The Western Wizard

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  Rache recalled his father’s and grandfather’s stories about the great and loyal knights of Erythane who served the king in Béarn. Tales of their heroism and pageantry had spread through the Westlands. Many considered their honor the exact opposite of the Renshai’s supposed lawlessness; but Rache guessed that, this day, he would see the other side of the glorification.

  Colbey rapped a fist on the bar. “If I can get the knight’s son away from your daughter, may I then have your attention?”

  The barkeep met Colbey’s gaze. “If you can do it without bringing the king’s wrath upon me. Or the boy’s father.” He shivered. “I’m no soldier to risk challenge by a knight.”

  Still pleased with his triumph over the four drinkers at his back, Rache volunteered. “Can I speak to the knight’s son?”

  Colbey hesitated. Then deciding it was a part of Rache’s training, he bobbed his head once toward the knight’s son.

  Rache grinned, trotting across the common room, aware the barkeep and Colbey watched him expectantly. He would not disappoint his torke. He drew up beside the barmaid and the teenager who had his arm around her waist so tightly, he had nearly pulled her into his lap. “Excuse me,” the Renshai said.

  The knight’s son rose and bowed, still holding the barmaid’s wrist. “I am Shalfon of Erythane, son of Brignar and apprentice knight to the Erythanian and Béarnian kings: his grace, King Orlis, and his majesty, King Sterrane.”

  Rache waited patiently while the other finished his title, so full of other men’s names and deeds, then introduced himself. “Rache. And if you don’t remove your hands from that woman, I’ll remove them for you. At the wrists.”

  “Your pardon?” Shalfon said stiffly.

  Rache frowned, not certain they were speaking the same language, though they seemed to understand one another. “Let’s talk outside.”

  The knight apprentice bowed. Releasing the young woman, he indicated the door with a broad sweep of his arm. “Sir.”

  Rache hesitated, legitimately concerned about preceding an enemy through a doorway. Colbey had taught that it welcomed daggers in the back. “You’re so damned mannered, you go through first.”

  “Fight!” one of the men who had tormented Rache hollered. The tavern emptied. All seven of the other patrons plunged through the doorway. Suddenly, it no longer mattered who left first, so Rache and Shalfon exited together.

  Once outside, Rache poked a finger at Shalfon. “You fancy yourself a nobleman, do you? You treat that young lady without honor.”

  Shalfon blinked several times. “Do you doubt my chivalry, sir?”

  “I believe I said that!” Rache shouted, liking the way he had said it better.

  “Then I have no choice but to call you out.”

  Rache shrugged, his heart pounding. He did not precisely understand the implications, though he knew fighting words when he heard them.

  Yet Shalfon did not reach for a weapon. “An honorable battle. To the death, of course. On the Bellenet Fields by the hill.” He made a grand gesture that told Rache nothing. “At talvus.”

  “Talvus?” Rache repeated, still not wholly certain what was happening.

  “Midday,” Colbey explained from the doorway. “A fine time for a falsely noble fool to lose his life.”

  Shalfon glared at Colbey. Then he turned his back on Rache, marching to a dappled gray horse tied to a post outside the tavern. Mounting, he rode away.

  Rache watched the other leave. Colbey came to his side, resting a hand between the boy’s shoulder blades as the disappointed patrons staggered back into the tavern. “There are better ways than threat to handle problems. Still, it can’t hurt to have a reputation for skill. So long as you choose honorable battles instead of frenzied brawls, you’ll do fine.” The elder steered his charge back into the bar. “Men like Shalfon, who see honor as unwavering rules without exceptions, make people revere the arbitrary and rigid. Honor is situational, Rache. Don’t ever forget that. It’s making the right decision, without regard to yourself.”

  Rache nodded, battle readiness making him too eager to listen carefully. He walked across the common room with Colbey, taking the same seat at the bar. Colbey sat beside him. “May we talk now?” He slid a gold coin across the bar.

  Taking the gold, the barkeeper gave the elder Renshai his full attention. “How may I be of service?”

  “Do you know of anyone who’s seen Northmen in the last few days?”

