Blade Archer ~ Nineteen

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It was with painful reluctance that Kael returned to the palace the next morning for training. For all the confidence he showed his mother, he was terrified that he would be kicked out of training. Throwing daggers was all he was good at. If he couldn’t do that for a living, he might as well chop his fingers off himself.

The archery master was in the range already, and he glanced up from the lesson he was giving as Kael approached. ‘General’s office,’ he said, nodding his head in that direction, then returned to the lesson.

Kael chewed his lip as he turned his heal and made for the office of the First General. He hadn’t been in there since he had first applied for the position. He didn’t remember feeling so nervous then as he did now. With a moment of hesitation, he knocked on the general’s door and pushed it open.

The general sat behind his desk as he had the first time Kael had met him. He looked up from his paperwork, frowned at Kael’s face, then looked at the bandage on his arm. With a heavy sigh, he laid his charcoal stick on the table and rested back in his chair, beckoning Kael forward.

‘You have issues with authority,’ he said.

Kael didn’t know how to respond to the statement, so he said nothing. The general’s voice was bland, almost bored by the situation. He probably was, Kael reflected. There were surely more important matters for a general to attend to than a trainees’ scuffle.

‘I’d encourage you to curb that. You’re all on the same side in this army, whether you want to be or not.’

Kael gritted his teeth, but couldn’t stay silent any longer. ‘He provoked me, sir,’ he excused. The general’s expression soured at his speaking out of turn, but he said nothing, so Kael continued. ‘I warned him not to mention me scar or I’d give him one to match.’

The general said nothing, only continued to look stern but bored. Kael met his gaze evenly, ready to defend himself further if he needed to.

‘You’re on stable duties until Summer Solstice,’ the general decided. ‘Consider this your only warning.’ He picked his charcoal back up again and resumed writing.

Seeing this as his dismissal, Kael gave a hasty bow and left the office. It wasn’t until he was back outside, with the heavy wooden door behind him, that he realised his hands were sweating. Stable duties! He couldn’t believe his luck. After his first camel riding lesson, when the beast had broken his arm, he’d come to like the animals in the army’s stables.

The only problem was that it would take what little free time he had to himself, leaving him with no time to make any money, but at least he still had the prospect of making some when he graduated. He might even impress the stable hands enough that he could stay on after the Solstice and take a paid job with them, or at the very least he could pick the pockets of a few Own riders while he was there. He hadn’t been caught pick pocketing since he was eight.

He strode to the archery range, hands buried deep in his pockets. The archery master hardly even looked at him as he selected a bow from the wall, but the boys were all doing their very best to avoid his attention. Wise move, Kael agreed with a glare at any foolish enough to catch his eye for a moment.

He slung a quiver over his shoulder and joined his archery training group. They all gave him a few paces distance, and one gave him a cautious smile as a peace offering. Kael returned the smile with a cynical half-smile of his own, and loaded an arrow into his bow in preparation for his shot.

It had taken nearly three years of training, but finally Kael had solidified his reputation. They wouldn’t dare provoke him now, not after they had seen he had the guts and the strength to back up his threats. No longer was he just the uneducated southerner. He was someone to be feared, and he delighted in it.

The day passed with little incident. After only a few minutes of dagger training, during which Niloren had done his very best to get one over Kael and coming dangerously close to the blade archer’s throat on a number of occasions, the dagger master had finally given them each a new training partner. Kael was partnered with the strongest of the blade archers, a determined boy who said from the outset that he was only there to learn. He slashed more than once at Kael’s stitches, though, and after the second such occurrence, Kael pinned him against the wall with his arm pressed against the taller boy’s throat.

‘I’m only going for your weakness,’ the boy stammered. ‘Like the master’s been teaching us.’

Kael’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s not a weakness,’ he snarled, but he shoved the boy aside and let him go. There was nothing malicious in his thrusts, only cold tactics.

At the end of the day, with an hour before sunset when the rest of the boys would be heading home for dinner, Kael made for the stables for his first day of punishment. He felt curiously enticed by the prospect. He knew he would start with the most menial, disgusting jobs of shovelling camel manure, but he hoped that if he did as much without complaint then he might come out the other end with a real, paying job. However bad it was, he reminded himself, it was better than losing a finger, and it was only three full moons until the Solstice, anyway.

