Marlo dipped a finger into the vial and spread the smooth lotion on Brann’s forehead, forcing him to stop. ‘Well, you have it now,’ he pointed out. Brann couldn’t argue.
They fetched the wooden swords and set to work. Marlo showed no hint of mercy and hacked like a woodsman felling a tree, sending Brann’s sword flying at the first attempt, and the next dozen. Circling his wrist to try to ease it, he moved the sword to his left hand and nodded to his companion to continue.
‘Right hand not strong enough to carry on?’ the boy grinned.
‘No, I just want to learn with both hands. What happens if my right arm gets wounded? At least this way I wouldn’t have to resort to letting someone batter my shield until they exhaust themselves or die of boredom.’ In reality, it was both his and Marlo’s reasons.
By midday, both hands were numbed. Even on the odd occasion when he had managed to keep hold of the sword hilt, his arm had been jarred to the shoulder. Washing was hard enough but eating was a particularly slow and awkward affair, and more than once Marlo had to return to his previous job and be Brann’s hands for him. He managed to use the waterskin that Cassian had left with him.
Cassian was waiting in the garden, this time sitting in the shade and picking from a bowl of assorted fruit, only some of which Brann recognised. He looked at Marlo. ‘He did well?’
‘He dropped it a lot.’ The boy’s teeth flashed in enthusiasm. ‘But he tried really hard not to.’
‘Excellent, excellent. Delighted to hear it.’ He turned to Brann, gesturing for his waterskin and taking a long swig. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Well done. That really is excellent.’ He returned to his food, sorting through the fruit until he found what the boy had learnt was called an orange. Brann’s mouth watered. He had not only discovered the name of the fruit, but also its taste. And that it was very much to his taste. And that they were in short supply this week.
The boys waited patiently. Cassian dug a thumbnail into the thick skin of the fruit and began to peel it. Pausing, he looked up. ‘Yes? Was there something else?’
Brann cleared his throat. ‘The training? What shall I do this afternoon?’
Cassian’s face brightened. ‘Ah the training, yes. Marlo, be so good as to take your friend to the Field of Rocks, would you?’
‘And will I come to see you when I have finished?’
‘Of course. In the evening, five days from now.’
‘Five days?’
‘You can count to five can’t you? We always have the occasional one who struggles with that. Is that a problem?’ He spat a grape seed into the flower bed.
‘No, no, it’s fine. But what training shall I do tomorrow?’
Cassian looked as if it were the most absurd of questions. ‘Why, the same as today, of course. And so on, until six days have been achieved. Then you have earned your rest day, and you will be given your instructions for the next six. Why would it be otherwise?’
Brann shrugged. ‘Why indeed? But will you not need to see me?’
Cassian wiped his hands on his tunic and beckoned Brann closer. He drew a knife with a cross-hilt from his belt and pressed it into the boy’s hand. Brann’s fingers closed around it automatically, and the man altered the angle slightly. ‘This is how you held a sword this morning.’ He twisted it slightly. ‘You see? Like so? Like I showed you on your first day. If you remember this time, you are more likely to hold onto your sword.’ His large hand closed around Brann’s, locking it tight. ‘Close your eyes. Feel it there. Think only of the shape in your hand.’ They stayed like that for several long moments. ‘Lock that feeling in your head. Practise holding anything, any time, to capture your hand in that shape.’ He tapped the back of Brann’s hand. ‘Now, if I may have my knife back? It was a present from my wife, and she would be most displeased if I gave it away, especially as you already have a present this week.’ He handed him the waterskin. ‘I hope you weren’t going to forget this.’
Brann smiled wanly. ‘I have a feeling I am going to need it.’
Cassian just held his knife in his hand, keeping his eyes fixed on the boy. With a slight move of his fingers, he rolled the blade very slightly to a new angle. ‘Hmm?’ He frowned. It rolled to a new angle. ‘Hmm.’ He smiled. A slight roll and a frown. ‘Hmm?’ A roll back and a smile. ‘Hmm.’ He patted Brann on the shoulder. ‘You do not need to visit for me to see.’ Picking up his fruit basket, he walked into the house.
