Elite: A Hunter novel (22 page)

“All righty, then. Did anyone vid what I did to the Minotaurs back at Bensonville?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Well, this is where you learn that a Wall can be something else. Watch,” I said. And I made another one of those short Walls, forming it up slowly so, Glyph by Glyph, he could see what I was doing.

His blond brows creased as he concentrated on the magic. “Okay,” he said, slowly. “I see what you’re doing. I think. I just don’t get wh—”

That was when I brought up my Shield, expanded it rapidly outward, and shoved him over the shortened Wall.

As I had hoped, he tripped and fell over backward. I hadn’t shoved him hard enough to break anything, just to get him moving.

“Oh,” he said from the ground. “That’s why.”

“A Wall doesn’t have to be a Wall,” I pointed out. “Especially not if your opponent doesn’t see it. That was what I did to those Minotaurs; they ran right into the barricade and broke their legs on it. I don’t advise that you break anyone’s legs in the Trials, but demonstrating that you
could
is going to get you style points.”

I dissolved the Wall and the Shield and offered him a hand to help him back up to his feet. He took it and got back up again. I was very glad that Mark Knight had both an amazingly even temper and the motivation to take lessons as
lessons
and not as an attempt at humiliation.

“So, let’s see you make one. And let’s see you make it as unobtrusive as possible,” I said.

It didn’t take him long; Mark turned out to be a very quick study when he was modifying something he already knew how to invoke. Within an hour, he was making Walls that were only a couple inches high, which was still plenty tall enough to make someone trip and land on their butts.

He was breathing hard and sweating; doing magic in a new way is always exhausting. I was still in pretty good shape. It hadn’t been anything but little stuff like a couple of Redcaps and some Goblins in the sewers. “Enough for tonight, or do you want more?” I asked him as I went to the cool-box built into the wall and got him a water bottle.

I handed it to him. He checked his Perscom for the time. “At least another hour,” he said firmly. “One trick is not going to help me win the Trials.”

I heard a step I recognized at the doorway. “Listen to that boy,” said Hammer from the door. “He’s learning.”

Mark looked up at Hammer. “I’m trying,” he replied. “It would help if I could have seen exactly how you and your brother were doing what you did in
your
Trials. For some reason, magic energy and spells don’t show up on the vids.” He drank the last of the water and put the empty bottle with other empties to be cleaned and refilled later. “Dare I hope that is what you are here for? To demonstrate?”

“He’s not as dumb as you said he was,” Steel quipped, shoving his brother aside so he could get in the room too. “Of course, what would be best for you is if you could learn the whole of our limited bag of tricks.”

“I aim to try,” Knight replied doggedly. Steel nodded approval.

I stood back in a corner, leaned against the wall, and let them work. And the truth is, for the first hour, there wasn’t much action to see. Hammer and Steel made entirely different Walls and Shields from the sort Knight and I made, so he had to first learn a brand-new way of working.

Needless to say, I was taking plenty of notes too. Different styles of magic, and different teachers, mean even when you think you know everything about how to do something, you really don’t. Hammer and Steel’s Shields and Walls were much stronger than mine, and now that we weren’t facing Othersiders and they could construct them slowly, I could actually see what they were doing. I was getting excited. I loved learning new magic.

After about an hour of practice, they decided Mark should put what he’d practiced into action, and that was when things
really
got interesting.

I just watched for a while. Mark would put his Shields up, and Hammer would form up the version of his Wall that he used as a weapon. It wouldn’t take more than two or three hits, and then,
wham
, Knight was flying across the room backward, to slam up against the wall of the room. He just couldn’t anchor well enough to hold against those blows.

Finally, I got tired of watching him do that. “Hold up,” I said, walking to the center of the room. “Look, guys, all you’re doing is repeating the epic fail that gave Hammer his win.”

“So?” Hammer replied, raising an eyebrow. “I’m showin’ Knight how it’s done.”

“But what if someone tries it on
him
?” I asked. “He hasn’t got a counter for it.”

They both thought that over for a moment. “Huh,” Hammer said.

“And you’ve got a counter?” asked Steel skeptically.

