Students of the Order

by Edward W. Robertson

  Over the next few days of sparring at the House of Steel, he tried to do what he'd seen Shain do in the forest, reading his foes to anticipate their moves in the instant they made them. The process earned him a heavy serving of bruises.

  After he lost a match against Gogg, Shain pulled him aside. "What's wrong with you? It's like you're getting worse at this. Stop leaping at your opponent's every twitch. If this were a real fight, I'd be yelling for Brakk to come swab your guts from my nice floor."

  Joti returned to his regular sparring style. Instead, when he had time to himself, he tried to repeat the sensations he'd felt under Prock's guidance, holding fast to his memory of the raiders at the river and trying to use those feelings to guide him toward the Warp.

  But not only was he missing the disorienting powder, which he suspected was important, but he didn't even know what the Warp was. Trying to reach it on his own was like trying to fire an arrow when you didn't have a bow. How many more tests would they let him take before they decided he'd never be able to reach it?

  ~

  "Loton wants to see you," Brakk said. "Best hurry. When he has to wait, the old bastard grows as salty as fish crackers."

  Joti still wasn't sure if he liked Brakk's true personality better or worse than the simpering servant. He followed along, gnawed by the possibility the chief was calling him in to interrogate him about the Warp. It had been two weeks since Prock's second test, and despite Joti's ongoing solo efforts, he wasn't an inch closer to his goal. He didn't even know if he was pointed in the right direction.

  They got in the little boat and ferried themselves over to the keep. Loton was in his mushroom grotto. Shain was with him, too.

  The chief dismissed Brakk with a nod, then set his eyes on Joti. "Do you know how the No-Clan began?"

  Joti frowned. "Six hundred years ago, before the Alliance began, humans came to our borders and raided our settlements. Dwarves, too. Skirmishes escalated into war. From a medley of tribes, the No-Clan formed to drive out the invaders. After, that medley stayed here to keep the borders safe. Over time, they found out that the best way to do that was to stop wars before they began."

  "Correct—in a sense."

  "In a sense? That's exactly what Almak taught us."

  "He taught you what he was instructed to teach you: the history of what could be referred to as the second formation of the No-Clan. Long before that, however, we were common mercenaries. Drifters who joined together for protection and the easy profit of taking from others. We were no different from many of the tribes today. Raiding. Robbing. Killing as we pleased.

  "Then the dragons came. No one knows what provoked them. There are those who will tell you they were lured here by the gold and wealth flowing across the border. But I believe they were sent as instruments of the gods. They burned everything. Decimating the land. Purifying it. And we made our stand.

  "We weren't fighting for the money of the borders—that was long gone, burned along with the hills. We fought because we had no other choice. When the first dragon fell, we forged the ore inside it into swords. We shaped the scales that protected it into armor. With these tools, we learned to fight back until every warrior of our clan carried dragonsteel in their hand and scale on their chest. Over the years, we retook the Many-Claimed lands hill by hill and stream by stream."

  He paused, as if envisioning a legion of scale-clad warriors charging an ancient wyrm.

  Joti lifted his eyebrows. "But we haven't been like that for a long time, have we? What happened to those weapons?"

  "They succumbed to the two forces far more powerful than any dragon: time, and loss. The surviving dragons flew away in search of easier prey. As wars came and went, and Marshals with them, some blades were lost in battle. Others were carried in retirement to remote farms to be hung above fieldstone mantels. Armor grew brittle and broke down. With no dragons left to fight, we forgot how.

  "Possessions wear away. But ideas are immortal. Battling the monsters taught our clan that there is something more valuable than any sword, scale, or dragon's hoard: a righteous cause. To this day, we hold to the truth we first won nearly a thousand years ago. And for the first time in decades, members of the No-Clan will carry the same weapons as our founders did."

  Loton nodded across the grotto. A woman with the unmistakable shoulders of a blacksmith approached holding a long, cloth-covered object. She presented it to Chief Loton, who swept away the cloth, revealing a long blade, slightly curved, sheathed in a red lacquer scabbard carved with silver and white lines resembling birch trees in the snow.