Brann was right about needing the waterskin. The Field of Rocks was as aptly named as everywhere else seemed to be. Lying beyond the practice area where Brann had been so soundly beaten, a memory that prompted a shudder as they walked past, it was an area of uneven and rutted ground strewn with what appeared to be a random selection of rocks, from stones the size of a head to others that were nearly boulders.
Marlo walked to a medium-sized one and squatted, wrapping his arms under it. ‘Always with the straight back, always with the legs,’ he grunted, lifting the rock as he stood.
Brann nodded appreciatively and moved to a rock half as big again. His knees bent and, almost in the same movement, he rose with it clutched to his chest. The ground shook as he tossed it a good couple of yards from him and a bird taking flight in alarm caused Marlo to jump.
Brann grinned. ‘Maybe you joined a fighting school when you were six, but I started working with my father when I was five. There are plenty of sacks of all sizes in a mill, all filled with something or other and all needing to be lifted. If there’s one thing I’m well used to, its that.’
‘Good,’ Marlo said brightly. ‘Lifting and holding need not be explained, then. We are not practising to carry flour to a cart, however. We are not practising to lift at all. We are lifting to practise. We build the strength to move the way we would in a fight. Like this.’ He held two smaller rocks in front of him at shoulder height and swung his right arm to the right then back to the front, then mirrored it with his left, over and again, sometimes with the rocks facing up, sometimes down, sometimes centre. ‘And if we work a front muscle,’ he took a bigger rock and, elbow at his side, lifted it to his shoulder and back down, ‘we work a back muscle.’ He held the rock straight up then dropped his hand behind his head and back up.
‘Then we also get the big ones, like you were throwing about before, except we walk across the field with them.’
Brann smiled and lifted the same big rock, starting to stroll away. ‘Now this is like taking grain to the cart.’ He took two steps, caught his toe on a rut and sprawled headlong, the rock bouncing away from him.
‘You probably had a flatter floor in the mill,’ Marlo pointed out helpfully. ‘This exercise also builds balance and, er, awareness.’ Noticing Brann’s expression, he quickly grabbed two rocks and tucked them under the other boy’s arms. ‘Now squat. Head up all the time, look ahead, back straight. Right down, and up, and again and again many times. Curiously, although you feel your legs in this one, it really works you here.’ He slapped his hands all around the bottom half of Brann’s torso. ‘Lady Tyrala says this is the most important. She calls this the Core of our Whole. She says all real strength comes from there.’ He was as solemn as Brann had ever seen him. ‘And if the Lady Tyrala says it, it must be true.’ Brann didn’t doubt it.
He showed him a dozen other ways of using the rocks, and they worked through all of them, then started again, and repeated until the sun started its drop towards dinnertime. As Marlo headed for the trough to join the other fighters at their final wash of the day, Brann excused himself.
On a balcony at the Big House, Cassian stood watching the small figure dragging his legs at a laboured jog around the perimeter track. Every step was clearly a torture, but every step spoke of grim determination. He only slowed to a walk after staggering to the completion of the sixth circuit.
‘Good boy.’ The old soldier sipped his wine, savouring the taste for a long moment before swallowing. ‘Good boy.’
The weeks merged without a sensation of time. There
was no goal other than the incessant quest of improving, of being better than the day before, of teaching his body to move before his mind had time to wonder. Once mastered, one exercise would be changed for another, all aiming to develop a skill from new sensation to automatic movement.
Initially basic technique dominated, working single moves over and over with one weapon after another. Occasionally, there would be a double move, where the initial thrust or swing would expose him to attack and he needed to become automatic in shifting into a defensive position in an instant, smoothing the two movements seamlessly into one. Using swords defensively, using shields as weapons; stabbing and parrying with spears and throwing, throwing, throwing them until something that had all his life been an inability to the extent of embarrassment became a strength. All the time, he was guided by the relentless drone of Corpse, his meticulous eye missing nothing and his capacity for repetition never dwindling. He did seem amused – or so Marlo told him, though he couldn’t see it himself – at Brann’s insistence that whatever he did once with his right hand, he would do twice with his left. Brann didn’t care whether he was amused or not; it was his one stipulation that he did so and Corpse never objected as long as his technique became perfect, whichever hand he used.
