“--never let one of you wizards command my men! Are you crazy? Wait, why am I even asking that? Of course you’re crazy. You’ve been inhaling parchment fumes and your--”
“--too many of your own men, your tenants and your most loyal soldiers, die every--”
“--never had a woman, not even allowed to touch a woman! I bet when you joined up they even cut--”
“--fought under three kings after my vows, so don’t you accuse me of--”
Rivka looked at her mother and deadpanned, “Yes, the men have it under control.” She picked up the knitting and fiddled with it, making three mistakes without even trying on her first row.
She didn’t know how she felt about having the wizard around. She didn’t disagree with his ideas, but she was a member of the family, even if pretty much all of them were completely alien to her; she felt threatened, like an animal whose burrow had been breached.
On the other hand, he had parchments, and some of them were about military strategy or the history of warfare. She yearned to read them. Here, at last, she would find the information for which she had been so thirsty all her life. Caught between her sex and her uncle’s distaste for written histories, it had been dry pickings. She had listened intently every time a soldier told a tale, but they presented only the narrowest view, and she knew she needed more.
The idea came into her head that she might get her hands on these parchments in secret and read them quickly, replacing each one before he might miss it. What a delicious prank!
She plotted this for days before actually beginning the project. Already practicing her strategizing, she took note of any times the wizard could predictably be found in the Great Hall (and nearly as predictably, arguing with her uncle over any topic from whether the sky was blue to the treatment of the guard’s dogs.) After a while it became apparent that he always lingered after luncheon, usually by falling prey to verbal taunts given out by the baron between the soup and the rest of the meal.
This, then, would be her time of opportunity. She ate her food quickly and unobtrusively, and then, as the baron’s voice grew louder and louder in an attempt to drown out the wizard’s gentle basso, she slipped out of the Great Hall into the dark passageways.
The wizard had been given a room high in a tower, at the end of two flights of rickety stone stairs. It was actually the room where Mitzi had stayed during the final few months of her pregnancy, hidden away in her shame from curious eyes, and so it was lavishly furnished and relatively clean. But it was as inconvenient a room as the baron could muster, and he was doing everything he could to make it clear that he resented everything about the wizards stepping in and mucking around with his business.
Rivka scurried up the stairs as quickly as was prudent on their uncertain surface and then pushed open the door in one sweeping gesture -- better to find out right away if there was some kind of spell put on the room, trapping her or informing the wizard of her intrusion.
Nothing happened.
She looked around the room. It was as she had always known it from her childhood wanderings, save for a few spare cassocks and several trunks, all of which belonged to the wizard. Two of the trunks were open, both containing piles of bound parchments. She stared for a moment, breathing heavily over the sudden wealth at her fingertips. Where to start?
Stepping over to the first trunk and peering in, she read the title of the book on the top. A Complete History of King Pampas IV’s Battles -- His Victories and Defeats. She had no idea who King Pampas was, let alone his three ancestors before him, but she figured this was as good a place to start as any.
Her hand darted out and snatched the book off the pile.
The ceiling did not collapse, and neither did the spare cassocks hanging across the back of the chair get up and block her way. Everything was as it was before. “That’s right... He thinks we don’t read,” she said out loud to herself. He’d be mostly right, she added internally.
She was back in her room reading the brittle old book before she let herself relax -- not that she could relax completely. Her heart was pounding pretty strongly as a result of her little pilfering adventure. The book in her hands was a connection to all her dreams for the future, and it was a few minutes before she could focus on its words instead of the importance of the moment.
The king in the book had been a great general who lived in another land several hundred years ago. During his reign he protected his people from numerous invasions and also won a civil war when another member of the royal family grew strong against him. She could tell there were plenty of things in the book that could help her uncle, whose situation was always on her mind because it was on his. But she knew he’d never want to hear about anything that had happened to people so irrelevant to his life.
That was okay. She’d find a way to defend his keep even over his own objections.
When she had finished the book several days later, she waited until the daily lunchtime battle and then snuck back into the tower to switch it out for the next one. So did Rivka bat Miriam slowly make her way through the books in the trunk. Her hungry mind soaked up all the new information. She didn’t dare take notes for fear they’d be found, so while she ran around in the garden feeling the sun’s warmth battle the crispness of the air, or during bad weather when she was trapped inside mangling yet another piece of fancywork, she repeated the important points to herself over and over until they were nearly as automatic as Bless you, O Lord, King of the Universe...
One day, she had taken one of the books into the garden because she knew a place in a tree where she wouldn’t easily be seen and could hide there to read in peace. She opened the book, and to her breathless horror she beheld an unfamiliar scrawl--
If you’re going to borrow my parchments, why not ask permission?
Chapter 8: The Wizard
Rivka’s first reaction to the note was, naturally, to panic about being caught, but then the warrior’s heart that could not be squashed within her neither by motherly concern nor avuncular edict woke up and wrote back her response.
Only to have you say no?
