Chapter 8
"Never trust love. Always love trust."
- Troy Franklin, 25 Augesti, 1787 AC
"I knew it," Rodrig said, clapping his hands and giggling. "I knew you were too mean to kill."
Aidan sprinted down the incline to gather with the others, certain he knew the old woman in the group. He nearly fell over in surprise when he realized it was Nadya, Barrowdown's former Steward.
"Only mean to lazy, good-for-nothing horse masters, Mister Rodrig." She smiled, and the two old friends shared a moment of gladness at seeing one another alive.
"Nadya," Aidan said, helping her down from her mount, "how did you escape?"
"Much the way one generally escapes," she said, giving Aidan a smile that brought back memories of mint treats, learning arithmetic, and handling shipments the time Father spent a full summer at court, "I ran away."
"You absconded, eh?" Aidan cracked a wry smile, and his heart felt like it would burst with joy. "After the thrashing you gave those Serfs in my sixteenth year?"
"Call it a strategic retreat, young Sir, I'll not be having the likes of you spreading rumors about me." She laughed a Lady's laugh, graceful and flittering like bird wings.
They embraced, tears streaming down Aidan's cheeks. She's alive. My family's dead, but Nadya survived, and I don't care if she stole half our treasury on her way out. "I'm never letting you out of my sight again."
"Nor I you, young-" Nadya suddenly doubled over in a coughing fit, hacking and gasping. The rough-looking Knight jumped from his mount and provided a kerchief from inside his vambrace. Such chivalry. I wonder who he is?
"She's been like this for two months, Sir Aidan," the Knight said, his lumpy face testifying he was no mere titled dandy, "and the doctors say it's like to get worse before it gets better."
"Sorry to hear it, Sir ... ?"
"Oh, Sorry." He extended his armored hand, and Aidan took it, trying hard to grip firm enough for the brute to feel. "Sir Gary Oakwood, formerly of Yanji."
"A Yanjian?" Aidan raised an eyebrow, wondering why he hadn't recognized the accent sooner. "I thought the Barkers were Lords of Yanji."
"They were until two summers back. Plague took them, same as it did your family, I'm afraid. New Liege didn't like me, so I hit the hedges. My sympathies for your loss."
"Plague, my ass," Nadya spoke up, wiping stray blood from her lips, "they was murdered, every last one of them."
Aidan's heart beat with a savage ferocity. If some other family got caught in the Deputy's schemes, then perhaps something could be proven. Something the King couldn't ignore.
"Please, Nadya, come sit by our fire, and we can talk." Aidan turned to ask Charlene to join them, but she was gone. The four of them, Rodrig, Nadya, Aidan, and Sir Gary went to the nearest fire, standing upwind of the slight breeze that made the smoke wriggle and dance.
"Taking up with outlaws, Sir Aidan? What would your father say?" Nadya asked, then seemed to regret the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Aidan felt his heart sink a bit, imagining how severe his father's scolding would be and how stinging his criticisms. Aidan smiled through his pain and gave a retort.
"Probably the same thing he would say to you for sharing their fire, dear Nadya." Aidan said, the steam of his breath mingling with the hot, dry smoke that wafted from the orange flames.
"I brought you something," she said, reaching into her cloak.
"You didn't need-"
"I did." She looked him eye to eye, more serious than the time she'd caught him stealing from the family chest to buy a toy he fancied at the Capital Market. "I have waited two long years to give you these."
She handed him three thick books bound with a wide leather strap. He unclasped the strap and saw that the cover of each volume bore his family's white tulip Crest. He opened one and held his breath as he read the name written in fluid, well-practiced calligraphic strokes: Quendon Franklin. He stared at the lettering for an eternity, lightly running his fingers along the long-dried black ink, tracing his father's name as he'd done when learning to script so many years before.
He opened the next book to find a different name written with delicate flowery strokes on the first page: Katisha Franklin. The letters were ringed with dots here and there, and she had drawn a cascade of flowers and leaves hanging off the first letters of both her names. Hastening to the third, he opened it to find bold, confident strokes bearing the name Troy Franklin. His academic brother had underlined his name and drawn an ornate rendition of their House Crests below the line, the White Tulip of Franklin surrounded with vivid, eye-catching patterns of opposing sets of lines and eternal knots. They did love to draw.
He carefully stacked the books and pulled the fastening strap firm, clasping it shut with the care such a find demanded. In his hands were his family's journals, their thoughts and hopes, their memories.
