Farlander (25 page)

‘We Mercians have done well enough,’ retorted Nico, ‘in keeping the Mannians at bay these past ten years.’

‘True,’ Baracha acknowledged, placing a hand on the neck of Nico’s mule. The animal flinched. ‘But you should guard against talk like that while you are here. Perhaps your master has forgotten to explain these things to you. We include people here from every corner of the Midèr
s. We do not speak of politics.’

‘Then I suggest you do not provoke such talk,’ said Ash softly.

The Alhazii stared at the old farlander. Ash stared back.

Baracha snorted, then turned and strode off without another word.

‘A hard man,’ muttered Nico, watching Baracha walk away.

‘The deep desert breeds hard men,’ replied Ash. ‘And its great emptiness gifts them with much imagination. I would caution you to provoke no one while you are here, Nico, especially that one. Now come. We have much to do before we may eat.’

*

They ate keesh and stew left over from lunch, since they had missed the noonday meal by the time they had rubbed down their mules and acquired fresh garments for themselves. Once they finished eating, Ash showed Nico to the door of the wardroom where he would be living with the other apprentices, and left him there to settle in.

Nico felt at a sudden loss, standing there alone in the corridor outside, after the old man so quickly departed. His new black robe hung stiff and heavy from his shoulders, smelling faintly of pine needles. He centred himself for a few moments, as the old man had been training him, then pushed open the door.

It was a large room with a stone floor and a roof of varnished wooden beams. A row of windows faced out on to the courtyard, with the bunks arranged along the opposite side. The room was empty save for two apprentices sitting on their beds. One of them was at work sewing a tear in his robe, his face screwed up in concentration. He seemed no more than fifteen years old, his white undergarments hanging loosely about his slight frame. The other apprentice, of a similar age to Nico, lay on his back reading a book, his long hair shining like straw in the light pouring through the windows. Both of them looked up as Nico stepped quietly into the room.

Nico nodded in their general direction, then looked around for a bunk not in use. He stopped at one with an empty chest standing at its foot.

‘Hello,’ said the young straw-haired man, as he put down his book and rose to his feet to amble across the room. When he offered his hand, Nico stared at it for several seconds before he took it and shook.

‘You must be Master Ash’s apprentice,’ the young man said in a drawl, then caught Nico’s puzzled expression. ‘Word gets around rather fast here. Your arrival was the talk of the order during dinner.’

‘I see,’ said Nico.

‘I am Aléas, and that is Florés over there. He is not rude. He simply has no tongue.’

The boy Florés opened his mouth wide to show them his vacant mouth. Nico smiled awkwardly and looked away, somewhat too quickly.

‘Nico,’ he told them both, as he transferred the few possessions of his pack into the chest.

‘We know,’ said Aléas. ‘I have been warned by my master to keep away from you.’

‘Your master?’ Nico glanced up.

‘Yes, Baracha. I understand you already met.’

‘Your master judges others quickly, it seems.’

‘He supposes we will likely fight, you being a Mercian and I being an Imperial,’ explained Aléas, observing him with lazy, intelligent eyes. As Nico forced himself to return the young man’s confident gaze, he found himself thinking:
An Imperial? I’m actually standing here face-to-face with the enemy. Strange that he does not seem so terrible.

‘So,’ said the other, ‘how does it feel?

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Standing here, conversing with a foul Mannian?’

Nico considered the question. ‘It feels fine,’ he said at last. ‘Though in truth I’m somewhat hungover just now, so it may be hard to discern any true discomfort.’

Aléas’s smile was genuine. ‘Then well met,’ he said.

CHAPTER TEN

Nico tried to settle into his new environment, though at first it was not so easy.

There were nine other apprentices at the monastery, and all of them male. It was not that women were barred from the order – according to the other apprentices, they were simply never recruited, nor put themselves forth for recruitment.

Not surprisingly, all these young men spoke the common tongue that was Trade, their speech peppered with words and expressions from the older – and sometimes still native – languages of their homelands. Nico was pleased that almost the first thing he learned at the monastery was a variety of swear words he had never heard before.

