If only he could talk to Tanrid!
The intense longing jolted him back into the here and now. He started up the steps. All spring and summer seemed like an unending stream of reminders of expectations that had turned out to be impossible. Everyone said that the academy was running fine. It didn’t feel fine. He knew he could command battle. He made a plan, he led from the front and used all his wits and strength until not an enemy stood around him.
Teaching boys?
Inda reached the royal family seat, remembering that the Royal Shield Arm, as head of the academy, was the one to decide if the boys would get the accolade. How had he managed to forget that? No. He had not forgotten. He had just never thought about what it meant.
He dropped down beside Hadand and Tdor, who were talking in low voices.
Evred arrived then, causing a stir among the Runners waiting with the trumpets and the boys impatiently nudging and wriggling beyond the corral gates. Evred sat down next to his wife, his profile tense.
Inda leaned across the women and punched Evred in the arm. “Evred. Hadand. You’re going to have to tip me the signal if you think they’ll get the accolade.”
Evred rubbed his jaw. “Better not than too often.”
Inda sighed. What was too often? But Evred had his wall-face on again, he stared straight ahead, fists on his knees.
Hadand realized something she’d been peripherally aware of for half a year: Inda was the only person who crossed in and out of that invisible space Evred surrounded himself with. Inda didn’t even seem to be aware of it. But Hadand could not imagine anyone else daring to hit Evred on the arm.
She shook away the thought. “Remember to listen to the crowd around you. If they really expect it, they are usually right.”
Inda leaned against Tdor and muttered in a whisper, “I want to give the brats the back of my hand.”
Tdor stifled the impulse to remind him that the stands were filled with families of the boys. “They think it was a great year,” she said. “You have to have seen that at the banquet last night!”
She’d had to attend the Summer Games banquet for the Jarl families the years she was here for training. The tense atmosphere of those long ago banquets and the geniality of the previous night’s could not have been more different.
Even Evred had seemed more relaxed while chatting with Horseshoe Jaya-Vayir, here for his last Summer Game: his son and nephew would go to the guard for their two years once the game was over.
“It wasn’t a good year,” Inda said under his breath, gaze beyond the waiting Runner with the horn. “Fox would’ve had them all trained.”
“Fox,” Tdor retorted, “would just get rid of the Honeyboys and the rest of the troublemakers. You have to take Jarls’ sons, whatever they’re like.”
“Inda. Fist up,” Hadand said out of the corner of her mouth. Inda hastily raised his fist to signal the official start to the games.
The boys cheered, some drumming on the temporary railings set up for the horses. It felt so strange, after all those years of wishing he was down there with the boys. What a laugh on himself!
Tdor gave him a mockingly severe look. “So you’ll have to revise your methods for next year.”
“Had to everyday.”
“So did I,” she reminded him, as below, the seniors took down the makeshift gate and began to bring out the horses for the scrub shoeing.
Inda watched some of the senior boys execute riding tricks on the horses’ backs. “But your girls aren’t brats.”
“Some of them are,” she countered. How to express the truth? “I think you expected the boys to be like you. If you’re not going to beat them into instant obedience, then you have to expect they’ll have their own motivations. Ideal training might be ideal for ideal people.” A shout went up as a senior did a handspring from a horse’s back to the next horse, and she raised her voice slightly. “Hadand and I were talking about that this morning just before inspection.”
The shout died away as the seniors ceased showing off and tied the animals to the rail.
Inda drummed lightly on his knee, sighing as the scrubs ran out and lined up squirming and nudging. “Yeah, they’re good when I’m there, but when I’m not, Honeyboy was slanging everyone, including me. Keth got into fights all spring. The horsetails scragged the ponytails. I keep trying to be Gand, but it doesn’t work.” He nodded at the waiting bugler, who played the call.
The scrubs promptly started struggling, scrapping, shoving, shrieking, as people in the stands laughed or shouted encouragement.
Hadand said, “Inda, where are your wits? Those boys love you. They will do anything for you!”
Tdor was aware of Evred listening silently. “Your mother told me something before I left. Since I was about to be training girls I don’t know, unlike at ho—at Castle Tenthen, where I’ve known everyone all my life. She said unless there’s immediate danger, two things motivate the young: competition and desire for attention.”
Evred joined the conversation, though he did not look away from the scrambling boys on the field. Inda was surprised Evred could hear over the noise around them. “There are worse motivations than game wins and stings.”
Hadand leaned past Tdor. “Here’s another thing, Inda. The boys act out because they want your attention. They never wanted Gand’s. They’re too scared of him.”
Inda made a skeptical face. “They’re not afraid of me, yet everyone keeps saying I have a rep for being rough and tough?”
“You’re rough and tough on the battlefield.” Tdor chuckled. “Their fathers and uncles and relatives have told them that. You never scrag anyone just to strut, and also, they can tell you like them. Gand grew up perfecting that dragoon disdain. You just never think about what your face says.”
Inda waggled his fingers. “Maybe we need a mirror in our rooms so I can practice. What’s a Gand face, anyway? How about this?” He slitted his eyes, twisted his mouth into a sneer, and stuck out his jaw.
