Dragon's Trail

III: FUGUE-1

III

FUGUE

“It is of the highest importance to know how to wrestle, since this often accompanies combat on foot.”

— Baldassare Castiglione, 1528

Crius, you’re jesting!” the knight cried from the next room. “Me?”

Jarrod listened intently. It sounded as if the knight had a good argument going. “You know of my track record with sergeants. If he’s of any value to you . . .”

Three pages loudly set Jarrod’s arming trunk, shields, and duffel down in a room across the hall, and nodded as they headed out.

And Crius’s rebuttal: “He’s to aspire to knighthood, and command. His Majesty has admitted him to the Order of the Stallion as a King’s Rider, and therefore, he is your charge.”

At this point, the two strode back into the anteroom, the knight throwing up his hands, professing his helplessness. “I don’t need this, Crius. Give him to Ilywyn!”

“He’s a capable warrior, and a crafty thinker, and you’re one to talk, Sir Javal!” Crius finally accused, grabbing the man by the arm and spinning him around. He shoved a folded letter into Javal’s hand. Javal broke the wax seal and read it, his eyes flicking back and forth to Jarrod.

“You’re jesting,” he said. “Or the king is f*****g with me.”

Javal was rail-thin and tall, Anglo-European in appearance with dark hair and gunmetal eyes. Jarrod figured him for a fit forty, for though his movements were quick with the strength of youth, his eyes and mouth harbored intense lines.

He was clad in black woolen trousers with cross-garters to high on the thigh, and a drab linen tunic with the sleeves shoved up to his elbows. His face was angular and clean-shaven and quite handsome, with a challenging jaw that could have merited a Gillette endorsement. His hair was black and wiry and for the most part clipped above his ears, though its cut was so ragged it looked as if he’d done it himself in a tantrum. His posture was ramrod; his hand gestures broad and foreign.

And what hands, Jarrod thought: broad, scarred fists and thick forearms crossed with red and pink tracks of wounds long healed. All four knuckles and the wrist bone of his right hand were freshly scabbed over and a bit swollen, as if he’d been in a fistfight just the prior evening.

“Of all people, I know you hate taking on a new sergeant,” Crius continued, quite sympathetically, “We need a knight to train him who is loyal to the crown, and none is more loyal than you. Make a rider out of him.”

Javal kicked his heel. “All right. But look at him,” he turned fierce eyes on Jarrod. “For hope’s sake, look at how small he is!”

Jarrod straightened to his full height and nearly said something.

“This matters?” Crius asked. “You were knighted at fourteen winters. Or have you forgotten? Dreaming of a lifetime of chasing dragons and maidens, how many suits of armor did we have to build you as you outgrew them? How old was Sir Morgan when you led —”

“Hey!” Javal snapped. He stiffened, regained his composure.

Crius let it go, having made his point.

“Now, I want you to take him with you when you leave today for castle duty at High River. You will groom him for command. He’s to be an adviser to the king.”

“Yes,” said Javal. “I read that part.” His voice was incredulous as he looked Jarrod up and down.

“He is his nation’s—and possibly his homeland’s—finest swordsman.”

Jarrod shrugged in response to the look Javal gave him just then. “And at the moment,” Crius continued, “the king has made him a King’s Rider, and the Crown will present him with anything you think he needs. He goes with you, for a year.”

Javal’s shoulders sank. “A year.”

“Jarrod, you are to take orders from this man. He is your superior, and your mentor. And Javal, Jarrod is not a squire, he is a King’s Rider and your acting sergeant. Your actions today disappoint me.”

Sir Javal mumbled an apology. Crius harrumphed, wished Jarrod good luck, threw him the rock sign, and bowed out of the room.

Sir Javal looked Jarrod up and down. “What’s that, your salute?”

“Pretty much,” Jarrod had to admit.

Javal made the sign and looked at it, turning his hand over and grunting.

He handed Jarrod the letter. “This makes you a member of our order. Keep it safe.”

