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BOOK: Michael A. Stackpole
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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 fire, 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 C
haosfire
and a mouth brimming with very big teeth.

In fact, 1 noticed the teeth about the same time I noticed that the animal was not slowing as it approached me. Before I could retreat, Cruach leaped up and dropped both forepaws on my shoulders. Unbalanced, I crashed backward and ended up with the hound pinning me to the ground. I felt the wiry hair of his chin against my throat and my nose was full of dog breath.

“Roarke,” I squeaked, “some help here?”

The Axman laughed aloud and dropped on his butt, clutching his stomach. “Hold your hand out to him, easy, so he can sniff it.”

“I think we are a bit past that stage, Roarke.” I reached up with my left hand, willing to sacrifice it in case Cruach decided 1 was dinner. Roarke smiled and clapped his hands to call the beast off, but the hound ignored him. Cruach sniffed my face, then licked it with an incredibly soft tongue.

I got the impression 1 wasn’t on the dog’s menu.

I reached up and scratched Cruach behind his ears. As my fingers met stiff resistance on the beast’s pelt, 1 looked over at Roarke. “His fur is steel!”

“True enough. Things like that happen in Chaos.” Roarke reached over and pulled the dog off my chest. Cruach slid to the side and lay there beside me. He lifted his left forepaw and dropped it across my ribs.

Roarke shook his head. “You wouldn’t have food on you—something he thinks is meant for him?”

“Sure, I have half a Tarris buffalo dressed and hidden here in my pocket.”

“1 wish that was true.” The Axman straightened up and glanced in the stewpot. “Lentils, again.”

“So your dog doesn’t take to strangers, eh?” I crawled out from beneath the hound’s paw and stood. Cruach came up on all fours, then leaned heavily against me. His shoulder came up to hand height on me, so I petted him. “Did you take Cruach into Chaos with you?”

Stirring the stew, he shook his head. “No, Cruach lias been there a lot more than I ever have, as you can tell by the eyes and his pelt.” Roarke smiled easily. “Cruach found me in Chaos and managed to help me home. Haven’t been back in sixteen years or so.”

I frowned. “Sixteen years? The Hamptons, in the next farm over, had hounds like Cruach here, and said they never live past ten or eleven years. That means Cruach is …”

“Different?” Roarke nodded quickly. “Things like that happen in Chaos.”

“Lots odder things, as well.” A black-haired woman whose long tresses were streaked with green walked into the circle of firelight. I noticed that the elbows and heels of her leather riding clothes had been capped with bony spurs that could be used in combat. C
fiaosfire
totally filled her eyes, though even without it her slightly pointed ears and green hair would have marked her as someone who had spent a great deal of time in Chaos.

“Roarke, are you filling this youth’s head with all sorts of romantic pictures of Chaos?” She gave me a quick, appraising glance that made me feel, momentarily, as if 1 were naked, then she shook her head. “He’s only an Apprentice. Have mercy on him. Let him grow up before you tell him of Chaos.”

“Lachlan is also Cardew’s son, Eirene.” Roarke rested his fists on his hips. “Chaos is bound to be in his blood.”

Eirene arched an eyebrow above a black-opal eye. “So this is Cardew’s get?” She tossed me one of the wooden bowls she was carrying. “Help yourself, Lachlan.”

I caught the bowl deftly. “Thank you. I normally go by Locke, if it suits you.” I waited for Roarke and Eirene to serve themselves, then took something less than either one of them had. Roarke gave me a wooden spoon, and I seated myself on the ground to eat. Cruach lay down beside me and put his head on my knee.

The lentil stew, flavored with bits of formerly dried beef, actually tasted fairly good. “Again, thank you. This is good.”

Eirene smiled for a second, then narrowed her eyes. “So what are you doing on the road, Locke? Going off to win great battles in Chaos?”

Roarke frowned at the question, but I answered it without balking. “My grandmother wanted one of her grandsons to accompany her to the Bear’s Eve Ball at the Imperial Palace.”

“I am certain the balls have not been the same since your father and uncle stopped attending them.” Eirene looked over at Roarke, and something passed between them, but I could not decipher it.

“You seem to have spent a long time in Chaos, Eirene.” I set my half-finished stew down, taking care to keep it away from Cruach. “Did you know my father?”

“No, but his story is well enough known among Chaos Riders.” She shrugged effortlessly, and I sensed some of her tension easing. “Your father led the Valiant Lancers into Chaos, and they did not come back. Your mother left the capital and returned to her father’s home in Garik. She died, leaving you in the care of your grandfather.” She shook her head. “It is best if Chaos Riders have no one left behind.”

“How about you, Roarke? Did you know my father?”

BOOK: Michael A. Stackpole
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