Themselves. His heart beat wildly as he recalled his vision in the hollow as the heavenly magic had stitched his bones and muscles back together. I have found you, Katisha. He thanked Nadya more curtly than he intended, then excused himself and sprinted back to his tent, overcome with emotion. I have found you all.
He skipped dinner, intending to use the time poring over every phrase, every letter, every punctuation mark in his family's journals, but every time he opened one he was overtaken by a flood of tears as though he really had found all three of them alive and well, sitting in his tent, ready to explain the madness that surrounded his return from the war. He muffled his face as best he could, not wanting random passersby to believe he was weeping in self-pity.
"Sir Aidan," Rodrig called softly from just outside the flap, "I brought you a tray. Missed you at supper."
Aidan opened his tent and let Rodrig in, offering him a wooden box he'd made as a guest stool. Aidan cut up the hunk of beef swimming in an onion gravy and munched on crunchpeas, and Rodrig stared with a leery sidelong gaze at the three volumes lying on his bed.
"Good to see ol' Nadya again, eh?" Rodrig said after a long, smothering silence.
"It was."
"You think she'll stay on, or go back with the others?"
"Others?" Aidan raised his eyebrows, suddenly realizing he had no idea who the people traveling with Nadya were, particularly that large armored fellow with his bristly mustache and permanently unamused face.
"Sorry, I thought you were there for that part." Rodrig took a thick splinter from his coat's chest pocket and began digging his dinner's remnants out of his teeth. "The others are from a group in Baadenswood. They call themselves the Shrikes, Sir Gary is their leader. He's here to coordinate winter with the Queen."
"Winter?"
"Yeah, lad, winter. In case you haven't noticed, it's getting colder these days. It won't be long before we'll have snow to go along with our clouds and fog."
"No caravans in winter."
"Precisely. Usually we take a few extra raids here and there, hit the Saukasi merchants and strip anyone in armor from Forestpeak to Klauston until the first snowfall."
"But that's not enough," Aidan said through a mouthful of beef, smiling as he thought of Nadya scolding him for talking with a full mouth when he was young. Sometimes it felt good to break the rules he'd spent his life upholding.
"Not nearly. We could probably survive on it, but at a minimum. We'd be skin and bones come spring, not well enough by a site for raiding."
"My father always called spring 'the war season,'" Aidan said, his mind drifting to those old days and his eyes drifting to those precious journals that he didn't even realize he was looking for, "and he'd stand on the balcony of the highest tower and watch for fires every night. Remember?"
"I do, M'Lord." Rodrig stared at the books now, no doubt wondering what wonders they contained. "It was an old custom, some say from before the Lily Conquest. Could be."
Aidan's mind shook free of its nostalgic trance, and he realized his food was nearly gone. He didn't feel as though he'd eaten his fill. Deep in his mind, ther
e was a growing sensation of dissatisfaction, of restlessness. Justice requires patience. He mentally chanted it until his thoughts drifted back to pressing matters.
"So what do the Redtails do when there's no food?" Rodrig shook his head as if he, too, was waking up from distant memories of better times.
"Hunt, mostly. Forest has plenty of game, and we're not technically poaching. At least not yet."
"Does the King plan to Royalize it?"
"There are always rumors," Rodrig shrugged and shook his head.
"And what happens when the game runs thin?"
"That's always the question. That's why the Shrikes are here - to negotiate winter trade."
"Bandits trade in the winter?"
"Each group, and there are at least five, try to maintain at least two weeks' supply of food. Anything extra they send to one another, and they have an entire ordered system for who gets first pick from which groups. If the recipients can use it, they keep it, if not they pass it along the chain."
"Amazing. I never thought bandits capable of such organization."
"Neither did I 'til I joined them."
"I wonder what would happen if they used that organization for something else."
Rodrig looked as though he wanted to ask what Aidan meant, but changed his mind. Aidan picked Rodrig's brain to get a better idea of where the gaps in the bandits' training lied.
"No matter what I tell them," Rodrig said, slurring his words a little after a few sips from his corked flask he shared with Aidan, "they always go up to the armored Guards hacking and slashing like you and Connel in your little contest. It's embarrassing."
"They try to cut through Kannitick Plate?" Aidan couldn't hide his astonishment. His own armor, practically unpowered when he fell from the window, barely had a scratch from the incident, not even a dent or compromised segment. "What do the Guards do?"
"Usually, kill them in threes." Rodrig shook his head. "Only Connel, myself, and a few other lads know how to open those cans. We teach the others, but they forget everything we said the moment they're facing one of the bastards."
