by Anthony Ryan
Al Sorna fell silent, his expression thoughtful as he returned his gaze to the sword in his lap. I had a sense that he attached some importance to this lurid tale, something in the gravity with which he had related the story spoke of a significance I couldn’t discern. “You believe this story?” I asked.
“They say all myths have some kernel of truth at their heart. Perhaps in time, a learned fellow like you could find the truth in this one.”
“Folklore is not my field.” I set aside the parchment upon which I had set down the tale of the Witch’s Bastard. It would be several years before I read it again, by which time I had good cause to bitterly regret not following his suggestion.
I reached for fresh pages, looking at him expectantly.
He smiled. “Let me tell you how I first came to meet King Janus.”
Chapter 1
They began riding late in the month of Prensur. Their horses were all stallions, no more than two years old, youthful mounts for youthful riders. The pairing was done under Master Rensial’s supervision, his more extreme behaviour thankfully in check today, although he muttered constantly to himself as he led each of them to their mount.
“Yes, tall, yes,” he mused, surveying Barkus. “Need strength.” He tugged Barkus by the sleeve and led him to the largest of the horses, a hefty chestnut stallion standing at least seventeen hands. “Brush his coat, check his shoes.”
Caenis was led to a fleet looking dark brown stallion and Dentos a sturdy, dappled grey. Nortah’s mount was almost completely black with a blaze of white on his forehead. “Fast,” Master Rensial muttered. “Fast rider, fast horse.” Nortah regarded his horse in silence, his reaction to most things since his return from the infirmary. Their constant attempts to engage him in conversation were met with shrugs or blank indifference. The only time he seemed to come alive was on the practice field, displaying a new found ferocity with sword and pole-axe that left them all bruised or cut.
Vaelin’s own mount turned out to be a sturdy, russet coloured stallion with a cluster of scars on his flanks. “Broken,” Master Rensial told him. “Not bred. Wild horse from the north lands. Still got some spirit left, needs guidance.”
Vaelin’s horse bared its teeth at him and whinnied loudly, the shower of spit making him step back. He hadn’t ridden a horse since leaving his father’s house and found the prospect oddly daunting.
“Care for them today, ride them tomorrow,” Master Rensial was saying. “Win their trust. They will carry you through war, without their trust you will die.” He stopped talking and, seeing his eyes take on the unfocused cast that signified another onset of rambling or violence, they quickly led their mounts to the stables for grooming.
They began to ride the next morning and did little else for the next four weeks. Nortah, having ridden from an early age, was by far the best horseman, beating them all in every race and traversing the most difficult course Master Rensial could devise with relative ease. Only Dentos could compete with him, taking to the saddle like a natural. “Used to go to the races every month in summertime,” he explained. “Me mum would make a packet betting on me. Said I could get a race out of a carthorse.”
Caenis and Vaelin proved adequate if not expert riders and Barkus learned quickly although it was clear he didn’t relish the lessons. “My arse feels like it’s been hit with a thousand hammers,” he groaned one night, lowering himself to his bed face down.
The others soon became bonded to their horses, naming them and getting to know their ways. Vaelin called his horse Spit, since that was all the animal ever seemed to do when he attempted to win his trust. He was perennially bad tempered with a tendency towards wayward hooves and sudden, bruising lurches of the head. Attempts to court his favour with sugar sticks or apples did nothing to assuage the beast’s basic aggression. The only comfort in the pairing was the fact that Spit was even more badly behaved towards the others. Whatever his character faults the beast proved fast at the gallop and fearless in practice, often snapping at the other mounts as they charged each other and never shying away from a melee.
Their lessons in mounted combat proved a gruelling affair as they attempted to unseat each other with lance or sword. Nortah’s horsemanship and new found love of the fight meant many tumbles from the saddle and more than a few minor injuries. They also began to learn the difficult art of mounted archery, a necessary element of the Test of the Horse which they would have to pass in less than a year. Vaelin found the bow a hard discipline at the best of times but attempting to sink a shaft into a hay bale from twenty yards whilst twisting in a saddle was almost impossible. Nortah on the other hand hit the mark on his first try and hadn’t missed since.
