Legacies (9 page)

“I won't hear that.”

“You'll be right, daughter. We'll start tomorrow. You think we'll have a full year—or two seasons?”

“Temra doesn't know.”

“Let us pray we have a year or more.”

Alucius frowned. After a moment, he opened and closed the washroom door. “I'm through in the washroom,” he called loudly before walking toward the kitchen.

“I'll be there in a bit,” his mother replied.

Alucius looked blandly at them. “Grandsire said I needed to get to bed early.”

“That you do, young fellow. That you do.” Royalt offered a forced smile.

“Well…good night,” Alucius said, turning and heading down the corridor to the ladder up to his loft room. He hoped he could go to sleep early.

“Alucius?”

The young man jerked awake at the low sound of his grandsire's voice at the foot of the ladder. He hadn't thought he'd sleep, but he had, and it was now barely even gray in the east.

“Alucius?”

“I'm awake, Grandfather. I'll be down in a moment.”

“Try to be a bit more quiet than usual,” murmured the older man. “Your grandma'am is still asleep.”

Keeping that admonition in mind, Alucius dressed as quietly and quickly as he could and made his way down the ladder and to the washroom. When he finished, his grandsire was standing outside in the corridor.

“Let's go.”

“We're taking the flock out now? Before breakfast?”

“Soarers, no. We're going to the armory.”

Armory? Alucius knew what an armory was, but did the stead have one? He'd never seen it, and he'd been through every building on the stead. Still wondering, Alucius followed his grandfather through the grayness of predawn from the house to the maintenance barn.

Royalt continued into the machining area where the foot lathes, the drills, and the grinders were set on their mounts and benches. He walked to the tool rack set flush into the middle of the north wall, reached high on one side, well above his head, and pushed up what had seemed to be a bracket bolted into both the rack and the wall. Then he pulled on the rack, which swung easily out into the workroom, revealing a lorken door—an old lorken door.

Royalt opened the door and picked a light-torch off the wall to the staircase that led downward.

“I never would have guessed,” Alucius said slowly.

“That was the idea,” Royalt pointed out, gesturing for Alucius to follow him. “There are bars behind the door, if we needed refuge from brigands. The door is two layers, with nightsilk between each layer of lorken and an iron plate on the back. That's so that it will hold for a long time. There's water and dried food down here as well. We rotate that every so often. Haven't had to use it since I was a boy, but you never know.”

The room below was spacious, if without windows, measuring a good twenty yards in depth and fifteen in width. On the south wall were racked ten canvas cots on iron brackets. There was another door—barred and narrow.

“That's an escape tunnel. Runs a good eighty yards west, and comes out in the wash.”

“I've been through the wash, and I haven't seen any caves or doors,” Alucius said.

“You wouldn't. It's a concealed drop. Pull the levers at the end, and the dirt falls into a pit and breaks free of the door.”

Royalt gestured to the racks on the eastern wall.

Alucius just looked, taking in the rifles and pistols racked there, the short-swords, and the daggers and knives. All of the weapons had a dullish sheen. The rifle cartridges were locked in a heavy iron box, except for those in the two ammunition belts, but the cartridges, thicker than a big man's thumb, were so heavy that the belts only carried fifteen. While their size was necessary to deal with sanders and sandwolves, it was also why a magazine carrying more than five shells was impractical.

“They're covered with an oil wax. I rotate the rifles we use, but they're all alike. Didn't think you'd notice.”

Somehow, Alucius felt stupid for not noticing either the hidden doorway or the armory, and especially the switch in rifles, but then, he reminded himself, he hadn't expected concealment and deception from his own family.

Royalt cleared his throat and looked directly at Alucius. “What I'm going to teach you are things your father would have taught you.”

The youth's eyes went from the knives on the table to the spear with the cross-bar below it, and then to what looked to be a small pistol.

“You already can handle a rifle, and you're adequate with a blade. Not great, but adequate. I can help you there.”

“But…I'm a herder…”

“Are you ready to take on a pack of sandwolves by yourself—or a pair of sanders? Or will you take a few shots with your rifle and then let them make off with your best ewe? You've seen what they can do against both of us.”

“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.”

“There's another reason, lad…” Royalt sighed. “You heard what your mother's friend said last night. The Reillies and the other brigands are beginning to raid towns in the Westerhills.”

