CHAPTER 2
The Weapon Master
Rache left the gladiators’ training chamber quivering with strain, self-directed anger, and the understanding that pride and Garn’s affront had goaded him to reckless stupidity . . . again. I had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Rache flung Garn’s blunted practice sword into a box by the door containing similar weapons. Metal struck metal with a high-pitched clang. Egotistical fool, Rache berated himself, cursing himself for the lesson he had learned as well as taught. Any guard less practiced would have died; and, had Garn triumphed and survived, he would have become uncontrollable. Why do I let what he thinks bother me? With a sigh of irritation, he headed down the long corridor that led to the alcove before the outer door.
When Rache had first arrived in the Town of Santagithi, the memory of his capture and battle in Nordmir made the idea of gladiators reprehensible. But, with time and Nantel’s encouragement, he discovered that Santagithi’s gladiators were not children kidnapped and forced to fight against their will, but savage, scarcely human beasts: barbarians captured in war, the most intractable of criminals, and a few savages bred and raised exclusively to kill. They snarled more than they spoke. When they did talk, it was always to threaten or to brag to the guards and never one another, though their cages sat in a row.
And then there was Garn.
Rache trotted past a cross corridor, his lips twitching into a frown. Vivid as yesterday, he recalled a moment from thirteen years ago, when a pit fighter named Carad lay dying on the sand of the South Corner Arena after winning hundreds of contests. A willing, proud, and capable gladiator, Carad had won the guards’ respect and the favors of the woman who had borne him Garn. He had also won his freedom, though he had refused it. The one-on-one wars had become his source of pride; they were all he knew. Yet, in his last moments of life, he had called for the one guard who wanted nothing to do with the gladiator fights, who had agreed to train them only because he could not stand the thought of men dying without the final fulfillment of having given their all to the battle. Rache came, and Rache alone heard Carad’s final words: “With my blood and your training, Garn can be the best. Take care of my son.”
Now, more than a decade later, Rache again heard the gladiator’s rattling whisper beneath the rasp of stone against leather, and it haunted him. Though only thirteen years old to Garn’s five, Rache had become more of a parent to Garn than the uncaring servant who was his birth mother. Yet the combination of Rache’s training and Carad’s proud ferocity had created a monster neither of them could have foreseen. Born a free man, Garn had committed himself to a life of pits, whips, and cages with his own viciously wicked temper.
Shame and outrage twisted into a painful braid within Rache, and he deflected his train of thought before the ugly details plagued his mind again. Nothing good could come of dwelling on a tragedy now eight years old. But he could not keep himself from thinking of what Garn had become and what he could have been.
Many of the gladiators liked Rache for the maneuvers he taught that kept them alive in the pit; most of the others at least gave him a grudging respect. But Garn’s hatred for the weapon master seemed tangible. For weeks, the gladiator would say nothing, loathing fairly radiating from him. Then he would make a remark designed to goad Rache to violence. And for reasons Rache could not fully explain, he nearly always fell prey to Garn’s insults. He knows exactly how to antagonize me, and he does it again and again. He knows because I handed him the spears, sling stones, and arrows to hurl against me, the knowledge of Northmen’s gods and the reality of Valhalla and Hel. Santagithi’s mixed populace worshiped a host of gods, but only Rache followed the Northlands’ faith as well as its pantheon. When Garn’s rage takes control, he can’t even remember a simple dodge. So how does he always manage to recall things that annoy me?
Angered anew by the memory of his own carelessness, Rache turned into the smaller armory/storage room to reclaim the shortsword he had left there. Seventeen crossbows hung from pegs on the walls above a carton of quarrels. The other walls held gladiators’ weapons: swords, fighting gauntlets, knives, clubs, and pole arms in sharpened and practice varieties. The actual armory in Santagithi’s citadel held more finely crafted and balanced weapons, as well as mail and shields. Rache shunned the armor, too indoctrinated with the Renshai ways to consider it anything but cowardly. Like most of Santagithi’s soldiers, he preferred swords, but Rache had learned the techniques of the other weapons in order to instruct guards and gladiators. Discovering his shortsword in the corner where he had left it, Rache affixed it to the right side of his belt, opposite his longsword, and returned to the main hall.