“Can you teach me?” Vaelin asked him, chagrined by another disastrous practice. “Master Rensial’s instruction is often hard to follow.”
Nortah stared at him with the empty passivity they had come to expect. “That’s because he’s a gibbering loon,” he replied.
“He’s clearly a troubled man,” Vaelin agreed with a smile. Nortah said nothing. “So, any help you could provide...”
Nortah shrugged. “If you wish.”
It turned out there was no real trick to it, just practice. Every day they would spend an hour or more after the evening meal with Vaelin consistently failing to hit the target and Nortah coaching him. “Don’t rise so high in the saddle before you loose… Make sure you get the string back to your chin… Only loose when you feel your mount’s hooves leave the ground… Don’t aim so low…” It took five days before Vaelin could put a shaft in the hay bale and another three before his aim was true enough to find the mark at almost every pass.
“My thanks, brother,” he said one night as they walked their mounts back to the stables. “I doubt I would have picked it up without your help.”
Nortah gave him an unreadable glance. “I owed you a debt, did I not?”
“We are brothers. Debts mean nothing between us.”
“Tell me, do you really believe all this tripe you spout?” There was no venom in Nortah’s tone, just vague curiosity. “We call each other brother but we share no blood. We’re just boys forced together by this Order. Don’t you ever wonder what it would have been like if we had met on the outside? Would we have been friends then, or enemies? Our fathers were enemies, did you know that?”
Hoping silence would end the conversation, Vaelin shook his head.
“Oh yes. When I was young I found a secret place in my father’s house where I could listen to the meetings in his study. He spoke of your father often, and not with kindness. He said he was a jumped up peasant with no more brains than an axe blade. He said Sorna should have been kept in a locked room until war required his service and couldn’t fathom why the King ever listened to the counsel of such an oaf.”
They were halted now, facing each other. Nortah’s eyes were bright with the familiar hunger for combat. Sensing the tension Spit tossed his head and nickered in anticipation.
“You seek to provoke me, brother,” Vaelin said, patting his horse’s neck to calm him. “But you forget, I have no father, so your words mean nothing. Why is it the only joy you show these days is in battle? Why do you hunger for it so? Does it make you forget? Does it ease your pain?”
Nortah tugged his horse's reins and resumed the walk to the stables. “It eases nothing. But it does make me forget, for a while at least.”
Vaelin kicked Spit into a canter, overtaking Nortah. “Then mayhap a race will help you forget too.” He spurred into a gallop and headed for the main gate. Naturally, Nortah beat him by a clear length, but he was smiling when he did so.
It was late in the month of Jenislasur, a week after Vaelin’s uncelebrated fifteenth birthday, when he was called to the Aspect’s chambers.
“What now?” Dentos wondered. They were at the morning meal and he spat bread crumbs across the table as he spoke. Table manners were a lesson too far for Dentos. “He must like you, you’re never away from his rooms.”
; “Vaelin is the Aspect’s favourite,” Barkus said in a mock serious tone. “Everyone knows that. He’ll be Aspect himself one day, you mark my words.”
“Piss off the pair of you,” Vaelin responded, stuffing an apple in his mouth as he rose from the table. He had no idea why he was called to the Aspect, likely it was a another sensitive question regarding his father or a new threat to his life. He was often surprised at how the passage of time had made him immune to such fears. His nightmares had abated in recent months and he could look back on the dark events during the Test of the Run with cold reflection, although his dispassionate scrutiny did nothing to dispel the mystery.
He had munched his way through most of the fruit by the time he got to the Aspect’s door and concealed the core in his cloak before knocking. He would feed it to Spit later, doubtless earning a shower of slobber as a reward.
“Come in, brother,” the Aspect’s voice came through the door.
Inside the Aspect was standing next to the narrow window affording a view of the river, smiling his slight smile. Vaelin’s nod of respect was cut short by the sight of the room’s other occupant: a skeletally thin boy dressed in rags with bare, mud-stained feet dangling over the edge of the chair in which he was uncomfortably perched.
