Episode 7: Old School-fellows Episode 9: Dark Sage
Stubbornness strikes again! I would like to ‘win’ Camp Nanowrimo so I’m typing as fast as I possibly can while listening to GitS and Astebreed and the usual stuff. I think I can do it! I just have to finish like three more chapters. I got this.
Editing comes later. For now I’m pumping out words. *cranks Destruction of the Core*
Episode 8: Conscience Flying
He had arrived unnanounced at Lord Garlent’s estate on the edge of Ostia City, a short, thin teenager about sixteen years old, with nothing more than the clothes on his back and a letter of introduction in his pocket. He hovered a few hundred feet away from the front gate for more than an hour, trying to work up the nerve to go on, until a guardsman told him to get lost and blushing ferociously, headed for the entrance.
The tall footman looked at the letter of introduction, looked him up and down several times more than was strictly necessary, looked at the letter again, and walked away into the house with nothing more than a curt “wait here” which did nothing to sooth his nerves.
In a few minutes, he returned, and gestured for Ceniro to follow him, in out of the September wind at last. He was brought through tall passages to an austere study, dark grey with burgundy drapes and hard-looking ornate wooden furniture.
The famous Lord Garlent sat at his desk, writing busily. He didn’t look up as the footman escorted Ceniro in and left him there, afraid even to fidget as he stood ten feet away from the desk, an insignificant lump in the middle of this cold grandeur.
“So you’re Venedan’s star pupil,” Garlent said without looking up still. “You’re not much to look at, but we’ll see what we can make of you.”
Ceniro didn’t know if he was supposed to say anything, so remained silent.
Garlent looked sharply up at him. “Cat got your tongue, boy?”
“Yes sir- I mean, no, sir.”
Garlent snorted. “We’ll have to do something about that attitude if you’re going to be even a moderately good commander.”
What attitude? He wasn’t giving any attitude, not right now. “Yes, sir.”
Now Garlent sighed. “A strategist must always be confident, boy. Even when facing a new teacher. Be off with you; find your rooms. There’ll be some-” he looked Ceniro up and down, “-proper clothes there for you, too. Didn’t your scholarship extend to necessities like that?”
“No, sir.”
“Fine, then. Go away. Your training starts tomorrow.”
Ceniro turned and haltingly fled from the room, his heart beating fast. So that was one challenge down… now to find these ‘rooms’ he was supposed to be in. …And that meant probably asking someone. Terrifying.
But there were servants everywhere, even if they looked at him doubtfully. Maybe a girl would be less scary to ask…? No, definitely not, even if they weren’t so tall and imposing, a girl would be ten times more scary to ask. He found a male servant and asked for the student rooms. The servant looked skeptical, but gave him directions into a whole other wing of the castle.
Hoping fervently that they were the right directions and not a wild goose chase, he set off in that direction. He wasn’t afraid of getting lost. He had a pretty good sense of direction, even inside huge buildings that he’d never been in before.
He arrived at what looked like the right place, an arched corridor with thick blue carpet underfoot, a line of large, expensive windows on one side, and a line of thick wooden doors on the other. Now to find which one was his… Ah! There was another student! At least, he hoped he was another student. He was tall and imposing, with a stern, square-jawed face and a slightly cleft chin, short-cut chestnut hair, and a perpetual frown over brown eyes. He was dressed in fine clothes and carried a sword. But there was no one else in the corridor to ask, so…
“Um – um, e-excuse me-”
“What is it, sirrah? You appear to be lost. The servants’ quarters are in the other wing. Get going and I won’t tell the steward.”
“N-n-no, I’m, you see-”
“You bumbling yokel, I have no time for you. What is your name?”
“I-I’m a student here, too, um, I’m new…”
“A student?” If possible, the man’s face grew more thunderous. “You mock me, sirrah.”
“N-no, sir. I’m a transfer f-from Lord Venedan.”
“Impossible. The only students at the Academy are noble-born and you are nothing of the sort. Cease this prank immediately and get off to the servants’ quarters.”