Rache spotted Mitrian sitting on the bench near the exit. Though not quite sixteen, she had inherited her father’s broad-boned frame. Already, her hands and feet had grown nearly as large as Rache’s. She wore her shoulder-length, chestnut hair tied into a ponytail, revealing her father’s spacious, pale eyes and her mother’s oval face and fragile features. Though unusual, the combination was appealing. Beyond her, the heavy main door was propped open, revealing brilliant blue sky and gray buildings etched against forest.
Mitrian rose as she noticed Rache and raised a woven basket. “Ready?” As he drew closer, her smile of welcome faded. “Rache, are you well?”
“I’m fine,” Rache replied brusquely, taking Mitrian’s arm. Apparently the girl could see the tremor of his overworked muscles, and it infuriated him. “Let’s eat by the stream.” He yanked her toward the door.
Sensing Rache’s discomfort, Mitrian did not question further but accompanied him to the doorway. They had nearly escaped into the sunlight when Jakot’s voice reached them from a distant corridor. “Rache?”
When a man least wants company, it is most apt to find him. Rache measured the distance to the door, wondering if he could slip through before the guard turned the corner. Then, aware it would look bad to avoid his duties in front of his leader’s daughter, he turned to face the sizable, sandy-haired guard who hurried from an opposite hallway.
Jakot stopped, still some distance from Rache. “How about a spar?”
Rache smiled despite his mood, glad to see the guard interested in an unscheduled practice. “Sure. I’ve got a gladiator to train after lunch, but I’ll meet you by the guardhouse first.”
Jakot nodded his thanks and returned the way he had come.
Quickly, Rache and Mitrian slipped through the doorway into the comforting heat of the midday sun. Warmed, Rache’s sinews uncoiled; and, as thoughts of Garn faded, peacefulness settled over Rache. The sky stretched, cloudless, over the familiar buildings of Santagithi’s estate, and the tiny but concealing patch of forest enclosed between the walls beckoned. He headed toward it.
But before Rache and Mitrian had taken a dozen paces, Nantel’s voice stopped them. “Rache?”
The sword master gave Mitrian an apologetic glance. Though not averse to seeming busy in the presence of Santagithi’s daughter, the interruptions were becoming annoying. He stepped around to face the captain of archers. “Nantel?”
“Sorry to disturb you.” Nantel’s mischievous olive-brown eyes revealed that he was not at all sorry. “There’s a new guard, one of the village boys. Will you train him?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning.” Though he addressed Rache, Nantel’s gaze swept to Mitrian who shifted impatiently from one leg to the other.
Rache considered his already overly busy schedule. “I’m training gladiators this evening. Tonight I’m on guard duty. You snore like a bear, but even I sleep sometimes.”
Nantel sighed heavily, as if Rache had placed all the burdens of the world on his shoulders. “Then I’ll have to train him.”
Rache winked. “Eh,” he teased. “The boy’ll be deprived of the master, but you’re almost as good.”
Nantel raised his thick eyebrows questioningly, “Almost?”
Rache laughed. He turned with Mitrian and headed toward the woods. Suddenly, he spun, flinging his s
hortsword. Nantel had no chance to react before the blade buried itself in the doorjamb, nearly touching his knee. “Almost,” Rache confirmed. He returned his attention to Mitrian, too busy laughing to notice the envious stare Nantel awarded his back.
Rache and Mitrian entered the forest, brushing between the trees in silence. Rache’s friendly rivalry with Nantel had become local legend. He smiled at the realization that he had won this time, knowing Nantel would pay him back, tenfold and shortly, with some ingenious prank. His exchange with his roommate had dispelled the last of his annoyance, and he reveled in the sounds of the forest. Red squirrels scolded and skipped across the boughs. A fox slipped from brush to rock to tree, visible only as a pair of curious, amber eyes and lingering musk. Mayapples quivered in the thin, spring breeze, and poison ivy trembled in silent warning.