“That’s ‘im!” Frentis said, jumping to his feet as Vaelin entered. “That’s the brother that in-inspirated me! Battle Lord’s son ‘e is.”
“He is no-one’s son, boy,” the Aspect told him.
Vaelin swore inwardly, closing the door. Giving knives to a street urchin, a shameful episode. Not what is expected of a brother…
“Do you know this boy, brother?” the Aspect enquired.
Vaelin glanced at Frentis, seeing eagerness under a mask of dirt. “Yes, Aspect. He was of assistance to me during a recent… difficulty.”
“Y’see?” Frentis said urgently to the Aspect. “Told ya’! Told ya’ he knew me.”
“This boy has requested entry to the Order,” the Aspect went on. “Will you vouch for him?”
Vaelin stared at Frentis in appalled surprise. “You want to join the Order?”
“Yeh!” Frentis said, nearly jumping with excitement. “Wanna join. Wanna be a brother.”
“Are you - ?” Vaelin choked off at the word “mad” and took a deep breath before addressing the Aspect. “Vouch for him, Aspect?”
“This boy has no family, no one to speak for him or formally place him in the hands of the Order. Our rules demand that all boys who join must be vouched for, either by a parent or, in the case of an orphan, a subject of recognised good character. The boy has nominated you.”
Vouched for? No-one had told him this. “Was I vouched for, Aspect?”
“Of course.”
My father spoke to them before he brought me here. How many days or weeks before had he arranged it? How long had he known and not told me?
“Tell ‘im I can be a brother,” Frentis was saying. “Tell ‘im I helped you.”
Vaelin drew a heavy breath and looked down at the frantic desperation in Frentis’s eyes. “May I have a moment alone with this boy, Aspect?”
“Very well. I shall be in the main keep.”
After he had gone, Frentis started again, “Ya gotta tell ‘im. Tell ‘im I can be a brother…”
“Do you think this is a game?” Vaelin cut in, stepping close to grasp the rags covering Frentis’s narrow chest, pulling him close. “What do you want here? Safety, food, shelter? Don’t you know what this place is?”
Frentis’s eyes were wide with fear as he shrank back, his voice small now, “’S where they train the brothers.”
“Yes they train us. They beat us, they make us fight each other every day, they put us through tests that might kill us. I have fifteen years and more scars on my body than any seasoned soldier in the Realm Guard. There were ten boys in my group when I started here, now there are five. What are you asking me for? To agree to your death?” He released Frentis and turned back to the door. “I won’t do it. Go back to the city. You’ll live longer.”
“I go back there I’ll be dead by nightfall!” Frentis cried, voice heavy with fear. He sank back into his chair and sobbed miserably. “I got nowhere else to go. You send me away and I’m dead. Hunsil’s boys’ll do for me for sure.”
Vaelin’s hand lingered on the door handle. “Hunsil?”
“Runs the gangs in the quarter, all the dippers, whores and knifers pay ‘im homage, five coppers a month. I couldn’t pay last month so his boys gave me a beatin’.”
“And if you can’t pay this month he’ll kill you?”
“It’s too late for that. Not about the money anymore. ‘S about ‘is eye.”
“His eye?”
“Yeh, the right one. It ain’t there no more.”
Vaelin turned back from the door with a heavy sigh. “The knives I gave you.”
“Yeh, couldn’t wait for you to teach me. Practised on me own. Got right good at it too. Thought I’d try it out on Hunsil, waited in the alley outside his tavern ‘til he came out.”
“Taking him in the eye was an impressive throw.”
Frentis smiled weakly. “Was aimin’ for ‘is throat.”
“And he knows it was you?”
“Oh ‘e knows alright. Bastard knows everything.”
“I have some money, not much but my brothers will pitch in some more. We could buy you a berth on a merchant ship, a cabin boy. You would be safer on a ship than you could ever be here."
“Thought about that, din’t wanna. Don’t like ships, get queasy just crossing the river in a flatboat. Besides, I’ve ‘eard sailors’ll do things to cabin boys.”
