He had never been in a position like this. He had nothing to draw on, no reserve army, no help from his father, no unlimited ground. Not even Old Stories or history to give him a grounding. He would have to find a solution on his own.
Rugar put his head in his hands. He needed a new strategy, and he had no ideas at all.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Nicholas never thought he would outgrow sword practice, but in the last few months he had felt that the time had been wasted. He sat in the courtyard, the sun beating down on the cracked dirt, the unnatural rains of the past year a distant memory. There had been reports of rain near the Stone Guardians, but the storm had never come into Jahn. Rain made him nervous now; it always made him think of Fey attacks, even though he had fought that first battle in sunshine.
First and only battle. Despite the other fighting—some of it in Jahn, his father had not let Nicholas out of the palace. His father said Nicholas’s life was too precious to waste. He was also convinced that the Fey now knew who Nicholas was—and would try to kill him if they could.
Nicholas’s sword rested across his legs. He had been polishing the blade, waiting until the practice began. He suspected he was early, Dunbar had never kept him waiting in the past. Unlike Stephen. Stephen had always kept Nicholas waiting, believing the experience good for the Prince.
Only now Stephen no longer taught sword fighting. He no longer had time for Nicholas, always running to keep up with Nicholas’s father, always sitting in on the advisory meetings. The war had changed Stephen. It had changed all of them. Nicholas felt as if he were disobeying his father each time he took a horse outside the palace walls.
A shadow fell across the dirt. Nicholas looked up. Stephen smiled down at him. “Are you ready to practice?”
Nicholas’s heart leaped, but he kept the joy off his face. “What about Dunbar?”
Stephen shrugged. “He says you were contemplating quitting sword lessons. I think now would be the wrong time to stop, don’t you?” His words were a bit slurred these days. The red scar that ran across his right cheek pulled his lips slightly off center and made the right side of his mouth almost immobile. He had received the wound on the day the Fey woman had disappeared. The day of the invasion. The day Lord Powell had died.
Nicholas stood and sheathed his blade. “Father won’t let me go with the soldiers. If I can’t fight, there is no point to practice, is there?”
“And what of defense?” Stephen asked. “Should the Fey ever get into the palace again, you will need your skills.”
Nicholas grinned at him. “Honestly, Stephen, fighting just hasn’t been the same with Dunbar. He’s good, but he’s not you.”
Stephen smiled back. He patted the hilt of his own sword. “Should we begin, then?”
“Here?” Nicholas glanced around the courtyard. It was empty, but Stephen had always taught him that blades belonged in a site away from passersby.
A bit of surprise passed through Stephen’s eyes so quickly Nicholas thought he imagined it. Then Stephen said, “No, no, of course not. In our old place.”
Their old place was an alley between the servants’ quarters and the guard barracks. The alley was rarely used and was wide enough for both men to parry and fight.
“All right,” Nicholas said. He led the way. A groom nodded as he passed, leading one of the King’s stallions. The horses rarely got good exercise anymore. Since the Fey had arrived, Nicholas’s father did not take the horses on their rides, and he forbade Nicholas to as well. He truncated the grooms’ routine, preventing them from going far from the palace. It was as if, with the walls and gates repaired, Nicholas’s father believed that the thin wood would keep the Fey out.
Stephen did not keep up and chat as he used to. Once Nicholas turned to find Stephen frowning at him. When Stephen noticed Nicholas looking at him, Stephen smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes. Perhaps Nicholas’s father had ordered Stephen to fight with Nicholas. Perhaps the King had finally become convinced of the importance of fighting altogether.
Finally they reached the alley. Sunlight didn’t touch the ground there, but the dirt was still hard. The alley was closed on the guard-quarters end but open to the courtyard. As they went in, another groom passed, leading a mare, and nodded as he headed toward the stables.
“I remembered this as being more private,” Stephen said.
“It’s even more private now that the guards don’t come through here.” Nicholas frowned as he took his usual place. It wasn’t like Stephen to complain about passersby. Sometimes a handful of servants stopped and watched the fight, picking sides and cheering as if they were watching a real battle.