Ceniro squared his shoulders and stood his ground. “I am a student! I have a scholarship! I just want to know where my room is!”
The other man had begun shouting back at him before he had even finished speaking, and probably didn’t hear the last part of his sentence. “What sort of fool do you take me for!?” His baritone voice was well-suited to shouting orders across a battlefield, Ceniro noted. “You mock the very vocation of strategist by your presence in this house! I will turn you into the street-”
“Hey!” yelled a woman’s voice, and they both turned to see a grey-haired girl coming out of another room. She wasn’t any taller than Ceniro, but her posture and clothes marked her as high-born, a magenta jacket and black tights. She looked annoyed, but that annoyance changed into surprise. “What’s all the yelling- oh, hi, you’re Ceniro, right? From Lord Venedan’s class! I remember you! I mean, you’re hard to forget, being the only non-noble there. So you made it!”
“Lady Renee, this is an outrage,” began the other man.
Renee shrugged. “He got good marks, Lord Milton. Really good, even. Why don’t you wait and see how he does here?”
“I am insulted,” hissed the man, and turned with a swirl of his cloak to stalk past Ceniro and down the hall towards the exit, bodychecking Ceniro on the way and sending him stumbling into the wall.
Renee was looking at him with a mixture of apology and curiosity. “He’s very proud, I think. Son of a duke of Bern, come here specifically to study with Lord Garlent… I got here yesterday, and talked a bit with him over dinner. He’s not so bad, really, but he’s the senior student here and I think he wants everyone to know it. So I guess keep out of his way.”
“Um.” Ceniro was too shell-shocked to say anything else. “Where’s my room?”
Renee rolled her eyes at him. “You’re on the end, right over there…”
“Ceniro?”
He blinked and came back to the present. Renee was leaning over him, grey hair falling over her face. “Hi?”
“The boat’s about ready to go. You having a moment, there?”
“Just remembering the first time I properly met you and Milton. I was such a mouse, then.”
“Yes, you are,” Renee said cheerfully. “Before that, too. You were always in the back of Lord Venedan’s classes like a loser.”
He laughed ruefully. “A bit.”
“Why did you join tactics classes?” Rigel asked. “How did you get there?”
“Scholarship,” Ceniro said. “I did so well in elementary school that I went for more school instead of taking an apprenticeship, and I did so well in that school that when I was fifteen, they paid for me to go to Ostia. They got a grant from Lord Helman, I think, since my grades were so good. I don’t really remember how I ended up in Lord Venedan’s class… but I don’t remember any of my other classes hooking me like that.”
The captain of the ship taking them to Fibernia signalled them, and Ceniro rose and got into line with the others to board the ship. They’d had to travel quietly through part of Etruria to reach the port of Massa, and Pent and Louise kept their heads covered while they journeyed. Hector had funded them for the first part of their journey and wished them luck finding Durban’s cave. Sain had stayed in Ostia, preparing to make the journey back to Caelin by himself, assuring them that he would be fine. “I am a bold knight of Caelin, and my passion and fire will see me through any obstacle in my path back to my most beautiful lady Salir! But I’m not expecting any trouble. It’s been a good year for that. Have fun on your adventure!”
“But your temperament,” Louise said. “If you were really so shy back then…”
“He was definitely shy,” Renee said. “Shy isn’t even the word for it. Snail-like, perhaps, hiding from everything and everyone.”
“And the danger! Didn’t you worry about how it would work out?”
“It did work out, though,” Andy said.
“It’s true,” Ceniro said. “On the one hand, I’d have to talk to actual people – tell them what to do, even. On the other hand, the intellectual side of it appealed to me very much! On the other other hand, there was always the risk of my companions or me getting killed…”
“Yes, you should stop with the ‘getting killed’ part,” Fiora said. “That’s at least twice you’ve almost done it. It’s very stressful for the rest of us.”
“Even more if you count the first time I met him,” Lyn said. “And probably more that we don’t know about.”
“There was that one time just in training!” Renee said. “I agree with Lady Fiora. Stop doing that.”
