Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (76 page)

The wizardess shrugged sheepishly.  “Chief Mage Tollaf
told me to make sure you heard.”  She leaned forward, placing a hand to one
side of her mouth to confidentially whisper, “He made me memorize it and
promise to repeat his exact words.”

There was no need to move his head to know all the old
Ninth Squad mercenaries stopped eating to watch.  Tollaf had made quite a show
of their tense relationship in this very room in the past.  The spectacles of
his furious arguments were matched only by the heights of rage Marik could
inspire the old man to.  Both master and apprentice had managed victories
against the other previously, so it was with interest that the veterans waited
to see what Caresse would do.

Her face reddened with embarrassment, then she breathed
deeply in preparation to carry out her assigned duty.  A bad sign if Marik ever
saw one.  He held up a hand to stop Caresse, to tell her they could talk
outside, but too late did he realize what she intended.

“If you aren’t in front of me within the mark,”
Caresse shouted loudly for the entire dining area to hear, “I’ll have you
cleaning out the stable stalls with your
fingernails
!  Skip one more day
and I’ll ship you back to Thoenar so you can train under Celerity!  That should
teach you how to be a proper apprentice, or else lash you shreds!  Either way,
I’ll be well rid of you!”

Lungs expended, Caresse took several short breaths
before adding in a normal tone of voice, “I’m sorry, Marik, I truly am.  But he
said, ‘do it exactly like I ordered’, and so I did.”

“It’s not your fault,” Marik replied.  He ignored the
sniggers from the various tables while his face burned. 
That old bastard! 
I’ll make him pay for this one, and pay in blood!

“But you’d better come today,” she whispered, eyes
wide.  “The chief mage is very angry!  He’s scary to see!”

“I’ll bet.”

Caresse nodded earnestly.  Her duty done, she left the
Ninth’s barracks.

Marik glared at his plate, muttering, “Would Yoseph
have done that if Tollaf told him to?  Of course not!  Jeremy or Lynn?  Not a
chance!”

Dietrik laughed, which snapped Marik’s angry eyes
upward.  “It is too bad Kerwin is no longer around.  Your feud won’t be half as
entertaining without him running the book for the squad.”

“Excuse the hells out of me for not being an interesting
enough diversion!”

“Sorry,” Cork interjected, “but what was that about? 
Chief mage?”

“That would be old Tollaf,” Dietrik explained. 
“Weren’t you aware that the Kings employ mages in their ranks?”

“No, but that doesn’t surprise me.  What does he want
with you?”  He glanced at Marik’s sword as if to make certain it did, in fact,
exist.

In no mood to discuss it, and angry at the old man for
making an issue of it on the new recruits’ first day, Marik pushed his utensils
across the table to Dietrik.  He picked up the bread roll, saying, “Put these
away for me, will you?  I’d better go see what the old fool wants.”

Cork’s inquiries drifted behind him as he left the
barracks.  Marik could feel countless eyes in the dining area centered on him,
a sensation he always hated.  The entire way to the Tower, he pondered how best
to make the old man wish he had left well enough alone.

*        *        *        *        *

Exhaustion threatened to topple Marik to the floor
that evening when he staggered into the barracks.  The dinner mark had long
passed, the mess area empty but for scattered groups using the tables as dicing
boards.  Hunger failed to eat at his stomach because he had long since passed
the point of exertion where he ceased to feel it.

Thoughts of his cot crowded all others from his mind
until he crossed through the half-wall.  Annoyance pricked him when he found a
raucous group gathered around Dietrik’s cot, making noise enough to ensure he
would never fall asleep anytime soon.

After stepping closer, he could see between Cork and
Talbot to where Dietrik and The Peacock stood before the cot, rapiers in each
man’s hand.  Ringing the pair also were Bancroft, Edwin and Chiksan.  Marik
moved to pass the group, except they blocked the entire space between the cot
rows.

“Naturally,” commented The Peacock in a vibrant,
self-confident voice.  He sounded as though he were about to sing.  “A rapier
is the deadliest of blades, only to be used by the deadliest of men.  It is a
fearsome weapon that can never be mastered by clumsy hands!  Brute strength and
brawn are meaningless.  Only skill and a sharp mind can draw out its true
powers.”