“Well,” Stephen said, unsheathing his sword with a flourish, “it has been a long time.”
“It has.” Nicholas unsheathed his. He stood, knees bent, sword ready. But at that moment Stephen stepped forward and his blade clashed against Nicholas’s, sending a shuddering jolt through Nicholas’s arm.
“Hey!” Nicholas said. Stephen had never started early before.
“New tactics,” Stephen said as he withdrew and danced back, amazingly light for a man his size and age. “The Fey do not wait for an invitation to fight.”
That they didn’t. Nicholas remembered the battle all too clearly. He stepped into the spot vacated by Stephen and lunged. Stephen parried, and the clang of blades echoed in the open air. Nicholas led the attack, each movement he made blocked by Stephen. Then, suddenly, Stephen held a dirk in his left hand, and he sliced at Nicholas when he came close.
Nicholas had to twist away from the new blade and, in doing so, left his right side undefended. Stephen’s sword point grazed the skin of Nicholas’s belly. The pain was sharp and instant. Nicholas looked down at the blood staining his blouse.
“First blood!” Stephen cried with an exhilaration that Nicholas had never heard.
“But we never—”
“Stop complaining, boy,” Stephen said, lunging again and again. Nicholas had to parry each movement, his arm already growing tired from the odd, rapid fighting. “It’s a new world.”
“I guess,” Nicholas said. His left hand felt empty. He hadn’t fought much with a knife or a shield, but he had never had to defend himself against two blades before—except in that first battle. So that was what Stephen was doing—mimicking actual fighting conditions. If Stephen wasn’t going to fight fair, neither would Nicholas.
He backed away from the sword, then slammed the flat of his blade against Stephen’s knife hand. Stephen lunged with his sword, but Nicholas dodged and hit Stephen’s knife hand again, then turned the sword and cut Stephen’s thumb just below the knuckle. The injury was enough to loosen Stephen’s grip on the knife, and Nicholas flicked it away.
The knife clattered against the servants’ quarters.
“Second blood to me,” Nicholas said.
Stephen’s jaw set, his scar dark against his pale skin. He was no longer smiling. He lunged, stabbed, lunged, swung, and fought like a madman. Nicholas had to block each thrust or get wounded himself. Stephen was hitting with such force that Nicholas was afraid to stop fighting, afraid that Stephen would really hurt him.
It was odd, too odd. Stephen had never fought this way, not in all the years Nicholas had trained with him. His eyes were too bright, and his movements stronger than those of a man who hadn’t fought in nearly a year.
Nicholas kept defending himself, anticipating, blocking, holding the swords together as long as he could. And each time the blades separated, and Stephen moved away for another swing, Nicholas took a step backward. The alley no longer seemed friendly. The darkness felt like an enemy, and Stephen had the feral expression of a man Nicholas didn’t know.
Sweat ran down Nicholas’s face. He hadn’t practiced either, and although he was strong, his body felt the lack. He bit his lower lip almost through, his gaze never leaving Stephen. Nicholas kept moving backward until he felt a warmth on his skin. The sun. He was in the courtyard.
People wer
e gathered on all sides, watching with a seriousness they had never shown before. No one cheered. They all had the same uneasy expression. When he reached the center of their semicircle, Nicholas stopped defending and stepped forward, attacking with the remains of his strength. He kept lunging toward Stephen’s weakened left, forcing Stephen’s blade to cross his own belly. Finally, in one quick movement, Nicholas nicked Stephen’s left arm again.
“Third,” Nicholas said. His breath was coming in gasps. “Enough blood, Stephen. We quit.”
“We’re not done,” Stephen said. He was still in the alley, his sword held ready before him. “You need to know how to fight in difficult situations.”
“I’m done,” Nicholas said. He threw his sword onto the ground between them. It landed in the dirt, and dust rose around it, dirtying the blade. Stephen looked down at it, then up at Nicholas. Stephen took a step forward, his sword poised for attack.
Fear rose like bile in Nicholas’s throat, but he held his position. “We’re done, swordmaster.”
