by Dave Duncan
Down on the flats, Andy urged his roan into a trot and Durendal kept pace. Joking aside, he was well aware of age creeping up on him. Still stiff from his ride in from Ironhall, he now faced another two days’ return, even if the weather held. He would happily stay longer at Ivywalls, but the briefer his absence from Ironhall the less chance it would come to the attention of those with the power to demand an accounting of what he had been up to.
“You made a mistake, Son. Harvest is my sword and always has been.”
Andy shot his father a thoughtful glance. He was a heavy-set man, who had always been more rugged than handsome, whose blocky face had never quite lost the ruddy tropic weathering gained in his sailor days. He was stolid and deliberate but never predictable. He had made his own fortune trading to far lands, coming home late in life to settle down and start a family. He had taken over Ivywalls, enlarged it, and turned it into a model estate admired by landowners from all over Chivial. He was an authority on crop rotation, fruit trees, and horse breeding. No man likes to see his son reach middle age, but Durendal was enormously proud of Andy.
“Well, my eyes aren’t what they used to be.”
Durendal laughed. “They’re the envy of every hawk in the county.” He dared not discuss the Swithin affair, but Beaumont’s sad tale was stale news. While it was not exactly public knowledge, the vultures of the court had picked its bones bare long ago. He could talk about that safely. “I’d as soon not have this known, but I was doing a friend a small favor yesterday.”
A problem as deadly as the Swithin abduction was a strange favor to drop on anyone’s head, but Beau and that fiery little black-eyed wife of his had virtually nothing left to lose. Beau was the only man in Chivial who might find a solution.
Roland counted years. “You must remember Montpurse?”
His son said, “Vaguely. Your predecessor as chancellor.”
“Finest man I ever knew. Brilliant swordsman, magnificent statesman. My friend and mentor. My idol.”
“And a traitor?”
“No. A patriot. I sent him to the headsman, yes, but that’s another story. See, there’s a Blade, an ex-Blade, who reminds me very much of Montpurse. Has the same baby-blond hair. Moves like a sunbeam. Utterly deadly with steel, incredible. When we admitted him, he demanded the name of Beaumont; it wasn’t on the approved list, but I allowed it. Of course the whole school instantly began calling him Beau.”
Andy grinned. “Did he know what it meant?”
“Oh yes! Beau never gets blindsided.” Except yesterday, when he set eyes on Just Desert again. That moment alone had been worth the ride in from Starkmoor.
“Father, a captain soon learns not to play favorites among his crew. I can’t imagine you ever do at Ironhall.”
The horses were cantering now, big hooves pounding the rutted trail. A faint veil of smoke over the fields showed where stubble was being burned. Chivial was prospering, and at peace. In all areas except the extreme north, the harvest of 402 had been the best in a generation. King Athelgar would receive much of the credit, for no rational reason. The Thergian war that had threatened for the last two years appeared to have been averted.
The Swithin nonsense must not be allowed to upset all this!
“I hope I don’t play favorites, son. But Beaumont was like Montpurse—so spectacularly the best that the problem never arose. He made no enemies. He never needed disciplining.” In his last few months in the school, the juniors had taken to calling him “the Paragon.”
He had been the bright star who rides the heavens in splendor, then falls to earth and shines no more.
• 2 •
Early one fine morning the first fencing classes were starting to leap and shout in the quad. The beansprout riding class had just gone out the gate like a cavalry charge. So dewy was the spring sunshine that even Starkmoor’s barren crags and perfidious bogs could seem gentle, and the wisps of dawn mist that lingered around Ironhall’s battlements and towers gave it very nearly the air of antiquity and invincibility its architects had striven to portray. As a castle, it was a monstrous fake, of course; as a prison for delinquent youths, it would have failed utterly without the deadly moors encircling it. As a school for swordsmen, it was unsurpassed in the known world. A hawk was quartering the sky; doves cooed on the rooftops, taunting the stable cats far below. Durendal was just tightening Destrier’s girth straps when he heard childish voices yelling, “My lord!” and saw some sopranos, boys of the youngest class, racing toward him.
