by Matthew Berg
Breeden’s attention returned, and he glanced over at his friends. Laudan was smiling at the continuing conversation between Oskar and Kestrel too but, as always, was also keeping his wall of isolation in place.
Cedric asked them to be seated and gestured to the individual writing desks spread around the room in a rough half circle from where he was standing. The top of each desk was nearly a yard across, the surface tilted upward at the back so the parchment being worked on would be easier to read and work with. Attached at the far-right side of each table, there was a metal basket that contained a small stoppered glass vial full of a thick, dark ink. In front of the ink, in an adjacent metal basket, was a low stone jar full of fine beach sand. The legs of the table were stout and made of a dense wood. And just above the floor, the legs were connected to each other at the sides and back of the table by heavy reinforcing crosspieces of the same wood.
“Since we weren’t making much progress with Laonese economics, I thought we could practice the art of treatise writing. Laudan, what can you tell us about the elements of a successful treatise?”
Breeden couldn’t help but feel that Cedric was choosing Laudan to start the class in response to the end of the morning’s lesson. And Laudan may have been thinking the same thing, because he appeared to visibly steel himself and gather his energy before he spoke, as if he might be in need of reserve breath for a prolonged day of Cedric’s personal attention.
While Laudan was answering, at length, the question posed by Cedric, Breeden looked at Janelle, seated immediately to his left, and tried to make eye contact with her. She refused to do so at first, and when she finally did meet his eyes, her glance was hot and cutting. Then she startled him by reaching across the space between their desks and grabbing his writing quill. She placed his quill at the top of her desk and turned her head forward, refusing to look at him. He didn’t know why she had done it, and frankly didn’t have a clue as to what he should do about it, so he simply smiled and raised his eyebrows at her. Was she mad about the princess?
Lest he draw attention to himself and interrupt the dialogue between Laudan and Cedric, Breeden tried to get her attention quietly. He gestured with his hands and even extended his left leg to kick her chair, but she refused to acknowledge he existed. Breeden glanced back to his right to make sure his teacher was still occupied, and then lunged across the space between them for the quill. But Janelle was expecting him or had seen him out of the corner of her eye. And she snatched the quill before he could reach it and then threw it at him, or rather past him, since it flew by his shoulder and landed on the floor on the far side of his desk. Now it was Breeden’s turn to glare, and he did so, but his face was also a mask of confusion. He couldn’t understand what her problem was.
“Breeden! What do you think you are doing over there?” It was Cedric. He had finally noticed.
Breeden resumed his seat, and all he could summon was a feeble “I can’t seem to lay hands on my quill.” And then he pretended to see it on the floor to his right, as if just noticing it for the first time. “Ah, there it is.” And he picked up the quill and met Cedric’s eyes.
Cedric looked more curious than annoyed and stared at Breeden for a moment, as if expecting the boy to further explain himself. But when Breeden remained silent, Cedric let it go and returned to his discussion with Laudan.
“Laudan, what are the elements of an effective response treatise?”
Laudan was ready with his answer, seeming to know that it would not be his last of the day.
14
Adventure
Winter had finally arrived. And the next day found Breeden, with Kestrel, Laudan, and Oskar, entering the lower rooms of the keep during their morning break. It had been easy enough to find the entrance to the cellars. Kestrel had led the group of four boys into the kitchens below the main hall, and he had asked the nearest scurrying cook’s assistant for directions to the cold storage rooms. A breathy response indicated that they were not far, that the dry storage was past the baker’s ovens, all the way at the end of the hall. And the cold rooms were below them. The boy looked at Kestrel and Laudan’s clothing and, more specifically, their insignia of royalty. He also appeared to consider the clothing of Oskar and Breeden. Whether he thought he faced two young nobles on an errand with their pages, or whatever he may have thought, he didn’t even seem to consider the possibility that it might not be appropriate information to share. And he was only too happy when Kestrel dismissed him with a nod and a thank-you.
