Another laughed drunkenly. “Maybe we should take this dwarf’s shirt.”
“Maybe this dwarf should give us all he got.”
“Leave me alone.” Eohan drew a knife from his boot. He slashed wildly in the air toward the one with the frizzy beard. He did not connect. His knife cleaved the air again.
Fists and open hands knocked him to the ground. Eohan slashed upwards with his knife. One grabbed his arm and smacked his hand. He dropped the knife.
Laughing, the telchine pulled at his tunic. Eohan kicked upward and hit hir in the groin. The telchine grunted from the impact, but sie was not affected as Eohan assumed sie would be.
Eohan scrambled to his feet. One telchine hit the back of his legs. He fell forward into the mud. Laughter filled his ears.
*
Leaving Cloudy and Jaci to graze, Alana rode Talia towards the men surrounding her apprentice. They didn’t look as if they were robbers, just drunk villagers celebrating the feast where the bard’s exclaimed the Viscount defeated the dwarves with guile. Even though the telchine had been the first aggressors, it would be some time before these people learned to trust the dwarves — or any outsiders — again.
Drawing her short blade, Alana slapped the first telchine using the flat, followed by a wide arc to hit the next opponent, knocking hir to the ground. She kicked the third in the face. Liquid clay spurted across her boots.
The fourth grabbed Talia. Alana sliced hir across the face. It was not a mortal wound, but it might scar.
Three ran off, leaving the final telchine bleeding clay into the dirt, holding hir broken nose.
“Get up, Eohan.”
The boy peeked at her, his face swollen where one of the drunks hit him.
“Finished with your tantrum?”
“Yes, my lady. Where did you come from?”
“Will you ever lie to me again?”
“No, my lady.”
“Will you ever let greed overpower your senses again?” she asked.
“No, my lady.”
“Good. Cloudy is a hundred paces north.” Alana said, ensuring her voice left no room for discussion. “You dropped your things.”
Eohan grabbed the small bag of spilled gold coin and discarded knife from the ground.
“I was never far out of earshot. Come along.”
Trotting after her horse, he said, “I’m sorry.”
Cloudy and Jaci looked up from their grazing at her approach. Cloudy seemed happy to see Eohan and trotted to him. Jaci neighed again. She put her hand out to the gelding and petted his nose as Roark would have done.
Once Eohan was upon his horse, she scolded, “I needed to demonstrate the price of greed before you acted upon any inclination.”
“You knew?”
“If you plotted against me or any member of the Guild, my answer would be your death. If you acted upon it, you would face crucifixion. Understand?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“You lied to a mind reader. Why?”
“My brother … I don’t know.”
“Truth now. Do you wish to be released from this life? I will take you to Fairhdel. We can find a village and open your shop with the payment I gave you. I will seek your brother, and if he lives, I’ll bring him to you.”
“No, my lady.” The boy wiped tears from his face. “I want this life.”
“When we arrive in Olentir, you will be bound to me as my apprentice.”
“Yes, my lady.” He stared at his riding saddle, trying to stop the flow of tears. His voice cracked. “Will you tell Roark?”
“I don’t see why every detail of your education concerns my nephew, any more than every detail of his education concerns you.”
“Are you saying…”
“I am saying, though Roark has never let greed overtake his good sense, both of you have disappointed me. I swear apprentices will be the death of me.”
*
Chapter 12
The Muirchlaimhte
At the egress of the Guild Cabin, Eohan watched Nalla run a line of rope through a honeycomb window, raising a sail. The crew moved in practiced sequence by order of the deck boss. It was a dance that Eohan didn’t understand. The air was dense with sweat and condensation in the enclosed deck. Outside the hexagonal windows, a mass of multiple colors of the Expanse swirled in the mists. A streak of red flashed by, followed by violet. The chaos reminded him of battle. Feeling dizzy, he reached for a nearby barrel lashed to the deck.
A callused, withered hand was on his arm.
“You fine, Guild Apprentice?” the deck boss asked him.
