Silver Dragon Page 8

  "Stumpy?" Namitus echoed.

  Mordrim glared at the barbarian. "Mind your tongue, boy, or I'll cut you off at the knees. Who's to be the stumpy one then?"

  "I'm more likely to trip over you," Garrick said.

  Mordrim placed his helm on his head and adjusted it, and then growled and took three steps before lowering his helm and jamming the studded steel straight into the furs over Garrick's loins.

  The barbarian's breath exploded from his mouth. He stumbled back and reached for himself, but not before he fell to his knees. He teetered forward and fell off to the side, rolling on his shoulder and curling into a ball.

  Mordrim stood tall and turned back to Patrina. "I stand ready, my lady."

  Garrick overheard the slight but when he tried to move and regain his feet, he could only manage a groan.

  "Ah, here's someone to talk sense into you all," Kar said when Tristam approached the table.

  The leader of the Blades walked around Garrick, staring at him the entire while. Mordrim smiled and tapped his helmet in greeting, earning a laugh from Namitus. "What's this?"

  "She thinks she can pray to the Saint of Lust and receive guidance to the boy," Kar was quick to advise.

  "Syllenia is the patron saint of love and romance!" Patrina refuted.

  Kar raised an eyebrow and gave her a look that said she'd argued his point as well as her own.

  "We can't just wander around the countryside hoping we'll find him," Tristam argued.

  Patrina sniffed. "I'll be paying you."

  "Been a while since I've had some fresh air and wind in my face." Tristam changed his tune. "I think we could all do with a little exercise."

  Kar threw his hands up in the air. "Fine, I'll go, but only to make sure you don't get my boy killed."

  "Father, I'm neither a boy nor incapable of defending myself," the priest reminded him.

  Kar waved it away. "Last time I took a nap, they tried to do you under. Somebody's got to watch out for you. I guess it falls to me since there's no one else."

  Karthor rolled his eyes before turning to look at Garrick. "Breathe through it," the priest said. "Priest or not, I'm not laying my hands on that wound!"

  Chapter 7

  Aleena stood at attention outside Sir Amos's door. Her body hurt in ways that even the daily training couldn't provide. She'd glimpsed her face; her eye was a rainbow of gruesome colors and her nose and lip were swollen. That was just her face—the rest of her body felt as though she'd been run over by a coach drawn by a team of horses.

  The other recruits had all gone before her, one at a time, into Sir Amos's chambers. Each had come back out, save for Celos. She wondered why he hadn't been released. When the others exited and walked past her, they did so with their heads held up. Only Durak had turned his head just enough to offer her a wink as he walked out.

  The door opened, allowing Recruit William to walk past her as though she didn't exist. Aleena drew in a breath to strengthen her already stiff shoulders and walked into the priest's office. Sir Amos sat behind his desk while Celos stood to the side of it, facing him.

  "Recruit Aleena," Sir Amos greeted her. She stiffened even more and stared above him towards the symbol of Leander on the wall behind the priest. "You performed admirably at the testing so soon after beginning your training. However, you have failed every challenge."

  Aleena kept her desire to wince inside. She blinked when her vision blurred, but otherwise forced herself to behave like a statue.

  "Several of the other priests have called for your dismissal. They doubted my wisdom in allowing you to train and again in allowing you to test. Now they believe they have the proof that they need. Their concerns are in your best interests. Tell me, Aleena, what do you think of this?"

  Aleena blinked again, surprised at being given the chance to voice her thoughts. Or was she? Was it a formality? Was she out no matter what she said? Aleena looked up to the holy symbol behind Sir Amos again. She drew strength from the painted rays of sunlight and clasped her left fist over her heart.

  "Saint Leander, I have followed and admired You from afar for all of my life. It was only in these last two weeks that I have come to learn of You beyond the words of one of Your chosen priests. This time of training and learning has been the most rewarding of my life, and I pray that You will allow me to continue to pledge my service to You. Through serving You, I have found my troubles eased and my life made simple. I believe that I can best serve You as one of your chosen Knights, but I will continue to serve in whatever fashion You deem fit."

