The Silver Lake (33 page)

After that first interview, Kaptin Julide had placed Brax in a unit of first-year delinkon, but when it became obvious that he needed more training just to keep in line, she’d added two hours of individual sword and spear practice in the early morning with Tersar and another two hours of bow practice in the late evening with Arjion. Three days later when his unit began formation drill in the central courtyard; his training increased by yet another hour in midafternoon. On the fourth day he could barely walk but had refused both Kemal and Tanay’s ministrations. On the fifth day, his legs had collapsed underneath him as he’d tried to get out of bed. Gritting his teeth, he’d sworn Spar to secrecy and made his morning practice with moments to spare. Somehow he’d gotten through the day, the constant strengthening presence of the God the only thing keeping him on his feet, but on the sixth and final day before Cyan Company was to leave for Anahtar-Hisar, he’d vanished before dawn.

Kemal found him sitting against Estavia’s onyx statue in the temple’s central shrine, the secondhand sandals Tanay had managed to find him tossed into one corner.

He raised his dark eyes to the man’s face with a look of stony acceptance.

“I can’t do it,” he said bluntly.

Kemal took a seat beside him, carefully avoiding the sharp end of the statue’s downward pointing sword.

“No,” he agreed. “Not like this, anyway.”

Brax’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t run out on practice, you know,” he said stiffly, misinterpreting his abayos’ words. “She told me to come here.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Looking up into the God’s crimson gaze for guidance, Kemal felt a single name take form in his mind on the faintest breath of wind and nodded. “Have you ever heard of Kaptin Haldin?” he asked.

“No.”

“He was Estavia’s first and only Champion, many hundreds of years ago. He commanded the army which protected Anavatan’s builders. He and Marshal Nurcan—the Warriors’ first fighting-priest—laid the foundation stones for Her temple, right here before this very altar. He’s buried under Her statue behind us.”

Brax glanced over at the polished black marble slab beneath the God’s onyx feet, but said nothing. “Since that day, Estavia’s ghazi-priests have trained thousands of warriors to follow in Haldin and Nurcan’s footsteps,” Kemal continued. “And they’ve been doing it the same way for centuries.”

“If it’s not broken ...” Brax muttered, his voice tinged with bitter sarcasm.

“Exactly, because up until this point it hasn’t been. Most of Estavia’s fighters come from families that are already sworn to Her worship so they’re familiar with Her ways. They begin at age six, serving under an abayos or older kardos, sometimes a ghazi or even a senior delinkos. They assist them, fetch and carry for them, get to know the life. What little formation training they do is carried out within their family or in small village groups. During battle they stay behind, sometimes at home, sometimes behind the lines. By the time they pick up their first real weapons at age eleven, it almost comes naturally.”

Rubbing at one tightly swollen wrist, Brax frowned. “So Spar has two years before he even has to start real training?” he asked.

“Yes. He has two years to catch up on five instead of nine.”

“Lucky him,” Brax said under his breath.

“Hm?”

“Nothing.”

Kemal frowned. “You really need to stop doing that,” he admonished gently. “It’s disrespectful to Estavia’s officers and.therefore disrespectful to the God Herself.”

Brax glanced over at him with the beginnings of a scowl, then nodded sharply. “All right.”

“What I meant before,” Kemal continued, “was that we can’t go on blindly assuming that your training can follow the usual path. You’re not usual and neither is your circumstance. To believe otherwise is to fail you and so ultimately to fail the God.”

Brax glared at the floor. “It all comes back to that, doesn’t it?” he said after a moment.

“Always.”

“And that ... chews at you, to fail Her, I mean.”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “Life used to be a lot more simple,” he mused. “You did what you had to do and you didn’t worry about what anyone else thought about it, especially not the Gods. I never thought that would change. I never thought it
could
change.” He gave a deep sigh.

“It chews at me, too, you know, even with it being so soon.”

“I know,” Kemal said sympathetically. “I can see it.”

When Brax gave him a suspicious frown, Kemal smiled.

“You’re not very good at hiding your thoughts or your feelings,” he explained. “You’re the least subtle person I’ve ever met, even given your age.”

Brax mulled over his words for a moment, trying to discover any criticism or sarcasm despite Kemal’s warm tone, then just shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “I can’t get it. Not even with Her help. Kaptin Omal’s right. I’d get killed, or get someone else killed.”

Kemal sighed. “No, you won’t.” As Brax frowned at him again, he stood. “Lesson one,” he said, crossing his arms. “The essence of strategy is adaptability, to use what works and discard what doesn’t. So,
delinkos,”
he stressed the word with a smile, “the traditional training regimes aren’t working. Why?”

“Because I’m too old.”

“No, because you haven’t had the nine years of preliminary groundwork that you require. So the answer

is ...?“

“I dunno, to get them?”

“Exactly. Now, how?”

Brax shrugged wordlessly.

“Well, how would you learn any new skill?”

“You’d start at the beginning.”

“That’s right.”

Brax frowned at him. “You want me to fetch and carry for five years before I pick up a sword?” he asked.

“Maybe. If that’s what it takes. Could you do that?”

Staring intently at a spot just past Kemal’s right shoulder, Brax considered everything that would mean while the God whispered Her demands of battle and glory in his ears. Five years. In five years he would be ... old. Her impatience with the thought of waiting at all was almost audible.

So was his.

“I don’t know,” he replied finally. “Probably not.”

“An honest answer. As it happens, you’re forgetting the main point from the other direction. You’re in an unusual circumstance requiring unusual strategy, remember. You haven’t had nine years of training, but you haven’t got nine years to catch up either.” When Brax looked at him questioningly, he just shrugged. “Do you really want to be nineteen before you pick up a real sword and twenty-four before you become ghazi-delinkos?”

“No.”

