Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four (64 page)

“Very well, then,” the Guildmaster said, and then raised his voice, the low guttural, reassuring sound turning harsh and discordant. “Then you will fight amongst yourselves until there is only one of you standing … and we will judge which of you will remain, will learn to be fearless … and which of you will spend the rest of your lives living like an ordinary person … in all the requisite fear that brings with it.”

Cyrus found himself moving before the Guildmaster had even finished speaking. He heard the words, absorbed them, but after the command to fight, nothing else needed to be said. Belkan had told him what the Society was, after all—it was to learn to fight, like his father had fought the thrice-damned trolls. That meant hitting, it meant swords, it meant fists. He’d fought his father—wrestled, more like—trying to knock the man down to little effect. But his father was big, tall, muscled, could lay him out with a single swat—not that he ever would do that, but he could, and Cyrus could feel it. He’d fought with other boys his age, too, though, clumsy, uncoordinated fights, miming the things he’d seen the drunks do in the alley outside the Rotten Fish, the tavern just down from his home. Punches, kicks, biting—he’d seen a dark elf lose an ear that way, once, seen blood come down the face of another man and seen a dwarf kicked so hard in the groin that it looked as though his pants came up to his chest.

Cyrus head-butted the boy next to him, remembering what his father had told him about using his skull against the soft part of a face. His father had meant it as advice in case he’d been about the market and someone other than a guard had tried to take hold of him, but he used it now and watched the blond boy next to him, who was already near to tears, fall to the ground, his hands on his face and his low sobs turned to a high whine. Cyrus moved on, but the boy was already still. The child next to him was not as tall as Cyrus, and Cyrus jabbed the heel of his hand into the boy’s nose and felt pain shoot through his wrist from the impact. This was near to a punch, and his father had taught him how to throw a punch, a good one, straight on and with his weight behind it. The boy on the receiving end fell to the ground sobbing, too, just like the last, and Cyrus wondered if he was doing well, if the Guildmaster would teach him how to be unafraid if he knocked them all down.
And if they get up, I’ll knock them down again until they don’t.

He kept on, the sobs and wails growing louder and more persistent. He saw other boys, too, making their way through, knocking down the ones who stood dumbfounded, almost as though they were prey. It wasn’t just the larger ones, either; Cyrus saw the two girls at the front, the ones the Guildmaster had nodded to, and he watched them both tear into a larger boy with a flurry of kicks that brought him to his knees.

Cyrus saw two come at him, both just a shade smaller than him, and he dodged the first and put a fist in his face. Blood trickled down the boy’s lip, but he only flinched a little. Cyrus hit him again, then again, and felt a heavy blow land on the back of his head, with enough impact to send him sideways. He staggered, came back up with his hands in front of his face, and lashed out with a foot to the nearest one’s leg. He tripped him sideways, leaving Cyrus to look at the other one, the one with a bloody nose. Cyrus leapt after him, caught him with another punch, then another, until the boy curled into a ball and Cyrus moved on, back to the first, whom he hit twice before the boy yielded, shaking where he lay.

“Enough!” came the voice, the call, over them, and what motion there was halted, all save one—Cass, the boy had been called, and he was pummeling another, hitting him in the face over and over. “I said enough, Ward,” the Guildmaster called again, and Cass stopped his assault.

The Guildmaster and the others came out of the enclosure now, down the five steps to the arena’s dirt floor. There was a wide gate opposite them, and it opened now, and a few men came out, waiting in a huddle behind the battleground, where at least forty of the fifty that had started lay on the ground, a few unmoving. “This was a good showing by some of you,” the Guildmaster said. “A good showing indeed. Some of you have the seeds of fearlessness within you, the roots to grow mighty and strong in the sight of the God of War. Others …” he touched one boy who was curled up with the toe of his boot, not hard, but the boy whimpered anyway, “… others of you will find paths more suited to your … tendencies, shall we say?” He pointed to a few of the fallen, including the two boys Cyrus had just downed, and whispered to one of the armored men at his side, a painfully thin one. The other, a dwarf with a face that was all jaw and beard, shook his head a few times during the conversation. Their healer was already moving about the children on the floor, using his magic, mending wounds, sending some of them on their way, out the gates, where Cyrus could see other men waiting for them, herding them like the cattle he’d seen run through the streets of Reikonos in the past.

