Valdemar 06 - [Exile 01] - Exile’s Honor (14 page)

A great bell rang somewhere outside, which was, evidently, the signal for the next class. This lot was off like a flight of arrows from bows even as the first tone still shivered the air. Alberich looked sideways at Dethor, who chuckled.

“Now, why do I think that my new Second is going to be the
least
popular instructor in the Collegium?” the Weaponsmaster asked the empty air. “Barring me, of course.”

“The Weaponsmaster, popularity cannot afford,” Alberich said dryly, as he began picking up discarded weapons and returning them to their places.

“True, my friend. Very true. And what did you think of the two young colts who think they're stallions?” Dethor asked.

That was easy to answer. “All spirit, no sense,” he replied shortly.

“Ah, but can you drive some sense
into
them? That's what I want to know.” Dethor waited for his answer, head to one side, and interest in his eyes.

Alberich snorted. “Not I.
Bruises.
Pain teaches, what I cannot.”

And Dethor laughed.

“But yes, learn, they will,” he continued. “Stupid, they are not. Nor stubborn. Ill-taught, or
mis
-taught. But unlearn, they can.”

The next class was one in archery for younger children, and Dethor took this one himself, although he commended one young lad to Alberich for some special attentions precisely because the youngster was a natural marksman. Alberich soon had him shooting from several different positions and helped him find ways of getting a full draw even when shooting from a prone, partly hidden posture. Following that class was another like the first, weaponswork in the salle, with slightly younger Trainees. This time there was a change in the uniforms, however. Among the Herald-trainee Grays was a boy in pale blue, a boy in a sort of brick-color and a girl in Healer-trainee pale green. The boy in orange was quick, but not very strong; the girl slow, but patient and deliberate. Neither were very good, but eventually their determination would enable them to hit what they aimed at though, for now, as many arrows flew over the targets or buried themselves in the grass in front of it as actually hit.

At least they were both trying to the best of their ability, which was more than could be said for the third child that was not in Trainee Gray. The boy in blue looked bored, and not at all interested in trying; he played at the archery, shooting haphazardly, not really aiming. Alberich waited for Dethor to say something or assign more “special attention” to that boy, but Dethor never did, and Alberich concluded that there must be something special about the blue uniform.

:There is,:
Kantor said into his mind, startling him, for the Companion had been silent for most of the day.
:He's not a Trainee at all. The students in light blue are the children of some of the nobles in attendance on the King; their parents don't see any reason to hire tutors when the Collegium is here and perfectly capable of educating their children. But the Blues don't have any real consequences to
not
learning if their parents don't care about their progress, so—:
The pause invited him to draw his own conclusions.

:Ah.:
That certainly explained things.
:Are there consequences for beating their backsides with the flat of a practice blade?:

:Alas, yes,:
Kantor said.
:Political consequences, I fear. Now, the ones in that orange-red sort of shade are Bardic-trainees. They aren't
required
to learn weaponswork, but they are encouraged to do so. Bards are often out in the wilds and in dangerous places—and while most of them
can
talk or entertain themselves out of trouble, it's a good idea to be able to fight your way out as well. But when you work with them, be very, very careful of their hands. The last thing you want to do is injure the hands of a Bard; it would be a catastrophe for them. You could set their musical training back a fortnight or more, depending on how badly the hand was hurt.:

He made a mental note of it. Interesting. He knew what Bards were, of course, but he had never seen one, much less heard one. Something more to look into.

He ignored the boy in blue, but once it was clear that Alberich wasn't going to single him out for attention, the boy watched
him
with a kind of speculation in his eyes. Alberich wondered if rumor had already begun to spread that the dreaded Karsite Trainee was one and the same with Dethor's new Weapons Second.

:It has,:
Kantor confirmed.
:Although I don't know that he would have heard it yet; the youngsters from your first class are beginning to put two and two together. I suspect that it will be one of the main topics of conversation over dinner. Certainly, by nightfall the whole Collegium will know.:

Unfortunately, it wouldn't stay there. And once it got out into the Court, the nobles and the rest who hung about here, well, things were likely to get very interesting.

:Things are interesting now,:
Kantor said.

If Alberich had been a stag, he'd have thrown up his head and sniffed the breeze at that, trying to find the scent of trouble. The statement boded no good, no matter what language it was spoken in.

:Just what does that mean?:
he thought probingly at Kantor.

:I'll tell you later,:
Kantor promised. But that was all that the Companion would say, and eventually Alberich gave up trying to extract something from him.

Easier to pound sense into a foolish Trainee. So Alberich set about doing just that.

But it was going to be a long afternoon.

T
HE sunset outside the sitting-room window made a fine backdrop for the meal that another servant had brought them. There were not too many different ways that one could roast a pig, nor stew apples in honey, and beans were beans no matter what you did to them, so at least this dinner had not left Alberich with that particularly odd feeling of dislocation when flavors he expected weren't there.

“A remarkable first day,” Dethor said, with more than a hint of satisfaction. “Hand me those plates, would you?”

Alberich handed over the stack of soiled plates, and Dethor packed them neatly in a straw container like the one that their dinner had come in. The servant that had appeared just after darkness fell waited patiently to take it away; the clean plates it contained, evidently meant for tomorrow, (so
that
was where they came from!) were already stowed in Dethor's sitting-room cupboard.

Alberich could only shrug. “And I would know this, how?” he asked logically.

Dethor laughed, a sight which would, no doubt, have astonished his pupils. Weaponsmasters, of course,
never
laughed. They also, according to popular repute, never ate, never slept, and were possessed of the ability to know
instantly
whenever one of their pupils had done something he shouldn't, because he was always punished for it with an extra-hard lesson the next day. It obviously never occurred to boys that their guilty expressions always gave them away. . . .

