FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  Terrac winced but held his ground. “Tell Rideon I’m not a priest, and I’ll tell everyone how he knocked the feathers out of you.”

  I knew he was waiting to bring that up. I sank back in defeat. “You win, priest boy.” I conceded ungraciously. What choice did I have? Terrac was a fair teller of tales and too honest to skim over details. I knew by the time he finished the story I’d be a laughing stock around the outlaw camp.

  “Good,” he said now. “We’ll give up this sulking nonsense and return to Red Rock first thing tomorrow morning, where we will resume your lessons.”

  Too dispirited to object, I nodded dumbly, returned the brooch to its protective leather wrapping, and tucked it into my tunic.

  But as it turned out, we didn’t wait for the following morning to return to Red Rock. Brig found us that very afternoon. The purposeful way he strode into our little camp told me he hadn’t found us by accident. I ground my teeth. Obviously, Terrac had talked to him. I should have known better than to send the priest boy back to camp for the brooch. Brig stood silently before us and looked me up and down.

  “Sorry,” Terrac mumbled. “He caught me and threatened to beat it out of me. He knew something was wrong when you stayed away so long.”

  I could see by Brig’s lack of reaction to my battered face that he already knew what happened. Yet another thanks I owed Terrac. I was relieved at least when he asked no questions.

  “Let us see the damage, Ilan,” he said, turning my face to examine the bruises. “Nothing serious,” he observed. “But you should’ve come back earlier and let me clean up these little cuts. For that matter, you’d have done better to avoid a fight with the Hand in the first place. Still, a beating is nothing to be ashamed of. Sulking about it, though, that’s another matter. Hiding away from camp only makes you look like a weakling.”

  It stung that Brig, of all people, would kick me while I was down. That was why I said, “You ran away to hide in the forest when your Netta left you and took your sons. Maybe that’s why she went—she didn’t want to be married to a coward. I’m not surprised you’ve nothing to say to me about standing up for myself in a fight but criticize me instead for failing to run from one. When have you ever stood your ground for anything?”

  Even as I said it, the unwanted memory flashed through my mind of Brig withstanding Rideon’s orders to protect a little orphaned girl. Right away I could have bitten my tongue out, but it was too late to call the words back.

  Brig’s eyes flashed with a mixture of anger and pain. I thought if he hit me I would deserve it. I heard Terrac clearing his throat and backing away. But Brig wasn’t going to let me off so easily. He took a long breath and it was a moment before he spoke.

  “You’ve developed a sharp tongue, Ilan,” he observed quietly. “I think I liked you better when you were that silent little hound.”

  Filled with remorse, I tried to apologize. “I’m sorry, Brig. I don’t know why I said that. It wasn’t true.”

  He held up a hand. “Never mind. If you feel you owe me an apology, you can make it up by coming back to camp. Stop skulking around out here like a petulant child I have to be ashamed of.”

  “Alright.” My voice was heavy with regret, but if Brig noticed, it didn’t soften him. Terrac and I followed him back to Red Rock where I faced an unpleasant handful of days to follow.

  The bruises on my face attracted a certain amount of attention back at camp, and a few of the outlaws asked if I’d stuck my face into a badger’s den. I told myself they meant no harm with their jokes and that for every man who remarked on my battered countenance there were just as many who appeared not to notice it at all. Still, I knew everyone had heard my story, and that was deeply humiliating.

  I avoided Terrac during this time. Although I knew he hadn’t meant any ill in betraying me to Brig, I couldn’t shake the notion none of this would have happened if not for him. Of course I realized I couldn’t keep away from him forever. Sooner or later I must stick to our agreement about the lessons. But how could I do that when I couldn’t abide the sight of him anymore? My anger at him grew, and the strength of it only made me more miserable. I had grown accustomed to his odd, deprecating company, and now I found myself strangely lonely without him.

  As for the Hand, he treated me as if nothing had ever happened. It stung to think my captain could dismiss me so quickly after his former harsh treatment, but I told myself it was for the best. I would keep out of his way until another opportunity to prove myself came along. Then I wouldn’t fail him.