“That's fifty vingts away.”

“Fifty vingts isn't that far.” Royalt paused. “With the brigands being pushed toward us by the Matrites, and more Lanachronan Southern Guards being moved north, it won't be long before they're talking about conscripting more young fellows for the militia. If the Council calls the need for conscription, each stead owes one man to the militia, if there's more than one man. Two, if there's more than five. You'll be eighteen in a little more than a year.”

“Mother won't like that.”

“She knows already. She doesn't like it. Neither does your grandma'am. Doesn't change things. You have a lot to learn in the next year.

“Yes, sir.”

“Before we start, there's one other thing you need to remember…” Royalt said slowly. “I'll keep telling you, and I don't want you ever to say that you know it or that I've told you before.” His voice hardened. “You understand?”

Yes, sir.

“There are old troopers, and there are bold troopers. There aren't any old bold troopers. There also aren't many cowardly troopers left, either. That means you have to act, but only when you can stack things in your favor. When you don't know what's happening…watch, listen, and stay alive until you know what to do. Watched more men get killed 'cause they thought they had to do something, but they didn't know what. You get killed doing something stupid, and you can't live to do the right thing. If you think, you got a lot better chance of staying alive. Might die either way, but it's a sanded lot better to die doing the right thing that counts for something than just dying.”

Alucius understood that well enough.

“Now…we'll start with the knives, and how to use them. Should be carrying three. Bootknife, one at your belt, and a small one
in
your belt…”

The Matrial walked around the dais holding the high bed whose curtains had been pulled back slightly when she had arisen earlier. Her steps were measured, but with a forced grace. She stopped before the full-length mirror on the inside north wall of her bedchamber. In the early morning light, she studied her face intently, noting the faint trace of wrinkles beginning to spread from the corners of her violet eyes, the hint of slackness along her chin.

“The Matrial, eternal and unaging…” she murmured in a voice so low that no one more than a yard away could have heard the words. “Unaging…if they but knew the cost…”

She turned from the mirror, and took a deep breath. Her eyes went to the circle of golden stone floor tiles, ringed with black, that lay two yards toward the door from the foot of the dais. The gold and black circle stood out starkly against the muted green tiles that comprised the rest of the bedchamber floor.

After a long moment, she took one step, and then another. Just short of the edge of the black-tiled circle, she slipped out of the violet nightrobe, revealing that she wore nothing beneath. She clamped her lips together and, with a convulsive movement, stepped into the circle, moving as though she were forcing her way through an invisible barrier.

Once within the circle, her entire body jerked, then shuddered. Welts, and then dark blotches, appeared across the once unmarked white skin, as if she were being struck by an unseen rod, until her entire body was a mass of bruises. And still she stood within the circle, her form seemingly being twitched and jerked as if she were a marionette whose strings were being plucked at random.

Her eyes closed, the Matrial clamped her mouth shut, so hard that her upper teeth sank into her lower lip and blood oozed down toward her chin. A low moan escaped her as one extraordinarily forceful yet unseen blow shook her entire frame. The Matrial pulled her head erect, but made no immediate move to escape the circle and the torment within.

In time, perhaps half a glass, she fought her way back through the unseen barrier, and stood, panting, outside the black tile line. Then, as she lurched away from the stone circle, the bruises that had covered her almost from crown to heel began to fade. She stopped short of the mirror and took in her reflection. Blood still flowed from her lower lip where she had bitten through it, but, even as she watched, the tissues scarred, and then healed. Within moments, there was no sign of the wound, nor of the bruises. Nor were there wrinkles, not even the hint of a trace of such lines, radiating from the deep violet eyes. Her chin line was once more firm and youthful, and her alabaster skin radiated perfection, without a sign of the bruises that seemingly should have taken weeks, if not months, to heal.

She stepped away from the mirror and walked, with the unforced grace of youth, toward the dressing chamber to ready herself for the day ahead.

“Alucius?” Royalt's whisper knifed up from the hallway beneath the ladder.

“Yes, sir.” Alucius dragged himself out of his bed, into the cool air that held the faintest scent of quarasote. He pulled on his work clothes and boots.