  Loton held the weapon across his palms, face filled with a reverence Joti had rarely seen outside of shrines, and extended it to Joti. "Your blade."

  Joti accepted it and hesitated, glancing quickly at Shain, who nodded, bulging her eyes at the weapon. He drew it from its sheath. The blade was so light it seemed to spring out like a loosed arrow. The light in the grotto was weak, yet the single-edged blade glowed with fiery streaks that shimmered and flickered even when the sword was held still.

  Heart pounding, Joti proceeded through the first form Shain had taught them. The lightweight weapon was far more reactive to his motions than anything he'd used before.

  It was going to be lethal.

  Shain gave him a crooked smile. "Word to the wise: when you're out and about, don't draw that thing unless you're planning to use it."

  Joti nodded. "Because others will try to take it from me."

  "That, and they have a tendency to burst into flame."

  "At the moment, it's a little long for you," Loton said. "But you will grow into it."

  "Thank you." Joti had to clear the catch from his throat. "It's beautiful."

  "You saved a Marshal's life. It's a worthy prize. As is this one."

  Joti watched dizzily as the smith returned with a chest plate, a bracer, and a choker. All three were made of dragon hide, the white scales banded with black lines. They were as heavy as iron, but far more flexible, the scales rippling with his movements like a slithering snake.

  The smith gave a critical eye to her creations. "Don't get too used to the coverage. We'll have to adjust it more than once before you stop growing."

  Joti wanted to wear the armor night and day, like the mad Har-Dak hermits who wore their clothes until they had to be scrubbed off of them, but he knew that wasn't what a Marshal would do. Reluctantly, he removed the pieces.

  "One last thing." Shain lobbed a white stone at his chest.

  He caught it on the fly. His bone necklace. One of its faces had been carved with intricate blue lines: a young man aiming his bow at a ferocious dragon. Though it was just a single image, it seemed to suggest the entire battle.

  He lowered the necklace over his head. Somehow, this gift made him happiest of all: he had finally done something worth being remembered by those other than himself.

  ~

  Winter passed. Spring brought heavier rains, but also breaks in the clouds, the sunshine drawing steam from the leaves and platforms. Their arms practice went on as ever, but Joti no longer saw people pulled away in the middle of sessions to go see Prock. With news of rampant banditry down in the hills, Shain returned to Hongold to look into the mithril strike, assigning Almak to take over their swordsmanship training.

  During a break in the rains, Nod led them down the mountain to take another shot at the hunting game. Stalking the others through the forest was so engrossingly fun that Joti forgot about everything else in the world. He picked off four others by himself, staining their clothes with the dyed sling nuts. At the end, he and Faddak were the only ones remaining.

  As they stalked each other, Faddak cried out for help. Joti found him with his leg pinned beneath a rock. When Joti ran to free him, Faddak leaped to his feet and pelted him with a nut.

  "Common trap," Nod said in response to Joti's heated complaints of cheating. "Bandit pretends to be wounded. A traveler tries to help and is killed for the crime of having a good heart. When your instin
cts try to tell you that a person feels wrong, listen to them. They're trying to save you."

  Joti didn't know what made him angrier: that Faddak had cheated, or that he could have won if he hadn't fallen for it. There were so many different ways to fail along the way. Was cheating and treachery the only way to make it to the end?

  At the House of Distant Death, Marshal Willam had a new spring in his step. Joti was glad to see it. He continued to tutor Kata, who was now approaching mediocrity. In gratitude, she helped refine his swordplay. By some definitions of "refine," anyway: her main skill lay in overwhelming her opponent with flurries of attacks. Joti's efforts to duplicate her looked more like a drunk old man flailing at a swarm of bees that only he could see.

  Shain returned from her investigation in the lowlands. She headed straight for the wooden keep and spent the remainder of the day sequestered within it. At dinner, she found Joti in the mess hall and pulled him aside.

