Geoff fell silent as we went through a quick series of moves that developed the game from the opening to the midgame. I saw Geoff’s moves become more tentative as things went along and knew my drive to open up the Empress’s side of the board would be successful. 1 watched Geoff react to feints and successfully pinned one of his Generals in place to protect the Empress from a Cavalry charge.
Geoff moved the pinned General to set up an attack on my other Cavalry piece. He hesitated, then slid the movestone over to me.
1 frowned. “You can take that back if you want to. If not, you lose the Empress.”
“Here 1 tell you to watch the board, which is what I should have been doing.” The Warrior frowned, then shifted his expression to a sheepish grin. “Bad luck on my part.”
“Bad luck? You?” I shook my head. “You don’t have to throw the game, Geoff. Don’t you want to go to the Bear’s Eve Ball?”
Geoff sighed. “First off, I’m not throwing the game. I made a mistake. I don’t see the board the way you do. I never have, never will. I actually do have to look at the board, and even then I don’t see everything. But, to answer your other question: No, I don’t particularly want to go to the capital.”
My jaw dropped open. “You don’t? lust think of what you would see and whom you would meet!” I started pointing at various red pieces on the board. “You could meet the Emperor or his mother Dejanna, or the Imperial Warlord, Garn Drustorn, and …”
Geoff held up his hand to cut me off. “And someone would offer me a chance to join a sword school, or I’d be drafted into a group of Chaos Riders, or I’d be handed some commission in an Imperial Company.”
“Don’t you want that?”
“May not be fitting for Cardew’s son to say so, but, no, I do not want that. I want to stay here and learn as much as I can from Grandfather.”
“But you already know everything he can teach you. In Herakopolis you could learn from a Grandmaster.”
Geoff’s face darkened. “But I could not learn how to reopen Audin’s school and make it great again.”
All of a sudden I felt closer to Geoff than I had ever been before, and my respect for him increased incredibly. Geoff actually remembered our father and had started his sword training in the school Audin had run here in Stone Rapids. Three years after I arrived from the capital, when I became five years old and was due to start training, Audin had closed his school to make his grandsons his only students.
I swallowed hard. “You’ve seen it in his eyes, too, haven’t you?”
Geoff nodded solemnly. “He had always planned for Cardew and Driscoll to come back from their time with the Valiant Lancers to continue his sword school. When they died he decided to train us so we would never succumb to those things that killed them in Chaos.
Because he took no other students, his school has all but been forgotten, and it shouldn’t be. Deep down 1 know he still dreams of having his school continue, and I want to make that dream come true.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “You and I have an alliance, little brother. I will see to it that his dream of having his school reopen is realized. I leave it to you to fulfill his dream of having another of his pupils praised by the Emperor for service as a Chaos Rider. Is this bargain acceptable to you?”
“You’re a good swordsman, Geoff, and you will be every bit as much of a hero as our father. I think the course you give yourself is more difficult than the one you give to me.” I looked down at my hands. “I want you to do what will be best for you.”
“In that case, Locke, you will execute the Empress and put me out of my misery in what, five moves?”
“Four. You missed the Wizard fork.”
“Always my bane.” Geoff reached over and toppled the Emperor. “Locke, go, see the capital. Go meet the Emperor, and even dance twice with each of his sisters—once for you and once for me. Then come back and tell me all about it.”
“You will have no regrets if I go in your place?”
“I might, I just might.” He reached out and tousled my hair. “But I’ll live knowing you’re off having the adventures that will inspire whole legions of students to come to Audin’s school again.”
2
I
looked down from the promontory overlooking the Garik Road. Off in the distance I saw the dusty cloud that marked the approach of the caravan with which 1 would travel to the capital. All of a sudden my stomach turned itself inside out because I would be leaving home for the very first time. 1 pulled my sheepskin coat more tightly about me and looked over at Geoff and my grandfather.
“The caravan is coming.” I swallowed hard. “Geoff, you can take my place if you want.”