It was almost five years since he had tired of growing wrinkles, turned Ivywalls over to Andy, and retired to Ironhall to do something useful. His grief for Kate had faded into numbness, an outrage like a missing limb, never forgotten or forgiven, but no longer bleeding. Parsewood had repeatedly offered him any position he wanted—Master of Rapiers, Master of Sabers, Master of Anything. He had insisted on remaining Master of None, a title the candidates found very funny, but he coached their fencing, lectured them on politics, and generally lent a hand.
That was in winter. The rest of the year he had done some of the traveling that Kate had always wanted to try. At that very moment he was on his way to meet Snake and two other close friends for a trek through southern Eurania. Had he been just two minutes faster out the gate, he would have been gone for half a year.
When the white-faced messengers reached him, Durendal listened calmly to their gabble, then said, “Thank you. Cedric, unsaddle my horse, please. Give him some oats as consolation.” He set off to view the body.
Parsewood had been a competent, if uninspired, Grand Master for almost ten years. Not old, though…he’d been three years Durendal’s junior, so they had not become close friends until childhood was long past. Parsewood had served under Snake during the Monster War; he had held the Order together through the nightmare of the Thencaster Affair, when Blades were required to slaughter Blades. And now…
Now the quadrangle had fallen silent. Durendal detoured past a knot of seniors and told them to keep classes going, there would be an announcement shortly. He resumed his trek to First House.
The Order must elect Parsewood’s successor, so Lord Roland’s traveling days were over. There was no arrogance in that assessment—the outcome was inevitable. Although he wanted the job much less than he wanted paralytic dementia, he knew he could not escape it. If Malinda still reigned, she would veto his election, but Malinda had abdicated and sailed away. Less than two years since the Thencaster Plot almost tore it apart, Chivial was still divided, with half the country cursing the Blades for propping up a “foreigner” king, and the other half hailing them as national saviors. For the eminent Lord Roland, so closely associated with the days of Good King Ambrose, to refuse this service would be a blatant insult.
By the time he had climbed the stair to Grand Master’s chamber, half a dozen knights were gathered around the bed muttering. When he walked in they turned to him with obvious relief.
“It must have happened in his sleep,” Master of Rituals said. “He looks peaceful, doesn’t he?”
“He’s earned some peace,” Durendal said. “The King must be informed. And then…Um, who takes over until the election?”
“You do, my lord.” They spoke in chorus, heads nodding like drinking chickens. He wondered if they had planned that.
He sighed. “For now, if you want. We’ll have a general meeting shortly.” He knew what it would decide. “Protocol, will you send word to His Majesty, please? Archives, I assume you have records of the proper procedures?”
Of course. Archives had records of everything that had happened there in four centuries.
By the time the reluctant heir escaped and hurried across to King Everard House to change from riding clothes into something more suitable to the dignity of Grand Master Presumptive, the great bell was tolling, summoning everyone to the hall. Even while he was mentally preparing what he would say to the assembly, he noted the hawk still serenely circling. Men came and went; the world endured.
/> At the steps a slim young man wearing a senior’s sword moved to intercept and the abstracted Durendal almost walked into him. They dodged with mutual apologies. Florian had been Prime for almost a month now, doing much better than the masters had expected.
“My lord!” he said. “This…”
Durendal looked down with annoyance at This, standing at Prime’s side. He was too young to be even a soprano, dressed in jerkin and breeches too grand to be school issue. Not today! The bell was tolling. No one had authority to admit a new candidate and current enrollment was over the preferred limit already.
Then he thought, Montpurse’s hair was not curly. The color was the same, though, and the boy’s eyes were similar, ice in sunlight. They showed concern, but no real worry.
“He’ll have to come back another day. Who brought him?”
“Well…no one, my lord. I mean, the beansprouts found him on the road. He rode in doubled with Calvert.”
