Squire

by Peter Telep

  Hasdale was at the window alcove of his solar, absently watching a serf drive his grain wagon through the bailey. The wagon stopped before the squire’s hut, the serf climbed down, called out, then vanished through the doorway of the quarters. Hasdale pivoted from the window and returned his gaze to his father.

  He studied the man who had raised him, the man who had taught him everything, who knew every­ thing. And for the first time in his life, he deafened himself to Orvin. He knew his father would argue the point long after the castle walls had crumbled into the earth and the tide had come in and drowned the land from horizon to horizon. In their graves, Orvin would roll over and argue the point. But his father’s stalwart behavior made his own arguments no less credible. He had a wife who had become a recluse, shut herself up in one of the sentry towers. She would barely speak to him and would not sleep with him. The shame of Fiona’s rape was too deep, and the loss of her child was a leech sucking the will to live from her. He had lost his sister, Alina. He had lost Wells, his best battle lord. He had lost Baines, his too-young squire. And the more he thought, the more the numbers grew. Family, friends, loyal knights, servants, those he knew and the relatives and friends of those he knew formed the links in a world-long chain of death that led back to Garrett.

  It was revenge. It had to be.

  “My scouts have picked them out in the Mendip hills. He likes to camp in that remote region. He expects no one to journey that far to attack him. I am mounting this campaign, Father, and as I will repeat for you, with the king’s support.”

  “Your heart is not right for it. You go with the wrong intentions.” Orvin thought a moment. “Why doesn’t Uryens engage Garrett?”

  Hasdale found his spot back at the window, let his father’s question fade unanswered.

  The squire trainees formed a line that began at the grain wagon and weaved into the hut. Sacks were passed from boy to boy, and they talked about the day’s training and scolded each other for not keeping up the pace. Hasdale searched through the night mist for Sanborn’s son, but could not see him. “I wish to take the boy, Christopher, with me. Is he ready?”

  “He has mastered the skills shown to the group.

  Sloan rates him very highly.”

  “Then a day of practice with me and he’ll be ready for the hills.” “In body, yes. But in mind … I need to work further with him.”

  “Philosophy is quickly silenced on the battlefield, Father. I have listened to your magic principles and your thoughts on combat for too long, and I will not subject the boy to them. If he knows the ways, and practices with me, that will be enough. His own heart will define what he experiences. He does not need you to do it for him.”

  The solar had become a conversational battlefield. But to Hasdale’s surprise, it was his father who con­ ceded first. “Perhaps you are right. I am old and my mind is too keen on rumors and dreams and other things. Let the boy accompany you and watch you die. I only wish to serve.” Orvin put his heavily veined feet in motion and was out of the solar in a dozen steps.

  Orvin had left the old trick of a father behind. Hasdale remained at the window watching the grain chain, feeling bleak and stormy at the same time. Orvin was a wizard at creating a war within Hasdale. His father told him he .would die-not that he believed a word of that. What his father had really told him was, “I love you. I fear for you.”

  The squires finished unloading the wagon and filed back into their quarters. The bailey became silent, save for the footsteps of his men on the wall-walks. A faint breeze lifted the banners poled on the gate­ house, and Hasdale looked beyond them to the moon; it was veiled in clouds. He ran tense fingers through his hair as he traced the illuminated puffs of white with tired eyes. The desire to sleep came and went. He remained at the window, played out a mil­ lion options out of guilt, but circled back to the same conclusion. They would attack.

  13

  Two mounted coursers galloped furiously over deceptive grass that concealed a freckling of shal­ low ditches. Hasdale and Christopher turned sharply, in perfect unison, coordination so keen they seemed two parts of one whole. The lord cracked his quirt on his mount, and the coal black steed leapt ahead of Christopher’s, breaking the pair. Christopher followed suit, and his own like-colored courser galloped toward the lord, finally overtaking him.

  “Who taught you to ride?” Hasdale asked, shout­ ing over the rhythm of hooves.

  “Baines.”

  “And a fine job he did!” With that, Hasdale heeled his courser forward.

