we should keep our distance from him.”
A recruit clique led by a guide from the Marching Grounds passed when they reached the building’s end. Marik needed to pause for a moment. He peered around the corner and could see the group waiting their turn to be called forward by Janus.
“How many slots were open this year?”
“Two hundred,” Hayden replied.
“That’s all? The Ninth took heavy damage back at the dam.”
“That’s the way it usually goes here. We had a higher casualty count than the year before but most of the other squads fared better.”
“What’s customary then?” asked Dietrik.
“Between two and two-fifty. I haven’t seen it any higher than that.”
“Let’s get going.”
When they walked past the open area to the barracks buildings Marik noticed only a handful still waiting for assignments. They must be near the end of it then. One final glance back showed them being led west, rather than east. The new specialists had received a speech from the leading officer as a whole rather than by individual squad.
After one final rest, the friends reached the Ninth’s barracks.
“Home sweet home,” Hayden remarked when they passed the threshold. Marik loved the dining room’s familiar feel and wondered what Luiez would be making for the afternoon meal.
Inside the doors stood a larger group than had stood there the previous year. Nearly a full unit all by themselves, they stood waiting for whatever would happen to them next. Across the room, Sergeants Fraser, Dove, Bindrift and Giles quietly finished a discussion that had kept the new men waiting.
When Marik and his escorts entered the room, they captured every fresh recruit’s attention. Seeing a man wrapped in so many bandages must seem an ill omen. Edwin and Kerwin compounded the moment by rushing to meet him, talking loudly to ensure they wer
e overheard.
“About time you stopped lazing around over with the chirurgeons!”
“Yeah! Catch a little spell or two out on the job and you think you have the right to sit around for months?”
“Oh, lay off, chums! It’s his first time in full body wraps!”
“Ain’t nothing the rest of us haven’t been through.”
“Yeah! As the bards say, ‘been there, what’s next?’”
“Come on, mates! We need to go out tonight and celebrate our lad’s first survival!”
“Oh, I don’t think he’s ready to handle ale yet. He was puking up all that blood just a few days ago.”
“Well, he can bloody well try at least, can’t he? I’ll finish whatever he doesn’t.”
Many younger recruits looked spooked, their expressions suggesting they might be entertaining second thoughts. Marik, who had remained silent through the entire charade, shook his head, thinking it a cruel prank to play on the new boys, but trying not to laugh anyway. The sergeants threw their group a hard glance while they headed toward the waiting party, especially Fraser, who stopped to hand Marik new keys.
“Your old ones didn’t survive,” he said simply, then walked to the larger group.
Marik passed through the doors to his barracks, hearing behind him the crinkles of unrolling paper and Dove calling, “Which ones are in the First Unit?”
Soon they passed through the half wall separating the two units and Marik stood before his cot and closet. Edwin and Kerwin left to find Landon while Dietrik sat on his cot to watch Marik. Hayden laid down on his, shutting his eyes.
Marik used his new keys. He opened his closet to drop the bottle filled with salve on the top shelf. Inside he found nothing changed except that his sword leaned against the back wall next to his father’s original, and his dagger lay on a shelf. His muscles protested when he pulled out his sword.
“I kept meaning to tell you about that,” Dietrik said, snapping his fingers. “We found it on the ground where you’d been attacked. The scabbard and grip were burned away, but the sword was still in good condition after I polished all the soot and grime off it.”
“You did that?” He looked closely at the blade, seeing the metal had become slightly duller than before. “Thanks, Dietrik.”
“It kept me busy on the road. Sennet sent over the new scabbard and leather. He says the loss definitely qualifies as ‘in the line of duty’, so he won’t charge you a single coin for the replacement.”
Marik snorted. “Huh. Nice of him.”
“He also said to bring the blade over if you want. He’ll give it a real polish with his tools. You know, make it all nice and shiny again.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll leave it like this. As a history of me and the sword.” He glanced back into the closet. “What about my mail?”
“No idea about that, mate. When we got to you, everything you’d been wearing was either ash or grime stuck to your skin. The mail was gone.”
“And not the sword?”
“I think your belt burned through and it fell away.”
“I was holding my dagger though.”
Dietrik shrugged to impart his incomprehension of the matter.
At last he needed to face it. Despite everything Torrance had told him, he’d still clung to the hope that everyone was wrong. These last facts finally broke his resistance. Maybe, by a lucky chance, he had survived the spell cast at him where the others had not, but that would never explain this. If the fire could destroy his mail, his own flesh and blood would never stand a chance. Had the chainmail melted, the liquid iron would have killed him as quickly.
The only possible saving grace was a latent talent for magic within himself. It had countered the spell, and somehow protected him from a more physical death when his armor succumbed.
His steel dagger might have survived a temperature capable of destroying iron mail, except they were not talking about a forge fire. The magical fire from the spell must surely have made a forge fire look like a flickering flame atop a Spirratta lamppost. It seemed whatever force within him that had countered the hedge-wizard’s spell had done so enough to prevent it from overcoming the steel.
