by Guy Antibes
Even the people looked different. Their complexions were lighter, and more of them had blond or red hair. Winnie would have fit in with her looks. Sam smiled. He felt more at home in this bank than he had in Professor Plunk’s more stately severe home.
“This is the bank manager,” Plantian said, pulling Sam towards a frosted glass-enclosed office.
The door was open. “Plantian, it is always a pleasure to see you. Who do you have with you?”
“A friend of a friend from Toraltia. He has a letter of credit that he would like opened. I want to contribute a bit to his account, as well.”
“You will be leaving the money with our bank?” the manager said.
“If I can. I don’t care to have a large purse hanging on my belt,” Sam said with a smile.
“Of course not. May I see the document?”
Sam presented the banker with his next-to-last letter of credit.
“Oh,” the bank manager’s mouth retained its circular shape. “This is worth much more than a large purse.”
“I know. How much can I realistically draw on this?”
The man pressed his lips together this time and furrowed his brow. He seemed to wear his thoughts on his face. “As much as we have. It is unlimited, although, as you said realistically, perhaps five thousand Vaarekian gold pieces. If you leave it in the bank, that is. It would take a few months to arrange a transfer of actual funds, you see. The amount you leave with us will accrue interest. Even that is enough for most people to live in luxury for the rest of their lives.”
“Then five thousand Vaarekian gold coins. What are they called?”
“Eagles. That is the name for the highest denomination gold coins throughout most of Polistia. We all use the same weight by treaty.”
“Can I have some funds now?”
“Are you sure that is what you want?”
Sam smiled. “How long would it take me to spend five thousand Eagles?”
“For some a lifetime, for others a few years of extravagant, wasteful spending.”
“Then let’s be realistic,” Sam said. “Please make it happen.” The amount of the letter of credit stunned Sam. There had to be some mistake, but every banker had claimed the letters of credit were genuine, and Sam had one more to draw on.
“I will.” The bank manager looked at Professor Plunk. “You vouch for the boy?”
“I do. He is staying with me. Perhaps I should charge him for his lodgings.”
The manager chuckled. “He could buy fifty houses just like yours.”
“Maybe a few more,” Plantian said as he produced the letter of credit from Antina Mulch.
“We add this to the same account? I would suggest a different account under a different name,” the manager said. “Times are getting to be a bit strange. Or I can move a large portion of the funds to Zogaz and use the funds here for Sam Smith to use now.”
“While I am at the university. Antina’s letter of credit will be enough to support me through my schooling?”
Plantian nodded. “More than enough, especially if you are on an accelerated program.”
“I agree. Will I have to go to Zogaz to redeem my funds?”
The bank manager beamed. “Not while we are in business. Just don’t ask for it all at once.”
“I won’t,” Sam said. He felt better about having his funds in two different countries, anyway. For some reason, he trusted the Zogazin more than any Vaarekian, except Professor Plunk.
Sam stayed to sign some papers, while the professor sought out a large packet of scrap meat for Emmy. He loitered on the steps of the bank until Plantian walked up to him.
“You are a very rich young man,” the professor said. “What are you going to do with all that money?
“Do you think it is wise to leave it in Zogaz? I felt like I could trust the bank manager.”
“And you can,” Professor Plunk said. “The Zogazin are honest, trustworthy, and decent merchants and they know how to live a frugal, if odd, life. So odd, that no one bothers them. They don’t accumulate riches like the rest of us Polistians do, so they don’t get invaded.”
That didn’t make much sense to Sam. Countries in Holding, his continent, invaded each other all the time, just to acquire more land. There must be more to the Zogazin than what Professor Plunk claimed, but Sam wasn’t going to concern himself with that now. He had enough money to get him through his studies, and he would worry about the future in the future, while his Zogazin funds earned a tidy amount of interest.
~
After a week of study, Sam felt uneasy. His lessons weren’t as rigorous as everyone let on. He had studied much the same kinds of things in Cherryton in the last two years of his compulsory seven years of schooling. However, the dueling class was another story.
“You aren’t holding your sword at the right position,” Professor Grott said as he moved, what seemed to Sam, every inch of his body, positioning his grip, wrist, arms, posture, and stance.
“Why do I have to hold it at this position?”
“You question me?” the sword master asked.
Sam felt a bit picked on. Grott didn’t do so much work with the rest in the class, so Sam just nodded.
Grott grinned. “Good! You need to know why, so if your duel doesn’t go the way you plan, you can react properly,”
Sam relaxed and then assumed the same position.
“You can do that every time?”
Sam shrugged. “I have a good memory, everyone tells me. That includes where things are. It is something I continued to develop when I was a snoop.”
“A snoop, you?”
Sam nodded. “Didn’t Professor Drak tell you? I was an apprentice snoop in Baskin, and I solved some problems on the voyage to Tolloy.”
“Excellent. Dueling is not only physical but mental, and you are in Level One because of your mind, not your strength.”
“My swordsmanship doesn’t count?”
