Peter Brett: The Desert Spear

The girl nodded as if this were grave news, but there was amusement in her eyes. "He is strong and may return to training," the dama'ting told Qeran the next day, "but he must eat regularly, and if further harm comes to the arm before I remove the wrappings, I will hold you to account."

The drillmaster bowed. "It will be as the dama'ting commands." Jardir was given his bowl and allowed to go to the front of the line. None of the other boys, even Hasik, dared question this, but Jardir could feel their looks of resentment at his back. He would have preferred fighting for his meals, even with his arm in a cast, rather than weather those stares, but the dama'ting had given an order. If he did not eat willingly, the drillmasters would not hesitate to force the gruel down his throat.

"Will you be all right?" Abban asked as they ate in their customary spot.

Jardir nodded. "Bones heal stronger after being broken."

"I'd rather not test that," Abban said. Jardir shrugged. "At least the Waning begins tomorrow," Abban added. "You can have a few days at home."

Jardir looked at the cast and felt profound shame. There would be no hiding this from his mother and sisters. Barely in sharaj a cycle, and he was already a disgrace to them. The Waning was the three-day cycle of the new moon, when Nie's power was said to be strongest. Boys in Hannu Pash spent this period at home with their families, so that fathers could look upon their sons and remember what they fought for in the night.

But Jardir's father was gone, and Jardir doubted he would fill the man's heart with pride in any event. His mother, Kajivah, made no mention of his injury when he returned home, but Jardir's younger sisters lacked her discretion.

Among the other nie'Sharum, Jardir had gotten used to living in only his bido and sandals. Among his sisters, all covered head-to-toe in tan robes revealing only their hands and faces, he felt naked, and there was no way to disguise his cast.

"What happened to your arm?" his youngest sister Hanya asked the moment he arrived.

"I broke it in my training," Jardir said.

"How?" Imisandre, the eldest of his sisters and the one Jardir was closest to, asked. She put her hand on his other arm.

Her sympathetic touch, once a balm to Jardir, now multiplied his shame tenfold. He pulled his arm away. "It was broken in sharusahk practice. It is nothing."

"How many boys did it take?" Hanya said, and Jardir remembered the time he had beaten two older boys in the bazaar after one of them had mocked her. "At least ten, I bet."

Jardir scowled. "One," he snapped.

Hoshvah, his middle sister, shook her head. "He must have been ten feet tall." Jardir wanted to scream.

"Enough pestering your brother!" Kajivah said. "Prepare a place for him at the table and leave him in peace."

Hanya took Jardir's sandals while Imisandre pulled out the bench at the head of the table. There were no pillows, but she laid a clean cloth on the wood for him to sit upon. After a month sitting on the floor of the sharaj, even that seemed a luxury. Hoshvah hurried with the chipped clay bowls Kajivah filled from the steaming pot.

Most nights, Jardir's family ate only plain couscous, but Kajivah saved her stipend, and on Waning there were always vegetables and seasoning mixed in. On this, his first Waning home from Hannu Pash, there were even a few hard bits of unidentifiable meat mixed into Jardir's bowl. It was more food than Jardir had seen in quite some time and it smelled of a mother's love, but Jardir found he had little appetite, especially when he noted that the bowls of his mother and sisters lacked the bits of meat. He forced the food down so as not to insult his mother, but the fact that he ate with his left hand only made his shame worse.

After the meal, they prayed as a family until the call came from the minarets of Sharik Hora, signaling dusk. Evejan law dictated that when the call sounded from the minarets of Sharik Hora, all women and children were to go below.

Even Kajivah's mean adobe hovel had a barred and warded basement with a connection to the Undercity, a vast network of caverns that connected all of the Desert Spear in the event of a breach.

"Go below," Kajivah told his sisters. "I will speak privately with your brother." The girls followed her command, and Kajivah beckoned Jardir to the corner where his father's spear and shield hung.

As always, the arms seemed to look down on him in judgment. Jardir felt the weight of his cast keenly, but there was something that had been weighing on him even more. He looked to his mother.

"Dama Khevat said father took no honor with him when he died," Jardir said.

"Then Dama Khevat did not know your father as I did," Kajivah said. "He spoke only truth, and never raised a hand to me in anger, though I bore him three daughters in succession. He kept me with child and put meat in our bellies." She looked Jardir in the eyes. "There is honor in those things, as much as there is in killing alagai. Repeat that under the sun and remember it."

Jardir nodded. "I will."

"You wear the bido now," Kajivah said. "That means you are no longer a boy, and cannot go below with us. You must wait at the door."

Jardir nodded. "I am not afraid."

"Perhaps you should be," Kajivah said. "The Evejah tells us that on the Waning, Alagai Ka, father of demons, stalks the surface of Ala."

"Not even he could get past the warriors of the Desert Spear," Jardir said.

Kajivah stood, lifting Hoshkamin's spear from the wall. "Perhaps not," she said, thrusting the weapon into his good left hand, "but if he does, it will fall to you to keep him from our door."

Shocked, Jardir took the weapon, and Kajivah nodded once before following his sisters below. Jardir immediately moved to the door, his back straight as he stood throughout the night, and the two that followed. "I'll need a target," Jardir said, "for when the dama'ting remove my cast, and I need to get back in the food line."

"We can do it together," Abban said, "like we did before."

Jardir shook his head. "If I need your help, they'll think I'm weak. I've got to show them I've healed stronger than before, or I'll be a target for everyone."

Abban nodded, considering the problem. "You'll have to strike higher in the line than the place you left, but not so high as to provoke Hasik and his cronies."

"You think like a merchant," Jardir said.

Abban smiled. "I grew up in the bazaar."

They watched the line carefully over the next few days, their eyes settling just past the center, where Jardir had waited before his injury. The boys there were a few years his senior and larger than him by far. They marked potential targets and began to observe those boys carefully during training.

Training was much as it had been before. The hard cast kept Jardir's arm in place as he ran the obstacles, and the drillmasters made him throw left-handed during spear and net practice. He was given no special treatment, nor would he have wished it. The strap found his back no less often than before, and Jardir welcomed it, embracing the pain and knowing every blow proved to the other boys that he was not weak, despite his injury.

Weeks passed, and Jardir worked hard, practicing the sharukin whenever he had the chance, and repeating them in his mind as he drifted off to sleep each night. Surprisingly, he found he could throw and punch as well with his left hand as he had with the right. He even took to bludgeoning opponents with the cast, embracing the rush of pain as it swept over him like a hot desert wind. He knew that when the dama'ting finally cut the cast from him, he would be better for the injury.

"Jurim, I think," Abban said at last, the evening before Jardir's cast was removed. "He's tall and strong, but he forgets his lessons and simply tries to overpower his opponents."