“Sorry,” Ceniro said. “But on the other other other hand, I’d hopefully get to travel, which was something that I was finding I wanted to do, and probably job security as well. But it took me forever to figure out the mercenary angle, didn’t it?”
“Everyone else in our class was going to work for Marquesses and lords,” Renee said. “I can’t say I blame you for thinking that was the only real career option.”
“I almost figured it out when I joined Lyn,” Ceniro said, smiling at his girlfriend, “but then she turned out to be nobility as well so I didn’t quite put the pieces together.”
“You silly!” Lyn cried, and the ship cast off from the dock and they headed out into the foggy waters to Fiburnia.
The Western Isles were colder than most of the rest of Elibe, excepting perhaps Ilia, even in the height of summer. Still, Ceniro had never been, and looked around at the unfamiliar landscape with eager eyes. The landscape was mountainous, but old, worn mountains, craggy from the abuse of wind and weather; it was mostly brown with dry grasses, on which sheep grazed freely. There were few trees, at least on the road up to Jutes, the capital, where they were going to begin their search for Durban’s cave. But there were many icy-cold streams and small ponds, reflecting the sky with a silvery gleam. The locals were so odd, compared to what Ceniro had experienced on the rest of the continent. They were tough and hardy, which was hardly unusual in itself, but then with their accent, and the strange clothes they wore – everyone seemed to be wearing skirts, even the men.
In fact, the accents reminded him of Bartre. Was Bartre from the Western Isles?
Jutes was not a very large city, but they entered it without any fuss and stayed there for a couple nights while Ceniro and Pent used the farseer’s records and the city records to try to locate Durban’s cave. Hector hadn’t seen much of the countryside outside of the cave, in fact, only the briefest of glimpses, and Ceniro felt like he shouldn’t be too jealous that Hector had been able to visit the Isles before he had. Hector would probably never get the chance again, either, which would have made Ceniro a little sad, except that he knew Hector had no real interest in wandering like he did. The marquess didn’t mind staying in his homeland of Ostia, as long as he occasionally got to see his close friends and have a good fight now and then.
But Ceniro was enjoying himself, despite his lingering worry over the Legendary Weapons and Milton’s knowledge of them.
On the second day, Pent decided they should head west from Jutes and hope for the best. “Your records show that the cave is highly sulphurous, and that could be a number of places in the mountain range about three days’ journey from here.”
“You’re also enjoying this,” Ceniro accused him.
Pent smiled as he bounced Klein on his knee. “Of course I am. It’s starting to properly remind me of when we were searching for the jewel. Of course, we won’t get much of a chance to do more research here – the library is not extensive at all, and there’s only one here. It seems most local knowledge is passed on by word of mouth, through folktales and stories, and that’s the sort of research that takes even longer to decipher than the regular ‘I have no idea what this book says but I think it’s important’ research.”
“I see,” Ceniro said, even though he didn’t really. “Well, maybe we’ll get to do more research in… Ilia? I doubt Sacae has more written records of Murgleis, but the Ilians might know something of Maltet.”
“I hope so,” Pent said. “And isn’t Canas from Ilia? Perhaps we can look him up, or even his mother Niime! I’m sure he can help us.”
Ceniro smiled at Pent’s enthusiasm. “That would be great, but we have a long way to go before Ilia.”
“I know,” Pent said. “But we can set out tomorrow, rain or shine.” Klein burbled and Pent looked down, taking Klein’s tiny hands gently in his own and waving them back and forth.
Wil burst into their room, closely followed by Erk and Caddie. The first two looked excited, while Caddie just looked confused. “Ceniro! You’ll never guess who we just met!”
“Bartre,” Ceniro guessed, and was rewarded with Wil’s deflated look.
“How did you know?”
“I was thinking earlier, his accent sounded like the people here. Where is he?”
“He’s downstairs, we brought him back from the marketplace with us, and guess who’s with him?”
“Karla,” Pent guessed, and Wil laughed ruefully.
“I guess that’s not a big surprise. So I kind of told them we were on a quest, and they offered to come with us.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Ceniro said. “Let’s go talk to them!”
“Who are these people?” Caddie asked.
