Initiate's Trial

by Janny Wurts

  The heft of a main gauche in his hand, then the jarred clash, as edged steel deflected the hostile riposte of a larger opponent tore through the veil that darkened his past and unleashed a cascade of blocked recall. Nerve and bone, his body remembered its treacherous history: the same classic move, once before, had ended a duel by murder. He still felt the heated spurt of fresh blood as a low, left-hand jab sank his blade in the vulnerable flank of a man who had been the most steadfast of liegemen. The cry wrung from his tortured throat, then, haunted still: ‘Caolle! Ath’s mercy on me, Caolle! Dharkaron strike me, it’s death I have dealt for your service!’

  This night, called by Arin, he scarcely felt the blow that buffeted his exposed face. He stayed deaf to the heckling shouts of the drill-sergeant’s henchmen. Ripped near to tears by the visceral fear that another man’s loyalty might fall to ruin because of him, he did not resist as they noosed his wrists, then tossed the rope over a sturdy bough. Eager hands hoisted the slack till he dangled, toes scarcely in contact with the frosted ground.

  ‘Who are you, really?’ someone demanded. Without pause for answer, a blow hammered his ribs and knocked the wind from him. ‘Where were you taught sword-play, and how did you earn the punishment of chain and shackles?’

  Still undone by spasms, Arin could not speak. As if any bold lie could, ever again, reconstruct a false claim to innocence. The irrefutable rip tide of relapsed experience damned him too straightly to deny tonight’s accusations or protest the abuse hammered into him. Arin languished, no more responsive than a rag puppet hung from a nail. The punishment to his person meant nothing. Not while, thousands upon uncounted thousands, his past toll of fallen resurged to stain his culpable hands in let blood. If he gave way, he might number their endings: by arrow and steel riven through cringing flesh, until the harrowed noise of their ghostly screams deafened him, and the horrific wreckage of split organs and smashed bone sucked the air from his lungs, and whirled him insensate…

  Arin woke, choking, to the gritty splash of marsh water, hurled into his face.

  ‘We should leave you strung up all night,’ snapped the man who wielded the pail. ‘Maybe find out how loud you can sing before cock’s crow in the morning!’

  Spluttering, wet to the waist and helplessly shivering, Arin groaned. Someone had strapped a rock to his ankles. Against that cruel weight, the ropes binding him were being raised until his stretched shoulders popped, and his spine blossomed to star-bursts of agony. He understood, from the bystander’s shouts, that his unpleasant predicament was a stop-gap step, improvised for expedience. Once the troop’s provost returned from his sweep to round up deserters, the sergeant would lay claim to the chain and cuffs to properly shackle him.

  Someone spat in his face.

  Arin blinked, chin tucked against his strained arm in a thwarted effort to shield his eyes. A shudder ran head to foot through his frame. Lost again to the powerful currents of memory, he whimpered, while the fierce cold that bit to the bone hurled him back into harrowing wind on a sleety mountain side. Where, once in the past, he had climbed in exhausted flight to evade a troop of Sunwheel lancers. Almost, he remembered the names of the commanders who hunted him down for capture.

  But a nearby, familiar voice snapped the vision. Eyes opened again, frozen in wretched earnest, he recognized Tarens, importuning the sergeant to let down the snubbed rope and show mercy.

  ‘You know this rogue, then?’ The frustrated officer turned on the crofter, his hawk’s glance whetted to suspicion. ‘Who battered your face? Are you thick with this criminal miscreant?’

  Before the brute sized up his new target, Arin broke silence and pealed with quick sarcasm. ‘Yes, the dumb mule has claimed my acquaintance. How do you think he busted his nose? Didn’t teach him a thing, since he’s grovelling again, when even a girl with good sense should keep to the side-lines.’

  ‘Took the fist for you, did he, last time someone got pissed?’ Primed for amusement, the drill-sergeant tipped back his pot helm, licked gapped teeth, and bore in. ‘Or is this the side-kick who saves your runt hide from the scrapes touched off by your fumbling?’

  ‘He’s saved no one,’ cracked Arin, fast as a whip. Where, before this, had he turned a riposte with such cruelty, to strike that note of withering ridicule? With venomous ease, he hit the raw nerve guaranteed to evoke searing recoil. ‘What could you expect but soft sap from a man who ducked out for the scandal of incest?’

