Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades (16 page)

Late each afternoon, from seventh to eighth bell, was set aside for a session the Eyrie referred to as “Individual Close Combat.” The cadets dubbed it, simply, Blood Time. If you somehow managed to make it through the morning without the proper complement of bruises and lacerations, Blood Time would make sure you went to bed sore. The setup was simple: two cadets in a wide, low ring just to the west of the armory and forge. Whoever asked for mercy first, lost. Sometimes the fights took place with blunted blades, sometimes with knives or cudgels, sometimes with bare fists. One of the trainers was always there, in theory to make sure everyone followed the few rules. In practice, however, the older soldiers tended to heap fuel on the fire, hurling insults and gibes from the edge of the ring. Sometimes there was betting.

Forty or fifty Kettral surrounded the ring, vets and cadets alike, some stretching out sore muscles, others windmilling the blood into their arms in great looping circles, others chatting quietly in small knots. Valyn spotted Ha Lin, Gent, Laith, and Talal on the far side, and circled over to them, taking the time to catch his breath.

“My point is,” Laith was saying, hands spread as he tried to reason with Gent, “that the hammer is a ridiculous weapon.
Useless.
”

“It’s useless if you can’t lift it,” Gent argued, eyeing the flier’s thin arms skeptically.

“It’s a
carpenter’s
tool, for ’Shael’s sake. There’s a reason every Kettral carries two
swords
strapped across his back and not two hammers. Val,” he said, turning to appeal to the new arrival. “Talk some sense into this ox.”

“Don’t bother,” Lin interjected, raising a hand in warning. “They’ve been at it since sixth bell and left sense behind a long time ago.”

“We’re fighting with hammers today?” Valyn asked, glancing toward the arena apprehensively. The trainers loved nothing more than throwing unexpected twists into daily training, and a hammer was a dangerous weapon to spar with.

“Not that I know of,” Lin replied, eyes flashing. “But don’t worry. If we are, I’ll be gentle with you.”

“That’s what the whores on Hook always tell me,” Laith cut in with a wink. “Don’t believe her, Val. Or,” he added, considering the two of them, eyes narrowed in sly appraisal, “a pretty girl like Ha Lin, maybe you don’t
want
her to go easy on you.…”

Lin took a casual swipe at the flier with her belt knife, but Valyn could see the flush rising to her cheeks. He wanted to think of something to say, something quick and clever that would catch her eye and make her laugh, but Laith was the one with the lines, and before Valyn could find the right words, a round of raucous laughter cut through the air from across the ring. Lin turned toward the sound, her face twisting into a scowl.

Sami Yurl, along with his small cabal. Plenty of the cadets were nasty and strong—you had to be both, to some degree, to survive on the Islands—but Yurl’s lot was the worst, a handful of brutal young men who had signed on to become Kettral, not out of any great love for the empire, but because it satisfied some itch, a cruel glee derived from pain, and power, and killing. Meshkent’s Minions, they called themselves, though most of Meshkent’s most ardent worshippers lay beyond the boundaries of Annur. Regardless, the name suited them well enough; Valyn had little doubt that if they were promoted to full Kettral, they would inflict enough misery to make the Lord of Pain proud. He was also sure that most of them would sell the others to Manjari slavers for a handful of coin, but you needed someone to watch your back on the Islands, and over the years, the cadets had fallen into loose alliances.

Valyn frowned and turned back to Lin. “Try to stay away from Yurl today. We’re just three weeks from the Trial, and if something goes wrong—”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” she snapped.

The blond youth caught them staring, and nudged one of his companions in the ribs. The two shared a rough laugh, and then Yurl returned his gaze to Lin and licked his lips ostentatiously.

“Keep laughing, you bastard,” Lin murmured in a voice almost too low for Valyn to hear. “You just keep laughing.”

The first fight of the afternoon was an ugly brawl between two of the younger cadets. It went right to the dirt and ended with the larger of the boys holding his eye and crawling for the edge of the ring. After that, a tedious, probing dance between a pair of kids with blades took up what seemed like half the afternoon. Most of the older youths and the trainers jeered and coached from the sidelines while Valyn waited impatiently for the fights that mattered, for the ones he needed to study. Finally one of the kids landed a lucky blow, the other collapsed in a heap, and Jordan Arbert, the senior trainer, decided it was time for some real combat.

