Dragon's Trail

IV: ACCELERANDO-1

IV

ACCELERANDO

“Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth."

— Mike Tyson

Javal sat alone long into the night, toying with a dagger in his left hand and a pen in his right. A candle, burned to a fat stump, leaked wax off the side of the desk.

He read over what he’d written. The knife flipped in his hand, twirling and pirouetting with the flame’s light. He harbored no thoughts of harm; he was simply more comfortable with blades than with quills.

Master Crius,

Greetings from your eastern neighbor.

You should trust that I follow your orders, and the Crown’s, unquestioningly. I am honored by being charged with Jarrod’s training. I will fulfill my duties to the best of my ability. I must admit, however, that I question your judgment in the choice of King’s Rider Jarrod of Knightsbridge for the position he has been promised.

Rider Jarrod exemplifies such self-destruction and recklessness that I believe he harbors a death wish. I would be hesitant to promote such a man to knighthood, much less a command rank. In his defense, I must admit that he is already an exemplary warrior in his own right. I do not exaggerate on this next point: Jarrod is as skilled in combat as any man I’ve seen, and he is possibly a match for any man alive. However, I believe the consistency with which he puts himself into dangerous situations, coupled with the hesitation he displays in actual combat, would present a liability on the field and

He bit his lip. The knife crawled through his fingers to balance on the back of his hand, then dropped into his grip.

“. . . and I don’t know if I can keep him alive that long,” he muttered to no one.

He crumpled up the parchment, pulled another, dipped the pen, began to scribble furiously.

In a moment he stopped and read, and the knife began its dance anew.

“Crius?”

Crius was still awake in the front room of his chambers, tinkering with a spell mnemonic and a glass of brandy.

General Daral was an old warrior from the north, wiry and scarred and wearing his white and yellow beard in braids. He sat tiredly and took off his cap. “We need to talk, you and I.”

“Please.”

Crius poured him some tea.

“Thank you. Do you remember Sir Daran of—oh, I forget. Sir Javal’s second from two summers ago.”

“I do. Met his end with a sheth on a hunting expedition, yes?”

“Five sheth,” Daral corrected. “Sir Javal saw his end coming, a year before anyone else. He told you, remember?”

“I do. This is regarding Jarrod of Knightsbridge,” Crius assumed.

An ugly quiet drove itself like an adze between them.

Crius yanked it free. “That was a fair fight. Albar challenged him.”

“And lost.”

“Yes.”

“Jarrod of Knightsbridge is dangerous,” said Daral. “He’s uncontrollable. And unpredictable.”

“All the more reason we need him.”

“Explain.”

“I agree with Sir Javal’s assessment: Jarrod suffers from an appalling hubris; nearly an expectation that the world be laid at his feet simply because he is a skilled warrior.

“But that same hubris, from my observation, affects everyone in Jarrod’s homeworld.

“The son of Sabbaghian is going to be commanding the Gavrian forces, likely with the same abandon we see in Jarrod. To understand Sabbaghian, we need to understand Jarrod. When we can anticipate Jarrod, we can anticipate Sabbaghian. So we need to watch Jarrod. We need to learn from him. You don’t think we’re going to give him any real command on the field, do you? Sir Javal is teaching him so we can learn what someone from his world might do with an army. We have Sorenson in Rogues’ River, under tutelage from Commander Daorah Uth Alanas, for the same reason. We will compare notes and cross-reference with Sorenson’s mentors as the summer progresses. Come fall, we will have at least a cursory profile of Sabbaghian’s patterns and processes. We will put them in advisory positions, and we will use them to beat Gavria.”

“So we are not teaching him,” Daral’s brow furrowed. “He is teaching us?”

“Precisely. And we will be in his debt for it.”

“That makes much more sense to me,” General Daral said. “How is Javal with all this?”

“Sir Javal wrote me a wonderful letter the other night. He has sworn to fulfill his obligation.”