“Yes, Sir. I just wanted to…” He paused.
“I ain’t got all day. Spit it out, boy.”
“Nalla ...”
“Wash the idea from your head. See a whore once we land.”
Eohan raised his hands. “I just want to talk to her.”
“How old are you?” The deck boss punctuated his question with a shake.
“Ei-Eighteen.”
The man made a noncommittal grunt and a few syllables in what might be the Daosith language. Digging his narrow fingers into the muscles of Eohan’s bicep, he strode across the deck to where Nalla wrapped lengths of rope in tight figure-eights.
“This boy wants to talk to you. You want to talk to him? Don’t take all day.”
Eohan wanted to share everything. His mouth was dry. Thoughts jumbled his brain, each word pushing towards his mouth. Struggling for coherence, he couldn’t speak.
Nalla saved him. “Did you like your first job?” she asked.
“It wasn’t what I expected.” He pushed his sweaty hands into his tunic pockets.
“I don’t suppose it ever would be. My mother has some stories about her apprenticeship; she preferred transport and was lucky to procure a ship.”
“So many people died … on the battlefield.”
“More were saved.”
“You sound like Alana.”
Her eyes twinkled. “No one of the Guild is all that different.”
“How did you get that scar? Battle?”
“Shore leave. A drunk threw a bottle — not at me, but it hit my head,” she said.
“It makes your face look even more beautiful, kind of dangerous.” Eohan held back a shiver as he remembered the drunks which attacked him.
“Men,” she huffed, but she still smiled. His heart beat faster. He had to let her know.
“I love you.”
Nalla’s rhythmic coiling halted. She dropped three loops which she quickly gathered. “You barely know me.”
“The first day I saw you. You’re the most beautiful woman … every time I see you my heart might burst. I didn’t see you when we boarded and thought I might sink into the sea.”
“I was just running an errand for my mother.” Her smile grew wider.
The deck boss whistled. Nalla finished coiling ropes and tied them off.
“Is there another?” Eohan asked.
“Another?”
“Another man?”
“No,” She laughed lightly. “Or not yet anyway.”
The deck boss made two short whistles.
“Do you like me at all?”
“You’re fetching and sweet so I’d like to know you better, but I love this ship and sailing the Expanse. I want to be deck boss someday.” Nalla’s bronzed cheeks blushed darker as her eyes left his face and looked past him. “I’m not to be on the road you walk upon.”
Eohan glanced over his shoulder. Nyauail wore a deep frown causing her brow to wrinkle. He spun around and inclined his head. “Captain Nyauail?”
“If you wish to learn the sailor’s craft, you may stay aboard,” Nyauail said firmly. “However, you’ve no claim on my daughter’s heart — or time.” She handed him a scroll. “Give this to your master.”
Nalla met his eyes once more and gave him a small smile. It didn’t matter she didn’t love him. He would love her forever. Even if she didn’t love him back, the compassion in her e
yes, the directness of her speech deserved adoration.
Flush searing his cheeks, Eohan crossed the deck. The eyes of entire crew were upon him. He hurried below and handed the scroll to Alana. Unable to look at his master, he stared at her boots. “I’m sorry if I caused you embarrassment.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder. “What a desolate universe it should be if young people feared to speak to one another.”
“Nalla said she didn’t know me.”
“That girl always had a good head on her shoulders. Perhaps you two could take a short walk once we finish the binding.” Alana broke the wax seal on the scroll. “This will bring you some happiness, I should think.”
“What is it?”
“More information about the man who bought Kian.”
“Nalla’s mother … gave me that … but she was vexed with me.”
“I doubt that very much. Nyauail is our friend.” Alana patted his shoulder. “You’re overwrought. Rest. Call the steward to bring you another bath or a massage. I shall read this and plan.”
“Do you think we really found him?”
“I hope so, but it doesn’t change the fact we must go to Olentir first. Rest.”
*
Guild House of Olentir
in the Realm of Fairhdel
Eohan knelt onto the dark stone floor. The House Master’s long uncut nails, sharp and thick as knives, scratched his skin as the old man put a hand to his throat.
