The Weapon Bearer (Book 1) (14 page)

“Are you not going to mount your horse?” he asked Kilen

“I think I’ll be able to keep up,” he said and looked to Brent. Brent smiled back at Kilen knowing that this is one skill he could show that he really was a weapon bearer, and perhaps give this small town something to talk about. The sergeant took off at a slow canter looking back at Kilen still standing in the same spot. In the firelight, Kilen could see a confused look on his face. Kilen leaped in the direction that he was going and covered twice the distance. He then looked back at the mounted guard who looked at him in a mask of confusion. Wells smiled and kicked his horse into a sprint. Kilen let him pass and stood his ground, letting Wells make up some distance and then started to leap to catch up. He now kept pace with the horse bounding along the road next to Wells. They traveled out of town as fast as the light from the moon would let them. Wells stopped in a heavily wooded area where there was a large clearing. He dismounted and began unloading the practice swords.

“Sir, may I ask how much training you have had in the sword so I can know where I shall help?” he asked.

Kilen shrugged his shoulders, “I have no training Sergeant. I have only just received the weapons and armor I wear on Springfest, the night before last. I want you to teach me as if I was a regular beginner. Anything you can help me with would be an improvement.”

Wells regarded Kilen while rubbing his chin, “If you have learned to control earth magic like that and you are able to subdue a fire wizard in only one full day of training, you are worthy of being an armor bearer in my opinion. I’ll teach you the best I can in the time that I have. I hope that this instruction serves you well.” Wells handled a couple of the practice swords and finally decided to hand Kilen one about the same size as a short sword. He took one of similar length. “You may want to use your shield until you become better trained. I need you to take off your armor and your magic imbuements. If you use earth strength in our training you could break my bones or kill me very fast. Even with wooden practice swords.” Kilen remembered what Brent said about being separated from his sword. He looked up into a tree near the fighting area and leapt to the top and rested his sword in the branches. He then fell to the ground and bent his knees to absorb the impact. He took the earth rings on the chain from around his neck and put them in his coin purse. He felt his body regain its normal strength. He felt the full weight of the shield and bracers, and the weighted practice sword. Wells nodded in approval and took a fighting stance, holding his shield and sword up. Kilen tried to imitate him as best he could. Wells moved and gave him a couple pointers. “Chest up. Bring your shield up just below your eyes to be ready to block. Bend your knees a bit farther.” Wells paused, looking Kilen up and down, and then got back into his position only this time standing beside Kilen. “In a fight, never cross your feet, shuffle them so they don’t get tangled. Move only one foot at time, keeping one flat on the ground. If you move forward, your front foot moves first. if you move back, your back foot first.” Kilen nodded and the pair began a kind of dance in the moonlight, with Kilen following Well’s every move. “You’re a bit stiff, but practice will loosen that up. I’ll show you how to move in a fight. If I move to the right, you move right to keep me in front of you. If I move left, you move left. If I move forward, you move back. Keep me with our fronts facing each other, looking into your enemies eyes. When you get into a real fight you will be looking for the other fighter’s footwork to mess up. If that happens you probably have just found an opportunity to strike and end the fight. Now if I move at an angle, you move at the opposite angle but turn towards me.” Kilen began moving again with Wells, this time countering his step. He felt a bit like when his mother had taught him a couple formal dances. This lesson was different in that if he misstepped Wells would give him a rap with his practice blade. Twice Kilen dropped his sword because of these strikes, which earned him another strike and a stab to the gut. Once he got hit in the neck for lowering his shield and then dropped the shield ending in more punishment. His body was becoming bruised and tired from holding the blade and shield in front of him, and he hadn’t even begun to swing it yet. Sweat dripped from his eyebrow and his shirt was damp from the effort. Sgt. Wells seemed to be unaffected by the physical exertion, and he was swinging his sword to help correct Kilen. A small thought occurred to Kilen as he was receiving his training and now it began to grow in the back of his mind. Ross could have been trying to weaken him so that he could get his rings and sword. The wizard had just warned him about this, and it was fresh in his mind.

