Blade Archer ~ Twenty

[annarti.livejournal.com]

Kael fell into an exhaustive routine as the year drew to a close. His days were filled with army training, followed in the evenings by whatever backbreaking tasks Giltha the chief stable hand had on offer. After only a week, she had begun paying him, a whole two copper pieces for his two solid hours of work, but she made him promise two things: one, not to tell the First General of their agreement, and two, to stop eyeing the coin purses of every First Company army man who stepped into the stable. She’d never caught him, either with his fingers in their pockets or with anything more than lint in his, but she knew. Kael had only grinned and laid his hand on his heart as he promised. For the woman’s generosity, though, he stuck by his promise.

The first two coins he received, he had stared at for long minutes. Two circles of copper, one worn smooth with age, the other bearing the face of Raykin’s last queen who had died last summer. Both of them were his. A shiver ran up his spine, and his legs urged him to run lest one of the Talons caught him in the act, but there was no reason to run. The coins were his. He’d earned them through real, honest work. He didn’t have to run from anything.

He’d celebrated then with Ronanen, taking her to the Charging Nira and spending both coppers on one tankard of beer that they both drank together, though if truth be told, he probably drank most of it himself.

He spent as much time as he could with Ronanen these days. For the blessed half-hour he was allowed to himself over lunch, he ate his lunch with her whenever she was on the palace grounds. She showed him around the palace, even inside the main building to the open bar on the second floor, where the palace staff—including the army and its trainees—were allowed to order food prepared in the palace kitchens and drink the palace’s own brew. The best part was that he didn’t have to pay for any of it.

‘Can I bring me Ma here?’ he asked reverently. ‘Or take some back for her?’

The barkeep shook his head. ‘Not unless you’ve got the coin to buy it,’ he answered, and Kael’s shoulders slumped. Once he had graduated, he promised, and he was earning real money in the army, he’d buy his mother a meal here.

Kelon and Aen, the two first year archers, hung around, too. They kept him company while he worked in the stables, until Giltha finally grew tired of them and put them to work, too. They only earned one copper piece, though. During his lunch breaks when Ronanen was working or wasn’t around, the three southerners drank in the palace bar together.

‘You’re sure we’re allowed up here?’ Kelon asked for the twentieth time. He was always looking over his shoulder for the guards, expecting to be reprimanded at any moment.

‘For better or worse,’ the barkeep answered. ‘I’ve got my eye on those glasses, though, and there’s no coin here for you to steal.’

‘There, ye sees?’ Kael said, slapping the younger boy on the shoulders. ‘Now grab yer beer and sit down. This is the best brew ye’re ever going to drink.’

On the Summer Solstice, the sky opened up and poured a deluge on Ni-Yana for a solid hour, heralding a good year ahead, and for Kael, it certainly seemed the case. Giltha had promised she would raise his wages to the same as the other stable hands, a whole five copper pieces for every hour he worked. He thanked the old woman with a tight hug and a promise he would earn it.

The next day, the first of the new year, saw his first official lesson on blade archery. The six boys in purple shirts, there to become the army’s blade archers, were taken aside for more precise instruction.

‘Fancy yourselves at the pub, I’ll bet?’ Master Medan said to the six of them, eyebrows raised and eyes twinkling. He had one belt slung over each shoulder, each strung with a dozen scabbards holding a variety of throwing knives across his chest. None had hilts, only a point of polished steel gleaming from the leather sheath. Another six daggers were sheathed at each hip, and two more belts of hilt-less blades strapped to each thigh, too far down to comfortably reach while he was standing but easily accessible from the saddle.

‘You can hit middle red nine times out of ten, beat just about any man who challenges you to a game of dagger toss, might even be you’re wishing middle red in the pubs was more like that one at the end of the range, give you a bit more of a challenge, am I right?’

Kael nodded with the other boys.