“Are you well?”
“I was thinking about what Torrance said.”
“You’ve skipped over talked about it.”
Marik leaned forward so his head rested against his closet door. “I think…he’s probably right.” He turned his head toward Dietrik’s cot. “I can see you do to.”
“Have you made your decision?”
He’d made this barracks building into his home, the only home that had ever truly accepted him. In a single year Marik had come to love it. “I think so. I don’t want to leave everyone I’ve become close to. I don’t want to leave the Kings, and if that means putting up with whatever Tollaf decides to put me through, I guess that’s the price.”
“About damned time,” Hayden muttered with his eyes still closed.
Marik scowled. “And what about you? I thought you didn’t trust magic users any further than me!”
Hayden opened his eyes. “I don’t, but you’re not one of them. It doesn’t matter what a man can or can’t do. A man decides to become a mage, or a man decides to become a warrior. You made your choice already, and you’ll never be anything else in your core.”
“You think it’s that simple?”
“It is to me. It is to you, too, though you don’t know it yourself yet.”
“Well, time will tell then, won’t it?”
“Nothing else will,” Hayden replied while Fraser came through the half wall with six new men carrying their packs. After taking names and revealing their fighter class, four of whom were D ranks, Fraser gave them his lecture on who possessed authority to give them orders. His brief explanation on the band’s workings used nearly the exact words as the year before. Marik sat on his cot.
Empty bunks with their closets standing open had been home to shieldmates the last time he’d seen them. Casualties in the wars of men, their belongings were swept away like leftover garbage. Ashlin had been caught in the rovers’ trap in the forest, Duain had been a victim of the hedge-wizard. Garret, a new man last year with Marik and Dietrik, had fallen in the predawn battle against Fielo’s main forces, along with Starr. Marik struggled to remember the other two’s names. They had been the solitary type.
Empty places where once there had been men. Whose closets would stand open this time next year?
Tired, he lay flat while Fraser told the new men to find an empty cot to call home. “If you lose your keys,” he said as he left, “you’ll be charged by the band for the cost of replacing them.”
They spread out, filling the holes and testing their new sleeping accommodations. Across the way, two of the youngest recruits claimed cots separated by Sloan’s and Edwin’s. The two stored their belongings then looked lost for what to do next, trying not to let their gaze stray near Marik in his bandages.
“I think I saw the two of you from the wall. I was watching the testing,” Hayden told them, raising different memories in Marik’s mind. “What’s your handles?”
“I’m Kenley! I’m from up by Thoenar!”
“Call me Knox,” the other offered. “Is the sergeant always like that?”
“Yeah. His opening speech hasn’t changed at all in the four years I’ve heard it.”
“He said to ask the rest of you our questions and spend the day around the town. Which should we do first?”
“How about I show you a few things? I could do with a walk.”
“You bet!” exclaimed Kenley from up by Thoenar. “That’d be great!”
Hayden left with the two new boys in tow and Dietrik remarked, “Hmm, still a bit green and wet around the ears I should think.”
“I wonder if anyone said that about us when we left with him last year,” Marik mused aloud before he drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 18
I wonder if I sinned outrageously in a previo
us life.
Marik had been far from enthused to meet Tollaf in the first place, and the chief mage nurtured much the same opinion of him. Tollaf turned out to be another cranky old man, as bad as the old clerk Janus.
He had first met the old mage in his workrooms within the Tower. Most rooms were filled with long tables covered in a welter of refuse. Tollaf’s stern admonishment not to touch the worktables had been unnecessary since Marik felt no urgings to even look at the rickrack they displayed. Every room he peered into contained similar organized messes and he saw why an entire building belonged to the mages who, before Marik’s awakening, had consisted of six people.
Being the seventh remained an honor he would rather have forgone. Especially given his would-be mentor.
“You can’t even see!” the old man shouted at him. “How do you expect to perform the simplest workings?”
“Very badly,” Marik replied, showing no respect and feeling no urge to. Torrance may have forced him into this, but he would be damned before he would accept it gracefully. Marik still had his pride. He refused to be browbeaten by a weirdling old man with unnatural powers who had probably never so much as held a sword. “And I can see well enough to know you have bits of lunch stuck in your beard. I could have done without seeing that, thank you!”
“If you could see, you whelp, you’d know what I was talking about! Now look closer and tell me what you see!” Irritation clipped the head mage’s words.
As instructed, Marik looked yet again at the object on the table before him. “A flower. In a pot.”
“And?”
“And what? What the hells else is there to see?”
“You’d know for yourself if you would just blasted try!”
“Try what? See, I’m looking at your ugly plant! My eyes are open, I’m staring right at it. How does one ‘try’ any harder than that?”
“Stop trying to do it with your eyes, nitwit!”
