“Turn those hips, Corfin! Snap your shoulders into the strike, Sala! On the count: one, two, three . . .”
The count went on while Garet hung his sash and vest on a hook. He took up a pole from where it stood in the rack and joined Master Forlinect in watching the young Black Sashes hit the bags with less and less force.
“Do what you can with them, Garet,” the Red said when most had collapsed onto the floor, breathing in great gulps of air. “This lot is claw bait or I’m a trader!”
He turned and walked to the small office and equipment room to fuss with the paperwork or perhaps just fuss.
Garet watched him go. He had some sympathy for the Red. He knew Forlinect wanted Tarix’s approval. His devotion to the former Training Master was strong, proven by the fact that he had changed sides in the bitter civil war within the Banehall last year just to protect her, and Tarix had pushed Hallmaster Branet to name Forlinect Training Master while her leg healed. Garet knew the newly-made Master was grateful, and truly wanted him to succeed, but still, working these children to exhaustion would not make them Banes any faster.
He looked them over, trying to think of a better method. What could eight to twelve year-olds do that was useful? His own experience was not helpful. He had been older, sixteen, when he first wore the Black Sash. At that time, they didn’t use weapons at all. They just ran around the Banehall every morning and did exercises with weighted clubs and such until they passed the physical and knowledge tests and became Blues. Then the training changed and the poles and hooked ropes came out. After the Banehall’s conflicts had ended, Tarix altered the training routines. Garet thought this new way was much better. It might make Black Sashes feel more like proper Banes if they started off using weapons in training.
“All right, get up now. On your feet. Slow your breathing. That’s right, one breath at a time. Pick up your poles and get your wind back.”
The Black Sashes stood in an unsteady line and looked at him, apprehensive but ready. That was the look of a Bane, Garet thought. The people in this Hall did not have the ability to fight demons because they were born heroes, but because they had learned to live with some kind of fear. At the centre of each was a wound. Garet’s was caused by an abusive father and brothers, as well as the prospect of a wasted life on a backwater farm. Each of these children also suffered some kind of dread and, like him, had learned to fight against it—or at least live in spite of it. So, if they did not seem ready to charge forth with their staffs, neither did they seem likely to flee.
No, we are not shining heroes, but scarred children training for an endless war.
“We’ll do walking exercises first,” Garet told them. He demonstrated the crossover step, eyes fixed on the far wall and pole held out in a guard position. He moved among them, making gentle corrections and praising those who improved.
“Now back to the bags,” he told them, to general groans. “Come now, you won’t mind the practice when you’ve got a Shrieker in front of you. Then it will be your weapon against its claws, and the winner gets to live! Quick now, in position.”
He again demonstrated the proper form, hips rotating and upper body snapping into the strike. He set them to it slowly, only allowing speed when the form was correct. He walked down the line and saw a girl wedged in behind the sand bags, head down and arms crossed over her chest.
She must have been hiding there the entire time.
At first he was irritated at such deception, but pushed it away with a deep breath and approached her. The Banehall could be a frightening place for newcomers.
“Hello there. I didn’t see you before. Come out now and show me how you hit the bag. Come on, you’re a Bane, aren’t you? Here, take this pole. It’s about your size.”
He handed her one of the smaller staffs, and she took it only after a long hesitation.
“Grip it with both hands,” he said, tugging on the sleeve of her left arm, which had slipped behind her when she took the pole. He tugged again, and the arm came out. The end of the sleeve was empty, the cuff tucked in over the wrist.
The girl stood still as stone, though the pole trembled in her single hand. Somebody tugged his own sleeve, and he looked down to see a small boy staring up at him.
“She can’t be a Bane, can she, if she only has one hand?” he asked.
Garet considered his answer before speaking. What he said would be heard by this boy, his fellows, and especially the girl. She stood waiting, her hair swept forward. Garet had yet to see her face.
“Well, Corfin, isn’t it? Do you know a Master called Tarix? She needs a big iron brace just to walk around, and she’s the best Bane in this Hall. And the Master who brought me here had only one good arm. That was Master Mandarack, who became Hallmaster and was famous in the city.”
“Could he fight demons with one arm?” Corfin asked, doubtful.
Garet smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’d known him for only a few days when I saw him kill a great big Basher Demon with that sharpened shield he used, the one hanging up in the dining hall. You know he was the one who killed the Caller Demon, don’t you?”
The boy paled. He and several others half-raised a hand to the sides of their heads before self-consciously lowering them again. Ordinary people in Shirath would touch a finger to their ears to flick away the word “demon” upon hearing it, lest their luck turn and they meet one. New Banes were taught to think this foolish, but it took much repetition to set it firmly in their minds.
Garet slapped him on the back.
“You see? One arm is no trouble! Now, what’s your friend’s name?”
Corfin frowned. “My friend? Her name’s Allifur. She’s from the Tenth Ward, but she doesn’t talk.”
Garet waved them back to striking bags and took Allifur over to a bench set against the wall. Sitting beside her, he held out both his hands, palms up.
“Put your hand and your arm on top of my hands and push down as strongly as you can,” he told her.
It took a while for her to obey, and his arms were beginning to ache from holding them out when she shifted around and did as he asked. He let her push until the tension began to ease from her neck and shoulders. Her head came up a bit, and he caught sight of green eyes peering through the fringe of blonde hair.
“Did Master Mandarack really have only one arm?” she whispered.
“Yes, he did. His left arm was withered from when he was a child. He couldn’t use it at all. You, on the other hand—if you will excuse the expression—have a lot of strength in that arm of yours. You must use it a lot.”
The whisper came again. “I use it to hold things.”
Garet smiled and stood up. “That’s good. It means it can help you.”