Rache knew Mitrian remained quiet in deference to his thoughts. She was a beautiful woman, he decided, despite or because of her solid but slim figure and natural grace. Though she bore no resemblance to the baby sister Rache had lost, she had come to replace the child in his mind. Still, his relationship with Mitrian remained a mystery to the other guards and citizens. Nantel spent countless hours trying to wheedle the secret from him. Santagithi used a direct approach. Rache satisfied them both with vague answers that did little to quell the rumors. Let them think a romantic interest exists between us, he mused. It kept them from discovering the truth that would open him to punishment and scorn. Against all custom and propriety, Mitrian was Rache’s student.
They sat in a circle of elms by the bank of a winding stream. Mitrian passed Rache a piece of roasted rabbit and a handful of scarlet fruit. She spoke softly, with the subdued catch in her voice the captain had come to associate with trouble. “Rache?”
Rache stiffened, becoming inordinately engrossed in his food, certain Mitrian would ask an awkward favor or a question Santagithi considered improper for a woman. Three years ago, in this same tone, she had begged him to teach her to wield a sword.
“Rache?” Mitrian repeated. When he still hesitated to respond, she continued. “I heard the gladiators fighting last night. Tell me about it.”
Jarred suddenly back to the near-disaster in the training room, Rache scowled. Among Renshai, if he had suggested women should be protected from warcraft, death, and battle, they would have laughed him down. Fifty women with drawn swords would have taught him the error of his ways. But sixteen years among Santagithi’s people had touched him with their customs, if not with a true understanding of them. Unlike Rache, who had seen ailing Renshai attacked and slaughtered by their own people so as not to die a coward’s death, Santagithi protected Mitrian from images of blood and death.
Removed from the gore, Mitrian treated swordplay like a sport or a dance, a lithe choreography of steel and man. Even as an infant on the lawn, her eyes had followed the moving, silver glimmers, as fascinated as a crow by things that shine. Since childhood, she had spent much of her free time watching Rache practice katas or train and instruct the guards. Though young and unlearned about weapons, she had recognized the differences between Rache’s style and the techniques he taught, picking out the strange, precise Renshai maneuvers he used in spar but never demonstrated. Her sharp notice and zeal had awakened memories of his mother. Rache set aside his meal, aware Mitrian would persist until he answered. “What do you want to know?”
Unaware of Rache’s reverie, Mitrian squeezed a pit from a cherry. “I want to know about yesterday’s fights.”
Rache trailed his fingers in the cool stream waters as he sifted through the memory, trying to think of a way to tell Mitrian of the grisly contests without disgusting her. He never cared much for watching them, though he oversaw the battles to make certain nothing untoward happened and to discover the successes and failures of his training. “Well, your father lost quite a bit of gold up until the last match.”
“That was Garn. Wasn’t it?”
Rache scowled, forced back to the topic he had worked so hard to forget. He understood and sympathized with Mitrian’s interest. As a child, Garn had lived as a servant in her father’s citadel and, at Rache’s request, she had drawn the gladiator’s young son into her circle of friends, a mixed group of merchants and ranking soldiers’ offspring.
Thoughts of those children triggered the memory Rache had suppressed earlier, and it returned too quickly for him to evade it again. He recalled how damp, afternoon fog had swirled over the town of Santagithi, shrouding a frothing mob of citizens near the southern border. Their shouts knifed through the usual quiet peacefulness, sending Rache scurrying to the scene, though he was off-duty. Just beyond the crowd, Santagithi screamed orders lost beneath the hubbub; eight-year-old Mitrian clung, sobbing, to his legs, hindering his every movement. The handful of guards in attendance wove and darted, apparently trying to obey commands they could not quite hear and thwarted by the sheer numbers of the crowd. It seemed to Rache as if the entire village had massed.
Rache remembered how he had drawn up directly at Santagithi’s side. As always, the town leader watched with an admirable composure that soothed the nearest citizens. Only a faint scarlet flush to his cheeks revealed his anger. He was gaining control of his people far too slowly to please him, and the distraction of a terrified daughter did not help his cause.
“What’s going on?” Though Rache shouted, he was uncertain whether his general could hear him.
Either Santagithi understood or he guessed the obvious question. “It’s Garn. . . .”
The general’s remaining words were lost beneath the clamor, but Rache had heard enough. Jerking free his sword, he slashed at a section of the crowd with a wordless battle cry that drew every eye. Years of teaching had made him a master at anticipating the dodges and strikes of even the most erratic beginners, and he knew as much from instinct as sight how to pull or redirect his strikes. The citizens scrambled, screaming, from his path, little knowing that at no time were they ever truly in danger.