"So heavily armored Guards resist your forces?"
"Until me or someone else with a crossbow and two bits of sense snipes 'em with an ice bolt." Aidan shuddered as he remembered the Royal Guards lying on the ground with bodies frozen and twisted in death throes, covered in ice and frost. "Takes care of 'em quick, but the bolts are expensive."
"If that's where the trouble is, then that's where I'll begin."
"Grappling with brutes in Kannitick Plate?" Rodrig laughed with disbelief. "You're better off training them to shit downwind!"
Aidan winked, unfazed by his old friend's doubts. "If there's time."
The next day, Aidan jumped out of bed at first light and bounded to the breakfast line, smiling with a joy he never thought he'd feel again. The watery eggs dribbled through the spaces in his fork, the biscuits so undercooked they were basically a blob of dough surrounded by soft bread, and the crunchpeas now soggy and mushy since they'd clearly been left outdoors and had soaked up the damp night air. Aidan devoured every piece as though it were the most succulent meal he'd ever been privileged to eat.
As soon as breakfast ended, he visited Kluny, a former blacksmith with the massive arms and burn-scarred face to prove it. He gave Aidan a few practice weapons - some narrow hip daggers, a bill-pole, a couple of blunt broadswords - on the condition that Aidan return them every night so they wouldn't get left out to rust. He thanked Kluny, who nodded grimly. Aidan donned his Kannitick Plate and took a few of the hip daggers with him.
"You lads!" he said, coming upon a group of young men sitting on the ground, their weapons strewn around them. Aidan swallowed his disgust at the lack of discipline, and continued with the line he'd practiced. "I'm here to teach you how to fight."
"Are you now, brave Sir Knight?" A lily-skinned boy of no more than sixteen summers stood and looked Aidan over as if inspecting a sheep. He made a few twisting sour faces and scoffed. "Thing is, we know how to fight! Right, lads?"
His lads all cheered, "Ya!" at his invitation, and Aidan shook his head. Rodrig told him that the men would probably challenge him, so he was prepared.
"Then let's see what you know, Mr.... ."
"Greenborough. Quincy Greenborough."
"Mr. Greenborough. What do you say? Feel like teaching me a lesson?"
Quincy looked annoyed, and Aidan knew he had him clinched. He couldn't back down without losing face in front of his friends. After a tense silence, he nodded like a man agreeing to be put into the stocks.
Quincy was already dressed in a padded gambeson with plates of hardened leather strapped to it, ready for whenever the next raid came. He wrapped a long cloth several times around his head in a tight knot, bringing a broad loop in front of his face and covering his nose and mouth. Aidan threw Quincy a sheathed hip dagger, which Quincy fumbled and dropped.
"That dagger, Mr. Greenborough, is the most important weapon in armored fighting. Try not to drop it again."
His friends laughed, and Quincy tied the knife to a pair of loops on his right hip. His eyes glared at Aidan, his covered face menacing in its concealment.
"How about a sword?" Quincy asked, and Aidan shook his head.
"Sword training comes later." Aidan closed his helm's faceplate, waiting a moment for its electronics to switch on. Before him, Quincy adjusted his face mask and pulled it wide so that its edge rested beneath his jaw. Aidan's dagger was firmly tied to his hip, ready at the moment when he would need it.
Quincy drew the hip dagger and pointed it at Aidan, bending his knees and moving catlike to the side. The boy knows how to knife-fight; this will be easy. Aidan assumed a grappling stance, holding his hands forward like claws, hunching slightly and stalking toward Quincy directly. The boy sidestepped him, and Aidan's right pauldron rang as it was slashed by a hip dagger.
But Quincy moved with too much flourish, allowing the knife hand to linger several seconds longer than it needed to. With unhesitating speed assisted by the muscle boost his armor provided, Aidan grabbed Quincy's right wrist and moved his elbow so that it sat atop the locked wrist, stepping forward as his elbow connected with the boy's face. Aidan pulled the strike, and it only caused the lad to blink for a few seconds rather than giving him a broken nose and jaw. Letting go of Quincy's wrist, Aidan drew his own dagger and brought it quickly to his eye, its tip hovering a finger's distance from Quincy's pupil.
"You're dead, Mr. Greenborough," Aidan said the words simply and without either chastisement or arrogance.
"So I am," Quincy replied, "but I didn't realize we were fighting dirty. You didn't fight this way with Connel."