  It was a chase, and a haphazard one at that. This wasn’t simple arms identification, or the more difficult target run, or even the incredibly frustrating archery practice that Christopher had been put through. This was a total disregard for safety and a mad run to explore something he did not understand. What did this prove? Riding skills, yes, but why over this part of the field? Hitting one ditch would end it all. He had done fine thus far, but he knew he couldn’t sustain the effort.

  Again, he goaded his courser after Hasdale. Again, all four hooves of his horse seemed to leave the ground. He felt his mouth grow cottony as he spotted a ditch under a thin fence of grass only a yard to his right. It was sheer luck he didn’t drive his horse right into it. The ditch blurred past and he turned his attention forward in time to see the next ditch. He tried to bring his courser around the hole, but the momentum of the horse was too great and the steed’s left leg folded into the soft cavity.

  A sequence of things happened to Christopher before he hit the ground. He had seen the ditch, and, of course, his mouth dropped in horror. The attempt to round it was merely reflex; his eyes already told him it was too late. He felt his body drop, then be pushed left. He was arrested by the thought of get­ ting his booted feet out of the stirrups, and began the process as the left side of the courser made contact with the ground. The animal’s ribs pressed his left leg into the grass, and then he reached out toward the evil earth as it came up at him. His arm was extended, but it caved in at the elbow under the force of his own weight. The effort was not entirely futile, for it was that arm that lessened the impact of his head. A numbing ringing drummed through him a second after his skull popped back up from the ground.

  There he was, lying on his side, still in the stirrups of the fallen courser as the horse struggled to pull itself up and he struggled to get free from it. The hairs on his crushed leg took the form of pins and needles, not growing from the skin, but burying themselves into it. The feeling was good, though; no heat or ice or extreme bite. It was a hidden, bloodless feeling that unfortunately foretold future pain.

  Through glazed vision, he saw Hasdale come toward him. The lord’s figure momentarily blocked out the noon sun, then slipped under it as he dis­ mounted and ran over.

  For a moment, Christopher had felt deserted on the field. Hasdale had bounced toward the dusty hills in the distance while Christopher’s world jolted ninety degrees left. But the lord was here to help, and he valued the relief of that more than anything.

  Baines would have told him this was a bad fall. An extremely bad fall. You only had seconds to decide what to do. Seconds never seemed to be enough. If he could have freed his boots … Ifs, ands, or buts wouldn’t spare him the walking pain, or the tide of embarrassment that now rolled in under the relief. Hasdale slipped Christopher’s right foot from its stirrup. Feeling that action, the courser pulled itself to its feet, favoring its broken left leg. Christopher’s left leg still hung from its stirrup, and Hasdale attended to it with skilled and immediate hands. The freed leg thumped to the ground, deadweight.

  “I’m sorry, lord.”

  Hasdale reached down under Christopher’s arms and pulled him up to his feet. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine,” he lied.

  “Honest failure is one thing,” Hasdale said, “con­ cealed truth is another.”

  He turned away from the lord, brushing stray hair from his forehead, feeling rankled and caught and useless. “My head hurts, and m
y leg is numb.”

  Hasdale dropped to his knees and lifted Christopher’s leg, put it through a combination of lifts and bends. “It’s not broken. When the blood comes, so will the feeling.” He stood. “As for your head, I’ve a root back home that’ll cure it.”

  Christopher nodded, then he saw his courser over Hasdale’s shoulder. He painted a mental picture of the horse as an old, lame serf beast begging for alms from the lady of the castle. Sunset was upon the mount. He tried to believe what Sloan had said: “They are tools,” but he stung with the responsibility for this steed. The hostlers back at the castle would probably put the horse out of its misery. Christopher’s own misery over the incident would linger. Damn.

  “If her leg mends, she’ll pull a cart. I won’t slay her. I can see what that would do to you.”

  “She was only mine for a day, and I feel my poor riding caused her this.”

  “You lasted longer on this field than Baines. Poor riding. Ha!”

  They gathered up Christopher’s fallen belong­ ings, tied the injured courser behind Hasdale’s, and trotted back toward the stone walls pillaring the eastern sky.