“You wish to apprentice with the Guild, boy?” Corwin’s bloodshot yellowed eyes focused upon Eohan,
“Yes, House Master Corwin. I wish to be a War Ender.”
Corwin threw back his hand and slapped Eohan across the face, the tips of his fingernails scratching his cheek. “The hedgeborn will not be a War Ender in my lifetime!”
“He has a highly analytical mind,” Alana said. “And I have foreseen it.”
Corwin slapped Eohan again, this time on the ear. It took his entire will not to fight back as instructed.
“Have you bedded him yet?” Corwin sneered at her. “I should kill him.”
Out of the darkness, Seweryn, Kajsa, Doriel, and Roark appeared above Eohan.
The Daosith and the dwarves stepped over Eohan, putting themselves between the House Master and him.
Roark helped him to his feet.
“Master, if I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, I would never have guessed jealousy makes you stupid,” Seweryn said, his eyes laughing.
“I’d rather work with a shrewd hedgeborn than a stupid noble,” Kajsa said, “Now bind him to Lady Alana. I stand here as a witness to the truth of his character.”
Eohan couldn’t believe they were defending him. If they only knew about the forest, they would not defend him!
Corwin looked down at Eohan again, and if he hadn’t just been hitting him, he asked, “What is our code?”
Trying to remember each word that Alana taught him, he recited, “We champion the side we are paid to champion or the side which brings the Guild the most stability as a Realm is a form of payment.”
“And?”
“I must never disregard a bird without giving a reasonable written excuse, nor will I love anyone more than my oaths to the Guild.”
“Come.”
Corwin led the party to a door carved with two crows intertwined with leaves and scrollwork. Eohan opened the door for him, half expecting a blow, but Corwin just went through the door, swishing his linen robes against the floor. Eohan realized how strange it was that Corwin no longer walked in silence as the others did.
Feathers, straw, and bird guano covered the floor in the large brick room. Each wall was littered with large hollows of missing brick which housed the Guild’s messengers: crows, gulls, and pigeons.
Corwin opened one gate.
Six birds hopped out of their holes. Corwin grasped Eohan’s arm. With a bladed ring, Corwin sliced open the flesh on his wrist. Pressing the wound to his mouth, the housemaster sucked until blood pooled on the skin.
The birds lifted their heads and picked at the droplets of blood. Jiggling his foot on the floor, Eohan tried to ignore the pinpricks of pain as their beaks plunged into the wound. He forcibly tried to relax his arm, but his shoulders and neck tensed. He locked his knees and grew dizzy.
“Bind yourself to your Master,” Corwin said.
Light-headed, Eohan pressed his finger into his wound and pressed a bloody thumbprint into Alana’s forehead.
In the moment of binding, other marks materialized upon Alana’s brow: one was Roark’s, one was from her own fallen daughter, and one sparkled with dwarfblood. Not just any dwarf, but Kajsa. He could envision the other four, but they were just young faces of people he didn’t know.
He looked to Corwin. Several bloody thumbprints spotted his brow: Fairsinge, Daosith, dwarf, telchine, and human. He recognized two: Seweryn and Doriel.
“For the faith you put in me, I teach you in the ways of the Guild as your abilities dictate,” Alana said.
He would remember this day in the years to come. However, he didn’t quite understand the meaning of her words in the moment.
“Bind yourself to your messengers.”
Trying to make sense of it, Eohan pressed his thumb into the open wounds and called to the first crow. He pressed his bloody thumbprint into the back of the bird’s neck, so she and future generations of her nestlings could always find him.
As his future spread out before him, he understood the gravity of his vow. He was bound to Alana until he earned his rank and he was bound to the Guild until he fell in battle or died from other causes.
He fainted.
*
Alana knelt and felt Eohan’s carotid artery. “A little weak, but getting stronger.”
Corwin nudged the boy with his foot as the marked birds pecked at his open wound, finishing the binding ceremony.“I told you he was too fragile to be a War Ender.”