“Maybe. I think we ought to see if I do, and then Mark can learn it.” I did a couple stretches to limber up, arms over my head, twisting side to side. “The counter’s based on one of the hand-to-hand styles I learned back home. You know, the one that let me plant Ace’s face in the dirt when he rushed me?”

“After the Gazer fight when Paules died, yeah.” Hammer nodded, and so did Mark. “All right, then, I’ll bite. Let’s see if you can do this thing.”

I was going to see if I couldn’t apply the principles of Aki-Do to magic, to deflect an attack rather than try to stand there and absorb it. So when I put up my Shield, I gave it a little counterclockwise spin because I had noticed that Hammer tended to attack with his Wall just a bit to his opponent’s left. And as he launched his strike at me, I moved—physically, I mean—and got off the line of attack, same as I would have if I were facing a hand-to-hand attack. At the same time, I was taking my Shield with me, keeping it centered on me.

I felt the hit, but nowhere near as hard as it should have been; most of the force got deflected off to the left, as I had hoped it would.

Hammer narrowed his eyes and launched a second blow at me; this one would have landed squarely if I hadn’t gotten a little farther off the line of attack this time. Once again, most of the force went
whiffing
off, leaving my Shield intact and as strong as before.

“All right. That is one
good
trick,” Hammer said. Then without warning, launched at me again.

This time I reversed the spin on the Shield and stepped off to the left so his force deflected to the right.

Steel broke into a howl of laughter. Hammer stood there looking chagrined. And Mark had lit up like the façade of a fancy club. “Let me try!” he said eagerly. I imagine he was more than a little tired of ending up in the wall.

I stepped back to my place in the corner and gave over the center of the room to Mark. It took him about a half a dozen tries before he perfected the move and got the timing right, but after that, Hammer couldn’t touch him.

The door beside me opened and closed, and the armorer stood there, watching. His face was impassive, but his green eyes were alight. Finally, he stopped them with a single word.

“Hold,” he said, raising his hand at the same time. Both guys instantly dropped what they were doing and turned to face him. He ruffled his hand across the top of his head where his red hair was cut longer than it was on the sides. “Looks like you’re coming along, White Knight. Steel, Joy, let’s the three of us make a Trial Shield and let them have a real bout.”

Well, obviously I had never joined in making a Trial Shield before, but after I watched Kent put up his Shield, then Steel, it was pretty obvious what I was supposed to do; Kent’s made the outermost layer, then Steel’s, and mine was supposed to go inside that. It was tricky putting a Shield inside two more Shields from outside of all three of them, and it took me a couple tries to get it right, but once everything was set, Kent gave the sign to start.

Then things got downright hilarious, with both men’s attacks sailing off to be caught by the Trial Shields, and neither one managing to land a solid blow. Then, suddenly, I saw Mark’s eyes narrow, and I knew he was going try something different.

He made a slight movement to his right, as if he was about to launch yet another “Shield Bash,” as I was calling those attacks to myself. But I think I was the only one who saw an ankle-high Wall form right at Hammer’s feet.

Hammer had the predictable reaction, moving off the line of attack—

—and tripped right over that tiny Wall—

—lost his balance completely out of surprise, and went down like a stunned ox.
His
Shield went down, and Mark was across the intervening space in seconds, ending with his foot on Hammer’s chest. “Have a nice trip?” Mark said, deadpan.

Hammer looked at him with the most shocked expression I had ever seen on his face, then burst into laughter. “That was you? Damnation, boy, good for you!” He held up his right hand; Knight took the hint and grabbed it, helping him to his feet. “That deserves a drink!” Hammer continued, slapping Knight on the back, then putting an arm around his shoulder. “What about it, brother, Kent, Joy?”

“I’d say it’s a good start,” the armorer replied, with a slight smile. “You fellows do know I’m taking you and Joy out of the challenger pool for his Trials, right?”

Steel scoffed. “We’d figured that already, Kent. Even if we hadn’t decided to give him a hand, you’d have left us out, because a fight with two Shield specialists would have been boring enough to put everyone to sleep. The first one to die of old age would have been the loser.”

“There is that,” the armorer agreed. “All right, let’s all get that drink.”