“I’m sure they’ll leave you alone if we guarantee it.”
“But I wanna be a brother. I saw what you did to those Crows. You and the other one. Never seen nothin’ like it. I wanna be able to do that. I wanna be like you.”
“Why?”
“’Cos it makes you someone, makes you matter. They’re still yakkin’ about it in the taverns y’know, how the Battle Lord’s boy humbled the Blackhawks. You’re almost as famous as your old man.”
“And that’s what you want? To be famous?”
Frentis fidgeted. It was clear he was rarely asked for an opinion on anything and found this level of scrutiny disconcerting. “Dunno. Wanna be someone, not just some dipper. Can’t do that all me life.”
“All you are likely to earn here is an early death.”
Frentis no longer looked like a boy then, rather he seemed so aged and burdened by experience that Vaelin almost felt himself to be a child in the presence of an old man. “That’s all I’ve ever bin likely to earn.”
Can I do this? Vaelin asked himself. Can I condemn him to this? The answer came to him within a heart beat. At least he had a choice. He chose to come here. And what will I condemn him to if I send him away?
“What do you know of the Faith?” Vaelin asked him.
“’S what people believe ‘appens when you die.”
“And what does happen when you die?”
“You join the other Departed and they, y’know, help us.”
Hardly the Catechism of Faith but succinctly put. “Do you believe it?”
Frentis shrugged. “’Spose.”
Vaelin leaned down and looked him in the eye, fixing him. “When the Aspect asks you, don’t suppose, be certain. The Order fights for the Faith before it fights for the Realm.” He straightened. “Let’s go and find him.”
“You’re gonna tell ‘im to let me in?”
May my mother’s soul forgive me. “Yes.”
“Great!” Frentis surged to his feet and ran to the door. “Thanks…”
“Don’t ever thank me for this,” Vaelin told him. “Not ever.”
Frentis gave him a quizzical look. “Alright. So when do I get a sword?”
It would be another three months before the next intake of recruits so Frentis was put to work. He ran errands, laboured in the kitchens or the orchard and swept
the stables. They gave him a bunk in their north tower room, the Aspect felt leaving him alone in one of the other rooms would be a poor welcome to the Order.
“This is Frentis,” Vaelin introduced him to the others. “A novice brother. He’ll bunk with us until the turn of the year.”
“Is he old enough?” Barkus asked, looking Frentis up and down. “He’s just rag and bone.”
“Up yours fatso!” Frentis snarled in response, drawing back.
“How charming,” Nortah observed. “An urchin of our very own.”
“Why’s he bunking with us?” Dentos wanted to know.
“Because the Aspect commands it, and because I owe him a debt. And so do you brother,” he said to Nortah. “If he hadn’t helped me you’d be swinging in a wall cage.”
Nortah inclined his head but said no more.
“He’s the one you knocked out,” Frentis said. “The one that knifed that Blackhawk in the leg. Proper sharp that was. Are we allowed to knife Realm Guard then?”
“No!” Vaelin tugged him to his bunk, Mikehl’s old bed which had lain unused in the years since his death. “This is yours. You’ll get bedding from Master Grealin in the vaults, I’ll take you there soon.”
“Do I get a sword from him?”
The others laughed. “Oh you’ll get a sword, right enough,” Dentos said. “Finest blade ash can make.”
“Wanna proper sword,” Frentis insisted sullenly.
“You’ll have to earn it,” Vaelin told him. “Like the rest of us. Now, I want to talk to you about thieving.”
“I ain’t gonna thieve nothin’. I’m done with that, I swear.”
More laughter from the others. “Fine brother he’ll make,” Barkus said.
“Thieving is…” Vaelin fumbled for the right words, “accepted here, but there are rules. You never steal from any of us and you never steal from the Masters.”
Frentis gave him a suspicious look. “Is this one of them tests?”
Vaelin gritted his teeth. He was starting to understand why Master Sollis was so fond of his cane. “No. You can steal from others in the Order provided they aren’t a master and their not in your group.”