  Out of all the worries preying on my mind over the following days, my disagreement with Brig loomed largest. Since our heated words, he didn’t seem to look at me in the same way. I couldn’t say he treated me unkindly. But there was something missing from our friendship that had always been there before. I felt I no longer had his trust.

  Chapter VIII

  TIME PASSED AND MY FOURTEENTH birthday came and went with little to mark it. It wasn’t the true date of my birth anyway, but the day Brig and I had chosen to celebrate it, as I could never recall the real one. The two of us used to pass this day in some pleasant way, with the cooking of a favorite treat or the giving of a small gift. Other times, we might simply spend the day together, hunting in the forest or visiting one of the little woods villages. But this year, neither of us mentioned the occasion.

  My lessons with Terrac resumed. Brig finally noticed I was avoiding them and put an abrupt stop to it. This time I set to work with an interest born of determination, promising myself I would soon be able to decipher the writing on my mother’s brooch. At first I held on to my resolution not to speak to the priest boy, but it was difficult to ignore someone you had to be close to for an hour out of every afternoon. Inevitably, the day came when he asked me a question about my lesson, and I unthinkingly responded. As easily as that, the feud between us was broken.

  My eagerness to learn made a vast difference in the progress of my lessons. The day arrived when I began writing short words, and soon after that, I was spelling my own name. Even then, Terrac suggested I continue with our sessions until my skills had grown as far as possible. I enthusiastically followed his advice, for I was discovering in myself something unexpected. I enjoyed learning.

  One afternoon I presented Brig with a gift: his name inscribed in large, neat letters on a sheet of parchment.

  “And what do you expect me to do with this, wear it about my neck like a sign?” he asked gruffly, his needle barely pausing as it flew in and out of a tunic he was mending.

  But I had seen the look of wonder on his face as he contemplated the letters I had set out. Here was I, one he had raised from a child, doing a thing that in all his years he had never learned. Only pretending to look away, I watched from the corner of my eye as he carefully folded the page and tucked it away for safekeeping. His unspoken pride meant more than I could tell. I felt that a brick had been laid, that day, in bridging the gap between us.

  Not long after that, Dradac came to me and asked if I’d like to help him out on his road to recovery. His shoulder had healed nicely where he’d taken the crossbow bolt, but Javen said if he wanted to regain full use of his arm, he would need to exercise it often. I was pretty sure this was partially an excuse on the part of the giant to teach me combat skills without upsetting Brig. Either way, I was happy to comply, and we settled on the early morning as a good time to begin our exercises.

  The following dawn couldn’t come quickly enough for me. I rose with the sun, breakfasted early, and went out into the morning chill to wait beside the stream for Dradac. This ritual became a familiar one in the weeks to follow. The redheaded giant was never there when I arrived, and I would sit on the dew-sprinkled grass by the water’s edge to wait.

  I quickly found Dradac to be a more difficult master than I’d supposed. With his one undamaged arm, he made a more formidable opponent than most men with two sound ones, and he shed his usual, easygoing temper during our practice sessions so that I sometime
s felt I was facing a dangerous stranger instead of an old friend. I realized he wanted me to take this training seriously for my own good, but even so, I was truly stunned on that first morning by the number of times he seized me by the collar and dunked me into the cold pool to “wake me up.” His strength was unsurprising for a man of his size, but more than that, he was quick. I soon learned just how quick as we progressed to mock fighting with knives.

  Even with the blades dulled, by week’s end I had shallow cuts and bruises stretching halfway up my arms and even one or two across my face. Dradac believed in teaching by experience, and much as it unnerved me to see him flying at me with whizzing blades, I had to admit it did give me incentive to learn quickly. He was always watching me, forever on the lookout for signs of weakness. I had no idea how I was standing up to his expectations.

  The sword wasn’t Dradac’s best weapon, but we worked with those too. I had learned enough by then to know what it was to have a particular aptitude for a certain style of fighting, and it was easy to discern how much more comfortable the giant was with a staff or pair of knives than a long blade. Nevertheless, he was skilled enough to defend himself competently with one, which was more than I could say for myself in the beginning.