“How?” Louder now. Demanding, perhaps begging for an answer she couldn’t find herself.
Garet smiled. “People say I think too much,” he said. “They say, ‘Garet’s thinking again, so watch out!’ So I’m going to think about how you can use that arm as a Bane, and you are going to help me think.”
They tried the pole again, and found a way to brace her arm against the shaft to aid in the swing. After a few slips and false starts, Allifur started hitting the bag with a satisfying thud. She would curl her arm around the staff to retrieve it, then push it with her forearm to strike. The others paused to watch her.
“Good one, Allifur,” Corfin told her. “Do it again!”
She did it again, and again, until Garet set them back to cross-stepping up and down the floor. This time Allifur joined in.
“How did you do it?” Forlinect said behind him. “I couldn’t get a word out of her. I thought we would have to send her back to her Ward. My first failure.”
Garet shrugged. It wasn’t his place to tell a Master his business, but then again, it wouldn’t be the first time he had done so.
“I just remembered how it was when I came here. It was so strange, and my welcome was . . . well.” He didn’t finish. Forlinect coughed and looked away, perhaps remembering how badly the Hallmaster of that time, Adrix, had treated the first Bane come from the Midlands.
“It was hard,” Garet said, “harder than anything I’ve ever done. Many times I wanted to run back to the Midlands, or anywhere else, really, but one thing stopped me. There were people here, a few, who were on my side. Masters like Mandarack and Tarix. Good Banes like Salick and Vinir, and even odd ones like Marick and Dorict.”
Forinect chuckled at this. Marick’s reputation as a troublemaker was legendary in the Hall.
“And that was enough?” he asked.
“It was for me, and I think it will be for these Blacks as well.”
There, that was meddling enough, but he hoped the Training Master knew that Garet wished him well.
The Red rubbed his chin. “Well, that’s better advice than I’ve been giving myself. Off you go to your studies now. Come early next time, and we’ll cut some of the poles into sticks and let them have at the bags one-handed with those. It will even things out for her, at least a bit, and after all, some might be mad enough to choose axe and club over something sensible like a spear.”
Garet smiled. That was a great compromise on Forlinect’s part. He was a spear Bane through and through, the best Tarix had ever trained, or so she claimed. According to her, Forlinect could put the point of his weapon through a demon’s eye at a dead run.
Garet retrieved his vest and sash and left Forlinect contemplating which poles were to be sacrificed. When he arrived at the room he shared with Marick and Dorict, he took down a coil of wire-reinforced rope from its hook. He wondered what Forlinect thought about Garet’s own weapon, the rope-hammer, as he stretched out its length, checking for tears or fraying. Luckily he was alone, for extended it ran from one corner of the room diagonally to the other.
It was no spear, though it would obviously outreach that weapon. Neither did it have the heft of an axe or club, though it could be made to strike like one. Tarix had offered him this weapon when she heard of his accuracy in throwing stones, a talent picked up herding the stubborn sheep on his family’s farm. One end of the line was fixed to a heavy, spiked ball, and the other to a short-hafted tool that was half pick and half hammer. He had suffered many bruises learning how to fling it out or wrap it around a target, but this weapon had protected him against both demon and human adversaries many times.
Reluctantly, he coiled it again and replaced it on the hook. Much as he might want to practice with it, his duties were not over for the day. He had set himself a task, and in the space of time he had before the dinner bell, he toiled at it.
Beside a desk claimed for his own, partly due to his rank and mostly due to his obvious need for workspace, stood a wooden box of records. The old scrolls and tattered log-books were on loan from Master Arict, the ancient Red who kept the Hall’s history. Garet was going through them, a box at a time, and making notes as he did so. His intention was to discover why the Caller Demon suddenly appeared last year, and what else might follow if, as he feared, a six hundred-year-old fixed pattern of demon attacks was changing. He tapped his brush’s wooden handle against his chin. He should record the increased attacks mentioned at the midday meal, for in his research so far he could recall no mention of a sudden jump in the number of demons.
He was soon lost in the work, for it was much suited to his nature. He had told Allifur the truth; people did believe he thought too much. That only added to his oddness for some citizens of Shirath, but, as an outsider from the Midlands, Garet would always be an oddity, for few people travelled to see other places or peoples. Indeed, no one could, without the protection of Banes. So his dark hair and skin, inherited from his mother, kept him from fading into the background. Once seen, he was known, and once known, he was judged.
Despite his resentment of this treatment, he had worked long and hard to improve people’s opinion of him, though Branet’s glare at lunch told him he still had some way to go in that regard. That was one reason he liked reading. A book might give horrible opinions of a battle, or a treaty, or some great person long dead, but it never criticized the reader. A book always told you things as if it was your dearest and most accepting friend.
Comforting as the process was, however, he had come no closer to an understanding of the Caller or these new attacks when Salick burst into the room, trident in hand.
Before he could say a word, she barked, “You can’t wear that vest! What have you been doing to get it so stained?”
Garet took a deep breath. He was becoming very familiar with Salick’s moods.
“I’ve been training Black Sashes, spilling some ink, but mainly falling off a horse, if you really need to know,” he said, as calmly as he could manage. It was no use trying to match outrage to outrage with Salick; she always seemed to have more in reserve.
She swelled up once more and opened her mouth. Abruptly, she closed it and left the room.
Garet waited. After ten breaths, there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he said.
The door opened, and Salick walked in, blank-faced. She carefully propped her weapon against the wall.
“Garet, we are called upon by Master Branet to accompany him to a formal dinner at the Palace. Every Ward Lord and the King, of course, will be in attendance. Is there some way you can make yourself presentable for such an occasion?”