  "The raiders who attacked your tribe," she said. "They were a mixed band of Tuskers and Artuskers, yes? Led by a woman with white scars on her face? Single orange braid?"

  "You saw her? Where?"

  "Nowhere, so stop dreaming of shaking her severed head at the gods. Do you remember anyone else who was with her? Especially her lieutenants?"

  Joti thought through that day, going from one event to the next. "Everyone else is a blur. Why?"

  "I scouted a gang of robbers down in the hills. Turned out to be Tuskers and Artuskers working together. Not completely unheard of near the borders—the need to survive has a way of obliterating the normal prejudices—but still unusual enough to raise my eyebrow."

  "I could go back to scout them with you. See if I recognize anyone."

  "You'd only be disappointed. We'd be there to observe them, not to massacre them." Her face softened. "But I'll consider it."

  The next week, she hosted a sparring contest against the warriors-in-training from the peer group above Joti's. This group was a year or two older, bigger and stronger. Kata came close to claiming her match, but Faddak was the only one who won. Most of Joti's cohort were beaten handily, including himself.

  "What was the point of that?" Kata spat afterwards. "Of course they were going to beat us!"

  Gogg shrugged his round shoulders. "Maybe Shain was testing herself. She sees if she trained the older ones good enough to whip the whelps."

  "Why would she even be worried about that?"

  "It makes more sense than thinking she's such a fool that she doesn't know that big and good warriors will beat small and bad ones."

  Joti didn't know about Gogg's theory in particular, but it pointed to a broader idea that this was an Inscrutable Marshal Thing he shouldn't worry about. So he didn't. The week after their disastrous sparring contest, Shain brought them down to Dolloc Castle for a friendly match against their trainees who were one or two years older. This time, Joti won his match—and so did fourteen of the seventeen No-Clan cohort.

  Once they were done, they feasted at the castle, staying the night. Walking home in the morning, Shain smiled to herself, uncharacteristically quiet. The students had to wait until they were back in the Peak and she went to report to Loton before they could start gossiping.

  "Now I'm really confused," Kata said. "She must have known how that would turn out, too. Why bother?"

  Faddak rolled his eyes. "Are you tent-dwellers that ignorant of politics? This was clearly a message to Dolloc. A reminder that they shall never be our equal. Someone down at the castle must have been trying to swing an axe their arm's too weak to lift."

  Gogg folded his arms, chin tucked against his chest. "If this was to test Marshal Shain's training, she's much better than whoever is doing the training downhill."

  "It wasn't a test." Joti could feel his mind lighting up. "It was a message. But it wasn't for Dolloc Castle. It was for us. When we fought the older group from the Peak, they wrecked us. But when we fought the ones from Dolloc, who've been training for the same amount of time as we have, we wrecked them. We've already learned so much—and in another year from now, we won't even recognize ourselves."

  ~

  Before he knew it, a year had passed since he'd come to the Peak of Tears.

  The instructors made no special note of it, but a few of the students gave offerings to their shrine. Shain ventured downhill again, chasing rumors that some of the Sum tribes were coming in from the desert to lay claim to the metal being found in "their" hills, and being attacked in turn by bandits who were unusually well-organized. She didn't ask Joti to go with her.

  He soon learned why he'd been left behind when Prock summoned him to the tree again.

  The eyelock looked older than ever, his halo of hair hanging limply down his cheeks. "You've been practicing."

  "How do you know that?"

  Prock waved a hand and picked up a clay cup from his cluttered desk. "Drink."

  The liquid tasted like raw poison, and had slimy little bits in it that made him want to gag, but Joti swallowed convulsively—Prock could have told him to snip off his own eyelids and Joti would have obeyed.

  Prock instructed him to sit. His head grew fuzzy, just like it had with the powder. His breathing grew pleasant, as though he was inhaling steam. And then the room was breathing with him, the shadows darkening while the light in the window slits sharpened to a razor's edge.

  Someone chuckled. The laughter was knowing, but there was unease in it too. "Find your memory."