  Sir Amos nodded his head when Aleena lapsed into silence. She closed her eyes and dropped her head as was the proper ritual for a prayer to Saint Leander. Her arm fell to her side and she opened her eyes to look at the priest again.

  "The other priests do have your best interests at heart, Aleena," he repeated. "I admire and respect that, but I have a different calling. On my heart weighs the heavy weight of the church of Saint Leander. We live in troubled times where lip service is played to the saints but true believers are fewer and farther between. Those who would devote their lives to the ideals and principles embodied by the saints come to us less and less often. There are no temples to Leander or any other saints to the north. Small shrines exist in villages and cities, but the priests lack the divine might granted to accomplished priests. I believe that you can help with that."

  "What?" Aleena slipped and asked. She clamped her mouth shut, mortified at her lack of discipline. Sir Amos's lips rose in a ghost of a smile that disappeared just as quickly.

  "I may be doing you a disservice, Aleena, but I wish you to continue your training. I wish you to succeed and one day become a Knight of Leander. Word of your rise will spread far and you can inspire the people of the northern reaches. Remind them that Leander will champion us all, not just the privileged or holy. You must work harder and longer than your fellow recruits. You must be able to run farther and faster. Strike truer and endure more. You must be forged into the finest weapon the church has seen in hundreds of years, if not ever. And the forging will be painful. Will you agree to this?"

  Patrina slammed her hand over her heart again. "I will, Sir Amos. I won't let you down again."

  "You haven't let me down yet," he said with a sad smile. "Squire Celos has passed the testing and become my squire. He will assist me in training the recruits, but his true job is to push you to become the best trainee ever seen. You have six months. If you do not rise to the ranks of a squire at the next testing, I will be forced to dismiss you for the good of the church and for your own good."

  Aleena nodded. "I will make you proud of me, Sir Amos."

  Amos smiled. "Make yourself proud, recruit. You have already shown me earlier today that you have a fire burning in you hot enough to temper the hardest of steels."

  Aleena slammed her fist to her chest again and left Sir Amos's office. She walked back to the barracks without feeling any of her pains. The other recruits looked up as she entered. One bunk, the one that had belonged to a young man named Rorin, had already been emptied.

  Aleena walked past them without a word, heading straight for her bunk. She slipped behind the sheets and took the healer's robes they'd given her as a dress uniform off. She folded the robes and put them in her trunk, and then pulled out the pants and shirt she wore when training.

  "Hey, how did your—" Durak's words were choked off by a strangled gasp as he rounded the sheet and saw Aleena pulling her pants over her hips.

  Aleena jumped and covered her chest with her arms. The young man stared at her, mouth agape as they both were unable to get past the awkward moment. "Close your mouth, you look a fool," Aleena said when she realized he was stricken senseless and unlikely to move. She sighed and lowered her arms as she turned away. She grabbed her shirt and pulled it on, and then tied the laces to tighten it and added a belt around her waist.

  When she turned, Durak was gone. She smirked and put her boots on, and then hurried back out of the barracks
and down the hall. The other recruits stared at her in utter silence as she passed them. Durak was focused on his own trunk, keeping his back to her. It didn't matter what they thought of her anymore. Her task was to pass the test. The other trainees could only help her work towards that. Either they would try to make it difficult and thus make her stronger or they would work with her and help her become stronger.

  But for now, with her body drained and trying to recover, there was only one thing she could think of to do. She was going to run that obstacle course again.

  * * * *

  True to his word, Sir Amos set Celos to make her life miserable. The very first day of training, the recruits were tasked with striking straw dummies with their weapons. They were not given armor to wear for the exercise.

  "Aren't we beyond this?" Aleena hissed to Durak while they grabbed swords and maces.

  "Every testing cycle they start over. They believe a gifted recruit can learn it in one pass, but they allow four if you don't make a fool of yourself," he answered.