“Fifteen,” the Guildmaster said, finished with his talk with the dwarf and the thin man. “Out of fifty-four, I’ll have you know. That’s how many of you will be inducted today. Twelve years from now, when your training is complete, perhaps five of you will remain. That is the way of things here in the Society of Arms. But don’t think you’ll be safe simply because you are one of the top in your form; there have been plenty of forms that haven’t graduated a single warrior.” The Guildmaster gave them a grin, one that highlighted that his smile was missing at least three teeth. “That’s how we like it. Toughness will become a second skin to you, fearlessness is earned, not given freely, it’s a confidence that comes with knowing that you will be able to deal with anything and anyone you meet or else you’ll die with a sword in hand, and that will be fine, too. We will take … everything,” his voice became throaty when he said this, “from you. You have no past. You have no future but war, weapons, and service. You will exist only in the present, in the moment, with your weapon in your hand, and conviction in your heart that whoever stands opposed to you will die by your hand.”

He made his way through those still standing, as he said this. Cyrus cast a sidelong look at Cass Ward and got one in return.
He’s trouble,
Cyrus thought.
Not the others, just him. He’s the only threat in this room, the only serious one.

“Cyrus Davidon,” the Guildmaster said, and Cyrus looked up to find him lingering overhead. “Do you still wish to be a warrior, to lose your fear and look into the face of death unflinching?”

Cyrus heard the moans of those still fallen, the ones the healer was working his way around to, one at a time. The smell of sweat and sand was heavy in the room;
fear,
Cyrus thought with his six-year-old mind. “Yes,” he said. “Guildmaster.” He remembered the honorific at the last.
Adults like that.

The Guildmaster studied him shrewdly, and Cyrus could smell the leather of the man, could see the scars where a blade had worked long cuts across the man’s forehead in a diagonal slash, an X above his eyebrows. His cheeks were pitted worse, and when he smiled at Cyrus only half his face lifted. “That’s good talk.” His hand came down on Cyrus’s head, gave it a tousle, then came back to his belt, where Cyrus heard a noise of metal on leather and steel, a screech of a blade running out of a scabbard, then it was in his face, in his hands, pressed into his palms by the Guildmaster, a blade longer than his forearm. “But let’s see if good action follows it. Take this …” The Guildmaster squatted, and pressed the weapon into his grasp then turned his eyes left, where Cyrus followed his gaze to a boy at his right, whom Cyrus had headbutted only moments before. Cyrus’s look flitted back to the Guildmaster, and he felt the first stir of uncertainty as the Guildmaster looked back at him, watching, assessing, judging. “… and kill him.”

The weight was heavy on Cyrus’s shoulder, the hand of the Guildmaster resting there, and Cyrus looked at it, looked at the metal gauntlet on the soft cloth of his shirt. That smell of leather was persistent, the other smell, too, that reminded him of the time he wrestled with his father and hit his nose, hard, and it wouldn’t stop bleeding … that was here as well, but it wasn’t his nose that was bloody, not this time …

The dagger had weight, too. He knew it was dagger. His father had showed him all manner of weapons, from short swords and axes to polearms, when he had gone to the militia house for a day. There were even a few hanging above the mantle in his house, he had seen them all his life. But when his father was clad in the black armor, he wore a sword. “A dagger is just a shorter sword, son,” his father had told him. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

And he saw it now, the blade, it fit in his hand but the hilt bulged out on the ends. “Like this,” the Guildmaster said, and pushed the guard up against his hand so that more of the hilt stuck out of the bottom of his fist. “Hold it like this.”

Cyrus did, and he felt the Guildmaster steer him toward the boy, the one he had hurt so badly that the child hadn’t bothered to get up yet.
And he is a child, not even a boy because he wasn’t ready, couldn’t handle it, folded and lay down when the call came over us—

“Do it,” the Guildmaster said. There was a silence in the arena that Cyrus reckoned had fallen in the last few minutes. “Go on.”