“Friends of ours from the journey last year,” Erk assured him.
“Ceniro!” Bartre boomed when Ceniro came down the stairs. “What brings you out to my lonely old corner of Elibe? Some kind of quest, hey?”
“It’s nice to see you again,” Karla said quietly, still as graceful a contrast as ever to Bartre’s recklessness.
“Yes, that’s exactly right. It’s nice to see you again, too! I didn’t really realize you were from the Western Isles until I got here. How have you been?”
“We’ve been fine,” Karla said. “We heard about you in Sacae, but our paths never crossed.”
“You were in Sacae too?” Lyn asked.
“We went there to see the place, since Karlie’s from there,” Bartre said. “Not really my kind of place. It’s… too open.”
“I would have thought it was very similar to here,” Lyn teased. “Lots of sky, lots of grass, lots of wind…”
“Yeah, but there’s too much sky. Even where there’s hills, the hills aren’t the same. And there’s lots of grass, but it smells different and there aren’t any sheep. And there’s lots of wind, but it’s not the cold, clear, bracing air of freedom!”
Lyn snorted. “It smells plenty free enough to me.”
Karla smiled. “And to me. But while my brother and his apprentice stayed in Sacae, we came here, so that I could see Bartre’s home. It’s been… very interesting.”
“I bet,” Wil said.
“How’s your duel coming?” Fiora asked.
Karla and Bartre looked at each other. “Um,” Bartre said sheepishly.
“We haven’t really duelled in a few months,” Karla said. “We fight sometimes, yes, but that’s a different story.”
Lyn giggled. “I bet it is. But I guess you’re still tied, then?”
“We’re pretty tied, yeah,” Bartre said, and Lyn giggled harder. “What? I don’t get it. We’ll pick it up again in a bit, now that you’ve reminded us. Anyway, to important things! You want some extra muscle on your journey?”
“We wouldn’t mind at all,” Ceniro said, smiling. “You’re most welcome to join us. We’re going to be heading west tomorrow, to the mountains. We’ll explain then.”
“Today we’re going to be doing exercises,” Garlent said to his three pupils, all lined up in a row. Ceniro’s clothes were a lot nicer than he had any right to be wearing, and they weren’t patched anywhere, but they were too big for him and he felt clumsy. “You’ll each get to fight two matches; we’ll do one now and two in the afternoon. Milton, Ceniro, you two will be first up.”
Ceniro froze, eyes wide, trying not to scream. His very first training battle for real, with real people and not just advanced chess, against the senior student who already hated him? He was going to be crushed utterly. Even at his best, this was all so new, he didn’t know what he was doing, he could try to defeat Milton’s people but Milton already knew what he was doing…
Garlent was oblivious to Ceniro’s shock, or ignored it, and so did the others. “Right, on back to the yard with you.”
Because Lord Garlent’s estate was on the edge of town, just outside the main wall of the city, even, he had a large field that he called the ‘yard’. Because of his position as a master strategist and a teacher of strategists, he maintained a small army of soldiers and mercenaries, some of whom were permanent employees of his house, some of whom worked for a time and then left again.
Milton and Ceniro called their soldiers, alternating between them, and Milton snorted disdainfully after half of Ceniro’s decisions. Well, it wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know who fought well yet!
They deployed, and Ceniro dithered over whether he should use his usual mid-range formation or go with the tight wedge of soldiers that Milton had set up already. Milton was muttering under his breath by the time Ceniro said he was ready.
Garlent blew a whistle, and Milton immediately began barking orders; his forces began to advance on Ceniro’s in an orderly, purposeful fashion. Ceniro’s soldiers shifted impatiently, unable to move by Garlent’s rules until Ceniro gave orders.
Ceniro swallowed, trying not to hyperventilate, trying to remember how to tell these people what to do. This was so different from chess, he couldn’t see anything, and he himself counted as a combatant so he had to be on the field where he couldn’t see anything, and he was going to get killed really quickly… “Um, so, um, let’s…”
“Act!” Garlent shouted down at him. “Act! Do something, anything, and let’s see what you’re made of!”