He was long past dreading the morning sessions with his grandsire. They had become an accepted torture that he only wanted to complete as well as possible. If he didn't try, Royalt got angry and ended up bruising him so badly that Alucius could scarcely get through the day, especially if he had to ride with his grandsire to watch the flock.

If he tried, he got praised, but he was almost as sore, and then he was expected to remember what he had done well—and do better every morning thereafter.

Still, he hurried, as he did every morning, but Royalt was waiting in the armory for him, in the open area in the middle of the big room that had become a training arena. He tossed Alucius one of the blunt wooden knives. “Take the rifle. Check it to make sure it's unloaded.”

Alucius caught the knife and put it through his belt, then checked the rifle. “Chamber's empty, magazine's empty.” He cocked the weapon, then uncocked it, and checked again. He frowned. There was a cartridge in the chamber.

“Good. Sometimes, if a cartridge is just in the top of the magazine over the lip, you can't see it unless you look closely. Two things can happen. Either you shoot yourself or someone with you, or when you load the magazine and you cock it, you jam it.”

Alucius nodded and removed the cartridge.

“Not the best design, and it usually doesn't happen. Took me a while to jigger that just right. But it's the things that don't happen often that can kill you.”

From what Alucius was beginning to feel, everything could kill a man. Or at least, his grandfather felt that way.

“Now…you've fired your last bullet, and you've got a knife. So does the Reillie that's just overrun you.” Royalt circled toward Alucius, holding the other blunt wooden knife. “Go on…what are you going to do?”

Alucius tried to circle away, but felt hampered with the heavy rifle, especially when Royalt jumped toward his right side. No matter what he did, he felt off-balance, and the useless rifle slowed him.

Finally, he set it down as he circled, and squared himself, finding his eyes tracking his grandsire's.

“Stupid move…” Royalt murmured, and feinted.

Alucius backed in a circle.

From nowhere, Royalt's booted foot slammed the knife from Alucius's hand, and before Alucius could recover, he was on his back with the wooden knife at his throat. Royalt shook his head and released his grandson. “In a real fight, wouldn't put you down and put the knife to your throat. Put the knife right up under your gut. Won't kill you immediately, but the pain's so bad you won't be able to do anything, and you'll die anyway.”

Alucius swallowed as he scrambled up.

“You were watching my eyes, not my body.”

“It's hard. I've grown up watching the eyes.”

Royalt snorted, tucked the wooden knife into his belt, and picked up the rifle, holding it in both hands. The black crystal band in the center of his herder's wristguard glinted, even though there was no direct light falling upon it. “Why didn't you use both hands?”

“Then I couldn't use the knife.”

“All right…you attack me with your knife. That's what you wanted, wasn't it?”

Alucius reclaimed the knife off the stone floor, then circled in.

Royalt ducked, glanced to his right.

Alucius ignored the glance, but the rifle barrel snapped down on his weapon, and the knife went flying, and, again, Alucius looked up at his grandfather from the floor.

“How many times do I have to tell you? You don't watch a man's eyes. He can move his body one way while looking another. You watch the middle of his body. That's where his weight is, and that tells you where he's moving. He can't go anywhere without bringing it with him. Now, on your feet.”

Alucius wanted to groan. His grandfather was ten quints plus, with the gray hair of age, and he was handling Alucius as if he were a toddler.

“You want to die out there?”

“No, sir.”

“Then act like you want to live and start listening. How long is the rifle?”

“A yard or so.”

“How long is a knife?”

Alucius nodded slowly, understanding the point. “But I didn't know how to handle the rifle that way.”

“You're going to learn, just like you're going to learn every possible way to kill and to avoid being killed.” Royalt smiled, not exactly warmly, but not coldly.

Alucius realized that the expression was one of concealed resignation,

“We'll work on the rifle for a while this morning, and then we need to get some breakfast and get the flock out as far as we can today.”

Alucius wasn't nearly as eager to ride herd on the flock as he once had been—not with his grandfather. On the previous Tridi, his grandsire had made him trot alongside the gray and mount from a run—time after time. Alucius wasn't even sure what good that would do in the militia or in a fight. He could see the knife work and the unarmed fighting. But trying to mount a horse on the run? Or was it just to toughen him up and improve his legs?

He didn't know, and he wasn't sure he wanted to.