Each morning the young men awoke well before first light and washed themselves in the communal washroom alongside the other silent R
shun of the order. Then they sat in the candle-lit dining hall, with the sun still not yet risen over the mountains to the east, and ate a simple breakfast of porridge and dried fruits accompanied by a choice of water or chee. The apprentices had to make the most of this fare, for their next and only other meal of the day would be dinner in the evening. Often they slept hungry, the food barely enough for their requirements. It was as though the R
shun wished to encourage the theft of foodstuffs. For certain, they did not condemn such activity, only admonished the apprentice who was clumsy enough to get caught in the act.

Straight after breakfast, it was off to whatever lesson was scheduled first for that morning, the young men’s faces brightening along with the early light of dawn. For Nico, the rest of the day would comprise a confusing jumble of instructions quickly forgotten and lessons barely understood in terms of what purpose they might serve.

The evening meal, when it finally came round, was a relief like no other. He would sit and eat in numb exhaustion, thinking of nothing but his bunk.

The apprentices hailed from various corners of the Empire, though there was a surprising lack of tension for all the cultural differences between them. Still, Nico prepared himself for the worst, having never been overly sociable as a child. As a boy he had attended the local schoolhouse, and knew how his peers looked upon his solitary nature and his quick tongue when provoked.

But not so here, it seemed. Those few most likely to pick on him – big Sanse with strength on his side, fierce little Arados with the most to prove to the others – hung back for some reason. At first, Nico thought it was simply the strictness of monastery discipline. After a week or so, he realized it was something more than that. He realized they were somewhat in awe of Ash, and in return a portion of that respect rubbed off on to Nico himself, as the first apprentice Ash had ever taken on.

Those first early weeks of training were to be the most difficult. In a way the glamour that seemed to surround Ash, and therefore in a lesser form Nico, began to work against him. Nico felt as though he had a reputation to uphold, one that he had done nothing to gain – save for this assumption by the other apprentices that he must have something special about him for Ash to have chosen him in the first place. Yet he did not feel very special. He did not know why Ash had chosen him, though he suspected it had little to do with his abilities.

Nico would have told them as much, the truth of it, but each time he tried to, he found some inner resistance stopping him. He had begun to enjoy his minor celebrity. The others treated him with a respect he was barely familiar with after living rough on the streets of Bar-Khos and, before that, sharing a cottage with his mother’s succession of indifferent lovers. He had found that he was standing up straighter than ever before in the presence of others. He would now meet their eyes and not so readily look away.

And so, in those early days, he tried too hard to impress, and because of this eagerness only made himself more inept in the trying.

He fumbled during his cali lessons – the style of sword-fighting practised by the R
shun, and designed for confronting multiple opponents while always advancing, never moving backwards. He would wheeze to a dead halt during his fell running, vomiting from the sheer exertion of it; broke two fingers in unarmed combat and cried from the shock of seeing them bent out of shape; lost his temper with the frustrations of oni-oni, a test of the reflexes that involved the contenders trying to slap each other across the face every time a gong was struck. He even fell off while riding a zel, not once but twice – nearly snapping his neck in the process.

However, Nico distinguished himself in other activities, enough at least to preserve his reputation with the others. He flipped and jumped and climbed like a natural during the acrobatics classes; performed especially well in acting, requiring the use of subterfuge and disguise; grasped quickly the basics of breaching, in other words breaking and entry; remained undiscovered for hours in tests of stealth and concealment; excelled at archery, in which he did in fact have much ability, having both a natural eye and a great deal of experience from shooting birds for his mother back home. And, most especially, he shone in ali, the combined arts of evasion – otherwise known as running away – in which Nico found himself particularly talented.

Under different circumstances Nico might have expected to suffer from homesickness, longing for the familiar streets of Bar-Khos, or even for his mother’s cottage. But for an apprenticing R
shun there was, simply too much to learn and practise for his mind to dwell on such distracting thoughts. Only at night would a sense of isolation oppress his spirits, but even then not for long, since he was usually so weary that he fell asleep in minutes.