True to the boy’s word, they found a well-used door not far past the baker’s suite, and Kestrel descended the narrow and tightly spiraled stone steps beyond with confidence. The others followed quickly. Laudan, bringing up the rear, closed the door behind him, leaving them all in the near darkness of a stairwell lit only by widely spaced torches that guttered as they walked past.
At the bottom of the stairs, a hallway branched in three directions: straight ahead, and directly to the left and right. Kestrel bent to the ground and looked carefully in all three directions. “The kitchen storage has to be to the left. That way bears the marks of the heaviest and most common passage. To the right, the dust is pretty thick. And the middle way is less used than the left but is definitely used on occasion.” Apparently without further thought, Kestrel walked straight ahead and grabbed a torch from the wall as he did.
“Why straight, then?” The question was Oskar’s.
“We want to find the lower levels—and maybe even the dungeons—so we need to go farther down. If there are stairs somewhere, I would think that the hallway leading to those stairs should be used by someone, at least on occasion. So the hall to the right felt like an unlikely choice, since it appears so seldom used. And as for it not being the hall to the left, I figured, why would the hallway straight ahead be used any more than the one to the right if the hallway to the left leads to both kitchen storage and the stairs down?” Then he shrugged his shoulders. “Seemed to make sense. And if I’m wrong, who cares? We can try the other directions another day.”
Oskar laughed. “I was expecting woodcraft. But that sounds like street logic!”
Breeden had a hard time arguing with Kestrel’s reasoning, and by the silence of the others, he assumed they felt the same way. The hallway they now traveled was wide and could easily have allowed three men to walk abreast. It was about thirty yards long. There were three doors to the left and two to the right, all made of heavy oak, and all closed, but Kestrel passed them without slowing down. The hallway ended with choices of left and right this time. With a cursory examination of the floor and hardly a hitch in his stride, Kestrel turned right.
A handful of yards later, they came upon a broad stairway on their left, with spacious landings visible heading both up and down from their current floor. Kestrel turned left down the stairs without pausing, and again the others followed without a word.
“This appears to be the main stairwell. What do you say we see how far down they go?” Kestrel tossed the words over his shoulder as he picked up his pace.
They had descended four more sets of stairs by Breeden’s count when they finally reached the bottom of the staircase. Upon the discovery that the last two flights of stairs were dark, Oskar, Breeden, and Laudan had each climbed back up to the last lit hallway and retrieved torches for themselves. Breeden wasn’t sure about the others, but the hair on the back of his neck had been raised for some time. And the farther they descended, the more his mind wandered into the black corners and unchecked doorways. He knew he had nothing to be afraid of. His father had taught him to use reason to confront his fears. But he couldn’t help it. These unused hallways were surely home to ghosts, even if just the memory of former inhabitants.
The hallway at the stair’s bottom was dark as well and allowed passage to the left and right. Kestrel held his torch low to the ground and checked for disturbances in the dust and dirt. He examined the ground for a long time, then finally whistled. “Well, I just can’t begin to tell
how long it’s been since someone was down here. Could be a year. Could be more. The dust is as settled as I’ve ever seen it. Hasn’t been disturbed in a long time. But there are old footprints under the dust that head in both directions. Anyone want to flip a coin?”
Laudan spoke up. “I say we go right. I want to start paying attention, and when I am learning a new place, I always start by going right.”
Kestrel laughed. “You want to start paying attention? Guess you’re not interested in being a scout, huh? But it doesn’t make any difference to me, so . . . let’s go right.”
They started down the hall with Kestrel in the lead and, again, Laudan bringing up the rear. Breeden suddenly felt self-conscious about the whole thing and wondered if Oskar felt the same. He got the sense Kestrel and Laudan had arranged themselves in this way to protect the two commoners. They didn’t have swords on their hips, or anything. But even though all four of the boys carried a knife on their respective belts, he still somehow felt that the two nobles were protecting him. It bothered him a bit, but he had to admit it also felt good, knowing the two boys at least knew the basics of fighting.