  It was a simple excuse: he needed to change into his gambeson before they ran through the weapons deliv­ ery. And so Christopher was inside the squire’s hut, peeling himself out of his riding tunic, shirt, and then breeches. Bryan was the only other boy in the loft, the rest joining in a mock siege ori the rear curtain wall. Christopher groaned loudly as his fingers touched the bruises blossoming over his left hip, but­ tock, and ankle. Pain screeched in his skin with the intensity of a wheelless axle across cobblestone. He had just wanted to see what the wounds looked like; now he was sorry.

  Bryan pulled his head back at the sight of Christopher’s leg. “Ouch,” was his only comment.

  “My feelings exactly,” Christopher answered.

  He climbed into the gambeso11 like an old man, struggled with his no-good limb, gasped, contorted, hopped on one leg. The points where bruise met leather felt worse. Nude, it was not so bad. But how would he explain arms delivery in the raw to Hasdale? The climb down the ladder? An exercise in torture. Garrison men who were off-duty gathered around in the exercise yard to watch their lord at practice. Nearly a dozen of them assembled near the keep’s moat, sit­ ting or standing near the shores of the opaque waters.

  Tankards of ale were passed around, and belches punctuated their grunts and baritone exchanges.

  Christopher stopped dead when he saw the crowd. Well that’s perfect. That is just . . . oh, God, create a little sanctuary for me. Get me through this. Please!

  He put his feet back to work, every step toward the yard a mindful step closer to the pyre he would lie in after.

  A pole arms rack, and shorter, club arms rack were in place to the right, while a pair of quintains stood far off to the left, past the onlookers. Another knight stretched his body near the rack, a fighting partner for the lord. Hasdale stepped up to the man, who pulled up the faceplate on his bascinet to expose his scarred face. Those deep canyons could only belong to Sloan. The battle lord and Hasdale exchanged a few words, Sloan referring to the sword he held. Hasdale took the blade and examined its hilt.

  This is getting even better…

  He would have to perform in front of his lord, and in front of the man who had trained him. Someone tapped his shoulder. He cocked his head.

  “Listen to what I have to say and let it ring in your ears until the sun sets on your life.” Orvin’s words were hushed and came quickly.

  Christopher wanted to tum around, but Orvin held him by the shoulders so that his eyes could not leave the practice field.

  His master continued, “You cannot think why you are doing what you are doing-only that you are. Do not examine your feelings, but let them go. Imagine them sleeping in the loft or lost or forgotten. Think only of the demands of your master and reach for those needs with immediacy. Think like your master. Try to feel what he feels. Those are the experiences you must have. The emotions are not yours-but his. Join with him in body and mind and spirit. It is a marriage, a pyramid of power that rules you. Forget your own pain, your doubts, your fears. They will not help you now. Go.”

  Orvin shoved him forward. Christopher swiveled his head and saw the old man move briskly away.

  “Christopher!” Hasdale called.

  He decided to jog toward the yard, an obvious demon­ stration that he felt much better now. At least his head did. The root Hasdale had given him when they had returned was so bitter-tasting that he had tossed it away, but fortunately the ringing in his ears had subsided. Christopher’s eyes were sore with tears by the time he crossed the bailey and assumed his position in front of the pole arms rack. There would be no joust­ ing this afternoon, so Christopher removed the six lances from the rack. He placed the poles behind the wooden support so they would not interfere with the javelins, glaives, bills, scythes, and halberds waiting there. This was not the crowded rack he had prac­ticed from, and selection would be swift and free of accident. Yanking a halberd from a crowded rack was dangerous; the hooked blade of the weapon could catch on the halberd next to it or the shaft of another weapon, bringing two weapons toward you, the sharp head of one in your face. Sloan had fin­ gered the scar across his eye as a visual reminder of what could happen. No trainee made that mistake, and every trainee was disappointed at the revelation that one of Sloan’s mighty slashes had been acquired when he was only a squire trainee, and not as a knight on the battlefield. It was a letdown, but Sloan wasn’t concerned with creating an image for himself, only with training squires. The trainees understood.