Grott shook his head. “It needs to be at a high enough level so you can improve enough to succeed in the ring. I contend that most interested boys can become good duelists if they apply themselves and if they have a good mix of mental and physical attributes, which you have.”
“I’m happy for that, but why do I have to hold this position?”
Grott stared at Sam’s pose. “It is because that is the optimum position for a duel in the conventional Vaarekian style. Duels don’t last very long, quite frankly. Children dream of duels lasting ten, fifteen minutes, but in actuality, they rarely last more than a minute. That position is designed to provide an optimum platform for both defense and offense.”
“Is it mandatory?” Sam asked.
Grott smiled. “That is the right question. It is the conventional pose. You think that there are more poses that will work as well as this one?”
Sam nodded. “Of course there are. Convention can kill a person.”
“That is an astute turn of a phrase I have heard before, but not too often,” Grott said. “In the ring, you start with a conventional pose and then move to something a bit more unique, if you want to survive. The best duelists know what you have just told me, but for mediocre duelists, the conventional pose works best. It has become conventional because, in truth, it works most of the time.”
Sam smiled. “Most of the time.”
Grott grinned. “You are Level One material.” His face took on a more serious look. “However, you need to master many of the conventional attacks and defenses.”
Sam nodded. “So I can understand what to expect from opponents?”
“Right. So let’s get started. I can’t let you monopolize all my time since I need to work with Norna. I have a strong feeling she will learn quickly. You know she has as much potential as you?”
“I suppose so. Is part of it because neither of us is Vaarekian?”
Grott’s face took on a playful expression. “Perhaps.”
~
Desmon looked along the sword he pointed at Sam as t
hey practiced in Plantian’s back garden. Emmy observed the sparring with a dog grin on her face and her tongue dripping on the professor’s newly blossomed flowers.
“You have changed your style,” Desmon said.
Sam cocked his head to the side, keeping his eyes on his opponent. “I may have, but I need to become proficient in the Vaarekian method. Professor Grott says I need to start my matches that way and then depart using the style that will be most effective against my opponent.”
Desmon grinned. His eyes widened, so Sam expected a thrust. Grott had been working on reading the body and the face. Sam already had an instinct for doing that, but the professor gave him more signs to look for. After deflecting Desmon’s quick attack, the Wollian said, “That may work for the first one or two opponents, but if Vaarek is like Wollia, the good swordsmen watch every match to analyze potential opponents. They will catch on.”
Sam assumed the primary Vaarekian pose and used it to produce a touch on Desmon. “If I start this way, my opponent will not know which style I will use, plus I can always change.”
“If you are proficient enough,” Desmon said.
“That is why I am taking a class and practicing with you, again.”
“Tricks don’t make up for strength,” the Wollian said.
Sam smiled, “I disagree. You can’t win on technique alone, but a flexible strategy, quick thinking, and speed can fight successfully against a lumbering swordsman.”
Desmon shrugged. “I’ve had enough of this. You have improved in your first month, so I would say Grott is succeeding in making you a fine tool for the Vaarekian dictator. I still think you need more meat on your growing bones.”
“I won’t be a tool,” Sam said.
Desmon grabbed a damp towel on a garden bench and wiped his face. “Even if you are drafted into Kreb’s service? Everyone is a tool of someone or a group of someones.”
“Am I naive to think I can just run away if I have to?”
“I ran,” Desmon said, “So the answer is, you don’t have to be naive to do that. Be wary of green pollen.” Desmon shook his head. “It has been so long since we’ve had to deal with pollen, I forgot you are immune.”
Sam nodded. “That is all the time I have for now. It’s time I returned to my studies. I have hardly any time to work out with you.”
“But keep making a slot for us to practice. I need the work myself.”
Sam looked at Desmon. “What do you do all day, anyway?”
“I am currently working in the Grand Market for a Wollian merchant. You would be surprised how much you can learn using some focused observation.”
Sam shook his head. “Not surprised at all. I was a snoop, once.”
Chapter Five
~
S
omeone poked Sam in the back. He jerked awake and looked for a sword in his hand, only to find an empty grasp. There were a few giggles behind him. Sam looked back at two girls he didn’t know.
“Did I snore?” he whispered back to them. He noticed his cap had slipped over his forehead. Probably another trick the girls had played on him while he napped.
They nodded and giggled a bit more before Sam turned back, earning a glare from the lecturer. She was giving them details on a Trakatan military campaign against Ristaria fourteen hundred years ago. Sam questioned, not for the first time, the wisdom of signing up for a First in History.
“Now, we will go into the conflict behind the scenes. Some of you might find this part more interesting,” She looked at Sam, who shook his head to wake up. “In a war, the victor isn’t necessarily the one with the bigger army. There is the strategic component that comes into play. There are strategies that both sides follow that are generally dependent on what kind of information they can glean from the enemy. The more information, the better decisions can be made in developing plans to defeat their opponent. Sometimes, if the larger army is led by a dominant figure, killing the leader can devastate the army. We can see this in multiple instances…”
Sam already knew of enough instances and understood the concept, since Professor Grott had told him the same strategy, only he applied it to dueling, and Sam applied it to war. He had plenty of experience with spies collecting information, but Sam had rarely applied it to a larger picture, but to the smaller, isolated outbreaks that enemy actions caused.