  "Durak!" Celos pointed at a dummy near him. "Be silent and take this practice dummy. Perhaps it can teach you how to wield that sword where everyone else has failed."

  Aleena opened her mouth to protest. She'd been the one to ask him a question. Durak saw her and shook his head, silencing her. She relented but shot a dark glare at Celos. There was no cause for him to act that way towards his friends. They'd shared sweat and blood. Together! Now that he was a squire, he was suddenly that much better than they were?

  "Recruit Aleena, take this dummy beside me. It's fat enough even you shouldn't be able to miss it."

  Aleena stiffened at his jibe. She narrowed her eyes and walked over to the appointed target and waited for the command to begin. All the while she imagined Celos's smirking face on the dummy.

  The bell rang a few moments later, announcing that they were to begin practicing thrusts with their swords. Aleena ground her teeth and went through the motions and thrust at the dummy. She buried the point of her blade in the target four times before Celos slapped her sword aside with his own.

  "Recruit, why are you wasting our time?" Celos barked at her.

  Aleena glared at him. "I'm stabbing the target, as ordered, squire."

  "That's what stabbing means to you?" Celos asked. "Looked like you were poking him to see if he'd been cooked long enough. You tickle a man in a battle like that and he's going to know you belong in a kitchen! Now do it again!"

  Aleena took a deep breath through her nose that made her entire body shake. She wanted to throttle the squire. Aleena turned her anger on the wood and straw target and raised her sword. Her next three lunges punched the training weapon through the densely packed straw but left her winded and weak. She reset herself for a fourth and risked a glance at Celos.

  He shook his head and showed a sneer of disgust. "You'll be feared by all the unarmed peasants in the north with strikes like that."

  She turned her attention back to the dummy and clenched the grip of the sword tightly in her hand. With her arm all but locked in position, she lunged forward, intent on striking through the dummy's chest. The momentum of her lunge twisted her thrust and brought it down so that she barely grazed the target at the hip.

  Celos turned away. He looked back at her and said, "Do yourself a favor and quit to avoid the embarrassment of a second failed testing."

  Aleena realized a moment later that she was staring at Squire Celos with her mouth hanging open. He thought she should quit? She clamped her mouth shut and glanced at Durak's dummy. She watched him drive his sword into the dummy three times, each of the strikes going in deep but not emerging behind it. They were well-placed strikes, spearing what would have been the heart or at least the lungs. Aleena's target sported belly, hip, and thigh wounds.

  After several more minutes of attacking her dummy with little improvement, the bell rung. They switched to slashing attacks. This time Aleena was more critical of herself. The first few cuts were soft and she knew it. She fought past the pain in her arm and forced more power into the swings. The dummy suffered for it, but she couldn't hit the same place twice, let alone the part of the straw body she was aiming for. She looked for Celos and saw him shake his head and turn away.

  The sword practice ended but rather than having a rest, they started with their maces. Aleena groaned when she picked the heavy weapon up. There was no finesse and great skill here; the mace was not a gentleman's club. It was designed to break bones or shatter and bend armor. She used hers to pound the straw dummy until her wrist and hand ached in ways she hadn't thought possible.

  Staggering and gasping, she struck the dummy as hard as she could and felt the mace rebound when it hit the wooden pole the dummy was mounted on. The weapon rebounded and slipped from her grasp to roll across the ground. Aleena scrambled after it, forgetting her exhaustion. Losing her weapon was proof even to her that she might be better off waiting tables.

  Celos stepped on the shaft of the mace as she grabbed it, trapping her hand underneath it. She looked up in time for her vision to be blotted out by a shield rushing down to smash into her head and shoulders. She cried out as she was driven to the ground by the strike.

  Aleena rested on the floor for a moment, fighting to keep the room from spinning around her and forcing to spew her breakfast onto the tiles. She spat blood and started to raise herself up on arms that felt like they were cast from solid lead.

