"In addition, you may have noticed that we have several Highborn candidates, including Lord Ardeth's grandson Timmon. The Caineron Lordan is also expected momentarily."
Is he, by God, thought Jame. She wondered whom the prolific but fickle Caldane had picked for an heir this week, and how Sheth meant to introduce her, if at all.
At that moment, the hall door swung open and a burly, travel-stained randon stumped into the square. He stopped, blinked, and swore at the unexpected sight of the drawn up troops, who stared back at him.
"Ah," said the Commandant, smiling slightly. "My esteemed predecessor at the college and the Knorth war-leader, Harn Grip-hard, and Steward Rowan," he added as a scar-faced woman appeared in the doorway, "and Sar Burr"—this last, to a third Kendar, who had stopped at pace behind the other two. "Goodness, nearly the Highlord's entire personal staff. Have you misplaced him again?" Someone in the Caineron ranks snickered. "How may we be of service, rans and sar?"
"We're looking for Blackie," the big randon said gruffly to the yard at large. His blood-shot eyes fell on Jame and widened. "Here, boy, what in Perimal's name are you playing at?"
Jame felt a powerful urge to withdraw into her oversized tunic like a turtle into its shell.
"If I may continue," the Commandant said smoothly, "I was just about to announce the presence among us, for the first time in forty-six years, of the Knorth Lordan . . . ah, Jameth, is it not?"
"Lordan?" Harn blurted out. "Has Blackie gone mad?"
More snickers, louder this time.
"As to that," said the Commandant with a smile, "you would know better than I. Torisen Black Lord rode on last night. You probably passed him in the dark. A moment, please," he said, as the three turned to go. "If you will stay for a bit, Rans Harn and Rowan, you can do the college a great service. Sar Burr, no doubt you will wish to retrieve . . . er . . . rejoin your wandering lord as quickly as possible."
He turned back to the cadets. "Our three lordans, of course, will serve as the master tens of their respective houses. You will also no doubt have noticed—especially those who had to sleep last night two or three to a bed—that there are nearly twice as many candidates here as usual. One thousand three hundred and ninety, to be exact. Death has greatly thinned our ranks. However, the college is only equipped to train some eight hundred cadets at a time. I speak, of course, of those who are still here at this time next summer. Between now and then, there will be three culls rather than the usual two. Over the next three days you will undergo a series of tests to determine who stays and who goes."
Tests.
Jame gulped. No one had said anything about that. She was certain that her brother hadn't known. No wonder Sheth had barely blinked when Tori had presented her as his heir. Neither the Commandant nor anyone else expected her to be here long enough to matter except as proof of the Highlord's lunacy.
"We have summoned every available randon officer, sergeant, and senior cadet to oversee this . . . ah . . . winnowing process. Ran Harn, if you would be so kind as to stay and assist? Thank you. I expected no less.
"Good luck," said Sheth blandly, "to you all," and swept back into the shadows of Old Tentir.
A sergeant stepped forward. "Tens," she cried. "Count off!"
II
By the end of the first day, the randon were optimistic. There were many good candidates, judging by the first three tests, easily enough to fill the college's depleted ranks. Also, there were some promising young Shanir whose particular talents they would assess later.
As for the rest, those who couldn't wake in a timely fashion from dwar sleep had already been dismissed. Some of the Caineron were clearly hopeless. Caldane had over-filled his quota with every young Kendar he could lay his hands on, half of them still hung-over from their lord's excesses of the week before. Even the Caineron randon glumly agreed, more freely than they might have if the Commandant didn't habitually dine alone in his quarters. The rest, officers, sergeants, and senior cadets, had gathered in the officers' mess in Old Tentir to share dinner and compare notes.
There was no sign yet of the Caineron Lordan. It didn't matter. By unspoken agreement, his place was secure at the college, whenever he deigned to arrive. After all, Sheth could hardly turn away his master's son.
"That Ardeth Timmon is shaping up surprisingly well," remarked a Danior randon, reaching for the salt. "Even if he does slide out of some things."
"Like the punishment run."
"Yes. But he clearly had good teachers at home and enjoys physical challenges. Not quite the spoiled brat we were expecting, eh? A little irresponsible and immature, though."
"I just hope he doesn't have his father's taste for the Kendar," a Coman sergeant muttered to her Jaran counterpart. "That damned Pereden could charm his way into any bed, for the sheer deviltry of it."
"But this is only a boy."
"Not so young as all that, and the Ardeth start early." She raised her voice. "Did your lord get off safely, Aron?"
"Before dawn, ran," replied the Ardeth sergeant. He looked exhausted. It had been a rough night, even without part of the dining hall collapsing into the cellar. "If his guard can keep him quiet with drafts of black nightshade, they hope to get him past Gothregor before he decides to tackle the Highlord again."