Right now, he was made of jelly, but he managed to give something resembling orders. “Um, ah, you guys move forwards, and, um, can you guys, um, maybe move over to the left…”
Then Milton’s units were charging his own, tagging his soldiers out with ruthless efficiency. Ceniro cried out as he was knocked down by a big man with a huge shield and tagged out.
Garlent blew his whistle again. “What was that, boy!? You call that a strategy?”
Ceniro got up, ego and body bruised. “We never had live exercises in class!” he shouted.
“Is that how you speak to Lord Garlent, you worthless scum!?” Milton cried.
“Shut up, Milton,” Garlent said. “I still have no idea how you perform, boy, so you’d better impress me in your match against Renee this afternoon. In any case, we’re obviously going to have to start from the beginning with you. Go see the medic for that head wound and get lunch.”
Humiliated, Ceniro stumbled off the field, ignoring Milton’s disdainful glare.
There was some time between lunch – he ate very little and was done very quickly – and his match with Renee, so he went down to the soldier barracks. If he wasn’t going to wash out on day one of the thing he really wanted to do, he’d have to take some initiative.
He hated initiative. But initiative made a good strategist, right?
There were enough soldiers hanging around outside their barracks that he didn’t have to go inside to talk to any of them. Some of them saw him coming, and snickered to each other, but he doggedly kept going.
“You want something, sir?” asked one of the soldiers, a fairly young man, maybe his own age. And he didn’t seem to be sneering the way some of the older ones were.
“I, um, hi.” How to explain…? “I want to know more about the fighters here, so I can do better this afternoon. I’m really sorry about this morning.”
The young soldier shrugged. “It’s your first day. I guess it’s not really your thing, huh?”
“No, I want to do this, but I… wasn’t prepared. So now I’m preparing. So, um, if you don’t mind, can you tell me about yourself?”
“Haha! What’s there to tell? My name’s Fernandez, I’m eighteen years old, and I fight with the lance. I’m not very good yet, I’m training under Captain Horton over there. He’s really good. He fights with the lance and axe. Is that the kind of thing you want to know, sir?”
“Yes, please,” Ceniro said. “Maybe can you introduce me to some people? It will make it easier to give… orders.”
“Man, you really are shy, aren’t you, sir? How old are you?”
Ceniro blushed and ducked his head. “Sixteen.”
“Wow. You’re pretty young, and you’re- you’re not a lord, like most of the students I hear go through here. Okay, so where to start? Well, I guess with the people I know!”
Ceniro spent the next hour just learning the names of the people he would be working with, trying to figure out who he ought to take, bearing in mind that Renee would get to pick half of them. He had also been thinking about what happened in the morning, where Milton had put his units, how to avoid getting immediately pulverized again. Renee would have a completely different style, he knew, but the more thinking he did at this point, the better.
Too soon, it was time for match number two.
“Good luck!” Renee called from across the field. “Fight hard! I’m not going to go easy on you, you know!”
“O-okay,” Ceniro said, deploying his people a bit differently than in the morning in response to what she had put down. Garlent raised his eyebrows before he blew his whistle.
He lasted longer this time, and had actually managed to make some rudimentary semblance of an encirclement, taking out maybe a third of Renee’s troops, before he ran out of enough people to fight effectively with – and then like before, it turned into a bit of a ‘slaughter’. He got hit by a padded arrow and flinched. Garlent called an end.
This time, the look he turned on Ceniro was not so harsh. “Not bad. I see you used your time wisely. You have potential and we’ll get it out of you yet. You may go.”
Ceniro nodded awkwardly and turned to go while Garlent congratulated Renee and told her to prepare for her match against Milton.
She caught up to him a minute later. “Hey, you didn’t freeze up this time, nice. Here.” She thrust something towards him, he took it blindly, and she ran off.
It was a cookie, wrapped in a napkin. For the first time that day, a smile crept over his face, and he munched on it happily.