  "Stay down," Celos taunted her. "Drop your weapon in a fight and you expect to be allowed to live? The only mercy you'll find will be to be taken back and used as a whore for your enemies! You'll never be a knight. You shouldn't even be allowed to use knives in a kitchen."

  Aleena let out a sob as Celos put his foot between her shoulders and pushed her back down to the ground.

  "That's it for today. I've seen what you can, and can't, do. Take the rest of the day for prayer, reflection, or to pack up your things," Celos called out to them. He turned and walked away, exiting the training room and leaving it in silence.

  Durak rushed over to her once the door shut. "Are you all right?"

  Aleena nodded as bloody spittle drooled from her mouth to the floor.

  "You look a sight," he said. Two of the other recruits looked on while the rest were returning their weapons and looking anywhere but at Aleena.

  "Why does he hate me?" Aleena asked.

  "I don't think he hates you," Durak said after a moment.

  Aleena knew he was supposed to go hard on her, but this wasn't beneficial; this was cruel. Hateful and abusive, even. She rose up and wiped the blood from her lips. "Show me how to fight," she said.

  "What?" Durak glanced at her dummy.

  "He said I don't know how to fight. Show me what I'm doing wrong."

  "I don't know what you're doing wrong!" he protested. "I've failed my testing twice. I'm not sure I'm the best man to ask."

  "Then who is? You're the best warrior among us now that Celos is gone."

  Durak frowned. He looked around and found that the other recruits had escaped, leaving only the two of them in the training room. He sighed. "All right, show me how you strike. Lunges first."

  Aleena grinned, showing teeth colored red from blood. She grabbed her sword up and focused on the dummy. Her body was tired but it didn't matter anymore. Tired or not, she wasn't going to let Celos belittle her like that again.

  They spent the next hour with Durak offering tips on how to wield the sword and mace. He showed her what worked for him and they tried to come up with ways to use her smaller frame to invent moves that would work for her. Aleena couldn't generate the force that Durak was capable of but she was quicker and more agile.

  She learned that she'd been striking too hard and exhausting herself. A thrust that buried her blade into her opponent was no more effective than one that pierced the body. Putting that much force into a lunge made it not only tiring, but also wild and inaccurate. By the time Durak convinced her enough was enough, she was beyond exhauste
d. Her body was tingling and each step she took made her feel as though she would either float off the ground or collapse onto it.

  "Why are you grinning?" Durak asked her.

  "I won't let him beat me," Aleena said. "I have a friend who is a great warrior. I watched him when he barely knew how to hold a sword and now he has become a champion and a hero. I saw how he was beaten and laughed at many times while he learned his way, but he never gave up. He never backed down. He is my inspiration. He showed me what we're capable of."

  "Not all men are the same," Durak pointed out. He grinned and added, "Or women."

  "Do you really believe that?"

  Durak laughed. "Of course I do. Otherwise everyone would be a Knight of Leander."

  Aleena shrugged it off. "I can feel it inside me. In my heart. I know what I want to do. I don't know how, but I'll figure that out on the way."

  Durak was silent as they walked through the halls and ended up at the feasting hall beneath the temple. "I admire you," he admitted. "I've always had things come easy to me. The sword, the mace, the bow, everything but riding. I never got along with the horses my father had so I didn't bother trying. That's been my problem. If I don't get something right away, it's hard for me to learn it because I don't want to try."

  "You're afraid of failing," Aleena observed.

  Durak shrugged. "I don't know, maybe."

  "Don't be, it's the best way to learn."

  He chuckled again. "I think watching you might be the best way to learn! Or at least working with you. Just today I taught myself a few things I'd never considered while teaching you."

  "We make a good team," Aleena said.

  "Just don't tell Celos that. I don't want him breathing down my neck like he does yours!"

  She laughed at his joke. Durak had come across as a jerk at first but the more time she spent with him, the more she liked him. He'd be a good friend, she was sure of it. Then again, she'd thought the same thing of Celos and now look at him. "Has anybody made it through on their first testing?"