"Huh," said a young Coman randon. "More likely, he'll wait to see what happens here. There'll be no hiding it now. You didn't exactly help, Harn. D'you have to call your lord crazy in front of the whole college?"
Harn Grip-hard was morosely gnawing a mutton bone, his broad, stubbly face glistening with its fat. Rowan sat beside him, carefully expressionless as usual; fifteen years after the Karnides had burned the name-rune of their god into her forehead, the scar still hurt.
A Caineron laughed. "Yes. What will your precious Blackie say when he hears about that, eh?"
"Nothing," grunted the former commandant of Tentir. "The boy knows I have a big mouth, and I've known him since he was fifteen, so new to the Southern Wastes that he looked like a flayed tomato."
"What was he like then, ran?" asked a senior cadet. "Besides sun-burnt, I mean."
"Quiet. Wary. Determined. Not like his father Ganth Gray Lord at all, except in certain moods."
"It took Urakarn to unsheathe the steel in him," said Rowan. "I was there. I saw."
Harn thought for a moment, absentmindedly wiping greasy fingers on his jacket. "It's hard to explain. He isn't like most Highborn. Never has been."
"Obviously not," said a Randir, with a sidelong glance at her table-mates. Even in the close-knit world of the randon, the Randir held themselves subtly apart. There were also more female randon in that house than in any other. "To make that freak his heir and then to bring her here. . ."
The other randon stirred uneasily. They knew there was bad blood between the Randir and the Knorth, although not all knew why.
A senior cadet broke in, grinning broadly: "D'you see her this morning trying to wield a long sword? Trinity, I thought she was going to chop off her own toes, or maybe mine. That cadet Vant made a proper fool of her."
"Still," said an Ardeth thoughtfully, "she didn't do so badly with the short sword although I'll wager she'd never had one in her hands before. I've been watching her technique. That girl knows knife-craft, although I've never seen that particular style before. D'you see how she tried to block with her sleeve? The Commandant was watching too. 'I thought so,' he said."
"Thought what?"
"He didn't say. Still, what in Perimal's name are they teaching in the Women's Halls these days?"
"Quiet, wary, determined," repeated a Brandan thoughtfully. "What if there should be steel there too, underneath? We may be surprised yet."
This was met with general laughter and some flung hunks of bread, which the Brandan flicked away with careless, good-natured grace. "Just the same," he said, "talk to Hawthorn when she gets back from escorting M'lady Brenwyr home. I hear she had some odd experiences with the Knorth during the weirdingstrom."
While he elaborated, gleefully, the older randon grumbled among themselves. It was a new idea that cadets should learn how to read and write rather than to depend, as for millennia past, solely on a well-trained memory. Things were changing. Not everyone approved.
". . . ending in a rain of frogs!" crowed the Edirr cadet, "and, you know, it just might work!"
The others exchanged looks and shook their heads.
III
By the end of the second day, the randon were less easy. The competition was getting ugly, and candidates were beginning to get hurt. Worse, instructors had come across possible evidence of sabotage. A notched bow had snapped at the full draw, nearly taking out a cadet's eye. Swords mysteriously lost their baited points or acquired newly sharpened edges. Horses were found to have burrs under their saddles or cinches hooked by twists of tail hair to their privates.
Practical jokes, said the Randir, shrugging.
Others feared that it was only a matter of time before someone was seriously injured or killed. In the latter case, no blood price could be demanded by the cadet's house, but such things tended to fester, sometimes for generations. Again, some glanced from Randir to Knorth.
They also spoke, with increasing unease, about the Knorth Jameth.
Most had expected that by now she would have burst into tears and retreated to her proper place, namely the Women's Halls at Gothregor. Captain Hawthorn, newly returned from escorting her own matriarch home, rather thought that the Women's World would as soon welcome back a handful of burning coals.
The Highborn girls there had barely settled down and stopped (oh, horrors) asking questions when who should arrive but Lord Caineron's young daughter Lyra Lack-wit, ostensibly to gain some polish in women's ways, actually to get her out of sister Kallystine's sight before the latter killed her. Various ladies had been heard to prophesy the end of the world, if only so that they might at last get some rest.
"However, they're apt to give the Highlord precious little of that," Hawthorn said, amused, pausing to drink from her mug of cider. "Now that his sister has slipped through their hands, I've heard that the Council of Matriarchs means to make a dead set at him for one of their own houses."
"But the Knorth Jameth. What d'you think of her?"
The Brandan captain considered for a moment. "Thoroughly unorthodox," she said, "but weirdly effective. Not unlike her brother."
The Caineron jeered at this. "What do you know? Your matriarch wears riding boots and a divided skirt. We've even heard that she sleeps with a death banner."
Hawthorn merely smiled. "She suits us. Perhaps we Brandan aren't all that orthodox either, anymore."
"What does Sheth intend?" one senior randon asked another quietly undercover of the above exchange. "Can he really mean to let this girl stay?"
