Magic's Pawn

“Armor does more than protect; it conceals. Helms hide faces - and your opponent becomes a mystery, an enigma.

Seldasen hadthat right. Just like those two down there.

The cruel, blank stares of the helm-slits gave no clues to the minds within. The two opponents drew their blades, flashed identical salutes, and retreated exactly twenty paces each to end at the opposite corners of the field. The sun was straight overhead, their shadows little more than pools at their feet. Twelve restive armored figures fidgeted together on one side of the square. The harsh sunshine bleached the short, dead grass to the color of light straw, and lit everything about the pair in pitiless detail.

Hmm. Not such enigmas once they move.

One fighter was tall, dangerously graceful, and obviously well-muscled beneath the protection of his worn padding and shabby armor. Every motion he made was precise, perilous - and professional.

The other was a head shorter. His equipment was new, the padding unfrayed, the metal lovingly burnished. But his movements were awkward, uncertain, perhaps fearful.

Still, if he feared, he didn’t lack for courage. Without waiting for his man to make a move, he shouted a tremulous defiant battle cry and charged across the sun-burnt grass toward the tall fighter. As his boots thudded on the hard, dry ground, he brought his sword around in a low-line attack.

The taller fighter didn’t even bother to move out of his way; he simply swung his scarred shield to the side. The sword crunched into the shield, then slid oif, metal screeching on metal. The tall fighter swept his shield back into guard position, and answered the blow with a return that rang true on the shield of his opponent, then rebounded, while he turned the momentum of the rebound into a cut at the smaller fighter’s head.

The pale stone of the keep echoed the sound of the exchange, a racket like a madman loose in a smithy. The smaller fighter was driven back with every blow, giving ground steadily under the hammerlike onslaught - until he finally lost his footing and fell over backward, his sword flying out of his hand.

There was a dull thudas he hit his head on the flinty, unforgiving ground.

He lay flat on his back for a moment, probably seeing stars, and scarcely moving, arms flung out on either side of him as if he meant to embrace the sun. Then he shook his head dazedly and tried to get up -

Only to find the point of his opponent’s sword at his throat.

“Yield, Boy,” rumbled a harsh voice from the shadowed mouth-slit of the helmet.

“Yield, or I run you through.”

The smaller fighter pulled off his own helm to reveal that he was Vanyel’s cousin Radevel. “If you run me through, Jervis, who’s going to polish your mail?”

The point of the sword did not waver.

“Oh, all right,” the boy said, with a rueful grin. “I yield.”

The sword, a pot-metal practice blade, went back into its plain leather sheath. Jervis pulled off his own battered helm with his shield hand, as easily as if the weight of wood and bronze wasn’t there. He shook out his sweat-dampened, blond hair and offered the boy his right, pulling him to his feet with the same studied, precise movements as he’d used when fighting.

“Next time, you yield immediately, Boy,” the armsmaster rumbled, frowning. “If your opponent’s in a hurry, he’ll take banter for refusal, and you’ll be a cold corpse.”

Jervis did not even wait to hear Radevel’s abashed assent. “You - on the end - Mekeal.” He waved to Vanyel’s brother at the side of the practice field. “Helm up.”

Vanyel snorted as Jervis jammed his own helm back on his head, and stalked back to his former position, dead center of the practice ground. “The rest of you laggards,” he growled, “let’s see some life there. Pair up and have at.”

Jervis doesn’t have pupils, he has living targets,thought Vanyel, as he watched from the window. There isn’t anyone except Father who could even give him a workout, yet he goes straight for the throat every damned time; he gets nastier every day. About all hedoes give them is that he only hits half force. Which is still enough to set Radev on his rump. Bullying bastard.

Vanyel leaned back on his dusty cushions, and forced his aching hand to run through the fingering exercise yet again. Half the lute strings plunked dully instead of ringing; both strength and agility had been lost in that hand.

I am never going to get this right again. How can I, when half the time I can’t feel what I’m doing?

He bit his lip, and looked down again, blinking at the sunlight winking off Mekeal’s helm four stories below. Every one of them will be moaning and plastering horse liniment on his bruises tonight, and boasting in the next breath about how long he lasted against Jervisthis time. Thank you, no. Not I. One broken arm was enough. I prefer to see my sixteenth birthday with therest of my bones intact.

This tiny tower room where Vanyel always hid himself when summoned to weapons practice was another legacy of Grandfather Joserlin’s crazy building spree. It was Vanyel’s favorite hiding place, and thus far, the most secure; a storage room just off the library. The only conventional access was through a tiny half-height door at the back of the library - but the room had a window - a window on the same side of the keep as the window of Vanyel’s own attic-level room.

Any time he wanted, Vanyel could climb easily out of his bedroom, edge along the slanting roof, and climb into that narrow window, even in the worst weather or the blackest night. The hard part was doing it unseen.

An odd wedge-shaped nook, this room was all that was left of the last landing of the staircase to the top floor - an obvious change in design, since the rest of the staircase had been turned into a chimney and the hole where the roof trapdoor had been now led to the chimney pot. But that meant that although there was no fireplace in the storeroom itself, the room stayed comfortably warm in the worst weather because of the chimney wall.

Not once in all the time Vanyel had taken to hiding here had anything new been added to the clutter or anything been sought for. Like many another of the old lord’s eccentricities, its inaccessibility made it easy to ignore.

Which was fine, so far as Vanyel was concerned. He had his instruments up here - two of which he wasn’t even supposed to own, the harp and the gittern - and any time he liked he could slip into the library to purloin a book.

At the point of the room he had an old chair to sprawl in, a collection of candle ends on a chest beside it so that he could read when the light was bad. His instruments were all safe from the rough hands and pranks of his brothers, and he could practice without anyone disturbing him.

He had arranged a set of old cushions by the window so that he could watch his brothers and cousins getting trounced all over the moat while he played - or tried to play. It afforded a ghost of amusement, sometimes. The gods knew he had little enough to smile about.

It was lonely - but Vanyel was always lonely, since Lissa had gone. It was bloody awkward to get to - but he couldn’t hide in his room.

Though he hadn’t found out until he’d healed up, the rest of his siblings and cousins had gone down to bachelor’s hall with Mekeal while he’d been recovering from that broken arm. He hadn’t, even when the Healer had taken the splints off.

His brothers slandered his lute playing when they’d gone, telling his father they were just as happy for Vanyel to have his own room if he wanted to stay up there. Probably Withen, recalling how near the hall was to his own quarters, had felt the same. Vanyel didn’t care; it meant that the room was his, and his alone - one scant bit of comfort.