The fear started to grow in his mind, and by instinct he began to react quicker and deflect some of the blows that were sent his way. The act earned him praise for learning to react, then Ross stepped up his training, swinging faster and harder. Kilen knew there was still a possibility of treachery here and set his mind to focusing on protecting himself. Wells threw Kilen a water skin from his horse, “Drink. You look to have worked all day with the amount you’re sweating.”

Sergeant Wells watched as Kilen drank the water offered, letting him rest. “May I give you a bit of advice?” Kilen nodded as he was too winded to answer. “I earned my title of sergeant by beating an armor bearer in the practice ring three times. The competition only took about fifteen minutes, but it was enough to wear him completely down. He wore his armor all the time. It gave him a false sense of strength. You see, your body begins to slowly lose muscle because the magic in the armor is compensating. I ask that when you practice or do things that might seem menial, you should always do it without the earth magic to help. The armor bearer I fought had to fight me on equal ground. When he removed his armor to fight me, he found that he could only last a short time at full speed and strength. My advice, don’t learn to depend on the magic. You may need your body someday.” Kilen let the words sink in, still breathing hard. He had worn the rings and the sword from the first moment that he received them. He wondered if Brent even knew of the danger to weapon bearers, to warn him of it. Kilen began to trust Sergeant Wells more than he had a moment ago, but only a little.

They began to practice again, this time Wells showed Kilen flows of attack. The attacks with sword were graceful and involved moving his feet and hips as well as his sword. It was graceful and Kilen had no aptitude for it. His skills were in books, art, and words. He knew what the practice forms would look like on paper and how to describe them, but to get his body to perform them he failed. Wells would provide the same punishment for a misplaced foot or a hip not rotated enough or a knee not bent when it should be. Kilen started to feel as if he were an old man as every move of his body pained him.

When Wells thought that Kilen’s positioning was enough to get him by until he could get more training, he stopped him again and gave him a water skin. “You must practice every moment of your day if you are to become good with a blade. Most fathers who raise up soldiers have taught their sons what I taught you by age fifteen, but those boys have the drills to perfection. If you are to truly become a full weapon bearer, you have to devote every spare minute to this art. Your blade must be as deadly as your magic.”

“Thank you for the lessons and I apologize for deceiving you today. You don’t know how much you have helped me here. I am very grateful. If I can help you or your town in any way please name it and I’ll do my best.”

“If you want to thank me, use what I have taught you. If the water kingdom ever regains its king, remember where you grew up and consider returning to be a weapon bearer for the new king.” Kilen reached out and offered his hand. Wells shook his hand as an agreement of the terms. Wells nodded and began to walk his horse towards the road. Kilen looked up into the tree and saw his sword resting comfortably at the top. He decided that it would honor Wells to climb the tree, and so he did. His limbs were weak as he started up the slippery branches and the needles of the ever green scraped his skin. He was close the sword when he reached out and slipped but caught the branch on which he stood with the pit of his arm. It knocked the air out of him and he frantically searched for a foothold below. He pictured Brent yelling at him for being foolish about not using magic. When he found a branch he stood up for a moment to regain his composure. Wells watched from below, drinking from a water skin. Kilen redoubled his effort and this time was successful. He reached the sword and felt the strength return to him as he tied it to his belt. He took off his hand and the magic faded from him. He looked down at the distance he had covered, took a deep breath, and returned to the bottom without magic’s aid. Wells smiled in approval and they walked together down the road back to Keepers.

***

Shortly after Kilen had left the camp, Bowie returned and began drinking two of the bottles of wine the town’s folk would part with. His plate was filled, again and again until he figured out he would have to beat the cook’s kid off with a stick to get him to leave his plate alone. Instead, Bowie decided it would be better to talk to him, after all he had no one to talk to with. The wizard was chatting with guards and cooks. Kilen was off somewhere with a swordsmen. He offered the boy a cup of wine, which he refused. “Hey what’s with your town here, there’s no shops, no mayor or lords?” The boy smiled.