My older brother shook his head. “I’m a Garikman born and bred, Locke. I’m not the sort that should attend the Imperial Ball. You, being born in Herakopolis, are.”
“I may not be Garik-born, but I am Garik-bred.” I nodded to my grandfather. “I will make you proud. The Empire will have another of your students to remember.”
The old man pulled me to him and enfolded me in a hug. “I am more proud of you than you could know,
Locke.” He held me out at arm’s length and touched the sword-and-dagger badge sewn on the left breast of my jacket. “You may only be an Apprentice in ranking, but there is much more to you. You know that. Be confident in yourself and your skills, but be aware that, like you, not everyone can be defined on the inside by the rank badges they wear on the outside.”
“Thank you, Grandfather.” 1 turned to Geoff and firmly grasped his forearm. “Two dances with each princess—one for you and one for me.”
Geoff laughed, the early-morning chill turning his chuckle into steam. He reached inside his coat and pulled out what appeared, at first, to be an inlaid wooden box with a gold clasp on one side and hinges on the other. It rattled as he extended it to me. “I know it is early, but this is my Bear’s Eve gift to you. just so you won’t forget us back here in Stone Rapids.”
I took it and opened the narrow box. Inside I saw a chessboard with holes drilled in the middle of each of the squares. The rattling had come from thirty-two carefully carved chess pieces, half in red, the others black. Each had a small peg on the bottom that would fit in the holes, holding them in place. A small trough ground out at the end of each side provided a niche for the movestone.
“Geoff, this is wonderful! Now I can play while on the road, if anyone in the caravan plays.”
“You will find plenty of players, I think.” Geoff smiled openly. “Wiley, the woodwright, made it for me in return for my giving some basic fighting lessons to his sons. Grandfather has agreed to help me teach them. If they work well, we might even reopen the school.”
“Might, Geoff, might.” Grandfather frowned a bit. “I’m really getting too old to teach children.”
My brother and I exchanged a smile, then I whistled aloud for my horse. Stail’s head came up, and the bay gelding trotted over to me. 1 slipped the chess set into my saddlebag, then swung up into the saddle. “I will come back in the spring, after the mountain passes have thawed, and tell you all about everything. And I’ll have Bear’s Eve gifts for all of you.”
“Good-bye, Lachlan. Farewell.” My grandfather lifted his hand and waved. Even though I felt his eyes upon me, it seemed to me that he was not seeing me at all.
Both he and Geoff watched as I took Stail down the switchback trail and joined up with the caravan. I paid the caravan master, a man named Haskell, the five gold Imperials my grandfather had given me for that purpose, and he told me to find a place in the train that suited me. I waved up at the two of them, and they waved back, then the caravan’s dust cloud swallowed them.
Deep down inside I felt 1 had betrayed my family because I did not feel properly homesick. Over a week out from Stone Rapids and I’d not dreamed once about my home. I wanted to feel lonely and desolate, but the caravan was full of interesting people and stranger things that took my mind entirely off those I had left
behind. It hardly felt appropriate for me to be happy and excited so much.
During the days I tended to spend most of my time riding beside the cumbersome wagons driven by merchants from Garikopolis. Laden with all sorts of wonderful things, from spices and crystal to delicately woven tapestries and shiny metalwork, they were bound for the capital in time for the frenzy of Bear’s Eve gift purchases. Being a native of Garik province, I felt proud about the way my people’s goods were cherished and coveted above and beyond those produced elsewhere in the Empire, but 1 restrained myself from believing all the stories the merchants told of past years in the capital.
At night, as the caravan settled down to prepare meals and let the draft beasts rest, 1 found myself drawn to the company of the various groups of guards who had hired on to protect the caravan. Some merchants had retained their own soldiers, while the caravan company itself had hired a large number of warriors to ward it. Because the private soldiers were paid better than and refused to take orders from the caravan guards, a certain amount of friction existed between the two camps. Because of my training I had more in common with the soldiers than normal folk, and the warriors tolerated me because I listened attentively to their stories.