“Sure,” said Jarrod. He tucked it into a small purse on his swordbelt.

“Give me your sword.”

Jarrod shrugged the gran espée de guerre off his shoulder, cleared it from its scabbard, and handed it over, hilt-first. Javal stood the massive weapon upright in his hand and struck the pommel, checking the balance and the fitting. He let out a low whistle. “Solid steel?”

“We don’t make our steel the way you do,” Jarrod told him, and held out his hand to have the sword back. He set the tip on the wooden floor and carefully put his weight on it, bending the blade past a 45-degree angle, then let it snap back to true and handed it back. “We can harden the spine differently from the edges.”

Javal eyed down the edge and muttered something profane. “Can you use it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you care to qualify that?”

“Gladly,” Jarrod said. “All the nations of my homeland hold a competition every four years. I was selected to represent my nation at the most recent one.”

“Did you win?”

“I was disqualified for killing another competitor outside of the match.”

Javal finally looked impressed. “Over a woman, I hope.”

“In fact, yes.”

“So you’ve already killed a man. That’s good. That’s one less thing I have to worry about. And now? What do you do now?”

“I teach future competitors. You could consider me my nation’s master trainer.” It wasn’t far from the truth. He had a former student who was up for an NCAA saber title and he’d taught Zera, Barbarian Queen everything she knew.

Sir Javal sighed. “We’ll see what we can do with that. Do you ride?”

“Not by your standards, I’m sure.”

Javal leaned back and tapped his head against the wall three times, swearing.

“So, in my homeland,” Jarrod trod carefully, “We have many orders of knighthood. There is ceremonial knighthood, royal knighthood, orders that work as professional military guilds or fraternities, if you will, and we have even had orders that have functioned as their own private armies.”

“And?” Javal asked.

“Well, which are we?”

Javal stared at him for a moment. “You don’t know?”

“I just got here,” Jarrod said. “I was told that I would be admitted to this order. I’d kind of like to know what it is.”

“Look—uh, Jarrod,” he began, clumsily. He sat down on a wooden chest and leaned his head against the stone wall and closed his eyes.

“The Order of the Stallion,” he began again, “has, well it has the highest—how do I say this?—turnover rate, of any of the orders. What I mean to say, is that a knight of the Stallion has absolutely the shortest life expectancy of any of the chivalrics.

“We are Gateskeep’s wandering servants, the king’s eyes and ears.”

“A royal order, then,” Jarrod deduced. “A military order.”

“Indeed. We are, in our own right, the swift hand of the king, above and beyond the embodiment of the ideals the other orders are sworn to. We fight on all fronts. Part of our pledge is to weed out evil within the ranks of the other orders, and we are sanctioned to do anything—anything—our quests, and our oaths, require.”

“Special Operations.”

“Interesting turn of phrase. Yes. The other orders hate us, and fear us, yet they envy us. We are the smallest in number, and the most feared. We killed the last known dragon around these parts. Every knight in the kingdom answers to us.”

“Okay.”

“You’re my sergeant. Most sergeants aren’t members of an order, but they hope to be. As a King’s Rider, you’re a probationary member of the Order of the Stallion, made so at the king’s request. The good news for you is, only the king himself can remove you from the order. I’m short a sergeant, as it happens, and for you, a sergeant’s billet is a good way to train you.

“The question I have is, what do I need to train you on? I’ve never heard of you. I have no idea what you did to win your warrant from the king—the king! Crius tells me you’re the champion of a land I’ve never heard of, and you tell me you’re disgraced. All you have is a letter from the king and a sword that’s worth more than my manor.”

“It’s a start,” said Jarrod.

“That it is. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I know I can’t undo it.”

“You stand an excellent chance of getting killed within the next year. Are you prepared to die?”

“Not needlessly,” Jarrod admitted.

The knight bit his lower lip as the words left Jarrod’s mouth. He perused them for a long moment, running them back and forth across his mind.