“Somebody get that ’Shael-spawned idiot out of my ring,” he growled. “Take him to the infirmary. There’s a batch of would-be soldiers here who think they’re ready to stand for Hull’s Trial. I want to see a few matchups before I place my bets about who survives. Now, who do I want?” he mused, looking over the crowd.

Valyn reached over his shoulder to ease his training blades in their scabbards, twisted his head to one side to stretch out a knot in his neck.

“So many options! How about we mix things up a little today? Two on two—see if you murderous bastards can actually manage to cooperate.” The trainer smiled a sinister smile. “I’m going to go with Yurl and Ainhoa on one side. That’s a nasty little pair.”

Valyn had to agree. Although Balendin Ainhoa was a part of Yurl’s circle, they could not have looked more different. Where Yurl was well-muscled and handsome, the very image of well-heeled Annurian nobility, Ainhoa looked like a savage straight out of the Hannan jungles. The feathers of seabirds hung among his long, dark braids, rings of ivory and iron pierced his ears, and blue ink snaked up his arms. Rumor had it that Balendin had ended up on the Islands after the people in his town—some tiny settlement on the western coast of Basc—discovered that he was a leach. When they came for him, he killed half the mob and fled, stealing and murdering the whole way, until the Kettral were called in to deal with the problem. They dealt with it by recruiting him.

Anywhere else in the Annurian Empire, a leach would have been strung up, stabbed, or strangled on sight. Valyn had grown up believing such men and women were abominations, that their powers were unholy and evil. He remembered old Crenchan Xaw, commander of the Aedolian Guard, waggling his knife as he made the point:
They steal from the world around them, leach the power right out of the earth. No man should be able to twist and tangle the laws of nature to suit his will.
Xaw was not alone in his convictions. Everyone hated leaches. Everyone hunted them. Everyone except the Kettral.

The Eyrie was always looking for an edge. It wasn’t enough that they had the birds, not enough that they controlled the few mines from which the fabled Kettral munitions were made. It wasn’t enough that their soldiers were better trained and better equipped than any fighting force in the world. Eyrie Command wanted leaches, too, even killers like Balendin. Especially killers.

Valyn had been appalled when he first arrived on the Qirins to discover he would be fighting alongside such perversions of nature. It had taken months to overcome the most basic revulsion and years to grow comfortable around the strange breed of men and women. As it turned out, reports of both their power and their evil were greatly overblown. They didn’t mutter incantations, for one thing, or drink the blood of infants. More important from a tactical standpoint, every leach had a different well, a different source from which he drew his power—granite, water, blood, anything—the secret of which he guarded as closely as his life. Without the presence of his well, he was no more powerful than the next man, a fact that could even the scales considerably. The problem was, if you didn’t know a leach’s well, you didn’t know when you had to be careful.

Balendin motioned his twin wolfhounds—freakish slavering creatures that followed him everywhere—to stillness as he stepped into the ring. They sat like sentinels just outside the stones, jaws gaping, panting audibly in the afternoon heat. The leach glanced skyward, where his tamed hawk circled overhead. The bird let out a piercing shriek, as though aware of his gaze.

“’Kent-kissing thing reminds me of a vulture,” Lin said.

“It’s just a bird,” Valyn replied.

“Maybe,” Laith said, turning to Talal. “I don’t suppose you’ve managed to figure out the bastard’s well.”

Talal shook his head somberly.

“You train with him at least twice a week. How hard can it be? There’s only so much stuff in the world!”

“Harder than you think,” Talal replied. “We’re even more wary of each other than we are of the rest of you. Everyone has their disguises,” he said, gesturing to the bracelets encircling his own dark wrists.

“You’re telling me your well’s not copper or gold?” the flier asked.

“I’m not telling you anything—but look at Balendin. The feathers, the rings, the ink … And that’s just what he has on him. It could be something all around us—moisture or salt. Stone or sand.”

“It could be those ’Kent-kissing beasts,” Valyn added, eyeing the wolfhounds warily. “He brings them with him everywhere.”

“Could be,” Talal acknowledged. “Leaches have had animal wells in the past. Rennon Pierce, the raven leach, had an entire flock that perched on his eaves and soared above him when he moved.”