Cyrus took another step toward the boy; he was over him now, hovering, and looked down over the patch of blond hair, where two grubby hands, smeared with dirt were held against the boy’s face. He was writhing, sobbing quietly, no older than Cyrus. Younger even, perhaps. It was so hard to tell.

“Go on,” the said Guildmaster again. “You want to be fearless? Be a warrior; do what a warrior does. Kill him.”

Cyrus swallowed, as though he could drown his fears inside him. He stared down at the boy and felt only pity, looking at the ragged cloth, at the shoes that were no more than foot covers with holes in them. “They’re orphans, all,” Belkan had said when he brought Cyrus to the Society. “Like you.”

Cyrus stepped closer, toward the lad, who was looking up at him now, eyes half-closed, curled up like a baby Cyrus had once seen sleeping at a neighbor’s house. The boy was still, though, breathing steady, watching Cyrus closely, but with a far-off look in his eyes.

“Go on,” the Guildmaster said from behind him. “Have at it.”

There was a still in the arena and the place was dark, lit only by the lamps all around them, a thousand of them, perhaps, and Cyrus wondered idly who took the time to light them all. The boy waited for him, unresisting, crying softly, and Cyrus saw the little droplets of water that ran down the boy’s cheeks, remembered the feel of his own before he ran out from overuse.
Pitiful. He’s not there yet but close. Then he’ll be like me.

The air was quiet, everyone watching him, even the men at the door. Beyond them he could see snow falling outside, damp, and even more quiet out on the streets than it was in here, with the men watching and waiting. The fear bit at him, and he knew he was failing the test, hesitating, and he stared down at the boy again. The smell of urine was strong now, and he could not tell whether it was from the boy or from himself. He looked again at the boy, then at the gate to the world outside the arena, so small, and getting ever so much smaller by the minute, the quiet, snow-covered streets. The sand beneath his feet was crimson, red with blood.

Cyrus felt a weight on his shoulder, the Guildmaster’s gauntlet resting on him. “Are you afraid to do it? Afraid to end him?”

Cyrus thought about it for a minute, looked again at the boy, and realized with utter clarity that he was not afraid at all, for once, that he really just felt sorry for him—

The dagger came around and plunged into the Guildmaster’s belly without Cyrus even being truly aware of what he was doing. There was a sharp grunt from the man and his gauntlet squeezed Cyrus’s unarmored shoulder tighter for a moment before he broke away, falling to his back, his hands clutching his midsection. There was a stunned, continued silence in the arena, and before the Guildmaster could speak, could proclaim, could say anything, Cyrus was off, running, dodging past the men at the gate, and his feet were slapping against the cobblestone street, stirring the wet snow and mud. He heard one of his pursuers slip and fall behind him as he dodged into an alleyway and past an open door where the smell of eggs wafted into the cold evening air.

The streets were twisted, and there were shouts behind him, a great clamor, but he ran, and when he came to the markets the noise was all but gone, buried in the sound of Reikonos by evening. There was still noise, in the distance, but Cyrus kept to the shadows. He saw guards in their armaments, patrolling, he saw men in heavy cloaks, and a few women wearing little enough beneath their robes, talking to every man who passed. He went unnoticed by them all, following the signs, the monuments, the things he knew and was familiar with. The stall in the corner of the market where the big man with bad teeth always gave him an apple. The house on the corner where the boy his age watched from the high window, never allowed to play in the street with the other lads. The spot where the man stood and called the news of the day, made announcements and proclamations from the Council of Twelve. He went slowly, carefully, but the streets were quiet and he had little to worry about. The evening shadows grew stronger as he went, and he could hear the torchlighters making their rounds in the distance. They had already passed here and the lamps shed a little light for him, enough to see as the snow came down harder, clumps of white that covered his shirt and turned it wet. He had no cloak, no coat, and his soft footcovers were soaked through.

The smell of the frigid air caused his nose to run, and he felt it freeze on his upper lip as he clasped his hands over his chest, rubbing them against the skin, trying to find warmth. His belly growled, roaring at him like the feisty cat that had lived in the alley behind his house but with more verve, more feeling. He shivered and felt the shake of his limbs, the chill that crept through the skin and went bone-deep.
Only a little farther,
he thought, and then he saw it.