Alanna: The First Adventure (5 page)

Training was endless. Even once a knight had his shield—or her shield—he still worked out in the yards. To get out of shape was to ask for death at the hands of a stranger on a lonely road. As the daughter of a border lord, Alanna knew exactly how important the fighting arts were. Every year Trebond fought off bandits. Occasionally Scanra to the north tried to invade through the Grimhold Mountains, and Trebond was Tortall's first line of defense.

Alanna could already use a bow and a dagger. She was a skilled tracker and a decent rider, but she quickly learned that the men who taught the pages and squires considered her to be a raw beginner.

She
was
a raw beginner. Her afternoon began with an hour of push-ups, sit-ups, jumps and twisting exercises. A knight had to be limber to turn and weave quickly.

For the next hour she wore a suit of padded cloth armor as she received her first lessons with a staff. Before she could learn to use a sword, she had to
show some mastery of staff fighting. Without the heavy padding she would have broken something that first afternoon. As it was, she learned to stop a blow aimed at her side, and she felt as if she had been kicked by a horse.

Next she learned the basic movement in hand fighting—the fall. She fell, trying to slap the ground as she hit, trying to take her weight on all the right places and creating new bruises whenever she missed or forgot.

The next hour saw her placing a shield on a bruised and aching left arm. She was paired off with a boy with a stout wooden stick. The purpose of this exercise was to teach her how to use the shield as a defense. If she succeeded, she stopped the oncoming blow. If she didn't, her opponent landed a smarting rap on the part of her she had left exposed. After a while they traded off and she wielded the stick while her partner headed off her attack. This didn't make her feel any better—since she was new to the use of the stick, her opponent caught every strike she tried.

Feeling cheated, Alanna followed Gary to the next yard. Archery was a little better, but only a little. Because she already knew something about archery,
she was permitted to actually string the bow and shoot it. When the master discovered she had a good eye and a better aim, he made her work on the way she stood and the way she held her bow—for an hour.

The last hour of her day's studies was spent on horseback. Since Alanna had only Chubby to ride, she was assigned one of the many extra horses kept in the royal stables for some of her riding. Her first lesson was in sitting properly, trotting the horse in a circle, bringing him to a gallop, galloping without falling off and halting the horse precisely in front of the master. Because her horse was too large for her and had a hard mouth, Alanna fell off three times. The beast was impossible for her to control, and when she told the riding master as much, she found herself ordered to report for extra study three nights a week, after the evening meal.

Alanna was staggering with weariness when the distant bell called them inside. She hurried with the others to bathe and change into a clean uniform. By then she was so exhausted she could barely keep her eyes open, but her day wasn't over. Gary shook her out of a snooze and took her down to the banquet hall. He stationed her beside the kitchen door. From this post she handed plates from the kitchen servants
to the pages and accepted dirty plates to hand back into the kitchen.

She dozed off during her meal. Gary steered her to a small library afterward, reminding her of the studying she had to do for the next day. He helped her with the poem, then left her on her own to deal with the mathematics. Alanna fought her way through three of the problems before going to sleep on the desk. A servant found her and roused her just in time for lights-out. She fell into bed and was instantly asleep.

Waking the next morning, Alanna moaned. Every muscle in her body was stiff and sore. She was speckled with large and small bruises. Stiffly she got ready for the new day, wondering if she would live through it.

It was like the day before, only worse. The mathematics master assigned her an additional four problems for that day, plus three more—punishment for the problem she had left undone during her nap the night before. The reading master informed her that since her oral report on the long poem was inadequate, she could put a longer report in writing—for the next day. The master in deportment gave her yet another chapter to read in etiquette and made her practice bows the whole period. The afternoon was hideous. Because she was stiff and aching, Alanna made more
mistakes than she had the day before. She found herself with more extra work.

“Face it,” Gary told her kindly. “You'll never catch up. You just do as much as you can and take the punishments without saying anything. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't what they're really trying to teach us—to take plenty and keep our mouths shut.”

Alanna was in no mood to consider this idea. When she returned to her rooms that night, she was tired, nervous and upset.

“Pack your things,” she ordered Coram as she marched in the door. “We're going home.”

Coram looked at her. He had been sitting on his bed, cleaning his sword. “We are?”

Alanna paced the room. “I can't do this,” she told the manservant. “The pace will kill me. No one can live this way all the time. I won't—”

“I never figured ye for a quitter,” Coram interrupted softly.

“I'm not quitting!” Alanna snapped. “I—I'm protesting! I'm protesting unfair treatment—and—and being worked till I drop. I want to have time to myself. I want to learn to fight with a sword
now,
not when they decide. I want—”

“Ye want. Ye want. 'Tis something different ye're
learning here. It's called ‘discipline.' The world won't always order itself the way
ye
want. Ye have to learn discipline.”

“This isn't discipline! It's inhuman! I can't live with it, and I won't! Coram, I gave you an order! Pack your things!”