Hadand waved at him in amused disgust, then turned her attention to the field.
“Looks like you got burrs in your drawers.” Tdor elbowed him. “Pay attention.”
The little boys were halfway through the shoeing. They were busy competing each for himself, just like the boys had been doing for generations. And yes, it was really funny to watch as they rammed into one another, dropped shoes. Splash! Honeyboy Tya-Vayir pushed Harstad Tvei into the closest horse trough, and laughter rose up from the audience. Inda did not see a hint of shock or disappointment that these ten-year-olds weren’t fast and competent.
“I guess I expected more out of them. I guess . . . I don’t know, somehow it feels like me being judged down there, that if they laugh it’s at me.”
“Boys,” Tdor stated, “are going to laugh. And so do the girls. If children can’t laugh at their elders, how can they expect to do better? We laughed before things got dangerous. I missed the laughter afterward.”
Inda found no answer, but the boys’ fooling around disturbed him. This is why the Harskialdna stays distant, Inda told himself, sitting back and trying to look serious. Next year will be different—I won’t teach ’em anything they can use on each other.
The day rolled toward its end, the boys’ skills neither demonstratively better or worse than any of the other years Evred had sat in these stands or watched from the gates. But the general atmosphere carried a qualitative difference, less sharpness, less of the old undertone of anger. As far as he could see, he was the only one aware of it.
Evred tested his observation over the next few days, without discussing it with anyone.
By the last day of the games, he knew that Inda was at the center of the new atmosphere, though Inda himself was not aware of it.
It was clearest at the siege, the most popular event of all, during which the queen’s girls defended a ramshackle building hammered together for the horsetails to attack. The boys mounted a clever enough attack, a three-pronged assault in which the feint was
unclear, sending the girls running back and forth.
But the girls’ running was to a purpose, not just frenzied dashing about. On a whistled signal the girls leaped out, each with her target, and the big horsetails hadn’t a hope of defending against the practiced Odni sweeps and falls.
One, two, three, the boy captains of each group were sat upon, wriggling and cursing in futility, and the boy commander was surrounded by determined girls ready to treat him likewise. Seeing his forces thoroughly routed, he raised his hand in surrender, and the packed stands cheered wildly.
Hadand and Tdor grinned at one another. As the four walked toward the residence to change for the last banquet for Jarls and their offspring, Tdor said to Inda, “I think that was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Hadand leaned over. “Showed the boys just how useful those drills are.”
“Too late,” Inda said. “They aren’t getting ’em next year. What a bunch of pugs!”
Hadand stopped, and put a hand on her brother’s chest to halt him. “Inda, those boys have been killing themselves to master their double-stick and lance and arrow-shooting from horseback, just to impress you. They can’t use any of that on these sieges.”
“But they could have learned to be fast with their hands,” Inda retorted. “They never took the Fox drills seriously.”
Tdor and Hadand exchanged looks. For generations the women had kept the Odni from the men because the purpose of it was to be able to take a bigger, stronger man by surprise.
Well, things had changed, and men were learning it.
“New things take time,” Hadand said.
“But old things—like competition between boys and girls—make changes go faster.” Tdor smiled as the girls departed, hooting, calling insults, and laughing. The boys eyed the girls, some uncertain, flushed and grumpy at their total defeat. Others pretended affront as an excuse to tease and flirt. “You watch. They’ll be more serious next year. Not because anyone that age sees how the new ways might be a help in the future, but because next year, the girls won’t be able to laugh at them, ha ha.”
Hadand chuckled as Inda rolled his eyes.
Evred slipped away, leaving the others to the fathers who, in praising the year’s games, were all really fishing for praise for their boys and girls. That was now Inda’s and Tdor’s job. Evred had only to preside at the last banquet, then the noise and interruptions of the Summer Games would be over.
He was surrounded by people demanding his attention, from whom he detached himself with the privilege of his rank. His head ached with the unexpected impact of memory. He’d been watching the Summer Games for years, but somehow, sitting there with Inda an arm’s length away had brought their own year so vividly to mind: Dogpiss, laughing in the sunlight . . . Noddy slouching along, cooing to the horses as he led them to Mouse Marth-Davan . . . Flash’s laughter. The horsetails, looking so old then, but so horribly young, all lined up at the corral rail: Hawkeye, Manther, Buck. His own brother. All either dead or horribly maimed. How sharp was the knife of memory! His head throbbed with it.
He had to be alone before he could trust his public face again.
Shaking off the last of the crowd, Evred took the Runners’ side route into the castle. When he reached the quiet of his own rooms, he glimpsed a blue-coated silhouette at the window, and had a single heartbeat’s warning before he recognized those shoulders, the long wheat-gold tail of hair.
“The privilege of a Runner is to enter and leave without fanfare,” Tau said, turning around and smiling. “I trust I did not break some rule of which I was unaware?”
He came to me first. Not to Inda. Why? The war-drum tap of Evred’s heartbeat had changed for a blacksmith’s hammer. “No.” He entered the room, so the sinking light from the window fell on his face.