Stephen froze and then glanced at the crowd around them. He held the position a moment longer than he should have. When he stood, he was not smiling. “A man never throws his sword in the middle of a duel.”
“It was not a duel,” Nicholas said. “We were practicing.”
“Times have changed, Highness,” Stephen said. “You need to learn to fight in war.”
“I have fought in war.” Nicholas was shaking. He clenched his teeth, willing the shaking to stop. “I no longer need sword practice. And you shall never draw blood again in training. Is that clear?”
“Highness—”
“Is that clear?”
Again the look. Stephen’s eyes held something—defiance—before he smiled and bowed his head. “It’s clear, Highness.”
“Good,” Nicholas said. He crouched to pick up his sword, not willing to take his gaze off Stephen. “I’m going to get cleaned up. You need to have that thumb attended.”
“Yes, Highness.”
Nicholas pushed his way through the crowd and took the entrance into the Great Hall. There, in the anteroom’s coolness, he leaned against the stone wall. His body dripped with sweat and he was exhausted. He pushed up his shirt and examined the wound on his stomach. It was small, more of a cut than anything serious. The blood had already slowed to a trickle. His shirt was ruined, and he would need a poultice on the wound itself. He sighed. He hated the way things had changed. He should have known that Stephen would have changed too.
Stephen hadn’t had a sword in his hand since he’d fought the Fey woman. She had attacked them and left Stephen for dead. When he’d come to, he hadn’t known that Lord Powell was dead. At first he had thought Lord Powell captured until someone pointed out that the bones near his feet were those from a human skeleton and were covered with fresh blood.
Of course all of that anger and fear would come back the next time Stephen held a sword. Nicholas hadn’t lost the feeling of fighting in battle; no reason Stephen should forget the moment of his worst defeat.
Nicholas took the stairs to his room two at a time. He didn’t relish the idea of telling his father that sword-fighting practice was a thing of the past. An odd irony considering how hard Nicholas had struggled to be allowed to fight in the first place.
He opened the door to his chambers and went in, kicking the door closed behind him. He winced as he pulled off his ruined shirt. The action opened the cut again, and he grabbed a cloth off the dressing table, pressing it against his stomach. Nothing serious, but annoying just the same.
Nicholas stuck his head into the bucket of ice-cold wash water, letting the chill travel down his sweaty body. Then he yanked his head out and shook the water off. The droplets landed on his naked back and chest. He grabbed a towel and scrubbed the wet off his face, then dipped it into the water and washed off the rest of the sweat.
He dried off, then sprawled backward on the softness of his bed, letting the feathered mattress enfold him. His body tingled from the exercise, and his stamina was good. But he had worked too hard on that fight. If he’d wanted that kind of battle, he could have gone into the woods and waited for a Fey to appear.
A knock at the door startled him.
“Yes?” Nicholas said.
“Yer Highness, yer father requests yer presence.” The voice belonged to his chamberlain. “Says there’s news.”
How often had he heard those words in the last few months? News was rarely good anymore. It was more dead, or sunken ships, or a food crisis near the marshes. His father had placed a food tax on the outlying provinces that hadn’t been invaded by the Fey, and the landowners weren’t happy with it. But with the Fey so close, Jahn would have suffered a food shortage if his father hadn’t taken action.
“Come in, then,” Nicholas said. “I’ll need your help.”
The door opened. His chamberlain entered. He was a gaunt man. His son had been Nicholas’s chamberlain for three years, but the boy had died in the battle. His father never spoke unless he had something he felt was important to say. He apparently stepped into his son’s job because the family relied more on the palace income than it did on the subsistence farm he had tried to maintain.
The chamberlain bowed his head. “Highness.”
“Clothes,” Nicholas said, as if it weren’t obvious. “I was going to dress myself, but there isn’t time.”
The chamberlain peered at him. “You’re bleeding, Highness.”
“It’s not serious,” Nicholas said. “It’ll be all right if I give it a chance to scab. But I don’t have time to wait for clothing. Find me a cloth to keep against this cut, and a shirt that won’t show blood.”