He found Giltha, the chief stable hand, at the far end of the stable where she tended the hoof of a dappled grey horse. The horse’s rider stood with arms folded by the wall. Kael recognised him as one of the two swordsmen who had shown off to the trainees earlier that year. He hung back until Giltha had finished, handing the reins back to the Own rider. Laeron barely gave her a smile in thanks before towing his horse away.

Kael rolled his eyes and approached the stable hand. ‘No appreciation, eh?’

Giltha shrugged one shoulder as she wiped her hands clean and hooked a stray lock of greying hair behind her ear. ‘The horse does,’ she excused. ‘And you are?’

‘Kael. First General sent me here?’

‘Ah,’ she said, pausing and frowning critically at him. Kael could have gleaned anything from that sound, then she shrugged again and set her hands on her hips. ‘You’re the southerner who did a fierce number on the young swordie, aren’t you? Well, best get to it, then. We can always do with another pair of hands. There’s saddle blankets over there that need washing, take them round to the laundry, then you can help Alida with feeding the beasts and bed them down for the night.’

Even for that one hour that Kael worked in the stables, it was backbreaking. He resolved not to complain about the work, no matter what task he was given, though he couldn’t keep from grimacing at every hay bale he lifted. His shoulders ached as much as they did after two hours of sword training, and his back was stiff after bending and straightening so many times. He couldn’t keep the relief from his face when Giltha finally released him for the evening.

‘Kael!’ Ronanen’s voice called across the palace courtyard as he made his way from the stables. Her face was bright and smiling as she ran over to him. ‘You thought about what I said?’

Kael glanced back at the stables with a shrug. ‘Yeah, but that’s punishment. First General’s sent me there, so I got no time at all for a real job now. Besides, nobody’ll take me. I tried.’

Ronanen bent forwards and planted a light kiss on his cheek. ‘You’ve only tried for one day yet,’ she teased. ‘Still, I’m proud of you for trying.’

Kael smiled, at her compliment and her kiss, and resumed his walk to the door. ‘I’m hoping I can get something out of this,’ he said, nodding back at the stables. ‘Just for when I’m training. I need to support me Ma somehow.’

‘There, you see? There’s always a way out.’ She pecked him again with a little giggle.

Kael shook his head with a grin. ‘Can I walk ye home?’ he asked. ‘All sorts of unsavoury beasts on the streets this late.’

‘I’d like that,’ Ronanen agreed. ‘Normally one of the guards walks me home, but they’re not much good at conversation.’

‘And I am?’

She giggled again and hugged his arm briefly as they passed under the palace’s outer wall. ‘Of course you are! You live another life, Kael. I saw the cut you gave Niloren. He’ll wear that all his life, you realise.’

‘Absolutely,’ he agreed with a nod. ‘My Pa always told me, never make a threat ye can’t see through. I was just seeing it through, is all. Not my fault if the Aeia-damned red shirt was stupid enough to think I wouldn’t do it.’

‘But why make the threat at all?’ Ronanen persisted. ‘Why set yourself up for this?’

‘Because I’m sick of it,’ he spat. ‘They hear me talking and just think I’m the uneducated southern rat, too stupid to be any danger, so they mock me. They do all they can to scare me off, always nagging about “one more until you start losing fingers,” wagging their own fingers at me and copying me accent. Well, now I’ve got the one more, and I’m sick of it.

Ronanen looked up at him in the moonlight, her brow creased in a confused frown. ‘You’re not like that, not really. Why don’t you show them who you are? You care for your family just as they do. How many of them have to support their mother?’

Kael snorted. ‘None. Still the other way around for all of ‘em. No idea what it is to live day to day without knowing where tomorrow will come from.’

The healer shrugged defensively. ‘Well, neither do I, but you care for me, don’t you?’

‘Ye’re different. Besides, I don’t want pity. I’m fine on me own.’

Ronanen stood in front of him, placing a hand on his chest to bar his way. She hooked a finger inside his collar to pull his face down to hers, and planted a grinning kiss on his lips.

After a moment’s surprise, Kael responded, placing a hand on her back to draw her closer.

‘You’re not on your own,’ she told him.