Cork, unaware of Marik standing behind him, piped in,
“But the blade is far too thin!  I could break a twig like that with my sword
easily, even if it is fine steel!”

Dietrik, his rapier propped on his shoulder, laughed
while The Peacock snorted with derision.  “Again?  Well, if I must, then I will
demonstrate a final time. 
This
time pay attention to how I move my
blade and try to fathom, difficult as it may be for you, I know, why I am doing
so!”

He raised the hilt in his limp-handed style, the blade
drooping to the ground.  Dietrik, smiling, lashed out, far slower than usual. 
The Peacock blocked by raising the blade at an angle to Dietrik’s slash. 
Rather than meeting the blow with a barrier of steel, he created a path for the
momentum of Dietrik’s blade to follow.  Along that line did Dietrik’s blade
travel, the blow deflecting to the side.

A second strike followed the first, this time from a
different direction.  The Peacock captured the overhead blow in the same
fashion Chatham, Marik’s first sword instructor, used to.  By slightly angling
and raising the hilt upward he caused the blow to slide to the side.

“Only a true fool,” The Peacock announced for Cork’s
benefit, “takes a blow fully with the intention of stopping it cold.”  He
brushed a hand up his forehead, sweeping the dangling locks up.  They fluttered
back into place while he continued the gesture, holding his hand open above his
head.  “Tell me.  Have any of your blades survived multiple battles before?  Or
have you never been in legitimate combat long enough to mar the steel?”

Cork flushed.  “I’ve been in plenty of fights!”

“Fights,” The Peacock repeated.  He placed one finger
alongside his nose.  “Ah, but fights and combat…they are hardly the same, are
they not?  Or haven’t you come to learn this yet?”  With a cock of his head to
the right while flicking his hand dismissively to the left, he indicated what
he thought of Cork.

Before Cork could explode, Dietrik spoke up.  “You
might consider holding whatever response you have long enough to let Marik
sidle on past you, chum.  He looks a mite tired.”

Startled, Cork spun to find Marik gazing at him
through tired, red-rimmed eyes.  A hand shot to the back of Cork’s head,
nervously scratching as he stammered, “Oh, uh…uh, sorry, I guess.  I, uh…I
didn’t know you were waiting…”

“Why would you?” Marik replied in a heavier tone than
he’d meant.  He stared at Cork until the man realized he still stood in the middle
of the aisle.

Cork’s jumping aside seemed a prearranged signal for
the gathering to break.  Marik hated how Cork’s gaze traveled all around the
room, settling on everything except him.  At the earliest opportunity the new
recruit slipped over to his own cot where he began endlessly rooting through
his closet.

The Peacock shrugged, announced he intended to
discover whether any of the taverns in this mercenary town were high-class
enough to serve mead, and swept from the room in the same graceful movement as
his hand brushing aside his dark locks.  Bancroft, Edwin and Talbot followed. 
Chiksan laid flat on his bunk, staring up at the rafters without saying a word.

Marik sat heavily on his cot.  “I should have expected
that,” he sulked.  “No one wants to stay around when the
mage
shows up,
especially not after Tollaf’s stunt this afternoon with Caresse.  I guess I
can’t blame them, though.”

“Are we in for another bout of ‘woe-is-me’?” Dietrik
demanded.  “In case it escaped your notice, Arvallar and I had finished making
our point when you showed up.  You can hardly credit our ending to your
arrival.”

“What about that, then?” Marik gestured at Cork.

Across the way, Cork had stopped his rooting so he
could mutter to a form sitting on the next cot over.  “That’s all well and good
for defending against other rapiers, but a
real
sword could still break
them.”

For the first time, Marik noticed Wyman sitting
cross-legged on that cot, who must have been watching the demonstration from
his perch.  He had dug a ten-copper coin from his belongings.  It flicked
through the air in a rotating spiral, deftly caught one-handed while he
listened to Cork.  Dexterously, he rolled it across his knuckles to rest on his
thumbnail momentarily before flicking it upward endlessly.