"He accepted her into Tentir," said the other. "His honor is bound."
"Even against the will of his lord that she should fail?"
"Even so, unless he bows to that will."
"You speak of Honor's Paradox. Where does honor lie, in obedience to one's lord or in oneself?"
"Just so. The Commandant will have to decide. So will we all. But what d'you think of these sightings of the White Lady? Has the Shame of Tentir come back to haunt us?"
The other stirred uneasily. "With a Knorth Lordan here for the first time in forty-odd years . . . ah, I don't know. Certainly, the Lady has unfinished business with that house, if even half the stories are true."
"As to that, only the Randon Council knows. Maybe it is just a wandering rathorn, swept north by the weirdingstrom. Cam did swear that he saw its horns. Still, a lone rathorn. A rogue. A death's-head. That's bad enough."
The Edirr cadet could no longer contain himself.
"Did you hear about her riding test?" he burst in, claiming the room's reluctant attention. "I'm waiting at the top of the training field when she and a Jaran ten come up. When she sees what's next, she stops dead (both squads piling up behind her, mind you), and says, 'Oh no. Horses.'
"So I get everyone including her mounted and in line. As you know, the test is to ride a circuit of the fortress keeping in formation, starting at a walk, ending in a full charge, over a variety of terrain. Well, from the first the horses are all in a fret, lunging, bucking, and then the Knorth's starts backing up. She's kicking it for all she's worth but it lays its ears flat and keeps going, right into one of those quake fissures, over and down, backward. It hits the bottom and bolts and so, if you please, do both ten commands.
"The next thing I know, we're thundering down the field with the Knorth keeping pace at the bottom of a ditch.
"Then up she comes, both stirrups ripped off, hanging on for dear life, and barges into the front line. Two horses go down, three more bolt off at a tangent straight through a quarter-staff practice—sorry about that, Aron; I hope none of your cadets were trampled.
"Passing the front door, we lose half a dozen more horses when they take bit in teeth and plunge inside, hell-bent for the safety of their stables.
"Then up the southern flank of the college over hill and dale, through wood and water, between archers and their targets, apparently, because suddenly arrows are whizzing past our ears. More horses shy. More riders fall.
"By now, there are only five of us including the Knorth and that big Southron Iron-thorn who's galloping beside her and holding her in the saddle by the scruff of her neck.
"Well, finally we stop and then, if you please, the Knorth falls off."
" 'Oh,' she says, looking up at me. 'Wasn't I supposed to do that? Everyone else did.' "
The Edirr burst into helpless laughter. As he beat his head on the table-top, the two senior randon exchanged glances.
"That's it," said one. "We're doomed."
Chapter V: A Length of Rope
Summer 4
1
In her dreams, Jame heard a voice:
Kinzi-kin, it was crying. Such a lost, plaintive sound, she thought, but fearful too, and hushed, as if afraid of being heard.
Kinzi Keen-eyed was her great-grandmother, slain some thirty-odd years ago in the massacre that had claimed all but one of the Knorth ladies at Gothregor. Who would call her by that long dead name?
She rose from her nest of blankets, went to the hole in the slanting roof, and looked down. It was early morning, barely light, with shreds of mist floating through the trees. A ghostly figure stood below, looking up. Again came that desolate cry:
Kinzi-kin!
Jame leaned out. "Here!" she called down.
The stranger appeared to be a woman clothed in filmy white, but the face raised to Jame was almost triangular, broad across the forehead, tapering down to a small mouth and chin. Ears pricked through the long, tangled locks that veiled half her face. Her single, visible eye was large and dark.
Aahhh . . . she breathed, in a long shuddering sigh. Nemesis. Then, in a pale flicker, she was gone.
The morning horn sounded and below feet hit the floor. Jame stood by the window, wondering if it had been a dream. Below, however, were hoof-marks in the rain-softened earth.
So began the third day of tests.
Hastily dressing, Jame wondered if she had been insane to believe she could ever qualify as a cadet. The Kendar against whom she was competing had prepared all their lives for this. Her own training had been at once more intense than theirs and more limited, including precious few weapons. She had only scraped through sword practice because at first her opponents couldn't bring themselves to look her in the face. Vant had broken that with a set glare, and then had thoroughly trounced her into the bargain.
She had thought she was doing well with the knife, only to be penalized for her unfamiliar style.
True, she had enjoyed plotting the overth
row of a citadel, only to realize when she turned in her closely written five pages that most cadets were still laboriously scrawling their first paragraph. That was the first time she had ever seen Brier Iron-thorn sweat.
She also thought she might eventually get the hang of the quarter-staff and bow, but not in time to help now.
As for riding, the less said, the better. Several of the horses had been found to have burrs lodged under their tails, which accounted for a great deal. Her own mount had been clean except for strange scratches along his crest that looked almost like claw marks. Jame was hardly going to explain how those had come about.
To Ride a Rathorn Page 9