He sat up, enthralled with the rest of the lecture. He had taken nearly three pages of notes when the lecturer finished. Sam felt his understanding had a new meaning. When in Wollia, he had thought of Vizier Pamon Tandar, Desmon’s brother-in-law, working on an insurrection, but he never put himself into Tandar’s shoes, never really being interested in what went on in Wollin.
It was the same when he was in Baskin. Sam’s horizons rarely looked at the big picture, except he did try to puzzle out what Banna Plunk was doing in the mountains of Toraltia, but he never dreamed there was a purpose behind her machinations, other than making a lot of money. He hadn’t expected his mind to be opened like this, talking about a war more than a millennia ago.
“Another class is coming in, Smith,” the lecturer said, “so you will have to leave. I’d like to ask you a few questions, anyway. Follow me.”
Sam gathered his things together, and both of them had to get past the rush of robed students flowing into the lecture hall. He pictured the lecturer and him as two fish swimming upstream.
Out in the hall, the lecturer led him to a bench in an alcove. “Sit,” she said. Tapping Sam’s notebook with her finger. “What prompted you to begin writing like crazy in the middle of my class?”
“I had a sudden insight,” Sam said. “I was an apprentice constable to a snoop at the Royal Constabulary in Baskin. We solved our share of crimes, and I could generally think one step ahead of the culprits, but I realized today that my thinking was too limited. When you began to talk about the quieter, well, maybe not quieter, but the part of the conflict not involving battles and troop placements, but the acquisition of knowledge, secret knowledge, and actions taking place outside the fighting, I realized I hadn’t taken the next step and then the next.”
“What do you mean?” The lecturer looked interested in what Sam was saying.
“The bigger picture, I think it is called. The overall scheme of things. I think it just keeps expanding, by circumstance or by intent. History is where everything is mashed together to create what has happened, but it isn’t a monolith at all. It is the convergence of many intents, many actions, some on purpose and some by happenstance.”
“Go on.”
“I don’t know if there is any more. From a snoop’s standpoint, you try to catch what has happened so you can react in the near future, and the suspect is arrested. But there might be a boss and a boss’s boss. There might be an intricate strategy that is playing out while you are investigating, so actions are re-directed. Other people you may rely on might not be available for your project. Circumstances change right before your eyes, but the overall strategy, the larger picture, might hold firm. That is what happened during the Ristarian-Trakatan conflict at the same time the armies were posturing and fighting indecisive battles, while the real war was being fought in the capital of Ristaria, which wasn’t Bliksa, then. Ristaria lost the war, even though they had the military advantage.”
The lecturer smiled. “Insight, indeed. I lecture all term to try to get that across, but so few students pick it up, even when I tell them directly.”
“It is happening in Vaarek as we speak, isn’t it?”
“The circumstances are much different,” she said.
“But the fluidity of history being created before our eyes is not. The process, the idea of all the linkages, and the separation of military action and intelligence actions are the same. I was taken to the Vaarekian National Intelligence Agency so I could get the message that Viktar Kreb has his eyes on me, a foreigner in his country. That was an act of intimidation. I left the building wondering how I can keep from being taken from the street again, bu
t I ran into another foreigner, a girl from Trakata, who received the same treatment. I thought I was singled out, but the bigger picture was no one is singled out; they are all treated the same, but separately, and that has a larger impact than if we were asked questions as a matter of course in the administration building.”
The lecturer’s eyes shined. “Very good. You are taking history to be a better snoop?”
“I don’t know if I will ever investigate another crime again, but I thought if I do, I would need more perspective and I got a lot more than I expected today. Being inspired is the easy part. Now I have to learn what others have done, so I can recognize patterns and echoes of circumstances in the past and then apply them to the present.”
“That is a daunting task,” the lecturer said.
“I am on the dueling team. If I watch a pair duel before me, I am looking at history that I might be able to apply to my present when I am in a match with one of them. It is the same theory. I still have to learn to recognize larger patterns than a single dueling match, though, don’t I?”
She smiled at him. “You do. Are you going to be sleeping through my class again?”
Sam shrugged. “Maybe, but even so, I’ll be filling up lots of notebooks.”
~
“What are you writing?” Norna Hawkal said, looking over Sam’s shoulder.
Sam closed the notebook. “Nosy,” he said. “I am learning to document fighting styles, poses, and results. I did something like this when I was a snoop. It helped some cases to organize observations to see patterns. I had forgotten about that until I remembered the technique while attending a history class.”
“Do you really think that is going to help?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I hope so. I’ll see how accurate I can be after my own matches.”
Norna snorted. “You are going to write about your own matches? Isn’t that a bit too much? Do you think you are better than anyone?”
“How do I really know?” Sam asked. “I have to rely on what other people tell me otherwise, and everyone’s perspective may be wrong.”