Once the movement had become as unthinking as breathing, the boys moved to drills aimed at bringing together the learnt movement and unthought reactions. The painstaking presence of Corpse was no longer necessary: the boys were given an exercise for the morning. Six variations, one for each day, a different day each week. Movement of body had become automatic, but the mind had to adjust to the unpredictable circumstances. Over and over, and over.
In one drill, Marlo would have two sticks with cushioned pads on the end with which he would try to whack Brann on random parts of his body. The catch was that Brann was to close his eyes and only open them in the instant that his companion told him the blow was coming. Sometimes he had a sword, or shield, or spear, or knife, or axe, or mace to ward off the blow, sometimes just his hands and arms. For another, Marlo was given a ball the size of a fist that was made, he said, from the mixing of the sap of two trees that grew in a country across the sea. When Brann wondered where, Marlo shrugged and said that the Empire was a very large place. Whatever its origin, the result was an object that, when Marlo threw it with gusto, would ricochet around a small bare room like an enraged wasp. Brann’s job was to strike it with a weapon before it stopped bouncing.
Sometimes he would see Cassian watching, other times not.
And every morning he would run with the other fighters, every afternoon he would visit the Field of Rocks with Marlo. And every evening he would run again, a solitary figure in the haze of the dusk.
And he missed Grakk. The eloquent tribesman of the savage appearance had been his last link to his life of recent times, and his absence brought home to Brann how much he had come to rely on his calming advice and reassuring presence. He filled the gap with work, forcing himself almost to exhaustion. After all, what else did he have? He fell into a routine of exertion, embraced it, letting it define his days and fill his mind.
Until a simple question was unexpected enough to jolt his mind from its habitual daily path.
‘Can I try?’
Brann leant against the wall of the small room at the end of the Practice House, sweat running into his eyes and the bouncing ball drumming to a halt close to the far wall. It was a particularly hot day, even by the local standards, and he wiped the sting of the sweat from his eyes as he reached blindly for the waterskin.
‘Thought you’d never ask,’ he grinned, handing Marlo the wooden sword. ‘My breath went somewhere and I could do with a chance to find it.’
Marlo scoffed with a fake laugh. ‘Your breath is right there with you. I’ve watched you. It’s not just Breta who can now see your arse on the runs.’
‘I’m still not a natural runner.’
‘So what? No one is a natural at everything. It’s your attitude to what doesn’t come so easily that makes a difference.’
‘Did you come up with that?’
‘I overheard the Lady Tyrala. Except she put it better. Still true though.’
‘It is, so take it to heart for yourself.’
Marlo shook his head. ‘You’re wasting your time.’
‘I thought we talked about that attitude.’
With a trudge of resignation, the boy retrieved the ball, tossed it to Brann and made himself ready. Brann hurled the ball at the floor so that it flew up against the side wall and across the room. Marlo managed to swing desperately four times as it pinged about the space, and managed to miss four times. Brann threw it five times in all, with much encouragement from him, much enthusiasm from Marlo and much failure from the efforts.
The boy sat down hard, slumped against the wall. Brann leant against the wall and slid his back down it till he was beside him. ‘How will I ever be allowed to train? I cannot even hit a ball. It can’t even hold a sword to hit me back. I cannot be a fighter. I just don’t have it in me, like it is in you.’ Marlo’s head dropped and he let out a long slow breath through pursed lips. ‘For ten years, almost all of the life I can remember, I have watched the fighters during the day and at night I have lain awake and dreamt of the day I would be one of them. But dreams are dreams and life is life.’ The wooden weapon dropped out of his fingers. The noise of it hitting the floor was loud in the small room.