  Sloan and Hasdale mounted their horses. Christopher went for a pair of javelins. He knew the one Sloan preferred, but had to guess at which one Hasdale would like. Maybe something Orvin had said could help. He tried to clear himself of the outside world, tried to imagine his head on top of Hasdale’s body, flexing Hasdale’s fingers, feeling what javelin would belong there. He right-handed the longest pole; he’d give it to Hasdale.

  Sloan angled by and Christopher tossed the pole as he had been taught. Sloan’s gauntleted fingers wrapped tightly around the weapon. The knight winked.

  Hasdale circled around. Christopher readied the longest javelin. He fired a last-second glance back at the rack, his eyes taking in the other javelins there. He locked his hands around the weapon, shook it a little, as if to instill some kind of correctness into it, some kind of magic that made it the one Hasdale wanted. It was a guessing game, but Orvin knew something about tipping the odds in the squire’s favor. This javelin felt right.

  Christopher held the pole out to Hasdale, who quickly appraised the weapon, then over his smile of satisfaction ordered, “Javelin!”

  He sent the weapon sideways into the air. His lord’s metallic hand bit the pole, then slid into the correct hold, a forearm’s length from the base.

  Sloan and Hasdale charged their targets. Each defied the bag man who tried to dismount them; each centered his javelin as the crowd nodded and chatted their envy.

  A weak connection birthed inside Christopher: a link to his master. It was the one he hoped for and felt was growing. There was some doubt, though. He wasn’t sure how he had selected the right weapon. He had simply followed Orvin’s instruction. But he also remembered another part of the lesson, the part which told him not to wonder why, not to examine his feelings, only to act. It was hard. It was letting yourself rest in the hands of something incomprehen­ sible; you had to wonder if you were doing the right thing.

  Three more target runs followed, and neither of the knights was dismounted. By the second run, some in the crowd already yawned, knowing Hasdale and Sloan were much too good for the target men. Hand­ to-hand. That’s what they wanted to see.

  The knights raised themselves off their coursers. Christopher took the reins of each horse and guided them toward the stable master’s right hand, who waited on the sidelines. The hostler was a stubby red­ head with a plague of freckles across his c
heeks, and a pinioned grin that flashed and was gone as he received the mounts from Christopher.

  Hasdale and Sloan faced each other, ten yards apart. Christopher knew they wanted weapons, but which?

  Help me, lords! Which is it?

  Was he supposed to know? He’d watched tourna­ ments but had certainly forgotten the order of weapons-if there was an order. Neither Sloan nor Orvin had covered such formalities in their lessons.

  He shrugged and sighed, spun around and grabbed a pair of halberds, again, knowing the one Sloan pre­ ferred. The other was selected by way of Orvin. Christopher stepped carefully toward the lords, hold­ ing the poles in the pattern of an X across his chest. He stopped, pulled his arms apart, breaking the X into a pair of l’s. Sloan took his halberd, barely look­ ing at Christopher as he did so. Hasdale tilted his head slightly and Christopher saw his eyes track the form of the weapon. The lord nodded and received the halberd.

  Another, what seemed to Christopher, lucky guess. He told himself it wasn’t a lucky guess, that it was Orvin’s instruction and the link he made with Hasdale. But how could he select the right one from so many? The fact chewed on his intellect. It grew harder just to act.

  Sloan and Hasdale both two-handed their halberds as they bent their knees and swung their weapons back and forth, ferreting out openings in each other. Sloan moved first, an overhead swing at Hasdale’s shoulder. The lord dodged the blow, and, as Sloan’s arm came down, Hasdale saw a chance to riposte; he turned and slammed the butt of his halberd across Sloan’s back. Sloan stumbled forward, his face creas­ ing and his free hand going to the pain.

  Hasdale decided to hook Sloan’s legs. He brought his weapon around, and was about to center his blade and catch the right greave covering Sloan’s kneecap. But Sloan jerked around and warded off the attack, utilizing the shaft of his halberd. The two weapons locked up in each other, hook caught on hook, and the men lifted the irons so that they pushed at each other’s chest, trying to force the other back, groaning but smiling at each other.