“It would be detrimental anyway. You need to become familiar with your weapons now, but you also need the groundwork. So, the only answer is to take you out of traditional unit training and put you into individual training more similar to that of other non-temple apprenticeships.”

“Under who?”

Kemal shrugged. “Myself and Yashar probably, but possibly not; we have to think this through very carefully. The Warriors of Estavia are not a collection of individual Champions, Brax, we’re an army; we’re soldiers. To take you out of that hierarchy could hamper your ability to work within it and you’re already far too self-centered for the council’s liking. And the decision—the order—to deviate from traditional training would ultimately have to be theirs anyway. All we can do is try to convince them that it’s the right way to go.”

“So how do we do that?”

“Well, precedents wouldn’t hurt.”

“What does that mean?”

“That it’s been done before.”

“Has it?”

“I don’t know.”

Brax laid his hand on the cool marble slab beneath the statue’s feet. “You said Kaptin Haldin was a Champion, but he had to have been a soldier, too, right?”

“Yes.”

“So how did he manage both?”

“I don’t know. There aren’t a lot of stories surviving from before the building of Anavatan.”

“Why not?”

Kemal shrugged. “Some people believe that literacy destroyed the oral traditions that kept such stories alive—very few of Estavia’s warriors could read and write before that time—only the stories that were written down are still with us and the priests of Ystazia, not Estavia, tended to be the ones who did the writing. So, naturally, more stories of the Art God’s people exist. Others—mostly the priests of Incasa, for obvious reasons—believe that something happened during those years that the Gods want shrouded in mystery.”

“But they’re not sure?”

“No.”

“Can’t they just ask?”

“They have. No one’s ever received an answer. Incasa’s particularly aggressive in His silence, Estavia less so, but even Ystazia, the scholars’ and historians’ own God, won’t satisfy their curiosity.”

“Sounds like They’ve got something to hide.”

“Possibly. Ask Estavia yourself. See what She says.”

Brax closed his eyes. Then opened them again with a frown.

Kemal raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

“Nothing. It’s like She didn’t even hear me. Does that mean She doesn’t want me to know?”

“Not necessarily. It may mean She wants you to find out for yourself. If the Gods tell us everything, we don’t learn anything, do we?”

Brax made a face. “So what do we do?”

“We go hunting for what stories have been written down.” Kemal straightened. “You need to start your reading and writing soon anyway or Spar will outstrip you there. Ihsan say’s he’s coming along very quickly.”

“So that’s what he’s been doing. He wouldn’t say.”

“I imagine he thought you’d disapprove.”

“He knows I wouldn’t. He probably just wanted to show off what he could do later on.”

“Oh?”

“When you’re the youngest and the smallest, people underestimate you. In our trade that can be either good or bad; depends on how you play it. So it helps to have a few surprises up your sleeve.”

Kemal raised an eyebrow at him and Brax shrugged. “All right, in our
old
trade,” he amended. “The point is that Spar likes to play things close until he’s sure it’s safe.”

“I see. Well, it’s safe now, so why don’t you give him the chance to show off and ask him to help you find stories about Kaptin Haldin. There’s a reasonable library at Calmak-Koy.”

“Where?”

“Calmak-Koy. It’s a village and recuperative hospice southeast of Anavatan’s Eastern Trisect on Gol-Beyaz. In the old Gol-Yearli lake tongue it means ‘gathering place of many flowers.’ I’d like to spend a day or two there and have the physicians get you back on your feet before you start training again.”

“But I thought Cyan Company was leaving for Anahtar-Hisar tomorrow.”

“They are, but we can catch up to them in a day or two.”

“Are we allowed to do that?”

Kemal shrugged. “In all honesty, I’m not sure; we’ll have to ask Kaptin Julide. But better to be a day or two late than to kill Estavia’s latest,
personally chosen,
Champion-delinkos, don’t you think?”

Brax snorted. “Probably.”

“Then, come on. We have to speak with the kaptin before breakfast and ...” he paused as the first notes of Havo’s Invocation filtered faintly in to them, “the sun’s rising. The breakfast bell won’t be far behind.” He held out his hand and, after only a moment’s hesitation, Brax took it and allowed the man to help him stand, stifling a grimace as the movement pulled at his stiffened muscles.

Calmak-Koy had been like nothing he’d ever experienced before.

Built up from the rocky shore in a series of low-walled tiers lined with flower beds, it was more like an orderly, wide-sweeping village than a hospice. Protected from the winds to the north by the promontory of Anavatan’s Eastern Trisect, and from the mountains to the east by a thick woods of pine trees, it was warm and open, its lawns and surrounding meadows already green. Both covered barracks and small, open-air kiosks radiated from a large, central infirmary, with paddocks and stables to the north and herb and vegetable gardens to the south, intersected with walking paths lined with fruit trees. A similar path through the pines led to the foothills and a series of hollowed-out caves where hot springs bubbled all year.

It was here, in these warm, healing waters, that Brax spent the bulk of the three days Kaptin Julide had allowed them, soaking the pain and stiffness from his muscles and listening to Kemal and Yashar talk about the lives of Estavia’s warriors. Their low, hushed voices filled the lamplit caverns with echoing whispers that merged with the constant buzz of Estavia’s own voice in his head and, as the sulfur-scented water lapped against his chest, the history of Estavia and Her people unfolded before him, from the early days when the farmer-cum-soldiers of the western villages dipped their weapons into the waters of Gol-Beyaz for the Gods’ blessings to the great march north, from the building of Her temple and the raising of seven companies of elite fighting-priests, to the night when She manifested in all Her terrible glory on the streets of Anavatan to save two children from the spirits of the Berbat-Dunya. He could almost see Her plans for his own future, but every time he reached for them, they slipped away like trickles of water until, finally, he gave up trying and just drifted.