As the caravan made camp in the Haunted Mountains, approximately a day’s journey west of the City of Sorcerers, I watched several of the guards in the employ of Kasir the gold merchant fence with each other. Stripped to the waist and using blades sheathed with leather practice covers, the two men sparred on a narrow strip between two bonfires. Others, including some of the caravan’s guards, watched the two men, offering applause, advice, and odds on victory as the battle wore on.
Having spent my entire life in the village of Stone Rapids, I had never realized how important rank insignia were taken in the outside world. When we rode into town for Bear’s Eve, Grandfather always donned a sash that bore a badge marking him as a citizen of Garik and another proclaiming his rank as a Bladesmaster. The black triskele badge of Garik had been fastened to the sash with green thread, as it was his home province, while gold had been used to sew the Bladesmaster badge on. This let everyone know Audin made his living as a Bladesmaster and that he could take on students if he so desired, but only a stranger wouldn’t know that anyway.
As was appropriate, we all wore sashes with our rank badges, too, but the people of Stone Rapids really paid scant notice. All of them could have worn a Garik badge as we had, but there seemed no purpose to it. Within our little community we knew each other, and many folks found the formality of rank badges unfriendly. Still, when two young men were vying for the hand of a girl, rank badges tended to proliferate like mosquitoes in a swamp.
Here, within the world of the caravan, rank counted for everything. I quickly bought and sewed a Garik badge to the front of my coat, just above the Apprentice swordsman badge. Because I wore a Garik triskele, those people from Herak naturally treated me as an inferior. This did not bother me overmuch both because of what my grandfather had told me before I left and because the triskele also won me instant company among the folks of Garik. My Apprentice badge, on the other hand, brought me no end of snide comments and piteous headshakes from Journeymen and Sworders employed by the merchants.
To watch this one particular fight, 1 worked myself into the circle of spectators between one of Kasir’s guards and a caravan guard. Kasir’s man wore the badge of a Sworder, which placed him a rank above either one of the lourneymen dueling on the strip and supposedly made him Dalt’s equal in skill. The caravan guard, a tall, slender man wearing a black eye patch covering his left eye, bore the four-ax badge of an Axman, making him the equal of Kasir’s man in level of skill. They had used gold thread to secure those badges to their belts, but I already knew they made their living through being guards. Both of them, according to their province badges, were from Garik, and both wore other badges, but 1 only glanced at them as I focused on the fight.
The man at the south end of the strip held his blade in an unconventional guard that left the forte high and the tip pointing down toward his foe’s knee. His foe clearly did not like it, and 1 knew, from fencing with Geoff during one of his periods of experimentation, that particular guard was annoying if the person facing it was unimaginative. As the other man dropped his blade down in a weak attempt to imitate his enemy, the first man snapped his blade around and smacked it against his foe’s thigh.
As the struck man yelped and limped backward, Kasir’s man turned to the Axman. “Well, Roarke, do you still think Timon can be beaten? More to the point, does your gold think he can be beaten?”
I turned at looked at Roarke, unconsciously nodding my head in answer to the other man’s question. Roarke cocked his left eyebrow above the patch and grinned with half his mouth. “It must be so, Ferris, because our little Apprentice here thinks he can be beaten.”
Ferris, firelight clinging to and evaporating from his bald pate, frowned heavily. “What can this little one know? If your gold bets with him, it is only because it rides on the belt of a fool.”
Roarke leaned over toward me. “What say you, little one? Can Timon be beaten?”
“Y-yes, sir,” I stammered, not because of any fear that I might be wrong, but because of the good look I had gotten of Roarke’s face. Three parallel scars started at the middle of his forehead and slashed down beneath the eye patch to reappear again to score his left cheek. His right eye, which I saw as predominantly blue, had hints of other lights glowing it in. That meant only one thing to me—Roarke had been in Chaos because Chaosfire had begun to burn in his eye.
Ferris spun me around roughly. “What would you know, child? You’re merely an Apprentice.”