As they walked, they passed many closed doors, and a hallway to their left, all of which they ignored. At the end of the hallway, there was a single door and another hallway branching off to the left. Kestrel stopped in front of the door.
“Well, you’ve gotta start somewhere. How ’bout here?” And he attempted to operate the latch on the door. The latch was quite rusty, though he did manage to lift it. But when he tried to pull open the door, he only managed to move it about an inch. The hinges seemed frozen with rust. Laudan gently pushed his way between Oskar and Breeden, and then not so gently shoved Kestrel to the side.
“Out of my way, puny one, lest thou breakest thy scrawny shoulder.” Laudan had deepened his voice and affected a snooty tone, assuming the high form of address still used for certain ceremonies of court.
Oskar and Breeden laughed and stepped back to give Laudan room to try his strength against the hinges. Kestrel grimaced at the gibe but smiled anyway and stepped back beside the other two. Laudan braced his right foot against the wall next to the door and grasped the heavy iron ring with both hands. He gave the ring a quick jerk, trying to pop the hinges free, but the door didn’t even budge. Then he leaned back and tried to use his weight and his shoulders to draw steadily against the door, but again the door didn’t move so much as a hair.
Breeden was right behind Kestrel as Laudan struggled unsuccessfully time and again, and he finally asked Kestrel if he could take a quick look at the hinges. Kestrel moved out of Breeden’s way without comment, and Laudan was focusing so hard on the door, he didn’t see or hear Breeden coming up behind him. He was leaning backward again and pulling steadily against the door with all of his weight, and then he tried to rock forward and backward, but still the door wouldn’t move.
“Could I take a look at the hinges?”
Laudan heard him this time and acknowledged him with a nod. But there was plenty of room for Breeden to approach the hinges at Laudan’s left without interrupting his efforts, and he did so while the larger boy continued to try everything he could against the door.
Breeden extended his right hand to the door’s center hinge and touched the built-up rust surrounding it. As he looked more closely at the surface beneath his fingers, he tried to feel the metal the way he had the chisels at the tinker’s stall those months ago. His eyes lost focus, and he found he could “see” the patterns in the metal of the hinges, just as he had before. The patterns were quite regular and consisted of densely woven and interlocking strands. Overlaying the patterns in the hinges themselves, there was a separate pattern he could discern from what he intuited must be the rust encasing the hinge. The bonds where the rust patterns met and joined with the hinge patterns were much less dense than either the rust bonds themselves or the hinge’s bonds, and much less sturdy. He tried to focus on a single strand of the bonds and found he could feel something coursing through it. As he had tried to describe to his father months earlier, it was like water, but it wasn’t like water. And it felt as though it was waiting to be released.
On a whim, he tried to probe the bonds joining the rust to the iron with his mind, to test them for weakness. To his surprise, he found that the stuff within the bonds responded to his mental probe, and the bonds snapped. He wasn’t sure what he’d done, but he felt a small pressure within him release when the bonds broke. At the same time, the center hinge made an audible crack. Everyone jumped, and Laudan took it as a sign to try all the harder to open the door. But it still wouldn’t move.
Inspired, Breeden knelt on the floor and tried to duplicate his feat on the bottommost hinge. He didn’t know whether he needed to touch the hinge, but he placed his hand on it regardless. More quickly this time, he focused on the rust and found several weak spots. One at a time, he manipulated the stuff inside the bonds, and one at a time, they broke under his ministrations. He broke one more bond, with several more still remaining, and all of a sudden, the bottommost hinge broke free from its encasing rust.
Laudan had been leaning backward with all of his weight and was not prepared when the bottom and then, almost immediately thereafter, the top hinges gave way. He flew backward into Kestrel and Oskar, the three of them sprawling to the floor in a heap. Meanwhile, the heavy oak door came careening around in its arc and slammed into the still-crouching Breeden. In one sweeping motion, he was driven hard against the wall and knocked to the ground.