  The clubbed shock of betrayal on Tarens’s open face raised hoots, then bellows of amusement from the gathered onlookers. Drawn in from the side-lines, others became riveted. The drama unfolded with such callous honesty, the sergeant broke into a guffaw. ‘Light’s sweet sake! You don’t relish the story of your filthy act aired in public? Tell us, fellow. Did you run with your sister bunged up with child, or did she whip you off like a rut-snorting bull?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Arin cracked. ‘His older brother poked the goods first. If the line breeder who fathered the brood shot the same, I’d bet this lummox is hung like an ox, fit to stir family sauce like a champion.’

  Gut laughter exploded with an ugly roar.

  ‘Ox-wang!’ The sergeant’s gibe rammed through the tumult. ‘Light’s own, there’s a name a stud greenhorn could never live down!’

  ‘Let him try!’ someone shouted. ‘We’ll cheer him on, since the whores hereabouts are callused with use, and bossy as crooked-horned dairy cows.’

  Hazed scarlet, Tarens broke from stunned stupor. Ripped to naked rage, he bent and snatched up an iced clod of mud. His overhand throw hurled the missile full force at the prisoner’s face.

  Arin could not duck, slung from his numbed wrists. The impact slammed his jaw and split his upper lip. Eyes open, set swinging, he spat blood, and denounced, ‘Bully for you. Now, deny that I’ve spoken less than the truth.’

  Whitened beyond fury, Tarens glared at the captive with arctic intensity. To the sergeant, to whom he had just pleaded for blankets, he said, charged to terrible calm, ‘Build a fire to warm the gleeking scum, for all I care.’ Jaw clamped, he turned his broad back and walked off.

  Still safe! Arin loosed his pent breath, shaken limp with relief. No one pursued his friend into the dark. A sharp prod in the ribs sped the twirl of the rope, followed fast by a taunt. ‘Cat got your tongue, little weasel?’

  The mocking jabs became thumping blows, which swung the line lashed to the creaking bough. The involuntary shudders set in from the chill made the victim jig like a hooked fish.

  Arin set his teeth to endure. Shoved, punched, and whirled nauseously dizzy, he scarcely cared that the macabre suggestion of fire caught on. To raucous whistles and cheers, a dozen enthusiasts hurried to gather dead wood. All but driven mad by the pain of stressed ligaments, Arin suffered the gamut of goading attempts to upset his nerve and break his clammed silence. He held out, not for pride. As long as his sorry predicament lasted, he held the crowd’s focused interest. If he failed, the disastrous end could be worse. The instant that sharp inquiry widened the search, the description of last month’s blond runaway would call for a cursory inspection beneath Tarens’s sleeve cuffs. Fresh weals from the shackles set upon the condemned would unmask the priest’s misplaced criminal.

  Where Arin could draw on an untapped well of resource, at risk of the horrors that occluded his identity, the kind-hearted crofter possessed no such ruthless store of experience. Tarens had strength, but no guile. Caught out, alone, he would be undone by the same strait-laced virtue that had led his family to ruin.

  Let him stay heart-sore and distanced and free, Arin whispered as an inward litany. He clung to that commitment to save his frayed balance. Trained to overmaster the body’s complaint, he pitched himself to withstand the harsh course and outlast the malice of his tormentors.

  Yet Tarens had no such callousness in him, to witness another man’s punishment. Huddled by the darkened warmth of the horse-lines to nurse the sting of betrayal, he could not shut out the mingled shouts and coar
se laughter as the spurious hazing continued. He saw men stack the driftwood beneath Arin’s feet. Heard the serious threat, as someone’s rash eagerness kindled a torch. Thin through the noise, he heard Arin cough as a flaming billet was waved in his face, and the greasy smoke billowed off the oiled rag choked his wracked effort to breathe. Sparks showered and ignited the laid store of fuel. Since the drill-sergeant hoped to prompt a confession, his gesture forbade the man with the bucket to douse the premature blaze.

  ‘String the wretch up! Crank that rope higher. If we toast his toes, he’ll sing all the quicker! Why not make a dull evening more lively?’

  Eager hands hoisted, while Arin, strapped helpless, was set swinging in ponderous arcs above the lit kindling. Night-wind fanned the flames. The logs singed and caught. Within moments, the blaze crackled in earnest.

  Tarens swallowed, distressed.