  It took him a moment to realize Prock was speaking, and the words were meant for him. He had to search to locate the old man within the unnatural gloom. Joti's jaw dropped. Prock seemed to have ribs of fibrous matter connecting him to a shadow of himself—or possibly a reflection. The reflection's head was a mass of shards barely held together by unraveling twine.

  "Find it," Prock said. "That which you most want to change."

  Joti turned inward and found his memories were as tangible as bowls on a shelf. He hunted for the battle at the ford, but others loomed before him, jostling to force themselves into his hands.

  Tull, bracing his arms over his head as the dragon's fire flooded over him, burning him alive, while Joti stared in horror.

  In the forest outside the encampment and Magak was striking Drez down, hurting her, and Joti couldn't stop the older girl, and for the first time, he understood how small he was, how little he could do to stop anything.

  Outside the tents. He and Drez had brought home the frogs and his mother had scorned them. Told them they'd never be warriors. He'd resented her for it, and that resentment had lodged deep inside him, like a sliver of rusted iron, with him always.

  He'd never forgiven her for not believing in him, but the truth was right there on the shelf of his mind. The others had all thought his father was a fool. When Joti had wanted to become a warrior despite being so small and having so many siblings before him, Hako had been afraid the villagers would think he was a fool, too. Then, when he'd insisted on trying anyway, she'd pushed him so hard it had made him angry.

  But not because she was mean, or to try to make him fail and realize he had no hope. She'd pushed him because she wanted him to become too skilled for the others to deny.

  He set down the memory; he wished he could change it, but he couldn't have known better, and understood that there was no use dwelling on it. Before he could choose the next recollection, another bulled its way into his hands. A memory he'd forgotten all about.

  The manor of Dame Fere. There was a servant named Ladd, a young man who was a little too fat, and it was obvious that he wanted everyone to like him but that only pushed them away instead. One day after dinner, with the dame returned to her chambers, Ladd, Joti, and Movo had come to clean up the table.

  Ladd's hip had bumped into the corner of the table. He'd dropped the dame's special porcelain bowl, smashing it on the floor. At once, he apologized, but Movo's face had glowed with wrath. He grabbed a rod holding up a tapestry, advanced on Ladd, and struck him on the head. Lad
d crumpled, but Movo kept beating him.

  Ladd cried out. Movo struck him in the mouth, scattering teeth over the stone floor. Movo raised the rod and hit him in the head, over and over, until a strip of Ladd's scalp popped free, dangling down his brow and then falling to the ground.

  Ladd begged Movo to stop. Joti watched, nauseated. If he spoke out, maybe he could break the spell that had come over Movo—but maybe Movo would beat him. So he said nothing. The rod landed again. Ladd's skull crunched. He groaned and shuddered as if releasing his seed. Joti vomited in his mouth.

  On hands and knees, Ladd swayed, then looked up at Movo. He was no longer crying. He grinned moronically, all spark of intelligence gone from his face, drooling blood. Movo stopped, shaken, and ordered Ladd to clean up the mess he'd made.

  He'd meant for Ladd to sweep up the porcelain. Instead, Ladd hurried to pick up his teeth, pushing them into the bleeding holes in his mouth, and snatched up the strip of scalp, pressing it to his broken skull. And all the while, he was grinning.

  Joti retreated from the memory like he would from a tiger. Hands shaking, he found the fight at the ford, where Drez had fled and he had fallen.

  "I have it," he said, lips numb.

  "Bring it forward," Prock said.

  He did, bearing it from the shadows and into the dim room.

  "See how it ties to the Warp," Prock said.

  He saw the sinewy ribs that extended into the distance, further than the room's walls could possibly allow.

  Prock said, "Take the will to change what was done, and use it to change what will be."

  Joti peered into the memory. At its center, a shape lurked, too vague to determine its edges. He reached for it. Took hold of it.

  A hornet sting raced up his arm. He knew something was wrong, but before he could release the memory's core, his sight went white, and then black.

  His nostrils stung. He was lying on a pallet and Prock was holding a thick ichor under his nose. Joti gasped and sat up, rubbing his upper lip.