Rache remembered using the opening his maneuver gained him to shove to the center of the disturbance. There, a child’s corpse lay on the grass, several of its limbs broken, its clothing torn, and its face a bloated mass of bruises. Rache recognized the boy as a merchant’s son; a few steps away, the father nursed a wrist swollen to twice its normal size. There could be no question who had done the slaying. Garn rolled, kicked, and bit, half pinned beneath three adults who lunged in whenever he swung for one, then retreated whenever he shifted his attack. Hemmed in by the crowd, the goldsmith’s daughter and a guardsman’s son cowered back from the struggle.
Rache sheathed his sword, plunging unhesitatingly into the fray. He caught the butcher by his thick shoulders and spun the larger man into the crowd. The butcher crashed into a goading mob of cattlemen. Three fell, flailing, taking the butcher down with them. Heedless, Rache ducked between Garn and his other two attackers, realizing only then that one of the men held a knife. Rache made a grab for the weapon.
Garn’s wild kick caught Rache in the shin. Driven off his timing, Rache felt the blade skim across his forearm, opening the sleeve and the skin. Modi! The Renshai’s pain cry came naturally to his mind. Though he had learned not to shout the name aloud, the battle wrath it inspired was less easily suppressed. Rage bucked against his control. He slammed the dagger from the man’s hand with enough force to break its wielder’s thumb. The movement threw a thin arc of Rache’s blood across the closest spectators, and they shrank back in revulsion. With a shriek of pain, the man skittered beyond Rache’s reach. Garn’s third attacker withdrew, ending the need for another confrontation.
Though only eleven, Garn already sported his father’s thick, compact musculature, nearly as broad as he was tall. He crouched in the defensive posture that Rache had taught him, and his green eyes held the madness of a hungry jaguar. Yet Rache saw details that others surely missed: the trace of rigidity that fear added to Garn’s stance, the upward twitch at the corner of his mouth that betrayed joy and relief
at having found an ally against the enraged mob. Caught between a temper as indomitable as volcano and a childish need for a parent’s comforting, Garn froze.
The level of noise had diminished, and Rache sought soothing words to pacify the wild creature that was not quite Garn. But before he could speak, a condemnation cut clearly over the crowd, picked up and carried by what seemed like all two thousand of Santagithi’s citizens. “Kill him! Kill the child murderer!”
Now, in the forest clearing with Mitrian, Rache cringed from the memory of what came next. He had reached for Garn, but the boy had sprung away. As the crowd pressed in again, Rache knew he had little choice but to subdue Garn before the mob slaughtered him. Drawing his sword, he whipped the flat for Garn’s head.
As he spun to face the crowd, Garn saw the blow too late. For an instant, his gaze met Rache’s, and the captain thought he saw an expression he had never known before or since, a self-righteous pain of betrayal so innocent that only a child could suffer it. Then the sword struck a clouting blow that had seemed to vibrate through Rache’s hands to his shoulders. And he knew a hatred nearly as pure as Garn’s pain, against himself for what he had done, against the crowd for a savagery every bit as revolting as Garn’s own, and against Garn for misusing Rache’s teachings and taking a young man’s life.
Garn collapsed without a cry. And Rache shielded Carad’s son with his own sword and body.
So familiar, the memory compressed to an instant. Still, Rache had hesitated long enough that Mitrian repeated her question.
“Garn was the winner of the last pit fight. Right?”
“Garn. Yes.” Rache rubbed his aching forearms with a frown, his past and present thoughts of Garn equally disturbing. “Mitrian, I’m sorry. I really don’t want to talk about gladiators.” Especially that one.
“All right.” Mitrian did not press. “Then let’s talk about swords. Will I have a lesson tonight?”
Though well beyond hearing range of the other guards, Rache grimaced. “I’m on duty on the south side. I can’t teach, but you can practice in the clearing near the arena.” Consumed by irritation, Rache left his meal half-finished. “I have to get back to work. Remember? I promised Jakot a spar.”
The Last of the Renshai Page 9