It turned out to be raining the next day, which was fairly normal for the Western Isles. They set off anyway, cloaks wrapped around them, and kept to the road for the day. “People are a bit territorial around here,” Bartre said. “You wander onto someone’s grazing grounds for their sheep, they’re as likely to shoot you or stab you as anything. It might not look like much, but… it’s home to someone, and they don’t like strangers.”
“I like the view,” Ceniro said. “I don’t think it ‘doesn’t look like much’, personally.”
“Even in this rain?” Erk asked, sneezing.
“Yes,” Ceniro said. “It makes everything look like it’s covered in a silver veil.”
“That’s a right fancy way to put it,” Bartre said. “Never heard this place described so pretty, really.”
“You speak truly, Ceniro,” Karla said. “And when you say those things, it reminds me to look around as well, to see this place as it truly is. To see this place as the people who live here must see it.”
“I don’t think we see it like that,” Bartre said. “It’s raining and mucky. But it’s our rain, dammit!”
Karla smiled. “If you say so.”
They hiked higher into the mountains, and the rain stayed grey and cold all day. It rained through the night and was still raining the next day, when Bartre finally let them leave the path to explore the mountains for Durban’s cave. But around noon, it began to clear up, until at last they saw the edge of the cloud heading eastwards and the sun burst from the edge of it, lighting up the entire landscape in brilliant gold against the still-dark clouds in the distance. There was a double rainbow.
“That’s good luck!” Wil cried.
“So pretty,” Florina said, holding his hand for a moment, and he put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed.
Ceniro wasn’t much help in the search; he couldn’t help looking out over the valleys they had come from, surveying the view with wonder and appreciation. The cold wind rustled the damp grasses, and sheep bleated in the distance, and the constantly changing clouds cast ever-shifting shadows against the sun-spotted ground in the distance. Pent took the farseer from him and threatened to leave him behind if he dawdled too long.
Ceniro just grinned. “This is why I travel. You go do your thing. I’ll catch up.”
“I’ll call you if we need you,” Pent said cheerfully, and left him and Lyn standing on a ledge on the mountainside.
Lyn took his hand. “Good thing we had to come, huh?”
“Yeah. It’s beautiful. I’m glad I got to see this. It should really be a painting. But you’d need someone who can paint really fast… I don’t know how painting works.”
“Neither do I,” Lyn said. “Sacaean art doesn’t tend towards capturing moments in that way. It’s much more symbolic. We don’t do… landscapes like Etrurians do.”
Ceniro forbore to make a crack about how Sacaean landscapes would all look the same anyway. “Well, Etruria has some nice views too. I’ll take you to see some when we go in search of Aureola.”
“This is all a big holiday for you, isn’t it?” she teased.
“Sure! I’m the laziest person in Elibe. All I do is walk around and look at stuff.” The rainbow was fading, and he reluctantly turned to continue up the mountainside, still holding her hand.
Lyn laughed. “You do a tiny bit more than that. Sometimes you yell stuff or point at stuff.”
He laughed in return. “There might be some of that involved. Wow, how far ahead did Pent get? I can’t see them at all-”
“Hello, Ceniro!” said Pent’s voice in his ear, and he jumped about a foot.
“That is really disconcerting,” Ceniro said. “How do you guys stand it when I do it to you?”
“Practice,” Lyn and Pent said at the same time, and Ceniro heard a chorus of other voices through what must be the farseer’s magic.
“Fair enough,” he said with a chuckle. “So how do I find you?”
“We found the cave,” Pent said. “I’ll guide you in. Haha, I am the master tactician now, aren’t I, Klein?”
Ceniro and Lyn giggled as they moved faster to join up with their friends again.
“Well, I mean, if you don’t accomplish your objective, what’s the point?” Renee said, sitting on the wall overlooking the yard with him. “There’s a term called ‘acceptable losses’, you know.” They had just got out of one of Lord Garlent’s informal lectures about five months after that first day and had much to talk about. Milton had heard the lecture before and left them to their own devices.
“I don’t like that term,” Ceniro argued. “All those people in the army, they all have a reason to join up, no matter what it is, or who they are. They’re trusting me to be responsible with their lives.”