The chamberlain disappeared into the wardrobe. Nicholas slipped out of his pants and threw them beside the bed. The chamberlain returned with a strip of cloth, which he wound around Nicholas’s waist. Then he went back and got a dark shirt and fawn pants, which he helped Nicholas put on.
“Did my father say what the news is?” Nicholas asked as he adjusted the wide lace cuffs on his sleeves.
“No, Highness. But it seems important. ‘Tis men on horseback.”
Nicholas nodded. “Thank you,” he said by way of dismissal. Then he ran his fingers through his damp hair and pulled it into a ponytail. The chamberlain picked up Nicholas’s discarded clothes. Nicholas strapped his knife around his waist—he no longer went anywhere without a weapon—and headed to his father’s audience chamber.
He took the winding staircase down two steps at a time and wondered what had happened now. The last time he had been called down the stairs, only a day ago, was for the news that the fifth Fey ship had been defeated at the mouth of the Cardidas. He couldn’t hope for good news two days in a row.
He hurried through the passageway, entering the audience chamber alone and unannounced.
In the last year the audience chamber had lost its musty smell. The spears still lined the walls, but guards now stood between them. Real swords rested in a stand behind the dais, as did vials of holy water.
His father was seated on the throne, Stephen and Lord Stowe beside him. Stephen raised his eyebrows and half smiled as Nicholas came in. Nicholas did not acknowledge him.
Two men wearing stained clothing and days’ old growth of beard stood at the base of the stairs, looking a bit confused by the sudden delay.
“Nicholas,” his father said. “We started without you.”
“I’m sorry, Father.” Nicholas walked to the stairs, nodding as he passed the men. They smelled of sweat and horses. They had been riding for some time. “I only just heard that you’d be here.”
His father nodded as if the matter was really of no consequence. Nicholas took his place behind the throne, between Lord Stowe and Stephen.
“All right,” Nicholas’s father said to the men below. “Continue.”
“‘Twas one of their scouts we was following, Sire,” said the man on the right. He was stocky with broad lips and a red nose. “He was watchin’ the wh
ole battle at the mouth of the Cardidas.”
“Why didn’t you capture him there?” Lord Stowe asked.
“Dinna see him, milord,” the other man said. He was stocky as well, but his stockiness looked more like muscles. “He showed up outta nowhere right in front of us.”
“Showed up out of nowhere?” Nicholas asked.
“Ye see, Highness, ‘twas like we seen an outline, and then it become this man,” the first said.
“But you let him go,” Lord Stowe said again.
“Yes, milord,” the second man said. “We thought if he was scoutin’, he would have ta report somewheres, and since they left the river, we knew that ye been lookin’ for them.”
“We have,” Nicholas’s father said.
“And we know where they are.”
Nicholas leaned forward, his arms on the back of the throne. His posture was not quite disrespectful, but only because he was Alexander’s son and would occupy the throne one day. “We already know about where they are. We’ve heard tales of their disappearing in the woods to the west of Jahn, near a bunch of old hovels.”
“Not disappearin’, beg pardon, Highness,” the first man said. He took a step forward. He seemed to be the one with the courage. “They got a door.”
“If they have a door, why can’t we see it?” Lord Stowe asked.
“Ye can,” said the second man, who then bowed his head and added, “milord.”
Nicholas didn’t move. If these men were correct, they had found the Fey’s hiding spot. The lords had been hoping for this. They hoped they could find a way to trap the Fey inside.
The first man glanced at his companion, clearly exasperated, and continued for him. “Ye canna see the door in the day. They got tiny lights around it, like fireflies. The lights blink at different times, so ye gotta be lookin’ for it. But it makes a circle that a man can put his head and shoulders through.”
“What did you do after you found the door?” Nicholas’s father asked.
“We waited until we dinna see nobody, then we walked around it. ‘Tis like they say about the one in the river. Ye canna feel nothing except if ye close yer eyes and pretend. Although them lights at the door are hot if ye touch one.”
Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey (The Fey Series) Page 26