I backed away from Ferris and instantly killed the desire to call him out into the fighting area. “1 have seen a man using that guard be defeated.” I chose my words carefully because I knew it would not be a good idea to mention I had actually scored a touch against Geoff once when he was using that guard. “If an attack comes low, that guard forces an outside parry. If the attacker can come up over the other man’s wrist quickly enough, he gets a clear line into torso or throat.”
Ferris’s dark eyes narrowed. “You have seen this, have you? Then perhaps you would like to show us, Apprentice.”
Roarke’s hands descended on my shoulders like hunting falcons returning to their roost. “Ferris, leave it alone. As he is an Apprentice, he cannot challenge anyone without leave of his Bladesmaster. Likewise, because Timon is a Journeyman, he cannot challenge down. However, the boy has given you the key, so perhaps you can unlock Timon’s guard yourself.”
Roarke’s appeal to Ferris’s vanity worked to deflect the private guardsman. With careful yet insistent pressure on my shoulders, Roarke steered me away from the circle of warriors. 1 stumbled forward into the fragmented darkness of men’s shadows. Behind me I heard Ferris voice a challenge to Timon, but Roarke’s strong hand on the back of my neck stopped me from turning around to watch.
I tried to shrug off Roarke’s hand. “Thank you, I think, Axman.”
“Thanks are in order, Lachlan, because you’d have beaten Timon, and he’s a nasty man to anger.” The larger man released his grip on me. “However, if you’re who they say you are, no thanks are necessary. This works toward squaring your blood with mine.”
“What do you mean? And how do you know who I am?”
Roarke scratched at the corner of his covered eye. “Your kin rode with you to meet the caravan, remember? Audin is not unknown, and enough people have heard of his tragedy that the story has meandered through the caravan.”
I felt myself blush. “People know, then, that I’m Cardew’s son?”
Roarke nodded solemnly. “That they do. They’ve been saying you’re a hero born, going to see the Emperor to become a General.” He pointed off toward a fire at the camp’s perimeter. “But I know from Haskell that you’re bound for a visit to your grandmother. From what I have heard of her, that could be heroic duty in and of itself. Let’s head to my fir
e, and I’ll give you some supper to fortify you.”
1 nodded, then frowned. “What you said about squaring your blood with mine—you knew my father?”
The one-eyed man looked back over his left shoulder and nodded. “Eat first, then talk later. Eirene has cooking duty today, so it won’t do to let her boil things down to mush “
All around us the caravan’s people settled into what had become a normal routine. Nestled in a hollow between two sets of hills and with guards at various sentry points, we felt safe from attack by bandits. Despite the thick pine forest surrounding the campsite and the possibility that it harbored highwaymen, I had heard speculation that our caravan was far too large for any one bandit group to attack anyway. The likelihood of several groups banding together had been dismissed out of hand, but Haskell still posted guards on the hilltops at night.
Mountain streams provided water for the caravan’s needs, and Haskell supervised the digging of waste pits so no one would foul the streams. The forest itself supplied plenty of fuel for cookfires and a couple of intrepid hunters wandered off to see if they could bag something more fresh and tasty than salted meats and grain. Beyond that, little or no order had been imposed on the camp.
The small campsite Roarke led me to had obviously been used before by other caravans. A circle of fire-blackened stones surrounded the crackling fire. A tripod of iron rods reached their apex above it, and a blackened pot hung from it, just above the flickering tongues of flame. Something in the pot bubbled and steamed. Though I had no idea what it was, my stomach rumbled as 1 caught scent of it.
Roarke stepped over his saddle and into the firelight. “Cruach, easy, boy.” Roarke held out a hand to stop my approach. “I have a hound that travels with me. He doesn’t take to strangers, so move slow and let him get used to you.” He squatted down and clapped his hands twice. “Come on, Cruach. Meet Lachlan.”
Out of the darkness bounded a huge hound with a broad, flat head and shaggy coat. In the mercurial light cast by the fire 1 thought the hound’s coat shimmered silver, but the beast silhouetted himself against the fire too quickly for me to tell for certain. I did see, in the hound’s shadowy head, two eyes full of Chaosfire and a mouth brimming with very big teeth.