  I was surprised one afternoon to find Terrac skulking around the edges of our training ground as we practiced. Dradac let him watch us for a few minutes. Then, pausing from sparring with me, he wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow.

  “Terrac,” he called. “Why don’t you come and practice with Ilan for a bit? Just until I’ve caught my breath.”

  Terrac hesitated only a moment before nodding mutely and stepping forward. Dradac decided that with two inexperienced fighters it would be advisable to trade real blades for the bundled lathes we kept on hand but rarely used. He pressed one into Terrac’s hands, showing him how to grasp it properly, while I snagged another for myself. Then, standing back, he nodded for us to proceed.

  As the match began, I tried to go easy on Terrac, remembering how ashamed I’d been after Rideon had forced me to injure him. Pacing circles around the clearing, we parried and blocked one another’s thrusts for a short time. Then, seeing he was working up a sweat and that his hands were beginning to tremble from the unaccustomed weight of the lathe, I felt a stirring of sympathy. That was why I dropped my defense and allowed him to tap me across the chest. It was hard not to laugh because he did it so gently, like he was swatting a fly that had landed on me.

  “Killing stroke,” Dradac called out, and Terrac and I lowered our lathes. I thought Terrac would be pleased, but instead he was frowning as the giant stepped forward to reclaim his weapon.

  “Another round?” Dradac offered. “You were doing well.”

  Terrac shook his head. “Batting at one another with sticks like a pair of angry children holds little appeal for me.” He offered us a good afternoon and walked away.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I demanded. “He looked at me like I was a piece of itchleaf in his pants.

  “The next time you fight, make an honest attempt,” Dradac said. “Nobody likes to win by default. Nobody worth beating, leastways.”

  After that, Terrac came regularly to our sessions. He wasn’t present every day, but he showed up often enough that he developed a fair skill at fighting with the lathes and, later, with real blades. Soon he was even besting me occasionally. I found myself enjoying those lessons.

  I grew both physically and in my capabilities during that time. Even Terrac was no longer the scrawny weakling I remembered from our first meeting. His shoulders broadened, and as he continued growing, it became obvious he would soon be taller than me, a fact that disturbed me to no end. All the same, he still relied on me for the protection of my sharp tongue, if not that of my fists.

  One afternoon, the two of us climbed together to the top of the highest rocks of Boulders Cradle where we looked down on the expanse of treetops spreading below. I had worked up a sweat on the climb, and now I was enjoying the feel of the cool wind drying the sweat on my skin. Lying on my belly near the edge, I looked down the way we had come. A small herd of deer was moving cautiously through the trees below. One moment I caught a glimpse of a tail or an antler through the leaves, and in the next the view was lost as the animal moved into the shadows. I said to Terrac, who was squatting silently beside me, “You know, if we had a bow handy and I was a fair shot…”

  Terrac snorted. “You’d have to be better than fair. The greatest marksman ever known couldn’t take one of them down at this distance. You’d just waste a lot of arrows and try to make me go and find them.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not,” I said, but I gave up watching the deer. Rolling onto my back, I stared up at the fat clouds drifting so low overhead I felt I could reach out and touch them. “The Hand says you never know what you have in you until you’re pushed to your limit.”

  “The Hand,” Terrac said and rolled his eyes. “I don’t need the likes of him for inspiration.” He stretched out on the stone beside me. “The rock’s hard,” he complained, squinting up at the sun. “And it’s too bright up here.”

  “You know, you’re going to have to toughen up if you’re planning on living in the woods the rest of your life. Otherwise, you’ve a long time ahead to be miserable.”

  “Who says I’m staying forever?” he mumbled, putting one arm up to shade his eyes. “I haven’t forgotten the priesthood.”

  “Rideon says so,” I reminded him. “He’ll never release you from your oath.”

  He didn’t say anything, but I sensed his unhappiness. “Look,” I offered in a rare moment of sympathy, “I think you make things harder on yourself than they have to be. The men would get used to you in time if you’d just try to belong. Prove your abilities to them, and they’ll respect you.”