Alana was about to answer, when Seweryn interrupted brightly, “Would you prefer he vomit on your shoes as I did, Master?” The man laughed, but the words dripped with venom.
Roark and Alana lifted Eohan by the shoulders. Doriel and Kajsa each took a leg. The four carried him to an empty sleeping cell.
Depositing him on the bed, Roark grunted, “Auntie, can your next apprentice be a gnome? They are much lighter.”
No one laughed, though Kajsa half smiled.
Corwin followed them; his linen robes swished against the stone floor.
“How do you propose to teach him, Alana?”
“Our first stop is in Dynion.”
“Why is that?”
“There is always violence among the human city-states and brigands in the wilds.”
Corwin narrowed his eyes before he disappeared silently into the darkness.
“Thank you, my friends, for protecting my apprentice,” Alana checked Eohan’s pulse on his neck as Roark bandaged his arm.
“It’s highly amusing to impede the house master,” Seweryn said.
Doriel agreed with too much joviality in his voice. Alana didn’t like to think about what had happened to them to make him hate Corwin so, but it was good to know.
In a manner childish for a young man so close to the end of his apprenticeship, Roark whispered to Seweryn, “You were right. He isn’t jealous. At least not the way I thought.” Her nephew turned away and vomited in a chamber pot. Spitting, he said, “It’s much worse because there’s no end to it.”
*
Paralyzed by sleep, Roark felt his spirit leave his form and mingle with the memory of Corwin’s hate. He felt lost within a dark cloud of the house master’s rage and sorrow.
Light punctured his retinas. He feared he would vomit again. This time his corporal form would be left lying in a pool of his sick. He refused to allow the nausea to take him.
A long flat plain of salt stood before him. He took a step and broke through the thin crust spread across thick goopy liquid. Heat of an unseen sun beat upon him and evaporated the
liquid forming a mist. Every step, he stumbled through the crust. Salt flew in the air.
Smoke and clanging metal swirled around him. Children screamed behind a wooden door. Oh no, not this day.
Flashing steel carved into the strong arm of his once lovely cousin, Saray. She parried, but a sword breaker caught her saber and snapped it in two. Another blade went through her chest. She drew her dagger and pierced the metal gauntlet that reached for the door. Then she spun and stabbed again. Her opponent fell.
She fell back on the door, then onto the ground. Blood flowed back to the Realm. Her bowels released and urine and feces spilled onto the ground. Her once blue eyes grew milky. Her flesh grew gray and rotted.
A male’s scream echoed all around him. Roark turned as Corwin’s hand reached through him and tried to hold Saray’s spirit, but she left her rotting corpse. Now unfettered, she walked into the sun.
Saray had always known who sired her, but as Corwin never once visited her in the nursery, she never cared to know him. She was the Lady of the Keys of House Eyreid, Daughter of the Martlet Alana. She had fallen protecting the three youngest children of House Eyreid — one of which was Roark.
Saray’s spirit stepped upon the Long Road. A path filled with dead things: millions of insects, hundreds of mice and squirrels, a few cats, dogs and a horse. All rotting flesh. Corwin tried to call for her, tried to reach for her, but she did not answer.
*
Roark opened his eyes. Though soaked in sweat, his flesh was intact. Saray walked with insects along the Long Road, he thought with a shudder. He rolled over to see Eohan snoring on the bedroll beside his. Above them, in the sleeping chamber’s only bed, Alana slept on her side, her sheathed sword beside her.
I didn’t see the resurrection, only the Long Road! But his mind repeated: Saray walked with insects. As far as the Road was concerned, his cousin was the same as them. His mind spun. The priests claimed that if he lived by his vows, he would be resurrected as a noblewoman’s son, but deep within his heart he knew that it was untrue. Eohan was a good man, a better man that Roark, and he was born a sausagemaker’s son, then made a slave through no fault of his own. Kian was just a boy somewhere lost in the Realms.
The War Enders Apprentice (Chronicles of the Martlet Book 1) Page 8