Coram carefully scrubbed a tiny bit of dirt off his gleaming sword. At last he put it down, carefully, on the bed. With a groan he knelt down and reached under the bed, dragging out his bags. “As ye say,” he replied. “But I thought I'd raised ye with somethin' to ye. I didn't think I was bringin' up another soft noble lady—”

“I'm not a soft noble lady!” Alanna cried. “But I'm not crazy, either! I'm going from sunrise to sunset and after without a stop, and no end in sight. My free time's a joke—I'm out of free time before I get to the third class of the morning. And they expect me to keep up, and they punish me if I don't. And I have to learn how to fall; I'm learning the stance with the bow all over again when I was the best hunter at Trebond, and if I say
anything
I get more work!”

Coram knelt on the floor, looking at her. “Ye knew it'd be hard when ye decided to come,” he reminded her. “No one ever told ye a knight had it
easy.
I
didn't, for certain. I told ye 'twas naught but hard work every wakin' minute, and a lot of extra wakin' minutes to boot. And now ye're runnin' away after just two days of it.”

“I'm not running away!”

“As ye say, Mistress.” Coram hoisted himself onto the bed with a groan, reaching for his boots. “I'll be packed as soon as may be.”

Alanna slammed into her own room. She yanked one of her bags out and stared at it. With a sigh she sat down, rubbing her head in disgust. At Trebond she could come and go as she pleased, do as she liked. Life here was completely different. Did that make it bad?

She wasn't sure any longer. Coram's words about “quitting” and “running away” stuck like barbs under her skin. She tried to tell herself she
wasn't
running away, but she wasn't having much success.

At last she opened her door and looked out at Coram. “All right,” she growled. “I'll give it a week. No more and no less. It had better lighten up by then.”

“Ye're the Mistress—or the Master,” Coram replied. “But if ye're goin' to go—”

“I'll make the decisions,” she told him. “Now, good night!”

It wasn't until she pulled the blankets over her that
she realized Coram had put his bags back under the bed and removed his boots. The old soldier had not done any packing at all.

I wish he didn't know me so well,
she thought grumpily as she dozed off.

The one week became two weeks, the two weeks became three, and Alanna was too exhausted to think of the long ride home. She never caught up with her work, and every day at least one master found something not done and gave her still more to do. She learned to take Gary's advice, doing as much as she could each day and taking her punishments without complaint.

Her first night of table service came and went. She was too tired to be afraid during this first test. She waited on Duke Gareth, listened to his lecture on table manners and continued to serve at the banquets. At last she was assigned permanently to wait on Sir Myles, much to her delight. The knight always had something kind to say, even if—as Alex had said—he
did
drink too much. Sometimes she even helped him back to his rooms if he had drunk too well. Often he would give her a silver penny, or a sweet, and his classes were the bright point in her morning. Myles had a knack for making history seem real.

She and Gary quickly became friends. Gary always had something funny to say about the master of deportment, and he was never too busy to give her a hand, if she could bring herself to ask for help. She also discovered she could make her large friend laugh simply by saying whatever came to her mind. She liked making someone as intelligent as Gary laugh.

Between Gary, Myles and other people in the palace, life got better. Alanna came to forget that she had once ordered Coram to pack and take her home.

Three months—and her eleventh birthday—passed before Alanna realized it. The first break in her new routine came one night when Timon came hunting for her.

“He wants to see you.” Timon never had to say who “he” was. “You're to go to his study.”

Alanna straightened her tunic and tried to smooth her hair before rapping on Duke Gareth's door. Why would the Duke want to see her? What had she done wrong?

He called for her to come in, looking up from his papers as she closed the door behind her. “Alan, come in. I'm writing your father, reporting on your progress. Do you have any messages for me to send to him?”

She wasn't in trouble! Alanna smothered a sigh of relief. Then she thought of something worse. What if her father came out of his studious fog and actually
read
Duke Gareth's letter?

I'll think of that when it happens,
she told herself. Would things ever get easy?

“Please say that I send my regards, sir,” she told the Duke.

The man put down his quill pen. “My report is satisfactory. You learn well and quickly. We are glad to have you among us.”

Alanna turned pink with delight. She had never received such a high compliment. “Th-thank you, your Grace!”

“You may go to the City tomorrow morning as a reward. In future, you may also go there with the other pages on Market Day. Since you're new to Corus, you may have one of the older boys accompany you. Not Alex. He has to take an extra hour of Ethics tomorrow.”

Alanna beamed. “You're very kind,” she said. “Uh—could Gary—Gareth—come?”

The Duke raised an eyebrow. “Hm. He
did
say you are good company. It can be arranged. Be certain to return in time for afternoon lessons.”

“Yes, sir!” She bowed deeply. “And thank you again!”

Gary had to laugh at Alanna's wide eyes as they walked through the city's marketplace. “Close your mouth, country boy,” he teased. “Most of this is overpriced.”

“But there's so much of everything!” she exclaimed.

“Not here. One of these days we'll ride to Port Caynn. You'll see
real
wonders there.” He stopped to look at a pair of riding gloves. Alanna wistfully eyed the long sword that hung beside them. She would need a sword someday. How would she ever get a good one?