“They’re all prepared to die if necessary,” Renee said. “Doesn’t mean that it is necessary, always, but sometimes, what if you have to choose between losing part of your army and losing part of your lord’s territory?”
“Well, I’d do neither,” Ceniro said.
Renee giggled. “That’s not possible. You’re fighting against someone who has the opposite goals. They’ll be trying as hard as they can to kill your people and prevent you from achieving your main objective, and then you’ll be trying really hard not just to kill their people, and achieve your objective, but to save every one of your people. That’s crazy!”
“I know it sounds crazy…”
“It is crazy! So you just have to be efficient with what you have so you don’t lose too many. Did you skip that day of Lord Venedan’s class?”
“No, I heard him, I just refuse to accept it.”
“Interesting,” said an old voice behind them, and they turned to see Lord Garlent had snuck up on them. “You really think you can do that? No other tactician has managed to keep every single soldier alive in all of history, not even the Hero Hartmut, not even our Roland.”
“I don’t know if I can actually do it,” Ceniro admitted. “But it seems like the most important thing. I mean, if you lose a really good soldier, then you could have used him later and can’t.”
“So you try not to lose the good ones,” Renee said. “That’s why there are so many infantry units in an army! They’re supposed to – You already know all of this, this is basic, I’m not going to teach you what you should already know.”
“Oh, he knows it,” Garlent said. “Both of you are well past that point. I’m only curious as to how you think you will accomplish this perfect survival rate while also being an effective tactician. I note that you can’t yet accomplish it in practice.”
Ceniro blushed. It was true he still lost on a regular basis, and even when he won he was usually missing half his army, even in chess. But since they’d all been getting more personal attention from Lord Garlent, he’d been improving substantially – and yet he still had so far to go before he was anywhere as good as the master.
Or Milton. The arrogant knight truly hated him, or so it felt, and took every opportunity to shove him or kick him whenever he was within arm’s reach, usually with a muttered epithet. Ceniro tried very hard not to be within arm’s reach, because he much preferred the stony refusal of acknowledgement that Milton gave him the rest of the time. Milton still beat him every time, just as Lord Garlent himself did – Renee had won twice against him so far, and the only person who could defeat him regularly was Lord Garlent, although even he didn’t win every time. For all his faults, Milton did work hard…
“Well?” Garlent asked, and Ceniro realized that he was supposed to respond.
“Um, well…”
“Stop beginning all your sentences with ‘um’!” Garlent cried, exasperated.
Ceniro flinched and narrowly avoided doing it again. “I’m going to keep getting better. I’m getting more familiar with a lot of the soldiers, how they fight, and it’s really helping me.”
“So it’s familiarity with your troops that brings success, eh?” Garlent asked with a look from under his brows. “I’ll have to bring in more to shake things up.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Renee said. “Ooh, can you get pegasus knights, master?”
“Pegasus knights are expensive and capricious, girl. Yes, if you can get one, they’ll fight for you as loyally as any knight – but it’s getting them to stay in one place that’s the problem.”
“But I like my units,” Ceniro muttered.
“You stick too long with the same lot, you’ll grow stagnant,” Garlent barked. “If you’re going to have this absurd goal, or even if you don’t, you need to learn how to quickly assess your forces both new and old. I’ll show you. Come with me, we’re going mercenary shopping!”
Renee’s face lit up. “Right now? Elimine be praised, how exciting!”
“Okay,” Ceniro said, but he was kind of excited too. This was something new.
Pent had finished the sealing ritual on Armads, now laid on an altar at the back of a sickly-yellow cave that stank of rotten eggs. Ceniro wondered how Hector could stand it, dimly recalling his disheveled appearance when he had returned from his trip with Lord Athos the year before. And he’d had to fight ghosts through this? Alone, without even the moral support of his friends…
Hector was tough. That had always been clear, but it was even clearer now.
Ceniro was glad when he came to the entrance of the cave and saw blue sky again and felt the cold, clear air on his face. The cave was a lot warmer, but Erk and Florina had almost passed out from the fumes, and Rigel had to practice using her new staff on them.
Right as he took a step out of the cave, rejoining Louise, Klein, and George, the farseer pinged.
