Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

‘No man may mount a drak as a bonded rider,’ called out Farris Uddin, ‘unless they are able to kill as well as their drak.’

Omar blinked away the sweat rolling into his eyes. He held out his sword horizontally with his right hand as the shaven-headed guardsman officer walked down the line of struggling cadets. How much longer could he carry the weight of his blade like this, the steel heavier with every second? How much longer could he stand in the courtyard of the palace fortress’ middle bailey, exposed to the sun in full riding leathers?

‘And a drak,’ continued Farris Uddin, ‘is bred for nothing else but fighting and killing, which is-’ he stared down the line, ‘-more than I can say for you. It doesn’t take much to train as a cadet. I see the sons of generals and rich traders, I see the sons of guild heads and viziers, but I don’t see any here fit to mount a drak.’ The guardsman officer halted before Omar. ‘Is your sword heavy, Cadet Barir?’

No, you old goat. In my hands it is as light as a feather. And one day I’m going to use it to carve apart the people who burnt down Haffa and laid their fat, evil hands on Shadisa. ‘Yes, master.’

‘Yes, master,’ parroted the guardsman. ‘It will be a lot heavier when you have been pulling the reins for a day and are given the order to dive down on the enemy.’

‘I will dive like a falcon upon your order, master. A falcon with keen eyes and a willing heart.’

‘A falcon, well,’ sneered Uddin. ‘You believe, perhaps, that your training flights qualify you as a veteran? Let the weight of that scimitar sap away your irremediable optimism, boy. If your training draks could talk, the stables would be echoing with their laughter. A falcon must have talons, and most of you have, I fear, proved yourselves to be little more than songbirds kept too long in your perfumed cages. And back to your silk-lined cages you will go when you fail me.’

The guardsman stopped as a covered sedan chair emerged from a round tower in the curtain wall. ‘Ah,’ said Uddin. ‘It is that time. Our songbirds must line up along their perch. Command. Sheath your blades.’

Omar didn’t know what perch the guardsman was referring to, but he let his aching arm fall down like a rock, glad that the stocky man was not going to make them all move through the twenty-five basic patterns of scimitar thrusts and parries again. They had tasted months of this repetitive grind, and at times Omar felt as if he were training to be one of the dancing monkeys that capered for coins down in the bazaars. Life back on the water farm had not been nearly so regimented. Here, Omar was up early, to bed early, every minute spent being instructed how to act. How to hold, oil and sharpen a scimitar. How to check a crystal shell’s casing for cracks that could cause its liquid explosive charge to leak and shatter a rifle barrel in its owner’s face. How to saddle and care for a drak, or strip and clean a pistol; how to communicate silently in the air and on the ground using the hand and finger gestures of the language the caliph’s military called ‘war sign’. There was never enough time, it seemed, to adequately study all the skills a guardsman was expected to master in the service of the empire. He didn’t care. Every day I get stronger, every day I get quicker with the blade, every day my aim with pistol and rifle grows truer. Each day that passes is a day nearer the time when I will have the skills to track down Shadisa and punish anyone who has dared to hurt her. He was aching for the chance to go down in the capital and begin searching the slave bazaars for her. Someone down there would remember her, surely. Remember the house that purchased such a beauty and the price she must have fetched.

Well, at least weapons drill made a change from flying practice on the draks. Even as Omar discovered he had something of an aptitude for the task, the actual act of mounting a drak and taking to the air frequently left him dizzy. Belonging to no single rider, the training draks were used to having novice cadets saddle them, and could beat a path into the air, sail around and land back at the fortress with minimal suggestions from a guardsman’s stirrups or reins. Sometimes Omar felt like he was just supplying guidance to the mighty flying creatures. But by the silver gates of heaven, their training draks knew how to leave saddle stiffness in a cadet’s limbs; the day after his first flight, Omar hadn’t even been able to bend down to fold the sheets of his cell’s bunk.

Working the water farm’s desalination lines had been easy graft in comparison, once you got the knack of moving in rhythm with the salt-fish; always plenty of time left over to rest and contemplate the slow-moving clouds above or the beauty of kitchen girls below. In Omar’s old existence, the rituals of his life had been small, insignificant things. Here in the palace fortress all of life seemed a ceremony, the corridors and rooms of the stronghold perching on the rocky peaks as much a monastic prison as a protecting fastness. Omar hadn’t even left the confines of the fortress to see the palace below, let alone gaze upon the legendary marvels of the capital’s streets on foot. He was free in name, but not in practice.

Green silk curtains along the side of the sedan chair were drawn back by four bearers who had carried it into the courtyard, to reveal an old white-haired man wearing a golden tunic, the dark silhouette of a drak on his chest. Boulous, Uddin’s retainer, slipped forward out of the shade of the fortress. Uddin frequently disappeared for long periods of time on guardsmen business, and during such absences the retainer was expected to maintain the demanding schedule of training. Unfortunately for Omar, the young man had a serious manner and a thoroughly studious attitude to how a cadet’s timetable should be maintained. Perhaps that came from his northern blood. Weren’t they all said to toil away in dark mills, worshipping money more than god, busying themselves with unnatural practices? Many of the other cadets had retainers too, the sons of the greatest families and houses in the empire. But in their case, the retainer’s duty was to run after the cadets, fetching and carrying and generally kowtowing. Boulous did disappointedly little of this for the heroic future guardsman that Omar was destined to become.

Boulous whispered to Omar, ‘That is the grand marshal of the order. We go onto our knees.’

A relative latecomer to the cadet’s ranks, Omar saw that all the other cadets along the courtyard were already dropping down on one knee, and Omar followed suit with undignified haste, not wishing to be singled out again for the attention of Uddin or the other tutors. Two of the guardsmen in the courtyard helped the grand marshal out of his sedan chair and up the steps towards the battlements. He was very old, Omar realized. The grand marshal wouldn’t have made it as far as the iron finger pillory at the bottom of the wall without assistance. Omar counted his blessings that he hadn’t caused any infractions of the order’s many rules that would have left him confined in the pillory today, his fingers inserted in the slots of the punishment frame and kneeling like a fool with the undignified sight of his arse presented to the order’s master of masters.

After the old man had gained the parapet, the cadets in the bailey were lined up; then the front of the line began to march up the stairs, and Omar saw that guardsmen and the order’s staff were marching out onto towers and gatehouse all across the fortress in a courtly fashion.

‘Are we to hear a speech?’ Omar whispered to Boulous.

‘No, no,’ said Boulous. ‘Today is a holy day, the Dream of the Silver Tree.’

Omar started. Is it that time of year already? Inside the guardsmen’s fortress, time seemed lost and scattered like motes of dust floating in the sunlight. Omar wistfully recalled the festival back in Haffa, happy cooks and Shadisa bringing out white cheese and fruit to the workers on the desalination lines. Even the grumpy old nomad, Alim, had taken that day off to play draughts with him in the shade of the tanks. Where are you now, Shadisa? Not enjoying a feast, of that I am sure. Well, Ben Issman, his name be blessed, might have dreamed of the hundred faces of the one true god under his tree thousands of years ago, but Omar hadn’t yet noticed any white cheese, fruit or iced water being distributed, let alone lazy hours playing draughts in celebration inside the corridors of the fortress.