Patricia Briggs - Masques

Myr was up and arranging breakfast with a dexterity that Aralorn, who liked to arrange people as well, found fascinating to watch. She let herself be organized with a bowl of cooked grain that made up in amount what it lacked in flavor. After the food she’d eaten at the inn, she felt no inclination to complain. Wolf neither ate nor removed the mask, a situation that seemed an established pattern since no one commented on it.

As she ate, Aralorn took the time to observe the people. The introductions she’d received the night before had been needfully brief, and many of the people had been asleep. She could only place the names to a few of the faces.

The sour-faced cook was a smith from a province in southern Reth. A large snake tattoo wrapped itself around one massive forearm, disappearing into his sleeve. She noticed that for all of his gruffness, his voice softened remarkably when he was talking with the children. His name was Haris.

Edom sat a little apart from the rest. He had the dark straight hair and sallow skin typical of parts of western Reth, the legacy of interbreeding with the dark Darranians. His hands were the soft, well-cared-for hands of an aristocrat. He was an oddity in the camp. Too old to be a child, yet younger than any of the adults. He was a recent arrival and still looked as if he felt a little out of place.

All but two of the children had been sleeping when she’d arrived at the valley. Those two who she’d met were now seated as close to Myr as they could get. Stanis had the red hair and freckles of the Southern Traders and the flamboyant personality to go with it. The second boy, Tobin, was a quiet shadow of his friend. Stanis tugged impatiently at Myr’s shirt until he had the young king’s attention. Then he settled back on his knees and started talking with grand gestures of his arms that looked a little odd on a boy of ten or eleven summers.

Aralorn was just about to look away when she saw Myr’s expression sharpen with alert interest. He looked around for Wolf and waved him over. Aralorn followed.

“Stanis, tell Wolf what you just told me.”

Stanis hesitated for a moment, but the enjoyment of being the object of attention manifestly won out over any shyness that he felt around the intimidating magician.

“Yesterday afternoon, when it was time to eat lunch, nobody could find Astrid. Me and Tobin thought that she might have been playing up near the old caves. So we all went up there to see if she still was. Edom was too scairt to go in, but I wasn’t. We looked for hours and hours. Then when we all got back out together, she was waiting with Edom.

“She said that she was lost in the dark. She cried and a nice man who knew her name found her and took her out of the caves. Edom says that he didn’t see no one with her when she came out. And Haris said that he thinks that she wandered into the mouth of one of the caves and fell asleep and dreamed about the man. But I think that she met a shapeshifter, and Tobin does, too. Only he thinks that it could have been a ghost.”

Aralorn suppressed a smile at the boy’s delivery—he’d gotten most of that out in one breath.

“What do think, Wolf? Astrid doesn’t tell stories, for all that she’s but a child. Who do you think she saw?” Myr’s tone was quiet, but it was evident that the thought of someone living in the caves (wherever they were) bothered him.

Wolf said, “It’s entirely possible that she did meet someone. Those caves interconnect with cave systems that run throughout the mountain chain. I have seen many strange things in these mountains and heard stories of more. I know for a fact that there are shapeshifters in this area.” He didn’t even look at Aralorn as he said that, nor did Myr, though the young king twitched. “I’ll keep an eye out—but if he were going to harm us, I’d think he’d have already done so.”

Myr relaxed a little, relying on the older man’s judgment. Stanis looked pleased with himself—Wolf had agreed with him .

After breakfast, Aralorn found herself cornered by Myr, and before she knew it, she was agreeing to give lessons in swordsmanship. Myr divided the adults into four groups to be taught by Aralorn, Myr, Wolf, and a one-armed ex-guardsman with an evil smile and the unlikely name of Pussywillow. The other three teachers were, in Aralorn’s estimation, all much better with a sword than Aralorn was, but luckily none of her students were good enough to realize how badly outclassed she was.

The first part of any low-level lesson was a drill in basic moves. Haris Smith-Turned-Cook handled the sword with the same strength and sureness that a good smith uses in swinging a hammer. He learned rapidly from a word or a touch. Edom had the normal flaws of adolescence—all elbows and awkwardness. The others were in the middle range. Given three or four years of steady sword work, they would be passable, maybe.

It didn’t really matter, she thought. If it came down to hand-to-hand fighting, they were all doomed anyway. But it was something to keep the people busy and make them feel as though they were working toward a common goal.

She fought her first bout with Haris, deciding to face the best fighter first—when she was fresh. It was a good idea. He might not have had much experience with a sword, but he had been in more than one dirty fight. If she’d had to rely on only her swordsmanship to fight him, she might have lost, but she’d been in a few dirty fights herself.

When she finally pinned him, Haris gave her the first genuine smile she’d seen on his face. “For a little bit of a thing, you fight pretty well.”

“For a hulking brute, you’re not too bad yourself,” she said, letting him up. She turned to the observers. “And that is how you fight on a battlefield. But not in a training session on swordsmanship. The sword got in his way more than it helped him. If he were fighting in a battle today, he’d be better off with a club than with a sword. That will not be true in a month, for any of you—I hope.”

The others were easier, so she lectured as she fought. By the time she was facing the last student, Edom, she was short on breath. Cleaning the inn had been good for keeping in shape, but a two-hour workout with a sword was enough to test her powers of endurance.

She opened with the same move that she’d used in all the other fights—a simple sidesweep that all the others had been able to meet. Edom fell, which should have shown him to be an utter idiot with a sword. She heard a few suppressed sniggers from the audience. But something about the fall struck her as a little off; if he had fallen from the force of the blow, he shouldn’t have fallen quite as far as he had. She wasn’t big enough to push him that distance without more leverage than a sidesweep allowed for.

She helped him up and handed him his sword. Grasping his wrist, she showed him the proper block and swung again. He met it that time, clumsily. She worked slowly with him at first, gradually speeding up. He progressed slowly, with nothing more odd than ineptness showing in his fighting.

She worked with him on three blocks, aiming different attacks at him and showing how each block could be used. She was getting tired, and made a mistake that a better swordsman would never have made. She used a complex swing, difficult to execute as well as counter, and misjudged it. Horrified, she waited for her sword to cut into his leg.

He blocked it.

He shouldn’t have been able to, not at his level. She wasn’t sure that she could have blocked it. She certainly couldn’t have executed the combination that he used. She stepped back and met his eyes. Softly, so that no one but she could hear, he said, “Can I explain in private?”