  “Just what I’ve always yearned for,” he said. “The respect of a filthy band of thieves and murderers. There’s deep ambition.”

  I ignored his sarcasm. “Rideon’s no mere thief—” I started to argue.

  “Why does everything have to be about Rideon with you?” he asked. “The Hand says this; the Hand thinks that. I suppose if Rideon threw himself down from this rock like a madman, you’d follow him?”

  I didn’t have to think about it. “Of course.”

  “Have I mentioned before how pathetic your devotion is?” he asked.

  “A couple of times. Mention it again, and it’ll be you testing the fall from here.”

  He frowned. “I can tell you something about Rideon,” he said. “He didn’t get to where he is by trotting blindly along at another fellow’s heels. If you dream of ever being anything more than his shadow—”

  “I don’t.”

  “—you should begin separating yourself from Rideon and making your own way. Pursue your own goals.”

  “Shut up, priest boy, and worry about your dreams, not mine. It seems you aren’t in such a hurry to catch up to them.” That effectively ended the conversation.

  But all his talk of unattained goals had me thinking. That evening, back in Red Rock Cave, I slipped a lantern down from the wall and carried it back to my sleeping nook behind the waterfall. Beneath the dim glow of the light, I probed my fingers into a deep niche in the wall, dusting aside the dirt and pebbles concealing the hiding place. I wiggled my fingers into the tight space until I managed to gain hold of a thin, flat object and drew it out into the light. Hands trembling in eagerness, I unwrapped the leather-bound packet and the brooch fell out onto the dusty floor.

  Its hammered metal surface gleamed beneath the fitful flicker of the lantern, and the copper and amber inlays reflected the light in warm reds and browns. The pin was almost large enough to fill my palm when I picked it up, and because of its size I suspected it wasn’t a woman’s ornament but intended for a male wearer.

  Flipping it over to examine the writing etched into the back, I knew a brief moment of panic where all my newfound knowledge of letters flew from my mind and I felt I was looking again
at meaningless squiggles. Then the tiny letters lined up in my vision and suddenly made sense. They spelled out two words. FIDELITY and SERVICE, the famed motto of the house of Tarius. The house of the Praetor.

  I mused long over my discovery before eventually rewrapping the brooch and returning it to its hiding place. What I couldn’t understand was how my humble mother had ever come to own a trinket once belonging to the Praetor or to someone in his family. Was it stolen? Given? Bought? Was the possession of it a danger to me, suggesting I had an affiliation with the widely hated Praetor Tarius? Or was it a form of protection from the Fists, as my mother appeared to have believed, an indication anyone harming the bearer harmed the house of Tarius? I suspected the answer depended on what company I found myself in.

  Viewed in that light, I decided I would be wise to keep the brooch and its original owner a secret for the foreseeable future, even from Brig and Terrac. I returned the lantern to its place on the wall and curled up on my sleeping pallet, where I lay awake for a time, staring into the darkness. When at last I slept, I dreamed of being pursued through the night, chased by a darkness I sensed closing in around me but could never see.

  Chapter IX

  THE SEASONS TURNED, AND BEFORE I knew it, I was another year older. Little else changed in my life except my relationship with Brig. That was unpredictable these days, at times thawing briefly but always growing cold again. I had no desire to mend the rift, deciding I hardly needed the bearded outlaw now I was grown enough to care for myself. I broke his rules, flaunting my newfound freedom, and slipped calculated slights into our conversations for the amusement of onlookers. Brig’s response was to avoid me and, when he could not do that, to eye me warily, like a strange dog that might bite.

  I was thinking of this one chilly morning in early spring as I crouched in the boughs of a thick elder tree, watching a small collection of men, wagons, and packhorses parade their way slowly down the Selbius Road. Undeterred by the temperature or the state of the thawing roads, travelers streamed through Dimming again on their way to Selbius or Kampshire, and we were glad to see them on the move for it had been a long winter. The coming of spring made the Praetor’s Fists and their way patrol more active too, but they troubled us less of late as they were caught up feuding with the savage Skeltai tribes along the provincial borders.