“Don't get coy with me, my lad,” Dethor replied. “You know very well how remarkable it was.”

Alberich gave the servant a sidelong glance; the man took the hint, picked up the carrier, and took himself off. Dethor sat down beside the fireplace and motioned to Alberich to take his own seat.

“I—I feel—unsettled,” Alberich said at last. “I am treated as if I belong—yet I do not. I
should
not. So how comes it, that it is as if I do? And how comes it, that it feels to me as if I should?”

“I wish I could tell you, lad,” Dethor sighed, and stared out the window at the darkening trees. “If I could, well, I suspect we'd not be at odds with your land. You're not the first Karsite to come over the Border, as you know—though I suspect you didn't until you found it out here. You're not even the first Karsite to be Chosen, though all of the rest were tiny children when they escaped, and were basically Valdemaran when they became Trainees. But you
are
the first adult Karsite ever Chosen, and I have to think that it's something in you that makes you different from your fellows.”

Well, that answered one question—why Vkandis, if indeed His Hand was behind all of this, hadn't arranged for one or another of the former Karsite children to be Chosen. Clearly, he had. And clearly, whatever He wanted from such an arrangement hadn't happened. Alberich stared at the fire in the fireplace. “But it is to Karse—to the Sunlord—that I belong,” he said softly. He
knew
that; it was at the core of him. Nothing about that part of him had changed. If that part had changed, he would no longer be himself.

“Your god is no issue to us; we respect a man who keeps to his own gods, and it makes no difference to the Heralds who another Herald gives his soul to. But are you vowed to Karse?” Dethor asked shrewdly. “Or to your people? That's two very different things, my lad. A country—well—that can be a lot of things to different people; some would say it's the land itself. But land can change hands. Some say it's the leaders, but leaders die. Or the religion—but I'll tell you something you'll
never
have heard in Karse—and that's this: religions
change.
I've seen it happen, and I'll bet my boots that if you ask your priestly friends down in the city, they'll tell you that
yours
has changed from what it was.”

That was such an astonishing statement that Alberich could only stare at him. Change? How could a religion
change?
Didn't truth come directly from God?

Dethor poked at a log sticking out on the hearth with his toe. “Don't look at me that way, ask your priests, and see if I'm not right,” he said, calmly. “Ah, this is daft. I'm only giving you too much to think about. Look, Alberich, I know this isn't easy for you, and there isn't much I can do about that. You'll have to reckon out what's important to you, and stick to that. Do that, and you'll have
one
thing you can hang onto, no matter how unsettled you feel. That'll give you a bit of firm ground to hold to, as it were, and once you've got that, you can take the time to figure out more.” He raised an eyebrow. “
Have
you one thing, right this minute, that's worth everything to you?”

“Honor,” Alberich said promptly, without thinking. Without
having
to think. Which meant, he realized, even as the word left his lips, that the choice was
right.

“Then you stick to that, and you'll be all right, and eventually you'll find your feet under you again,” Dethor told him, and yawned. “Me, I'm off for bed. I may not have chased lads around the salle today, but it's been a long one for me anyway.” He laughed again. “Good thing I don't get fighting Karsites turn up to become my Seconds every day!”

Alberich immediately got up, but Dethor waved at him to seat himself again. “Now, that doesn't mean
you
need to! Maybe you wear Grays, but you're no Trainee; you set your own hours.”

“Only so, I alert and awake will be, when first arrives the class,” Alberich replied dryly. Dethor chuckled under his breath, got stiffly out of his chair, and shuffled off into the shadows. Alberich sagged back into his own chair, but in the next moment, he was on his feet, staring broodingly into the fire. He wasn't tired, not even physically—that single workout with the young Guardsman had been good, but he was used to that sort of exercise all day long. When he wasn't drilling or actually fighting, he was riding, in all weathers, without the luxury of hot meals and showering baths. He was used to going perpetually short of sleep; riding before dawn and not finding his bedroll until after he'd stood first watch. When he got a bath, it was usually out of a stream or a rain barrel. When he got a meal, it was field rations augmented by whatever someone had managed to shoot or buy from a farmer.

No, he wasn't tired, not physically, and certainly not mentally. He hadn't heard anything in the back of his head from Kantor for a while, not since that class of children at archery practice. On the whole, that suited him. Kantor was very facile, very persuasive, and he didn't want any interference with his own thoughts right now. He wanted to work through them on his own.

He turned away from the fire, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to pace up and down the long sitting room. He didn't trouble to light any of the lamps; he was used to firelight, and his night vision was very good.

A suite of rooms—even a bed—I haven't slept in a bed for so long that it's going to feel strange.
The last time he'd been in a bed—the one at the House of Healing didn't count—had been just over a year ago, and he hadn't had possession of it for more than a single watch before he'd been turned out by the man he was relieving. It hadn't been much of a bed, just a sack filled with straw in a box on four legs, but it had been better than sleeping in the mud that had passed for ground around there.

Beds, hot meals, willing pupils to teach. Pupils who, with rare exceptions, were singularly devoid of “attitude.” Oh, this place, these people—they were so very seductive! If he could have said, “This is what is wrong with my life, and this, and I would change this, and
this
is what I want above all else—” and then have all of that come to pass in a single stroke,
this
is what he would have picked as the way to spend the rest of his life.

The only trouble was, he wasn't where he “should” have been, and he was irrevocably bonded to a White Demon.

He wasn't in Karse. These people were not his people; their gods were not his God. All right, it wasn't a White Demon, it was a Companion, but Kantor was still keeping out of his sight, because he still got a reflexive chill whenever he saw the creature unexpectedly. And yet—