“You don’t know the story of Keepers?” Bowie shook his head that he hadn’t. The boy plopped himself down beside Bowie and started talking in an excited voice. “Well, in the lake just at the edge of town is where the Water King’s castle was, or is…It is made of magic. The story goes, when a new king has been crowned he will take his queen to the middle of the lake and command the castle to rise again. The castle Leviathan will rise from the water in all its glory, ready for the Water Realm’s people to take over the positions. Well, the people here in keepers are what’s left of the population from when the last water king was here. My father was the head chef in the castle close to ten years ago. Of course I was there. I don’t remember much about it, but the memories I do have are some of my fondest. Anyway, we wait here for the next king to be crowned so we can help build the kingdom. We keep our loyalty to the Water Realm and the King to be so that when he arrives he will still find a warm reception. The Earth Realm king doesn’t like us because we are loyal to a king that will someday take back the Water Realm lands from him. We can’t build buildings or become a real city with shops because by wizard council rules, the Earth Realm King cannot harm us because we don’t outright defy him by having shops or a mayor. We just happen to be a bunch of random people living in the same spot.” He laughed, “So we live humble on the banks of the magic water kingdom, awaiting its restored glory.” He finished and Bowie realized that his mouth was hanging open. They had lived so close to this town and he had never heard the story. He accounted the lack of knowledge to the fact that the people of Humbridge were a people that did not make waves, to paid taxes and simply survived with what the fates gave them. Maybe it was an attempt by the King to keep others from joining the Keepers town. “By the way, my name is Leroy, Leroy Bradley, next in line to be the water kingdom’s kitchen master.” He puffed up when he spoke of the title then sagged right after. “If that happens during my lifetime, that is.”

“Can’t you just leave?” Bowie asked in surprise.

Leroy shook his head, “My father being, the head chef, and my mother, being as the medicine lady here, have both trained me in their arts. I am supposed to be presented to the new king to fill whichever role he wishes of me so that my parents can retire. Which is fine and all, but living in this town until then could be more than I can handle. In Keepers we all work for the greater good, from sunup to sundown. I plow, harvest, fish, repair, cook, clean, and work all manner of things all day long. When I was little and I started to deliver my father’s meals to the visitors in town, they would give me tips. I had always seen to their horses so I saved my money and last year I turned fifteen. My dad said I could buy something from a peddler. I found out I could buy two horses that were carrying goods. When I bought them they were immediately taken to use for plowing fields. So you see, living here can be for a worthy cause but there is nothing to call my own. My father says that I’m a valuable asset and someday there will need to be others to keep the tradition of Keepers alive.”

Bowie felt bad for the boy and asked another question before he realized he had spoken. “Why don’t you just leave? If you’re as talented as you say you are, you could work easy enough.”

“I asked my father that once and he said I could leave if it was a worthy enough cause. I think a worthy cause would have to be from a water wizard asking, or the new water king for that matter.” Leroy threw a stick he had been fiddling with into the nearest fire. Bowie nodded. He was trying to understand the people here. They had nothing to call their own but gave everything to a person that hadn’t even been crowned.

“Well, you should package up some of those herbs you put in our food and sell that to outsiders. I feel like I’ve slept for days, and it’s past time for me to be sleeping.” They sat by the fire talking for a while longer. Brent returned, checked on Kara, and sat down with them on the fire side. They all watched the flames and listened to a musician somewhere in the town play tunes to dance to. Before long, another musician joined in at the fire and people started dancing to the music.

“It’s like this every night, also. That part I don’t mind.” More people joined in and before long a full figured woman with two kids came to join Bowie. She asked him to dance, talking to her two children about how fine lords dance. Bowie didn’t have a chance to dance on Springfest, but whirling around the campfires, dancing to the music made up for it. He was passed on to girls of varying ages. He saw Brent tapping his foot to the beat of the music, checking on Kara all the while. He refused any request to dance and pointed at Kara. They went to find another partner without saying much more. Bowie danced until his shirt was clinging to him with sweat, and his legs felt like they would give way. None of the girls he had danced with talked much, but they smiled and thanked him for the pleasure of dancing with a lord. He was hoping to share the second bottle of wine with one and spend the night getting to know her warmth. He was told by two different married women that they could use new bloodlines around Keepers and tried to convince him to stay. He cordially refused the offers.