She didn’t give the wizard any especial look of deference that evening, nor did she return the book until she was good and finished with it. Then, and no sooner, she returned to the tower and exchanged it for the next one in the pile.
His reply was waiting for her two books later. And have me say yes. Anyone in this dank monument to human ignorance who finds value in these histories would be a welcome friend.
After that, she felt as though they had a secret inside joke. She supposed that eventually the joke would be on her, because he never guessed that she was female. She was sure this was why he let her write about her dreams of becoming a great warrior and helping to defend the keep, and encouraged her instead of trying to silence her like everybody else. If he ever found out, she presumed, he’d probably gently but firmly admonish her for her presumptuous plans.
How are you with a sword?
I look forward to my opportunity to find out.
If you’re able, I’ll give you instruction. I would find it a welcome respite from what I endure in the Great Hall, wrote the wizard back in brazen disrespect of the baron. He surely knew full well that a book in the bottom of an old trunk would never find its way into the baron’s hands even by accident. Especially not the middle of a book.
Rivka wished he could give her lessons via notes scribbled in books, but that was probably impossible. Besides, she had no sword. Not even a broken remnant from a heroic father lost in battle. Instead, he had left for her the nickname Rivka bat Beet-greens, daughter of the vegetable garden, as if Mitzi had gone out walking one night and been defiled by the crop itself.
I would gladly learn if I could, she wrote back into the book, but if I can’t, what are the first things I should know?
When she was finished with lunch, she tried to leave to return the book, but her mother kept her a few minutes just outside the Great Hall asking if she thought this or t
hat new piece of jewelry more fine upon her ears. She picked one at random, eager to get the book back to the wizard’s room before his daily argument with the baron was concluded. No danger of its being over any time soon, she thought -- even this far from the Great Hall she could hear her uncle bellowing. Would it hurt him to just shut up even for only a few minutes?
Gladly moving away from the sound of his voice, she rushed up to the tower and into the wizard’s room. She picked up the next book in the pile, placing the previous one on the stack in its place.
“What’s that there?”
Rivka froze.
She turned around to face the wizard, who had been sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. She hadn’t seen him in the shadow, and nobody had ever been in the room before when she had come up.
“How are you here? The baron--”
“Is abusing someone else today, blissfully enough for me.” He stood up. “You’re not what I was expecting. A soldier’s page, perhaps, or a stableboy.”
“Not the baron’s bastard niece?” She faced him without fear, daring him to send her away with steady eyes and even breathing -- even though her heart was pounding heavily.
The wizard opened one of the trunks that had always been closed and locked during her visits and took from it a long flashing thing of silver steel. He straightened up and approached her, offering her the hilt. “Do you have the next hour free?”
***
Far across the fields, there stood an abandoned shell of a barn, four stone walls with nothing but sky overhead. Together, without speaking much, they cleared away the remains of what had been the roof. When there was enough space for them to move, the wizard showed her the basics of swordsmanship. She entered the practice with a lot of zeal and strength, the natural outcomes of her lifelong interest and her athletic temperament, but she was also gravely unpracticed at telling her body what to do.
“We’ll work on the swords,” he said, after watching her for a time, “but I think I should also show you some exercises to bring you in touch with your movements, and in control of your body.”
Rivka concentrated on her lesson and committed everything he told her to memory. At the end of the session, she thanked him profusely and tried to give him back the sword he had lent her.
He held up his hand. “Keep it for now. Someday you’ll have your own, but that one’s only an extra, a token of appreciation from one of the kings under whom I fought -- you can read about it on the inscription -- and I barely even use the one I truly consider mine.” He held up his own blade, the one in his left hand. “I fight with the wrong hand,” he explained. “Had to learn to write with this one too.”
“I saw your scar,” said Rivka.
“Oh, in the Great Hall? Your uncle certainly brings out the warrior in my tongue, that’s for sure, even if my hands are often idle.” He drew back from her. “I think I know where I can find some old rakes nobody will miss. Take off the heads and they’ll make good safety weapons. I know you’ll practice before then, but you’ll have an easier time of it if you start with that.”
Rivka nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, of course! I’m so grateful... Wizard...?”
“My name’s Isaac,” he said.
“Rivka,” she said. “But surely you knew that.”
“Even if I did, it’s new to me now,” said the wizard with a smile. “Before today, I knew you, and I knew my strange friend who was stealing my books and returning them after reading them. Now that I know who you are, I meet the name anew.”
“I won’t let you down,” Rivka assured him.
“Let me down? No, Rivka, I don’t do this for my own glory. I’m teaching you as an excuse to interact with the one other soul in this cave who values learning and knowledge.”
“What book should I read next?”
“Since we’ve broken out the swords, I’ll lend you Face’s Treatise on sword craftsmanship. You’ll learn about words like ‘tang’ and start thinking about angles of swing.”
“I’m ready for anything.”
“I can see that already.”