Now, I had no idea what they were talking about, but I’d assumed that we were going to that little food area where Elite could get meals outside of mess hours. But instead, I followed Kent and the others up to the third floor, to an actual bar. I hadn’t even known there
was
such a thing in HQ.

It was windowless, decorated only with framed pictures of Hunters—I assumed as a quick guess, that they were all both Elite and dead, and later found out I was right. It was dark with only a little illumination on the back bar, and furnished mostly with comfortable couches except for a line of barstools at the bar itself. Kent went behind the bar.

“What’s your poison, Hunters?” he asked genially.

Everyone chose whiskey but me (even Mark, which actually surprised me, since I expected as a Christer he was a teetotaler). I hesitated.

“Here, Joy, try this,” said Kent, pouring something a deep reddish-brown over several cubes of ice. I picked it up and sniffed it. It smelled sweet. I could smell the alcohol, but it didn’t seem nearly as strong as the whisky.

Well, just one.

Kent picked up his glass and held it up. “Hunters all,” he said, and from the way he said it, the words sounded like something they all knew the meaning of. Maybe this was a toast that was always made here.

“Hunters all,” we said, and I cautiously sipped. The others did
not
gulp theirs down; they sipped the liquor appreciatively. Mine was sweet, with a flavor I didn’t recognize.

“That,” Mark said in what sounded like surprise, “is very fine whiskey.”

The armorer snorted. “It should be. We get it from you hill-country folks.”

I never did find out what my drink was. I did find out that this bar was exclusively reserved for the use of the Elite and their friends, and that, yes, you didn’t get your picture on the wall unless you were both Elite and dead. Kent and Hammer and Steel held forth on the Trials of those people on the wall that they had seen, Mark quizzed them intently, and I kept my mouth shut. This was Mark’s chance to learn things—and to become friends with the people he badly wanted to join.

Eventually, as I suspected it would, the talk to turned to a question on Kent’s part.

“Everyone has a reason to go for Elite,” he said bluntly. “And I’ll be honest with you, although you’ve put in good work as a Hunter, I haven’t seen the attitude I expect out of someone heading that direction in you. Joy there…absolutely. I knew she was going Elite from the moment I heard her intake interview.”

I took a quick sip to cover my surprise. How had he heard that…?

“But you, no. So what’s your reason, Mark Knight?” Kent gave him a long and level look.

Mark hesitated, then shrugged. “I’ve got a girl. I want to marry her. But you folks aren’t going to let me go live with her so we can be married, so I have to have a reason for you to let me bring her here. I’ll never be a ranker. Elite’s the only way it’ll happen.”

“Fair enough.” Kent poured himself a little more. “And what does she have to say about this?”

“I—” Mark began.

Kent interrupted him. “I know you Christers often don’t think that matters, what the woman thinks. A fair lot of you reckon that a girl’s under the authority of her old man till she’s married, and then under the authority of her husband. But you’re gonna be bringing her
here.
She’s going to see that it’s different for women in Apex. I wonder if you’ve thought that through.”

“I—” Mark said, and stopped. It was pretty clear to me that he hadn’t thought about that at all. But then he got a faintly mulish expression on his face. “Maybe that’s so for how our parents see it. Her pa promised her to me, and that’s all that matters to our people. But that ain’t what matters to the two of us. We want to be together no matter what, and Apex ain’t gonna change her.”

Kent regarded him silently for a long moment, then shrugged. “It’s no worse a reason to go Elite than some I’ve heard. I’ll allow it. But if things don’t work out between the two of you, for both your sakes, don’t let ’em fester. Bring the problem to me. That’s an order, White Knight,” he continued, his voice hardening. “I won’t have my Elite endangered because one of them is having wife problems and is distracted or distraught. Understood?”

I suddenly realized that
this
was Mark Knight’s real Trial. The one out in the arena was going to be for show. His answer
now
was going to determine whether Kent allowed him to win that Trial. Oh, if he couldn’t admit to Kent’s authority over
everything
, including his life outside of Hunting, the Trial would be fair, certainly, except that something in it would be tailor-made to make him fail, and only a miracle would let him pull it off.