"The dueling ring and the battlefield are two very different places, lad," Aidan answered, sheathing his hip knife as Quincy turned around and lifted his bascinet. "Treating one as if it's the other typically has lethal consequences."
"Shall we try again?" Quincy's voice was hard edged and eager for payback.
"By all means, Mr. Greenborough. Again!"
Quincy approached this time and lunged with his dagger toward Aidan's face. This time Aidan sidestepped and pushed Quincy to the ground with a ferocity that felt good to release. His movements were rusty, he'd had no use for them while fighting the War in the Heavens, but his disciplined practice still asserted itself. He placed a knee on Quincy's chest and drew his dagger, once again placing it over his eye while the boy flailed and desperately pushed for leverage.
"Two deaths in one day, Mr. Greenborough. Still think you can't learn anything?"
"One. More. Time." Aidan worried a little as they prepared for their final round. It was clear that Quincy had no skill whatsoever in grappling, but there was something feral and dangerous about his voice that Aidan disliked. Desperate men fight like animals, and even animals can kill a man.
This time was different. Quincy adopted Aidan's wrestler stance, his hands guarding his front, his fingers curled like cat's claws. They both circ
led, periodically grabbing at the other's hand to test defenses, but neither gaining an advantage. Without warning, Quincy stepped in close, ducking under Aidan's guard and bringing his fist square into the Knight's faceplate.
Aidan stumbled back but kept his feet. Quincy came in close, fists swinging, and Aidan blocked and hit back as best he could, but the boy fought like a whirlwind. Didn't count on him being a brawler. Aidan, finally tired of being a practice dummy, stepped at an angle, facing almost entirely away from Quincy and placing his right foot behind the lad's heels. Aidan grabbed Quincy's hard leather gorget with his right hand and pushed him over his leg, sprawling him on the ground. But as he attempted to pin the boy with his knee, Quincy rolled away and in a flash tackled Aidan to the ground, drawing his dagger and raising it high.
Quincy had drawn the dagger with his fingertips, and as he fiddled with the hilt to try and get a better grip, Aidan struck at the right side of his head. The boy dodged, his balance shifting slightly to the left, and Aidan swung his hand hard, grabbing Quincy's wrist and pulling him violently to the left, breaking his pin and allowing Aidan to reverse his fortunes.
Now on top of Quincy, Aidan grabbed his dagger and stopped it once again just above his eye. "That makes three times, Mr. Greenborough. I am impressed by your technique however. You almost had me."
"These damned daggers are too small," Quincy complained as Aidan helped him to his feet. "I couldn't get the grip right."
"A poor rider blames his horse, lad." Aidan sheathed his dagger, and then drew it again, gripping it firm in his palm and holding it ready for the kill. "Don't expect your weapons to adapt to your skills. Adapt your skills to your weapons."
The crowd who had gathered to watch the fight suddenly clamored with volunteers wanting to try their luck against Aidan. Between the waving arms, Aidan saw that Rodrig, Sir Gary, Connel, and Charlene looked up from a large spool tipped on its side as a table near the main fire. He smiled at them and held up an empty hand, a sign of peaceful friendship from afar. Connel, Sir Gary, and Rodrig waved back; Charlene overacted as though she were a lovestruck princess blowing a kiss. Though he knew she was jesting, his cheeks flushed red, and he was thankful that his helm concealed his boyish reaction.
"What you have just witnessed," he boomed over the cheering bandits, who hushed silent as he spoke, "is the last time I will fight any of you who is untrained. If you want to try your hand at," he hesitated, searching for the right word, "armor wrestling, then you will show up here every morning after breakfast for training."
"Count me in, Sir Aidan," Quincy said, offering his hand. Aidan shook it vigorously, lifting his faceplate and rewarding Quincy with the best warm, fatherly smile he could muster.
"Good. We don't have enough armor to go around, so you'll need to wear whatever protective gear you've got. And for at least the first five days," he cast his gaze at every person crowded around him, pleased to notice both Woodsen and Three-Eyed Laney smiling at him from the bunch, "you'll practice with your bare hands only. The dagger-sticking is easy; the holds, throws, pins, and counters are the hard part. Questions?"
Around him was only a sea of eager-looking faces, some smudged with soot and dirt, some fresh cleaned, and several bearing scars that may have come from the armored brutes they now sought to overthrow. He smiled, joy welling up in his chest just as it had the day he took his oath as a Knight, and he knew why. For now, Aidan understood his place in this world.