The others scrambled to their feet, pulled the door away from him, and lifted Breeden off the floor, each asking him if he was okay. Somehow his head remained untouched and he retained his wits, but he knew he would be one giant bruise later that day.
“I feel like a horse just fell on me,” he groaned, managing a weak smile.
Oskar was right in his face and sighed when he realized that Breeden was well enough to crack a joke. “You got clobbered! I can’t believe you weren’t squashed against the wall like a bug!”
Breeden would be sore later, but he really didn’t think the accident had been that bad. “You can let go of me now. I think I can stand.”
They let go of him and he stood unassisted.
Kestrel watched him for a moment, seemingly concerned about Breeden’s health. But instead of asking if he was sure he was all right—which Breeden had been sure would be the next question—Kestrel surprised them all. “What did you do to those hinges?”
Breeden didn’t think he had anything to hide, so he just shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure. I could tell that the rust wasn’t that strong, so I probed at it and somehow got it to break.” He didn’t have the words to describe what he had done in more detail. “It wasn’t really that hard.”
Kestrel didn’t seem so sure of that and continued to look at Breeden closely. “You didn’t appear to be pushing very hard. And you weren’t using your knife or any kind of tool, were you?”
“No. I just probed it, and the fibers . . . or strands that held the rust and metal together broke when I did. I’m not sure how I did it exactly, to tell you the truth.”
Kestrel wouldn’t let it go. “I think I believe you, but I’d really like to know how you managed to do it. What do you mean by strands?”
Laudan, surprised by Kestrel’s unusual persistence and bored by the exchange, poked his head into the room they had discovered. And what his torch revealed caused him to shout, “By Usen’s beard! It’s an armory!”
And then even Kestrel’s tenacity in his search for answers was exhausted. “What?” He dropped Breeden’s gaze, retrieved his torch, and joined Laudan in the unexplored room. Breeden and Oskar were just a few steps behind.
The room was old, as were the arms it contained, but that didn’t stop the sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys from being overwhelmed by the sight. There were rack upon rack of swords, pikes, and maces. There were dummy torsos that bore scale mail and leather armor. There were longbows and crossbows an
d slings. There were small round buckler shields and tall rectangular tower shields. There were spears and lances and hooks. The room was enormous and appeared to contain every type of weapon and armor one could think of.
Kestrel was the first to move, after spotting the crossbow rack and releasing a less than knightly “Ooh.” Before the others had even decided where to start, he had a light crossbow in his hand. The entire weapon was constructed of metal and looked to be in fair condition, the metal shining by his torchlight. He placed his torch firmly in the U vacated by the crossbow and, using both hands now, tried to draw back the string still attached to both ends of the prod. When the string began to make ominous creaking sounds, he thought better of it. “I’ll find a new string for you, don’t worry!” By the intensity of his examination, and the fact that he was turning the weapon over and over in his hands, he didn’t appear to be in a hurry to see any of the other weapons. One by one his friends left the doorway and spread out around the room.
Oskar moved over to the spears and began checking the heft of each one. Breeden went for the swords, trying the feel of a few of the smaller and narrower-bladed ones. And Laudan stood in front of the armor.
Among the old-fashioned scale mail and the rotting and scarred suits of leather armor, Laudan had found one suit of leather in remarkable condition. It was a dark brown and had been heavily oiled in the past—so much so it was nearly black. When he wiped away a patch of dust from its surface, the leather underneath reflected back the light of his torch, albeit dully. The armor was covered in heavy bronze discs, evidently designed to provide additional protection in turning away blades that might otherwise penetrate the suit’s leather. Each disc was carved with symbols and images of creatures and men. But though the discs looked the same from a distance, close examination revealed that each was unique in design. Perhaps most remarkable of all, however, was the size of the armor: it was enormous. It looked as if he would swim in it, and at sixteen, Laudan was already bigger than many adults. He unfastened the armor from its dummy torso.