  If not for that little man’s saving help, he would have met a hideous end on the scaffold, pierced through by cold steel until he died screaming. No matter how vile the slanderous words, despite the unforgivable mockery that heaped filth on the tender love that Efflin had cherished within the close circle of family, Tarens could not watch any wretch burn alive. Not even to vindicate the mean blow that savaged his brother’s private dignity.

  Big and good-natured, he was slow to enrage among strangers. His easy manner tended to be misread, and his forceful speed was underestimated, always, in those moments he did choose to move.

  As a whistling horse-boy jogged past with four mounts saddled up for the messenger’s relay, Tarens seized the moment and snatched the looped reins. His vaulted leap straddled the nearside gelding against the boy’s stupefied protest. Without stirrups, the crofter dug his desperate heels into the chestnut beneath him. He reined around shouting, and plunged the stolen string of horseflesh back through the camp at a break-neck gallop.

  Men scattered away from their trampling hooves. Kicked buckets tumbled. The cook’s trestle upset. A snagged guy-line collapsed a command tent, to corrosive oaths and confusion. Darkness lent wing to the erupted chaos as the stampede caught senior officers and troops in flat-footed surprise.

  Tarens snatched up a pennoned lance from a rack. He swung the tip and sliced through the picket line that secured the war-trained destriers. While the squire attending them stood and gaped, Tarens whipped the released animals into a charge. Onwards, he pelted, trailed by pandemonium as the freed horses thundered away, helter-skelter. The furious dedicates were compelled to choose: to chase their loose mounts or to murder the lout hell-bent on sowing mayhem.

  Someone with a cool head in the tumult strung a long-bow and nocked an arrow. In darkness, his target was a muddled silhouette, blurred by flying manes, upflung necks, and fanned tails against the spent coals of the cookfires. The shots snapped off his bow-string flew wild, more likely to maim an innocent soldier as take down the maniac fugitive. A powerful veteran cast a lance, and one of the riderless animals went down screaming. Its agony drove the rest of the herd into a rampage of panic.

  Tarens rode for his life. Wedged amid the crazed seethe of the herd, he had no level head for strategy. But his crofter’s background knew all the best tricks to drive terrified livestock. A few judicious jabs with his lance-butt ran his hacks straight into the lynch mob under the tree limb.

  The sergeant swore murder but could not hold his ground. While men peeled away to escape being milled under, only a few stalwart veterans regrouped and drew swords. Yet they dared not strike without risk of crippling the couriers’ race-bred steeds.

  Tarens shucked the spear. Jostled amid the swirl of crazed animals and partly shielded by the tree trunk, he drew rein and blocked the prisoner’s pendulum swing, before the arc reversed and scythed back over the pyre. Arin’s bound form crashed full length against the chestnut’s shoulder. Tarens pulled the home-made knife from his boot. Reins dropped, with the remounts snagged in pin-wheeling upset around him, he snatched the rope while their rampage foiled outside intervention. Somehow, with taut heels, he steadied the gelding. Kept astride its jostling back by sheer grit, he sawed through the hemp and cut Arin free. Powerfully strong from a miserable autumn spent busting frozen sod at the plough, the crofter clawed the smaller man’s limp weight astride with the singed rocks still attached.

  No time remained to hack Arin’s limbs free. Tarens kicked the gelding, drove it hurtling against the equine melee, and tangled the snagged wrack of lead reins. The bunched horses staggered. Dragged pell-mell with him, disgruntled and squealing, the nags chased their liberated four-legged brethren and pounded at an ear-flattened run out of camp. Furious officers howled orders to give chase. But the frantic men scrambling at their command were too hard-pressed, catching animals, to regroup for an urgent pursuit.

  Tarens had sense enough not to glance back. Bent over the rescue draped on his mount’s withers, he let the crazed beast tear through the night at an uncontrolled gallop. His break-neck course crashed through thickets and the pelt of low-slung twigs, then clattered in untrammelled flight onto the trade-road. Tarens hissed through his teeth and swerved the herd leftwards, then drove them over the ditch and onto the berm to hammer onwards down the tow-path. In minutes, the gelding he straddled was winded. Bred light for speed, meant to bear a slight rider, its strides laboured under the double burden. Hope to reach a safe haven was lost with the bridge south of Cainford ten leagues off, at best, and no dense forest at hand for concealment. A river-crossing stayed beyond hope. The channel remained too deep and wide, the deadly gleam of black water riffled between grey sheets of unstable ice. Worse, from behind, the camp’s archers regrouped. Their ragged volleys snicked a hail of arrows through the trees at the verge. Tarens plunged the horse down the steep bank into cover, where softened ground bogged down each stride. The chestnut’s hooves punched hock deep into mud, and thrashed into rattling stands of dead reeds. The crofter swore under his breath for the noise.