He looked around, glanced at it, and looked further down the mountainside. “We have company, I believe. Did we annoy someone by crossing their land?”
Bartre squinted at them. “Hard to say. They don’t exactly look like they’re from around here, though…”
“Because they’re not wearing skirts?” Caddie asked, unrepentant when Bartre glowered at him.
“He’s right,” Frank said. “Some of those are from Bern. But does that mean anything?”
“They’re heading right for us,” Ceniro said. “Let’s go talk to them. Although…”
“They’re really close to the cave,” Pent said in a low voice. “If they find it and tell others, well… too many prying eyes and even my efforts won’t hold up. If they’re hostile, we might have to wipe them out.”
Ceniro sighed with a grimace. “What a waste. But you’re right.” He raised his voice. “Hello! Who are you?”
“Who are you, rather?” called back the captain of that group. “That’s Pent Reglay, going by the alias ‘Rowan’ with the Near Elite Company!”
“The what now?” Andy asked. “Get it right! It’s Ceniro, not ‘Near’!”
“Whatever you’re called, it doesn’t matter,” said the captain. “Reglay’s bounty is big enough you ought to be called The Walking Purses!”
“Clever,” Pent said drily. “I’d say that solves our dilemma for us, doesn’t it, Ceniro?”
“I agree,” Ceniro said, and flexed his arms. “Right, here’s what we do…”
Lord Garlent had been unable to hire pegasus knights for his private army, but the new soldiers he did hire made things complicated again for Ceniro for a while as he had to quickly learn what they were capable of. He couldn’t do it at a glance like Lord Garlent, but then, Lord Garlent was in his mid-seventies. He had plenty of experience to do it so well. Ceniro needed to gain his own experience…
…And as quickly as possible, as today they were going on a field trip into the north of Ostia, to a mountain pass leading into the south of Etruria. There was a small castle at the top of the pass, they had been told, and they had been given maps to help them prepare their strategies for when they got there.
Lord Garlent, Renee, and Milton were all riding in a carriage, but Ceniro insisted on walking along with the other soldiers. He mostly walked alongside Fernandez, who was still friendly to him, no matter what the others said.
“Are you sure you want to walk?” Renee had asked. “The roads aren’t going to be great on foot.”
“Yes, really,” he said. “I walked to Ostia from Santaruz. You really get to see more on foot.”
“I see most on a horse,” she said. “Your words are tempting, but… I’m better at fighting with my lance than I am at walking all day. You can walk for three days. Your feet are going to be awfully sore at the end of it. I’ll be all fresh, and I’ll beat you when we get there!”
“No more sore than anyone else’s walking with me,” he answered. “And we’ll see who beats whom when we get there!”
“Useless peasant,” Milton muttered as he passed nearby. “You’re not good for anything other than walking.”
Ceniro rolled his eyes behind Milton’s back, and Renee shrugged before following Milton off to the carriage.
And now, three days later, they had arrived at Tanquet Pass, with its white-shining mountains. Ceniro headed off to the side of the group, where he wasn’t blocked by all the taller men, where he could see the view off to the east of the road. It was truly spectacular.
They turned a corner and his steps slowed to a stop, his mouth falling open as he stared frankly.
A crystalline lake lay blue and serene under the winter sky, glittering under the low sun. And darting back and forth across the top of it were pegasus knights, soaring, diving, spinning through the air, engaged in the sort of aerial acrobatics that only pegasi were capable of, white wings flashing and spears and swords sparkling in the sun.
“What did you stop for?” Fernandez asked curiously, noticing he’d fallen behind and coming back to him.
Ceniro spread his arms wide. “Just… look at this. Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
Fernandez shrugged, smiled. “Not me, but you go right ahead and look at it. I’ll just make sure no one jumps us, okay?”
“Okay,” Ceniro said breathlessly, not really listening, just drinking everything in.
That did it. He wanted to be a tactician, a tactician who traveled. If something this beautiful was just in Ostia, a place not renowned for its beauty or natural wonders, imagine how beautiful the whole world was!