***
Rivka had never felt better in her life as she did when she smuggled the sword back to her bedroom and spent all evening after dinner practicing with it. She also remembered to dutifully repeat the weaponless exercises that Isaac thought she needed, and she was pleased to discover that they caused a marked improvement in her carriage and movements over the next few weeks. The slight change in her made her catch the baron’s attention, and reminded him of his search to find her a suitably honorable husband.
Rivka and Isaac met whenever they could within the forgotten stone walls. They fought with the wooden rake-handles until she was ready to graduate to full-time sword work. Sometimes he talked about his history in battle, using his own adventures to illustrate lessons in combat. Rivka eagerly soaked up every story, determined to have her own someday.
Of course, it wasn’t all easy. Learning how to fall safely meant collecting a full spectrum of bruises before she mastered the technique. Luckily, she already had a reputation for “unladylike” behavior, so the few that showed up in places her dresses didn’t cover generated nothing beyond the unbridled disdain of her married cousin, Frayda, the baron’s eldest daughter, who was visiting to show off her new baby.
The hardest part came when she had mastered parrying and thrusting, and now faced the step where she must decide which order in which to put them, to keep an enemy on his guard. Rivka, whose brain wasn’t wired to constantly plan attacks complex enough to surprise an opponent, practiced incessantly until varying her choice of blow became instinct.
One day, as Rivka and Isaac were sparring in the rain, she realized to her heady surprise that she was besting him in blow after blow, and that all her months of practicing had grown her skill to where she outshone Isaac’s uninjured but non-dominant left hand. She continued wielding, not quite understanding the placid, yet slightly impish expression on his round face. What would she do for practice if she could now easily beat any sword he could hold?
His answer came in the form of swirling ribbons of light that suddenly appeared from his right hand. They surprised her and surrounded her sword, but then she roused herself and slashed back at them heavily. Then she put her sword down by her side, blinking raindrops from her eyelashes. “What was that?!”
“I can’t close these fingers around the hilt of a sword anymore,” Isaac explained, “but I can still do magic.” He was usually fairly tight-lipped on exactly what wizard training entailed and didn’t reveal more than was necessary.
Rivka didn’t move, squinting at his hands critically as she studied the winding silver whips.
“They won’t hurt you,” Isaac reassured her, sheathing his sword. “You won’t even feel them, not in the beginning.”
“And then what?”
“An irritating buzz. Enough to sharpen the game. Rivka, mind your sword!” The whips jetted out of both of his hands with no other warning, and she quickly raised her steel to meet them.
***
His magical abilities were a perfect grindstone for her skill, because he could improve both the stakes and the complexity of their sparring matches almost infinitely. Over the year that followed, she grew to be a formidable warrior, all under her uncle’s nose. Every day when the maid was cleaning her room, Rivka took the sword out from under her bed and hid it behind a suit of armor that stood as decoration in the passageway. It was a terrible hiding place, but it was only there for an hour each day. Thankfully for Rivka, the maid was like clockwork, and this was not difficult -- only annoying.
The wedding of Cousin Bina, the baron’s middle child, was approaching, and as soon as Rivka heard that the great General Zusmann was on the guest list as a good friend of the groom’s, she remembered her plan to marry a warrior and follow him into battle. She showed uncharacteristic interest in her frock and jewelry for the event, filling her mother’s face with smiles and her cousins’ with mocking eye-rolls. Wh
en they had finished with her, she looked passably pretty in dark brown, even though she towered over her cousins. The vegetable gardener had been a tall man, and from that, one could not escape.
She studied her reflection in the glass. Would the general find her appealing? She was greatly interested in anything he had to say about his adventures, or his ideas on various bits and pieces of military theory. She had reread a couple of Isaac’s books on strategy before the wedding so she could make sure to follow the general’s conversation and show by her replies that she was a worthy wife.
The baron must have had similar ideas about his lowborn niece and the single, respectable general, for he engineered a partnering of the two during one of the row dances in the Great Hall after the wedding ceremony was completed. Rivka did her best to lead his conversation to the field, and he gladly followed her there to relive his past exploits. But when she said, “Certainly a fitting wife for you would be she who could hold her own in battle,” his reply dashed her hopes.
“My wife? What an idea!” The general laughed. “My wife needs to stay at home and show the world evidence of that which produces my strength on the field, by breeding my sons.”
Rivka couldn’t suppress a face of disgust. She got through the rest of the dance somehow, but then fate added to her distemper by pairing her with her uncle for the next dance. “How did you scare him off, you foolish girl?”
“I didn’t scare him off. He scared me off.”
“In what way have you found him wanting? He is honorable, powerful, and wealthy.”
“He wouldn’t let me fight for him, just as you refuse to let me fight for you.” Rivka’s patience with enduring her uncle’s mindset was wearing thin of late, in direct proportion to her confidence as she gained skill at the blade.
The Second Mango (The Mangoverse Book 1) Page 6