Applicants were supposed to be sponsored by a parent or guardian, but foundlings on the doorstep were not unknown. This one unprepossessed—a child not yet into his adolescent growth spurt, weedy and city-pale. But a lot of them started like that and he deserved a fair hearing, because his whole future life was at stake. The bell was tolling.
“What’s your name?”
“Ned…my lord.” He was impressed at meeting a lord, but again not excessively so.
“Hungry?” That was always a safe bet.
The ice eyes sparkled. “Yes, my lord.”
“Take him to the kitchens, Prime, and tell the cooks to fill him tight as a drum. Wait there for me, Ned.”
Watching the two of them hurry off, Durendal noticed: He walks on springs. Like Montpurse.
The announcement was a solemn moment, a sudden shadow. To the aging masters and other knights, Parsewood’s passing was a reminder of their own mortality. To the candidates he was the man who had admitted them and given their lives new beginnings. By ancient tradition his sword, Gnat, was hung beside the founder’s Nightfall to await the conclave that would elect his successor.
Having led the procession out of the hall, Durendal reached the kitchens before the servants did, finding young Ned perched on a stool beside a teak counter, still eating. By the look of the remains, he had consumed most of a pitcher of milk, half a loaf of fresh bread, about a month’s supply of butter, and enough hard-boiled eggs to build a small mountain of shells. He was just reaching into the bowl for another egg when he saw Durendal. He dropped his feet to the floor and bowed. Few applicants knew gentle manners. Most were guttersnipes or churls.
“Feeling better?”
“Yes, thank you, my lord.”
Durendal leaned against the bench. “I’m Lord Roland. I’m in charge here at the moment. Tell me about yourself. All I know so far is that you like eggs.”
“They’re my favorite, my lord…I’m a bastard.” The wide juvenile eyes stared up at him warily, waiting for reaction.
“So am I. Carry on.”
Ned brightened and began speaking with more confidence. His mother had been a cook in the house of a rich and respected alderman in Brimiarde. She had died bearing him and he professed to know nothing about his father. He was being quixotically loyal there, because someone must have paid for a wet nurse, food and shelter, the rudiments of an education, serviceable clothes. Most unwanted babies died or disappeared. Lest there be any doubt who his benefactor had been, just three days after the rich alderman had been returned to the elements, his lawful heirs had loaded the unwanted brat into the family carriage and instructed the coachman to drop him off within sight of Ironhall.
“How old are you?”
“Be twelve next week, my lord.”
He looked younger, partly because of his fair coloring, mostly because he was small. The kitchen staff—all male in Ironhall—were drifting back in, carefully avoiding the intruders, but able to hear what was said. The meeting should be adjourned elsewhere, but Durendal had already concluded that Ned the Bastard was too young and too small. It wasn’t admitting applicants that was hard, Parsewood had always said; it was turning them away. What to do with this child?
“You think you could be a swordsman?”
“I’m nimble,” the boy said, suddenly stubborn. “They said you’d throw coins for me to catch.” He reached both hands into the bowl and came out holding four eggs. He threw one up, then two, and in a moment he was juggling all four. His gaze flickered from side to side, following them, full of gleeful triumph.
Durendal had never heard of an applicant auditioning this way, but few applicants ever had a prior chance to query the inmates on what to expect. “Is that as hard as it looks?”
“Um…no. It’s just a cascade.” The eggs disappeared into his hands and then reappeared, moving in another pattern.
“This is harder. This’s a shower.”
“Can you do five?”
“Not usually…my lord…but if you throw me one more, I’ll try.”
“No need. I’m impressed.”
The eggs vanished into the little hands and were replaced in the bowl. Ned grinned hugely as the watching cooks applauded. Durendal was tempted to do the same.
“We don’t admit boys younger than thirteen. How old are you really?”
The grin vanished. “What I said. I don’t tell lies!”
“Good for you! That’s the right answer. Can you ride?”
“I rode here, my lord…behind Candidate Calvert.”