Jarrod awoke in his bed, in his chambers. His ribs had been clamped with bandages and his right eye was swollen shut.

“So when it really comes down to it,” said Javal, pouring two goblets of wine on the bedside table, “You’re a coward.”

Jarrod squinted at him through his good eye. “How do you figure that?”

Javal handed him one. “You hesitate.”

Jarrod rose to a sit with considerable effort. “I didn’t think I did.”

“You did. You could have disarmed Alby and beaten him unconscious. You should have. Maybe given him a good scar or taken an eye, too. And you should have killed Urlan for what he did.

“Loth, as well. You threw him down, you waited to see if he got up, to see if you’d done enough. I should have known it, then.”

“You told me not to draw against Loth.”

“I was wrong. You should have killed each of them, right there. This is the right thing. This is what a warrior does.”

“It’s not what I do,” said Jarrod.

“No!” Javal shouted. “It’s not! That’s the problem,” he hissed. “You’re either lazy, or you’re afraid.”

“I’m not really sure I’m up to getting my ass chewed right now. Could you come back later?”

Javal wasn’t amused. “You are a war horse, Jarrod. As fine and strong and brave as they come. But when someone threatens you, you fight like a little baby goat, shoving people around hoping they leave you alone. Quit being a child about it. You’re going to get us all killed.”

More quietly, he continued, “You have a greatness inside of you. Men like Albar, men like Urlan, they see that greatness, and they hate it, because they haven’t figured out that greatness in others doesn’t diminish greatness in self.”

“You have this. . .” here, he searched for a word, and failed, “. . . thing, a gift, inside of you. You are, with a sword, what King Sabbaghian is with his magic. We’ve never seen anything like it. No one has. A man like you comes along once in an age. And for some reason, you hate this thing that makes you great. And that makes men who lust for greatness even more furious because you have what they want, and you don’t want it.”

“I screwed up with it,” said Jarrod. “I used it to kill a man, who didn’t deserve to die.”

“That’s not a judgment you can make,” snapped Javal. “He drew a sword on you, yes? Over a woman? This man? This is the man you speak of?”

“Yes,” said Jarrod. “He lost his footing. He hit his head and he died.”

“So he killed himself,” said Javal. “He should have been ready. He should have had his feet under him.”

“He did. It was wet.”

Javal shrugged. “Did he know you? Did he know what you were capable of?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then he knew the consequences of fighting you. He came at you—you, of all men!—with a sword. He was prepared to die. Maybe he wanted to die, and needed you to do it for him.”

“Jesus,” said Jarrod. The thought had never occurred to him. “Suicide by Jarrod,” he muttered.

He let a moment pass, muttering under his breath in English.

“It took everything,” he told Javal then. “It destroyed my life. It destroyed my career. The woman I loved left me. My father still doesn’t speak to me. I became a—” they had no word for meme, “—a national example of failure.”

“A man with your gifts? A failure, for killing a man in a fight?”

“My people don’t understand,” said Jarrod. “Most of us don’t fight anymore.” He suddenly remembered a thirty-year-old man, bearded, tattooed, learning to box in his gym, who’d broken down sobbing the first time he’d caught a heavy punch to the face. “We’ve forgotten this part of ourselves. We don’t value it. Our world only has a handful of warriors left.”

“That’s a tragedy,” said Javal.

Jarrod downed his wine. “You have no idea.”

“Your gift didn’t ruin your life,” said Javal. “The man you killed did. And your nation’s misunderstanding did. And look, you’re here, now,” said Javal, gesturing around him. “The greatest warrior in the world, with no one disputing it. Not even me, and I was the greatest warrior in the world until you came along.”

“Sorry.”

“There you go again. Don’t be sorry! What do you have to be sorry for? Wine, adventure, the king’s own two hands propping you up, beautiful girls wetting their linen when you walk by, an entire nation shitting itself in fear over you. This is a bad thing?