“And you wonder why everyone wants to string you bastards up,” Gent grumbled. “No offense meant, Talal, but the whole thing is sick, filthy.”

Talal eyed the larger cadet, his eyes hooded and inscrutable. Then he turned back to Valyn. “People have been speculating about Balendin’s hawk and his hounds since the day he arrived. Maybe they’re on to something. And maybe he’s playing us. It’s almost impossible to know.”

“Besides,” Laith said wryly, “it’s not like it should matter in the arena anyway.”

According to the rules, while in the ring, Balendin was restricted to the use of his body and blades, just like anyone else; the Eyrie believed in developing “the whole soldier,” and had no interest in training a group of men and women who would be useless on the battlefield the moment their wells ran dry. The reality, however, was slightly different. As long as a leach could work subtly, could twist the world around him without anyone noticing, his intervention was permitted. Kettral commanders could ferret out this kind of meddling if they tried, but they never tried—cadets needed to learn to fight in all circumstances, needed to grow comfortable fighting any foe.

“That’s one pair,” Arbert mused. “Any thoughts about who I ought to pit against them?”

The cadets erupted in a chorus of suggestions. Between the rigors of training and the exhaustive study, there wasn’t much leisure for entertainment on the Islands, and most of the assembled soldiers waited each day for Blood Time the way men and women back in Annur looked forward to a well-laid table at dinner.

Arbert held up a hand for silence, but before he could speak, Lin stepped into the ring.

“’Shael on a stick,” Valyn muttered beneath his breath.

“I’ll fight them,” she said flatly, not taking her eyes from the two.

Sami Yurl smirked.

Arbert chuckled. “All by yourself? Hardly seems fair.” He turned to the crowd. “Anyone want to join her?”

The group shifted uncomfortably, some gazing off toward the barracks, others out toward the open ocean. Sami Yurl was a self-involved bastard, but he was also quick with his blades, and brutal in the ring. And then there was the leach to consider.

“Unnatural,” Gent grumbled, eyeing Balendin warily. The huge cadet wasn’t afraid of much, but he held a fear of leaches matched only by his loathing of them.

“I’d step up,” Laith said, grinning at Valyn, “but I don’t want to deprive you of an opportunity for gallantry.”

Valyn sighed. It looked as though his return to the ring was going to be a little more exciting than he’d expected. He couldn’t leave Lin on her own, and he’d been aching to put a fist in Sami Yurl’s face since the scene over in Manker’s. One-on-one he’d have little chance, but Balendin’s bladework was mediocre. If they were able to take the leach out of the arrangement quickly, they could both concentrate on Yurl.
And besides,
he thought ruefully,
no one else is volunteering.

“I’ll do it,” he said, stepping over the low rope.

The fight began poorly. Valyn would have preferred to square off against Yurl while Lin faced Balendin, but the leach managed to engage him first, leaving Lin to defend herself. She was a full head shorter than her opponent, and certainly weaker as well, but she was savvy. As Yurl’s blades snaked in and out, slicing, probing, she fought elbow to elbow with Valyn, refusing to be drawn off her guard by a series of clever gambits.

When Valyn first arrived on the Islands, he had thought bladework was all about strength, technique, and courage. The reality was far more pedestrian. Although those qualities all mattered, they paled before the necessity of discipline, the ability to wait, to watch, and to avoid mistakes.
The first step in winning,
Hendran wrote,
is to avoid losing.
While Valyn battered back the leach’s attacks, Lin held her own at his side, playing a tight, cautious game, her breathing heavy but steady. Valyn felt himself smile. If Lin could just hold Yurl off for a while longer, he would find an opening, and then they could both press Yurl.

Then the leach started talking.

“I never understood,” he began in a laconic voice that belied the sweat dripping from his forehead, “why the Kettral let women fight.”

Valyn swatted aside a thrust and forced him back a couple of paces, but the youth kept up his taunts.

“I know all the stated justifications, of course: women can pass unnoticed where a man would draw attention, they’re often underestimated by a foe, but it just doesn’t add up. For one thing,” he observed, “they’re small and weak. For another, they’re a distraction. Here I am in the ring. I should be focusing on my bladework, and all I can think about is ripping the pants off this bitch.”