‘That’s nothing.’ He turned to pick up two training blade belts, similar to those he wore but more well-worn. There were more blade sheathes on his back, though none had anything in them. Kael wondered how he was supposed to even reach those blades when the blade archery master turned back around with a grin.

‘How many arrows can a blue shirt fit in his quiver? A dozen? And what does he do when the enemy is on him? Can’t defend yourself with a bow.’ He slapped his chest with his free hand, his blades glinting in the sunlight. ‘This is artillery, gentlemen, and there’ll always be another supply on the back of the man beside you.’ He turned again, demonstrating the empty sheathes on his back.

Kael grinned crookedly and folded his arms as he looked among the other boys. This was where the fun lay.

‘Lining up with one dagger against middle red with your mates cheering you on makes you a dagger tosser. Flinging three blades at once to three different moving targets, with a horse—or camel, beg pardon—galloping between your knees, grabbing a dagger to deflect the arrow aimed at your throat, that makes you a blade archer.’

He spun on his heel and did just as he had talked about—albeit without the horse or the moving targets—and flung three blades with each hand at the targets at the end of the archery range. Each landed in a separate middle red, and for the first time, Kael was in genuine awe of the former Own rider.

‘Belt up, boys,’ Master Medan said, gesturing to the blade belts hung on the wall behind him. ‘I’m going to turn you into blade archers.’

Kael tried not to look to eager as he slung the two blade belts over his shoulders, buckled the third dagger belt around his hips, and strapped both thigh belts around his legs. He’d been waiting three years for this day, and he found it hard to keep the grin from his face. The blades, like the swords he had been using since last year, were scratched and dented, but all still in far better condition than his own. He took one dagger from its sheath, admiring the gleaming, army-forged steel.

‘Don’t get any ideas,’ the blade archery master warned him, but when Kael looked up he was grinning, and gave the young trainee a candid wink. It was all that was needed to bring the grin to Kael’s face, and he shoved the dagger back in its scabbard with a satisfying shwing of steel on leather.

Master Medan went on to explain each of the different shapes and their uses. Long, needle-like blades for stealth and distance, often tipped with poison. Elegant, slender blades the length of Kael’s hand, the same as those the master had demonstrated with, for quick access and for flinging many blades at once. Triangular blades, for when missing wasn’t an option and there was always going to be a point driving into the target.

‘And the dagger, of course,’ the veteran blade archer said with a shrug, ‘but we’re not dagger tossers. We’re blade archers.’

The blades were so much lighter and easier to throw than a dagger. They reached the target with surprising ferocity, spreading a slow grin over Kael’s face as he flipped the next dagger over his fingers. What the master made look so easy, though, grabbing three blades at once with each hand, was much more of a task. Though the blades in their sheathes were positioned such that they could be easily grabbed as they were intended, Kael had to look down at his chest to make sure he had them held right. When he flung them, only the blades in his left hand went anywhere near the target, and only one of them even hit it.

He heard the boys behind him stifling laughter at his inevitable failure, but for once, he didn’t care. For the first time since he’d begun training, Kael was having fun.

‘Don’t try so much at once,’ Master Medan told him after his second failed attempt. ‘Get used to the blades first. Throw with one between your two middle fingers, then your middle and your weak finger, then one with your weak and your little finger. Get each of them sussed before trying to put it all together.’

Kael practiced all through the day, continuing until it was too dark to see before he finally, reluctantly, hung his belts back on the wall.

When he eventually turned up at the stables for his first day of officially paid work, most of the tasks had already been completed, leaving him with only half an hour’s work to do, but Giltha paid him three copper coins for that half an hour. Kael balanced them in his fingers as he walked home, holding them between his fingers as he had been holding the blades all day. The knuckles between each finger were raw and tender, but he didn’t doubt he would build up a blade archer’s calluses soon.

‘I was born for this,’ he murmured, grinning abruptly at the three coins held between his fingers. Pa would have been proud, he thought. ‘I’ll look after her fer ye,’ he promised the old man, gazing up at the stars as he said it. ‘I’ll look after her.’