  Rache sipped his milk, heart still pounding.

  “Yes.” The barkeeper studied Colbey, as if for the first time. “Me. Two days ago.” He took a step backward, and his fingers blanched around the gold piece. “Are you the one who’s supposed to get their message?”

  Message? Rache’s gaze riveted on Colbey. He supposed that it only made sense for the Northmen to guess that they would eventually visit a tavern in one of the largest cities of the West, but he did not expect them to leave a message. Rache wondered whether the Northmen had slipped from inn to tavern, leaving messages at every one.

  “I don’t know if I’m the one,” Colbey said carefully. “But I suppose I could get the message if I asked politely enough.” He pushed another coin to his informant.

  “East woods. Wolf Point,” the barkeep whispered. “Kirin will trade the three he has for the one he calls Bolboda.” Though spoken with the harder Western accent, the Northern title was unmistakable.

  Rache stared, drink and challenge forgotten. Despite its cryptic nature, the message came clearly through to him. Surely, Valr Kirin held the three missing Western Renshai. And he wanted the party to exchange Colbey for them.

  Colbey took a swallow of mead, his nonchalance spoiled by Rache’s obvious surprise. “Did he say anything more? Message or not.”

  “No.” The barkeeper continued to stare at Colbey, offering details that could have no significance, apparently to show that he was telling everything. “They came in a group of five. They ordered mead, and they didn’t harass my barmaids. They paid their tab.”

  Colbey counted gold coins onto the counter in two neat stacks of five. “What do you know about this Wolf Point? Is it a place?”

  The barkeeper’s eyes danced at the sight of this glittering fortune. “Nothing. It’s deep in the East woods. The only people who would go there are huntsmen.” Perhaps afraid his ignorance would lose him the money, the barkeep continued. “I can name you some guides. . . .”

  “No need. Thank you.” Colbey left the gold, rising to leave.

  But the barkeeper motioned the Renshai back. “Despite what you are, you did me a favor, and that won’t go unpaid. I can’t fight for you, but I can give you some advice.”

  Colbey and Rache leaned closer.

  “First, you need to know those Northmen were well-armed. Second, your—” He broke off, waving a hand at Rache without fathoming a guess at their relationship. “—may be in more danger than he believes.”

  Colbey smiled. “Rache can fight.”

  The barman shook his head impatiently, less a fool than he had seemed. “The Northmen told me who you are.” He glanced about furtively. “Every Westerner knows Renshai are unbeatable swordsmen. But Shalfon called the challenge, so he chooses the weapon. The Erythanian knights, Prince of Demons, wield pikes.”

  * * *

  The bartender gave Colbey and Rache a room for the night, and Colbey chose to train his student there rather than in the city streets, where Erythanians might take exception. Despite their cramped quarters, Colby worked Rache brutally, annoyed by the choices that paraded through his mind. Honor required that they stay and let Rache fight, that the Renshai name not become defamed because of one old man’s fear for a young student. Yet now was not the time to risk Rache, not with Episte dead and other lives at stake, not on a petty squabble over a barman’s daughter.

  Rache worked, displaying the same dedication to his sword that he had since childhood, challenged rather than burdened by the harshness of the lesson. Still, even his endurance ebbed,
and his movements grew less precise. Colbey watched, feeling ire rise as his student became sloppy, then forcing down his anger when he realized its source. I’m not mad at Rache’s performance. It’s the decision. Colbey called the practice to a halt.

  Rache sheathed his sword with obvious relief, then fell to the straw bedding that covered the floor. He gasped for breath.

  Colbey paced.

  After a long silence, during which Rache gathered enough breath to speak, the youngest Renshai sat up. “I’m wielding a mountain?”

  Colbey froze, staring quizzically. Then the answer came. The trading tongue word “pike” was the same as the Northern term for mountain. “No, Rache. A pike is a weapon. It’s a pole arm, about the length of three swords, with a barb on the end. And you’re not wielding it. We’re leaving tonight.”

  Rache’s mouth gaped open, and he stared in speechless astonishment.