“That’s all?”
Ned nodded glumly. “Yes, my lord.”
“I admire your honesty.” Durendal himself had not been quite honest, because boys of twelve were not always refused; the problem came later, binding a seventeen-year-old. “I’ll give you a chance. No, listen before you thank me. There’s a farm below the moor could use an extra hand. If they’ll keep you for a year, will you work for them?”
“Yes, my lord! I’m a good worker.” The grin was back.
“I believe you, but it will be hard work. A year from now, if you’ve pleased them, we’ll take you in. I’ll send you down there with Florian. You can double with him.”
Durendal was circling like the hawk. No applicant had ever been granted a delayed admission like that before, so far as he knew. But this Ned was obviously not the average applicant, a juvenile monster who should be chained to a wall. Nor was Durendal the average impoverished Ironhall knight; he had ample money of his own to compensate his friend Giles for taking on an unwanted and probably useless stray.
He would have to prime Prime very carefully in how to explain this arrangement to Ned’s still unwitting employer.
The following spring, Grand Master rode Destrier down to the Giles place, leading a saddle horse. It was not much of a farm—sheep, mostly, and some barley, but he had never regretted his brainwave, and since then he had boarded out other future candidates around the moors. Why had nobody ever thought of something so obvious?
The pack of barking dogs was called off by a scantily-clad boy, nutbrown all over and topped by a shaggy mop of sunbleached curls. He looked thicker, but no taller. He was jumping from foot to foot like someone who has been counting three hundred and sixty backward.
“You still want to be a Blade?” Durendal tried to remember if he’d told Ned all the advantages and disadvantages.
“Yes, my lord!”
“Just call me Grand Master.”
“Yes, Grand Master.” Ned’s teeth shone against his tan. “I can ride a horse now. And juggle six eggs, my lord!”
Durendal took him back to Ironhall to became the despised and nameless “Brat,” universal scapegoat, lowest of the low.
It took him exactly three days to make his mark.
Most nights the evening meal in the hall was a rowdy affair, with dishes clattering, eighty or so youths gorging and arguing at the same time, and the sky of swords overhead jingling in every stray draft. At high table the masters shouted back and forth through the racket.
&nb
sp; “Grand Master!” Rapiers was new and eager and loud. “Tried out that new Brat today. Think you’ve found a nugget there. Shows real promise! Not like some of—better than most, I mean.”
“He’s a scrapper, too!” Sabers agreed. “Makes up in ferocity what he lacks in size, mm? Did you see what he did to Cedric? No one else has dared take him on.”
“What impresses me,” Rituals shouted from the far end, “is the way he treats the hazing. If humiliation’s what they want, he just laughs and takes it. You’d think sitting naked in the horse trough quacking like a duck was perfectly normal behavior.”
A year auditioning applicants had shown Durendal how lucky he had been with his first recruit, for that is what the current Brat had been in practice, even if not officially so. And Durendal had been within minutes of riding out the gate and missing him!
“It seems to be working for him,” Protocol said. “The sopranos are letting him eat with them, see?”
The masters fell silent, staring in astonishment along the hall.
“Fates!” Archives exclaimed. “The Brat? Truly? That’s never happened before! The Brat always eats in the kitchen.”
The future Beaumont had arrived in the hall. Year by year his flaxen head moved closer, table by table.
• 3 •
King Athelgar rode to Ironhall early in Fourthmoon, escorted by eighty Blades of the Royal Guard. He stayed two nights, bound the five most senior candidates, and rode off with his train at dawn.
An hour or so later, Durendal sent the current Brat to find the new Prime. The young man who appeared in the doorway of his study was blond, slight, and as dapper as anyone could be in Ironhall hand-me-downs.
“You sent for me, Grand Master?”
Durendal looked up from his accounts. “Spirits! You still here?”
Beaumont could always be trusted to accept a joke. His smile was rueful but believable. “Apparently. I do hope to join the Royal Guard when I grow up.”