Brann reached forward and lifted the sword, the hilt falling into his grip exactly the way that Cassian had shown him what seemed like a life ago. Left hand slipping under the blade, he opened the fingers on his right and let the hilt roll back and forth in his palm as he stared at it. He spoke slowly, forming each word as he thought it. ‘Do you remember the first day I came into this room, when I chased the ball the whole morning, and the delight when I actually managed to clip it, and even then by accident with a badly controlled follow-though?’ A smile flickered through Marlo’s melancholy. ‘And on the Field of Rocks, when I thought I was so strong but really didn’t have a clue? And all those times you adjusted my sword until I could actually get it right myself? And when I was so bad with the spear that I tripped over it, and you had to show me how to switch hands without nearly braining myself? And with the mace, when I nearly…’
Marlo laughed and held up a hand. ‘Don’t remind me. I would have lost the chance for there to be little Marlos gracing this world if I hadn’t jumped so quickly in panic.’ He sighed. ‘But I get it, I was patient with you. But if you are telling me you are willing to be patient with me, I can save you wasting your time.’
Brann nudged him. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, I wasn’t intending to spend that much time on you.’ He fell serious again, eyes fixed on the rolling sword, the mesmerising twirling back and forth of the edges of the blade. ‘What I meant was, you had faith in me. You believed that I would get there. And then you were patient until I did. But sometimes it is easier to believe in someone else rather than in yourself.’
‘Sometimes you don’t because you know yourself. Or you’ve come to know yourself.’
‘Don’t talk like an idiot. Shut up and let me think.’
‘It’s you doing all the talking!’ But he fell quiet.
Brann stared intently at the sword, picturing Marlo chasing the ball and trying to compare with his recent successes. He was unable to envision himself. When he did it, he was lost in the moment. He didn’t know what exactly he did, he just did it. He found it hard even to remember the moments of striking the ball once they were done.
So he had to get into the moment with Marlo.
‘Take the sword.’ He pressed it into the boy’s grasp. ‘Up you get.’
‘Have I not tortured you enough with my ineptitude?’
‘No.’
He got up.
Brann picked up the ball but, as he threw it, he thought himself into Marlo’s place, trying to see what he would see. The ball pinged across and Marlo lunged at it, behind its passage.
He whirled, flailing at it as it bounced back and then, in desperation, reached for…
No! Brann’s instinct shouted. It felt so wrong. So awkward to think of doing it like that. No, like this! ‘Yes!’ his voice shouted.
‘I think,’ Marlo panted, ‘no is the word you are looking for.’
‘It was, but now it’s not.’ Brann grinned. ‘You’re coming at it from the wrong end.’
Marlo was confused. ‘Of the room?
‘Of your body. Of your intentions.’ He took the sword. ‘Look.’ He reached forward, extending his arm, and waved the sword to the side. ‘You are starting with the sword.’
‘But that is what I want to hit it with.’
‘But it is you who is doing the hitting, the sword is just the part of you that makes contact. You make it happen. But you are leaning beyond your feet, one part of you is fighting to keep you from falling so not all of you is trying for the ball. And you can do less, react less, control less when you reach and stretch like that.’
‘Right. So it is like I said. I am hopeless.’
‘There is hope. One of us here believes in you.’
‘Aye, believes in an unbalanced over-stretching failure.’
Brann shrugged. ‘Then we fix it. As I said, you are starting with the wrong end. See, not like this.’ He reached forward again and flapped the sword. ‘Like this.’ He stepped into the swing. ‘Start with your feet, and the rest of you has no choice but to follow. Step into the strike, and it will hit harder, and faster and, most of all, it will feel right.’ He shrugged. ‘If it feels right, it probably is.’ He handed over the sword and nodded. ‘It’s at least worth a try.’
Marlo shrugged. ‘I suppose.’
Brann paused before throwing the ball. ‘The first couple of times, don’t try to hit it. Just move to where you think you would.’
But when the ball flew across and Marlo’s feet turned and slipped to meet its path, the sword came up and clipped it, shooting it off the ceiling. The boy whooped with joy.
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