  Colbey winced, understanding the questions that Rache dared not ask, about Renshai honor and running from combat. He took a seat at Rache’s side. “The Renshai can’t afford to lose you. This isn’t combat; it’s a coward’s battle.”

  Rache stared at his feet. “If we run, then we’re the cowards. That barkeep knows who we are, so it’ll make the Renshai look like cowards, too.”

  Colbey lowered his head.

  “Maybe I could get Shalfon to wield a sword.”

  Colbey shook his head. “The challenger chooses the weapon, place, and time. It’s Erythanian tradition.”

  Rache stood, cringing almost imperceptibly as he moved. Apparently, the drill had caused him pain, and that bothered Colbey.

  Good planning, the elder berated himself. Make him sore before a battle in which all the odds are already against him.

  “My father taught me to use other weapons and my strength. I can win that contest.” Rache stretched out on the straw. “And I will.”

  Colbey said nothing, but he knew his companion was right. He spread out beside Rache, and both fell into a wary sleep.

  * * *

  The Northern Sorceress, Trilless, sat at the table in her library, staring at a strip of parchment with writing in her own hand. With time, her eyes had become dry from gazing too long, making the letters jump and blur into incomprehensibility, yet Trilless knew that copied footnote as she knew her own name:

  The Eyghteenth Dark Lord

  Will obtayn in his day

  A pale-skinned champyon

  To darken the way.

  One destined to betray

  The West and his clan,

  A swordsman unmatched

  By another mortal man.

  Colbey. Trilless sought another answer, for the thousandth time, but none came. And the old Renshai’s thwarting death by age as well as battle only amplified her certainty. He’s under a Wizard’s protection, which means he’s become a champion. Her experience did not match her findings. The prophecy stated that Colbey would become Carcophan’s hero, yet Shadimar had battled the demon she had called against Colbey.

  A chill spiraled through Trilless from an unnamed source that seemed to come from the air or the very fabric of the universe. She closed her eyes, waiting for the presence to pass. She had known its existence for decades, wisps of chaos that seemed stronger than the baseline that traced from pinholes in Odin’s wards or the tiny amounts of magic the Wizards dared to perform. She had seen its effects on mankind and their world: crime, lies, oath-breaking, and the loss of nature’s strict patterns, gradually replaced by oddities and unpredictability. Is Shadimar sharing Carcophan’s champion a symptom or a cause? Trilless doubted that it mattered. How clever of Carcophan. Sit back and let neutrality work his evil for him.

  Despite its danger, Trilless could not help admiring the ingenuity of the plan, although she wondered if it did not border on chaos itself. Did Carcophan literally trick Shadimar, or did he simply allow Shadimar to fall into a trap of his own making? Again, Trilless doubted that the answer mattered. She sanctioned goodness; and, like all of the Wizards, she also supported “Law.” Those obligations left her with only two courses of action; and, for that simplicity at least, she was glad. First, I have to see to it that Colbey dies soon. Second, now that I’m certain, I have to warn Shadimar.

  Trilless rose, cursing the boundaries of Odin’s Law that limited her magic. Though she had the power to contact Shadimar more quickly, Odin’s system forced her to use the Wizards’ messenger. She began the sequence that would summon the falcon, Swiftwing.

  CHAPTER 24

  Frost Reaver

  Sunlight glittered from the tended lawn of the Bellenet Fields, sparking from the wood and wire fence surrounding its jousting ring. As Colbey and Rache approached, the elder studied the small crowd of nobles which had gathered to watch one young warrior kill another. It included King Orlis, who perched on a black gelding surrounded by a dozen knights on white chargers with braided and ribboned manes. Each knight wore dress mail and a tabard. The front flap displayed Béarn’s blue and gold bear, the back the orange circle and sword of Erythane. Every one clutched a spear-tipped pole arm, and a sword swung at every hip, cocked at the same angle.

  Colbey searched for Shalfon Brignarsson and found the knight’s apprentice standing aside, in earnest discussion with a knight on foot. The youth wore a mail shirt. He clutched a pike in one hand, its butt resting in the dirt, and the reins of his gray in the other. The knight’s white charger grazed, untied, near the fence. A few peasants had gathered. Colbey recognized some of these as patrons who had attended the bar at the time of the challenge. Others, he presumed, had seen their king and his entourage and followed out of curiosity.