“So what?” Dietrik retorted.  “Give them time, mate. 
Say hello in the mornings, go about your business, and they’ll come around as
they get to know you aren’t a mage in the strictest sense of the word. 
Speaking of which, how did your day with the old man go?”

“Huh,” Marik grunted in return.  “He’s on a new
crusade.  Tollaf spent the first candlemark foaming at the mouth about how
inadequate I am.  He told me that if he waits for me to completely master the
entire first stage of a mage’s apprenticeship, he’ll be dead of old age before
I’m ready for the intermediate training.”

“I thought that scrying bit of yours is a higher level
working.”

“It is, but I learned that special.  Sort of like
jumping ahead.  Anyway, he’s decided to focus mainly on the most general mage
skills and bumped me up.  He’s trusting to Lor’Velath that I’ll learn the rest
on my own, ‘when I finally see how blasted foolish I am’.”

“So you are now…what?  Still an apprentice, yes?”

“Yeah, but between a beginner and a real mage.”  He
paused to consider.  “Like a journeyman, in a way.  Tollaf’s started me on the
‘basic’ skills needed for intermediate apprentice training.”

“You should be happy, I imagine.  The scrying is all
you ever wanted to do anyway.”

Marik nodded fiercely.  “It’s about time he stopped
wasting my life with all that other nonsense.  I’m never going to be a battle
mage.  Looks like he’s finally accepted that.”  He picked up the flint striker
he kept on his small bedside shelf and struggled to summon forth light from the
three-wick candle.  “What did you do while the old man worked me into the
ground?  Getting to know the new men?”

“Indeed,” Dietrik admitted, smiling.  “Most of them
have a wheelbarrow of questions.  Since Sloan appears less inclined for
instruction than Fraser even, I thought I’d be nice and fill them in about the
town.”

“Giving them the Grand-High-Hayden-Approved Tour, is
that it?”  Marik grinned in amusement.

“Not that far.  They can learn their own way around
for all of me.”

“So what’s the story with your pet noble?”

Dietrik winced slightly.  “You better not say that
around him.  That’s what started off that whole episode with Cork.  I spent
time talking with Arvallar this afternoon.  He’s as much a noble as you, and
will challenge anyone who accuses him of it.”

“Then why is he working so hard to look like one?”

“It is the way he is, I suppose,” Dietrik said with a
shrug.  “Cork asked him why he wanted to carry around a skinny blade like a
rapier ‘out here in the real world’.  He started on about how a genuine sword,
like his own, could never be a match for it on the battlefield.”  He paused to
smirk.  “That rankled under Arvallar’s skin, and he called Cork out right there
for a practical demonstration.  I stepped in to intercede because I was
interested to see how well he wields it.”

“Two rapier men in the same unit,” Marik shook his
head.  “They’re rare enough in the band.  How did we end up with both of you?”

Dietrik spread his hands.  “Because we are lucky?  Ah,
there…see?”

He glanced to the aisle to see the young boy striding
past, eyes fixed, oblivious to them.  The boy carried something on his far
side.  Marik lacked the enthusiasm to strain his eyes and make it out. 
Whatever it might be, it looked half the size of the kid’s body.  “You learn
about him?  What’s a young brat like that doing in the band, let alone our
squad?”

“I was talking—” Dietrik began, but the boy stopped a
cot away to whirl on Marik, interrupting Dietrik’s response with an angry
challenge.

“Ask me right out, why don’t you?” he demanded forcefully,
his voice cracking, striving to abandon its childhood pitch and deepen into a
man’s tone.  “Too afraid to talk to others?  Need your friend to scout us all
out for you?”

Surprised, Marik fumbled with his answer.  “Wh-what? 
Uh…no!  I mean…”  His tongue twisted around itself until he limply finished
with, “I’m Marik.  Uh, and you?”

“I know,” the boy replied, then swung the large burden
around to face Marik.  It turned out to be crossbow.  Large in a fully grown
man’s hands, it dwarfed the boy.  Marik wasted a single moment being impressed
that the boy could lift it at all before realizing that it was cocked, loaded,
and pointing straight at him.