And saw shock widen Tau’s eyes. Evred shut the door with his own hands, then put his back to it.
Tau said, “When one sees people every day, change is usually imperceptible.”
Evred’s wits had flattened on the anvil. “You are making an observation about me?”
“You’ve aged ten years. Twenty.”
Evred flushed, then turned away, a hand half raised.
“You’ve never talked to Inda,” Tau ventured further.
Evred turned back, a sharp, angry movement. His face had thinned, emphasizing the bones; the creases Tau had seen between his brows and bracketing his mouth during the previous summer were beginning to etch into lines.
Tau gave a half laugh. Here it was again, that thrill of danger. “You have more power than anyone I’ve ever met. I could feel it coming upstairs here, the rings of guardians you’ve put between yourself and the world.”
Evred’s lips parted, then he stilled, shutting himself off. Tau watched it happen: the man was gone, leaving the closest semblance of a stone effigy humanly possible. He could feel the effort it took.
“You had a purpose in returning?” Evred asked, in the effigy’s flat voice.
“Yes,” Tau said. “To see you. Oh, Inda as well. And Hadand. And everyone else I met and befriended previously. But I’ve been thinking about you all through this past year. I even found myself trying to talk to you through Inda’s letters last winter, before my golden case got swept overboard in a storm.”
Evred had gone to the desk, his tense hands fussing purposelessly at the neatly stacked papers there. “Inda wondered why you had stopped writing to him.”
“I even brought a justifiable reason to return,” Tau said, and thrust his hand into his gear bag, which crackled promisingly. “About a dozen of the latest plays, because if any kingdom needs a theater, this one does. With your permission I will put myself to work.”
Evred said, “How?”
“Volunteers. My theory is that your Marlovans will be more willing to try something new if they have a hand in its creation. But that’s my public reason. My real one is . . . you.”
Evred opened a hand, a wary rather than promissory gesture. “Is it I or the kingdom you intend to benefit from your presence?”
Tau ignored the sarcasm. “I am discreet, and I observe things. Like this aura of distance, almost of threat, that surrounds you like a lightning bolt about to strike. No one truly separates heart from head except at the cost of sanity. You’ve become so angry that people feel it as soon as you enter a room.”
Evred had not moved, but the armor of aloofness was gone. His voice was soft with menace. “You think I’m malevolent? Or just insane?”
“You will compass both if you keep denying normal human emotion.”
“And you are my cure?”
“You have to be your own cure. What I can offer you is the chance to laugh. To shed some of the passion you work so hard to deny. You know that’s not sane or healthy, Evred.”
Infuriated to the point of nausea, Evred briefly closed his eyes. The rushing in his ears was back. He walked to the window and looked down without really seeing the great parade ground, where wanders were busy magicking away horse droppings, others busy with brooms to catch up the bits of straw and splinters of wood. “Get out.”
“I’m going to give my greetings to the others, then maybe find a likely tavern and sing for my supper,” Tau said. “I told Vedrid I’d take that last room in the guest wing, the one before the middle tower. It has the most private entrance.”
He went out, shut the door, and leaned against the wall for several whickering breaths. He was drenched in sweat.
Well, that went . . .
Abandoning that thought, he bathed, changed, then went to hunt the others down one by one.
They were all happy to see him in their individual ways: Hadand flushing up to her hair, grinning like a girl when he bent to kiss her hands. Tdor smiled, and Tau wondered if it was hope or relief he saw in her quiet countenance. Inda was distracted, surrounded by several Jarls, Runners, and men Tau would soon learn were academy masters and assistants. Inda and Vedrid, as well as his old friends. Tau knew he was going to ne
ed an entire day for each of them. But he’d find the time.
He gracefully declined Inda’s offer to attend the banquet, and went into the royal city to visit the taverns again.
When the midnight bells rang he was waiting in his room as promised, and when Evred knocked just once a short while later, welcomed him in.
Dauvid Tya-Vayir and his escort reached home just as the harvest season began. The worry about what Uncle Stalgrid would say was so familiar Dauvid was not aware of its grip tensing him. It just was.
The Riders stayed in the stable to take care of the mounts. Dauvid paused to greet the dogs leaping up to lick his face and thump against his legs, tails batting the air. Then the two Runners brought Dauvid inside. They were passed along until they found Uncle Stalgrid out in the field, where he could see with his own eyes that no one sneaked an extra basket away at shift change.
The air was hot, full of buzzing insects; in the far fields, voices drifted faintly, singing old Iascan harvest songs.
“There you are,” Uncle Stalgrid said. “I’ve received no complaints of you. No praise either, but that’s as usual. No bootlick of Evred Montrei-Vayir’s is ever going to bestir himself on your behalf. Did the claphair strut his battle stories?”
“Not much. Boys asked, but—”
“Any changes from what I told you to expect?”
“Just, we got taught some of the Fox drills, but everything else—”
“Pirate tricks. What use is that in honorable battle? Well, the claphair is trying to win the favor of the boys, that’s obvious. What dishonorable name did they stick on you?”
“Honeyboy.”
“I hope you fought whoever did it.”
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