P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

“What’s going on?” Jame asked.

Shade rolled her shoulders in an almost boneless shrug that made the serpent undulate. “There’s been unrest in the Randir barracks over several unexplained deaths, also some disappearances. Ran Awl is here to investigate. I’m her new aide.”

“Congratulations,” said Jame, meaning it. She had wondered what the Randir would do with Lord Kenan’s half-Kendar daughter, especially since she was sworn neither to her father nor to her grandmother, Lady Rawneth. Neither was the Randir war-leader Awl, as far as Jame knew. Politics at Wilden were notoriously complicated.

Awl appeared in the doorway, a tall, raw-boned woman with close-cropped iron-gray hair. Standing behind her, burly Harn Grip-hard overlapped her on all sides.

“Ask if you need any help,” he was saying. “It’s a strange, troubling business.”

Then he saw Jame, and his bristly face reddened.

“So Lord Ardeth has seen fit to send you to me as a special aide. How kind of him.”

No, that was from Torisen’s dream. She wondered if her brother realized that he had shared it and more besides with her.

She saluted Harn. “Ran, an incoming caravan has lost their seeker to an ambush. She literally fell to pieces in my arms.”

“Yes, yes,” he said hastily, already turning away. “These things happen.”

“What,” Jame muttered at his retreating back, “all the time?”

“It seems you have a mystery of your own,” remarked Shade.

“Several of them,” said Jame, and sighed. Even now that she knew why her presence upset Harn, she didn’t know what to do about it. Knorth Lordan or not, surely the man couldn’t think that she wanted his post.

“Here’s someone else who came south with us,” Shade said, indicating a stolid figure as it limped up to them.

“Gorbel! How is your leg?”

The Caineron Lordan scowled at her under his beetling, sunburnt brow. “It hurts, thank you very much. You try getting smashed under a dying horse.”

“Well, yes. You were trying to kill me at the time, you know.”

Gorbel snorted. “Not likely to forget, am I? Father was disgusted with me for failing.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Not as long as he’s let me come south once the bone knit. Commandant Sheth Sharp-tongue is the one really in trouble.”

Jame felt her heart sink. Ever since the Commandant of Tentir had beaten Honor’s Paradox by letting her graduate from the college against his lord’s wishes, she had worried about his fate. “What’s happened to him?”

“On the face of it, not much. Now that his stint at the college is over, Father has him mewed up in Restormir twiddling his thumbs. Damned waste of a valuable asset, if you ask me.”

Jame sighed, glad that it was no worse, given what Caineron had threatened. Still, for a man like the Commandant to waste his time playing the courtier . . . No doubt about it: Caldane, Lord Caineron, was a fool.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “The last I heard, during the final cull you had earned one white stone for diplomacy and one black from the Falconer’s class for absenteeism, canceling each other out. So why are you here?”

“Earned another white, didn’t I, that last day of testing when you were off playing with your precious Merikit. For horsemanship, before you ask, little good it did me against that rathorn monster of yours.”

“I see you brought your pook, Twizzle,” said Shade, indicating the furry lump at Gorbel’s heels. Only the lolling red tongue gave a clue as to which end was which.

“Woof,” it said, and sat down to scratch what was probably an ear. Fur flew.

“I may still be lame, but I can ride. And hunt,” said Gorbel. “Show me a better tracker and I’ll take it with me instead.”

There was a bit more to it than that, thought Jame. Gorbel had shown signs of being bound to the pook as she was to Jorin and Shade to Addy. He should have kept attending the Falconer’s class to develop that link, not that it wasn’t likely to grow on its own with use.

Several third-year cadets walked past, giving the newly arrived second-years sidelong looks. “Fresh meat,” one said, not bothering to lower his voice. The others laughed.

Gorbel snorted. “Think they’re so grand, do they, for having survived the Cataracts and been promoted there? If we had fought, we could have skipped a year’s training too.”

Last year, the college had had virtually no second- or third-year students thanks to that great battle where so many had died.

“Maybe so,” said Jame, “but I would have hated to miss a minute of Tentir. Well, maybe a second or two.”

Shade watched the older cadets go. “There are rumors,” she said, “that the third-years have taken to blooding cadets who didn’t serve at the Cataracts.”

“Hence the deaths in your house and Ran Awl’s presence here?”

Shade shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve heard that hazing was vicious when Genjar commanded, up to the massacre at Urakarn and his death. Torisen forbade it when he took the Highlord’s seat. It still goes on, though, in some houses.”

Gorbel grunted. “No harm in a little spilt blood. Are we training to be warriors or not?”

An elderly, white-haired officer walked past in the other direction, glowering at Jame.

“Do you still get much of that?” asked Shade.

“Some.” Jame had hoped that she was past objections to her status as the only Highborn female in the Randon. “Fash hints to everyone who will listen that I only passed the last cull at Tentir because I’m the Highlord’s heir.”

Fash was one of Gorbel’s ten-command, but not noticeably under his control in this matter.

“That man is and always has been a fool,” said Gorbel heavily. “Tentir was a pond. The Host is an ocean. Let him flounder in it.”

By now it was time for supper. The three cadets exchanged nods and retired to their respective mess halls.

Torisen dreamed that he was a boy again, struggling to make his way in the Southern Host.

“Here,” said Harn Grip-hard gruffly, thrusting a paper at him. “Take this to the Jaran.”

Young Tori accepted back the note which he himself had transcribed, Harn’s handwriting being nearly unreadable. He had noted that early in his stay with the Southern Host, and it had suggested to him a way in which he might make himself useful. Harn had snarled at him at first, but he had persisted and by slow degrees had gained a measure of grudging acceptance.

Otherwise, he had no assigned role in the camp. That was hard, with everyone else so busy, so sure where they fitted in to the Host’s complex, bustling structure. Only he was the outsider. He had begged to be sent to the randon college at Tentir, but Adric had said that that would be too dangerous, so close to his father’s enemies, so here he was instead, where even the Ardeth wanted little to do with him. Maybe they shared Harn’s belief that he was one of their lord’s bastards, perhaps with a trace of Knorth blood to explain his distinctive looks. All in all, the only place he could call his own was the small, mean set of rooms not far from Harn’s office, kept for him by Adric’s spy Burr.

It was dusk when he emerged from the command block and set off south across the grassy inner ward under the flare of kindling stars.

A ten-command of second-year Edirr cadets trotted past him, skipping on alternate steps to the amusement of all whom they passed. For hazing, that was mild. The Randir and Caineron third-years had drawn blood, especially the latter, where a cadet had swallowed a live coal and died after being forced to tell a lie. The Randir were more subtle. There, two cadets had chosen the White Knife rather than live with what they had been made to do, whatever that was. It was rumored that Commandant Genjar had a taste for such games although he had never experienced them himself, not being a randon. His doting father Caldane had made the Randon Council accept him as Commandant of the Southern Host. Harn actually ran the camp. A proper nest of vipers, the Caineron, and the Randir no better.