  Colbey frowned, hating the pomp. He viewed war as a normal part of life and death in glory as the ultimate goal, but he saw nothing admirable about two young warriors fighting to the death over the honor of a barmaid only one of them wanted. Killing was a necessity. A competent battle was an honor, not a game to be played in a ring, surrounded by gawking spectators eager for blood, so long as it was not their own.

  As Colbey and Rache crossed the fields, looking out of place in their dusty travel garb, a knight approached on horseback. He offered Rache a mail shirt.

  Rache frowned, refusing with a gesture of disdain. He spoke loud enough for all the men and women gathered to hear. “Only cowards hide behind armor. And I’m no coward.” He tossed his tousled head defiantly.

  Frowns scored the knights’ faces. Shalfon took the bait. “Are you questioning my courage, peasant?”

  “No!” Rache shouted back. “There’s no questioning involved. It’s clear enough for this peasant. You hide behind armor; I don’t. Is that because you’re too lazy to dodge? Or are you just afraid I’m quicker than you?”

  Colbey watched the knights’ faces flush the same shade of red, all a tone lighter than Shalfon’s. Colbey placed his hand on Rache’s shoulder. “That’s enough,” he whispered. He added good-naturedly, “Did you inherit that tactless mouth from your father?”

  Rache grinned. “From my torke actually. A man crass enough to insult Wizards.”

  Now Colbey smiled, too.

  Shalfon and the knight exchanged a few words that Colbey could not hear, punctuated by angry gestures. The Renshai guessed that the knight was Shalfon’s father, the one the youngster had called Brignar. Apparently, the father lost the argument, because he threw up his arms in a wild gesture of surrender. Shalfon began stripping off his mail, replacing it with a silk shirt and tabard.

  While Shalfon dressed, a page appeared from the opposite side of the field, leading a small bay mare and using a pike like a walking stick. He approached Rache. “Your horse and weapon, sir.” He passed the reins to Colbey and leaned the pole arm against the horse’s side.

  Colbey studied the horse. It carried more weight than he liked; he could neither see nor feel its ribs. It stood shorter than Shalfon’s mount, not as well muscled or exercised. Despite its inferiority, its conformation seemed sound, and it did not shy from the touch of the wea
pon.

  Shalfon swung into his saddle, took his pike, and rode onto the field amid the crowd’s applause.

  Colbey cinched the girth a notch tighter around the bay. “Patience,” he reminded Rache. “Dodging blows is never cowardly, and sometimes it’s necessary when you’re measuring opponents. Parry until you get used to the weapon.”

  Rache nodded, twitching with nervous energy as he climbed into the saddle. He lowered his head.

  Colbey placed a hand on Rache’s thigh, feeling the muscle loosen as Rache used the Renshai’s mental techniques to steady his body and mind for battle.

  “Quit stalling!” someone yelled. The peasants caught up the sentiment, questioning Rache’s hesitation in a wild hubbub of encouragements and name-calling.

  Colbey did not react, glad that Rache did not either. After a time, the youngster opened his eyes. Reluctantly, he passed his sword and belt to Colbey.

  Colbey accepted the sword, giving Rache his new weapon. The younger Renshai studied the length of smoothed wooden pole, tipped with its sharpened barb. Then, awkwardly balancing it against the saddle, Rache turned his horse toward the ring.

  “May Rache, your namesake, guide your hand from Valhalla.” Colbey gave Rache’s booted foot a last pat. “Use his guidance. He can help more than anyone. He was resourceful and a master of many weapons. You know he taught your father.”

  Rache nodded once, curtly. His right fist clutched the pike to his horse’s withers, while his left guided the reins. He walked the animal into the ring.

  Avoiding the crowd, Colbey found the only position along the rail, directly at Brignar’s side. The peasants had given the knight a respectful berth, and his fellow knights perched high enough on their horses to see over the others’ heads. In a strange, inexplicable way, Colbey felt a kinship with his enemy’s father.