  Best to cut his losses at once. He turned his knife and sliced Arin’s bonds, then freed the lashed stones and ties at both ankles. He tried not to care, that under damp clothes, the body he handled was shivering.

  ‘We are quits,’ Tarens snarled, his throat strangled by fury too fierce for forgiveness.

  But Arin rejected the hate and the severance. ‘You’ll be killed on your own. I can’t let that happen. No matter how ugly the method I used to distance you from my crisis, I won’t leave you defenseless to be ridden down.’

  ‘Stop me!’ snapped Tarens. Bright anger killed pity. He grabbed at wet shirt with both hands and pushed.

  Arin slid, helpless. Numbed fingers found no purchase on the plunging horse. The tremors that shuddered his chilled body hampered his agile balance. But nothing slowed his sharp presence of mind. He snagged the bridle rein under one elbow. The yank as he fell snatched the bit up short and wrenched the horse into a scrambling stagger.

  Tarens tumbled off also.

  Both men landed together, trounced by the glancing blows of shod hooves as the gelding shied into its trailing fellows. The spooked horseflesh bolted away through the brush, while the locked pair of men thrashed onwards down the embankment. They fetched up in a heap on the frigid, soaked sand of a shoal where the swift current lapped at the verge.

  ‘What gave you the right?’ Tarens fought two-fisted to rise unencumbered. Act quickly, and he might catch a stray horse, perhaps fly ahead of the dogs brought to bear by the lance troop’s head-hunting trackers.

  ‘Not this way,’ snarled Arin. ‘I won’t see you killed!’ His wiry, slight form recouped with fraught speed as exertion flushed warmth through his sinews. Beyond his secretive skill with a blade, he knew how to fight barehanded. Move for move, he used all he had beyond mercy to foil Tarens’s bid to break off.

  Knuckles and knees thudded. Grunts hissed through shut teeth, embellished by Tarens’s blistered swearing. Kerelie would have been beyond shocked, that her good-natured brother could spout ruthless language while being battered to the c
razed edge of extremity. Felled at last by a blow that raised roaring rage for the ruthless denouncement of honour, Tarens dropped, sick with pain and kicked breathless. Paralyzed by discomfort, he felt icy fingers latch onto his collar.

  ‘Don’t thank me, just live!’ snapped his winded nemesis.

  A determined jerk heaved him onto his back.

  Then a savage and soundless descent of black cold hurled him into a chill almost too intense for survival. Swallowed into that blanketing void, the shocked air screamed like a gale wind. Tarens could see nothing. His eyes burned. Even the shallowest breath seared his lungs. Lids shut tight as the freeze fused his tear-wet lashes, he reeled under a burst of galvanic fear.

  The temple’s diviner had not been wrong! Here was deadly proof that the Light’s sacred canon was not based on an empty threat. Tarens cried out, shamed at last by the hideous error that placed him in the clutches of a genuine minion of Darkness, perhaps even the Master of Shadow himself.

  His scream went unheard. What sound reached his ears became chiselled by dread into preternatural clarity. He marked the harsh course of forced passage as his clothing scraped over the ice-crusted sand, and on through the shallows that lapped over the sand-bar. The splash of his struggles, and the hissed gusts through the bank’s fringe of reeds seemed the last trace of a solid world, wrapped by oblivion. Then the shore-line’s firm soil fell behind. Terrible as a nightmare beneath his hauled frame, Tarens picked up the glassine spang of rough water, snap-frozen in mid-cascade. He felt, through his skin, the rickle and groan of the raging current trapped underneath. His panic leaped to each juddering snap, as the paned ice overtop cracked like crystal beneath Arin’s rushed footsteps.

  ‘Don’t try to stand,’ his enemy warned. ‘Struggle at all, we will both break through. Stay down! Spread your weight. The thin surface will hold. Very soon, I promise, we’ll find safety on the far side and build a fire to get warm.’