“Brave words,” he decided. “Well then, sir, let’s see what you brought, and then we’ll take you down to Master Argyul’s and see how much training you need.”

“What the hell is that thing in your mouth?”

“Baby’s little pacifier.” Argyul was the sword master’s name, and he laughed heartily at his own wit as he kicked clear a space in the straw of the gymnasium.

Jarrod flipped his mouthguard sideways with his tongue. When inserted, it gave the impression that his teeth were filed to points, with long vampiric white fangs when he smiled. “This is to keep him from knocking my teeth out,” said Jarrod.

“Good thinking. You’ll need it.”

Jarrod wore a black horsehide motocross jacket with a matching leather skirt, which was a custom job with padding and carbon-fiber plates riveted beneath, attaching to the jacket with heavy buckles. His longer mailshirt would cover the skirt completely but he didn’t wear it here. He did wear motocross gloves and heavy workman’s knee pads, steel-toed work boots, and a padded mail mantle and hood, all in black. He flipped the hood over his head and tightened the drawstrings.

Jarrod had watched Javal’s dislike for him dissipate as the knight had gone through Jarrod’s gear, concluding that Jarrod was a rich lord in his homeland. The coat of plates Jarrod had packed—a magnificent thing of burnished harness leather tanned to a deep whisky color with sandwiched plates of ultra-high molecular weight plastic—brought a string of curses that Jarrod had never imagined; the modified motocross jackets he used as gambesons even more.

Jarrod explained away the plastic and carbon fiber as materials that grew in his homeland. Javal knocked on them, tried to flex them, and pushed at the padding behind. “Fine, fine,” he’d said.

Javal had been especially taken with fencing manuals, of which Jarrod had brought several. The knight seemed physically relieved to see the pictures, and mentioned that he was eager to see Jarrod fight.

After playing with a heavy plastic training sword for a few minutes, Javal had agreed upon its use in sparring, and also mentioned that he wanted one himself. Jarrod had told him that he’d only brought the one set of training weapons, but gladly gave him a nice Gerber multitool with a spring action built into the pliers. Javal had thought the metal snap on the knife’s leather belt case was particularly slick. He now wore it on his own swordbelt, which was a simple, double-wrap affair.

Jarrod had brought a hand-and-a-half training sword, which he now bore against the castle’s master trainer.

Argyul was armed with a wooden sword a little shorter and heavier, with a heavy glove on his hand. He wore no armor except for a heavy leather jerkin and leather knee guards.

He was taller than even Sir Javal, barrel-chested with a potbelly and wide arms braided with muscle. He was old enough, Jarrod assumed, to be Javal’s father, but he moved with a bounce in his step and a focused heft to his shoulders that Jarrod had seen in enough aging martial arts masters to know that this was not a man to be fribbled with.

Jarrod flashed his fangs. “This’ll be fun,” he assessed.

Argyul obviously had to be able to whip the arrogant young bucks—like Jarrod—easily and embarrassingly, or he’d never command their respect. He had power and explosiveness in his build, which made sense, because he likely couldn’t match someone with Jarrod’s grace and youth in any sort of enduring engagement.

Jarrod concluded that the old badger probably knew every dirty trick ever imagined, and had imagined quite a few of his own.

It was time to go to school.

Javal handed him a mail glove, for the right hand. Jarrod put it on over his leather gauntlet. Javal muttered, “That’s for the sword hand. Turn it inside out.”

“You’ve never read Fabris,” said Jarrod.

“One of those books you brought?”

“Yes.”

“I intend to,” said Javal.

Argyul beckoned.

Jarrod and Argyul stared at each other for a good five seconds, neither moving.

“Looks like a frightened mouse,” Argyul commented. “Aggression’s not your strong point, is it, mouse?”

Jarrod tongued his mouthguard sideways. “I’m wondering how you want to do this,” he said carefully. “Are we going full-speed? Light contact? Touch sparring? I don’t intend to kill you. I can crack your skull with this pretty easily, though.”