“That man you killed did us a favor,” Javal said. “If you hadn’t killed him—or if your nation had at least the brains of a horse between them and made you the hero you should have been—you wouldn’t be here, now.”

“I never really thought of it that way,” said Jarrod, refilling his goblet.

“You should,” said Javal. “Because it’s true. We need this thing that you have. We need you to use all of it, right now. It’s not enough for you to kick ass in the courtyard, to teach us to swordfight and wrestle. It’s not enough for you to punch a man like Albar, and to let an asshole like Urlan blindside you, or to let a man like Loth live. We need you to be big. Bigger. Do you understand? The stuff of songs.”

“Epic.”

“Epic. Yes. Be epic, damn you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Javal picked up his goblet. “Consider that an order. Now get some rest. Swords win wars. I need you whole as soon as possible.”

Jarrod awoke in candlelight. Someone was dabbing at his eye with a damp cloth that felt like an ice pick in his brain.

He grabbed the hand and pushed it away. “Please don’t do that.”

“I am so sorry,” said Daelle, whose hand it was. “Jarrod, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to—” She took a deep breath.

“Don’t worry about it,” he groaned, closing his eye. “I need a good ass-kicking every once in a while.”

“It took four of them to do it,” said a large knight wearing an Order of the Stallion pin. He stood at the door, one hand on his sword.

“Sire,” said Jarrod.

“Pleasure,” said the knight. “We figured that bag of s**t would be coming for you while you slept. It seems like the only way it would be a fair fight.”

Jarrod smiled. “Is Sir Urlan okay?” he asked Daelle.

“He’ll live,” she said.

“Mm.”

Daelle perked. “That fight is the talk of the town. You beat the prince.”

“He’s not a prince yet,” Jarrod grumbled.

Moments passed. Her next words were hesitant, girlish. “This was because of me.”

“No,” said Jarrod. “You were an excuse. They’d both been looking for one. I am screwing this whole thing up,” he grumbled, shaking his head and staring at the ceiling. “I should just go home.”

It was then that Jarrod noticed the cup on the table. It wasn’t the cup that Javal had left, but one of the tall agate cups that Falconsrealmers used for wine and fine drinks. This one, the color of honey and blood, had spiderwebs of silver across it.

“I brought this for you,” she said, handing him the cup, which he was disappointed to learn was empty. “I wanted to show you this.”

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “Thank you.”

She put her hands on his, around the cup. “When we break a fine cup, we take the pieces to a jeweler, who repairs it with silver. Do you see?” she traced the lines. “It’s more beautiful now, more precious, because it was once broken.”

Jarrod turned the cup over in his hands.

“You are broken,” she said. “But you are healing. What you’re doing for us? What you’re doing for the king? All of it, lines of silver, my lord. To work with that silver, it takes heat and time and a steady hand. Sir Javal is that hand.

“I’ve seen your mind,” she said. “I know your loss. I don’t understand the world you come from, but I understand the enormity of what happened to you. I do. I’ve been in your head, my lord, and I’ve seen it. Your life was amazing. You were a hero. You were a champion. You were robbed of your glory, and your love, and all the trappings of your greatness. Nothing can bring that back, but you can be greater, here, than you ever were.”

“I need to quit letting you in my head,” Jarrod muttered.

Her voice faltered. “Do you want another tutor?”

Jarrod took her hand, and told her no.

A few days’ ride to the southwest, near the Rogues’ River Manor, Carter rode fast.

Here, west of the Falconsrealm Mountains, the sun was a forge. He was bare-chested, treating his muscles to a carcinogen-free tan. Daorah wore a light linen tunic, revealing when doused with sweat, sexy as hell and screaming her head off in the middle of a clearing as Carter thundered through, leaping his horse over fallen logs and juking to miss rocks and holes. It was a big horse, a powerful horse, a stepping-stone to a pegasus.