Hephron bowed on reaching the prince, a motion that his companions copied with less feigned and more genuine deference. “Prince,” he said, “ready to fight the ghosts?”
Aliver knew what he referred to in an instant and felt the cut of the barb. A peculiarity of his training was that after the initial lecture and demonstrations, Aliver and the other boys parted company. The others paired off and went at each other with the padded swords, sometimes using the wooden variety, which had no blade to cut but could still issue a painful rap or jab, or even break bones when wielded skillfully. Aliver, on the other hand, trained only with an instructor who further worked him through the classic Forms, the teacher attuned to the minutest detail of his student’s posture and positioning, the intake or exhalation of his breath, the position of his head or even his eyes. Using the wooden swords, they fenced together in slow motions honed to the finest precision. In this Aliver had thought himself special. His training had a purity that would always set him apart from the others. It was a gift to be envied. So he had believed until Hephron undermined it all with a single question.
“Ghosts?” Aliver asked. “I don’t believe in ghosts, Hephron. I do believe that the instructors know how best to train the nation’s next king.”
“Yes,” the other said, “I suppose they do. Quite right, as ever.” As he turned away, his eyes canted upward in a signal to his companions. He said something Aliver could not hear, and the other youths moved away with amused murmurs.
Aliver tried to forget Hephron in the hours that followed. The lessons began with a lecture. Today it was from the second instructor, Edvar, a bull-necked man of mixed heritage, his Candovian ancestry betrayed by the barrel stoutness of his torso. He talked about the technique of the sword soft block, a defensive tactic wherein one countered an opponent’s attacks with the bare minimum of force necessary. It was risky, he explained. You did not want to underestimate the opponent’s force, but it was a valuable maneuver in that you could use the opponent’s energy to initiate your own moves, thereby starting the next motion with a boost, before the enemy had recovered. It was an energy-saving method if one faced a long struggle, as had Gerta when she fought the twin brothers Talack and Tullus and their three wolf dogs.
After this the pupils divided up to practice the Forms. These were routines that derived from age-old reconstructions of specific sequences of moves by specific persons in ancient battles. The first was Edifus at Carni, when he fought singly against a tribal leader. The second was Aliss, a woman from Aushenia who killed the Madman of Careven with only a short sword. It was a unique Form, in that Aushenians themselves did not honor Aliss as much as Acacians did. Indeed, the Madman of Careven was considered to be somewhat more of a hero to Aushenians since he had fought to protect their old religions against the secular movement Aliss championed. The Third Form was that of the knight Bethenri, who went to battle with devil’s forks, short weapons similar to daggers but with long prongs stretching alongside of the central blade. Skilled hands used these to snap opponents’ swords.
Other Forms followed, each more complicated than the one preceding it, up until the Tenth and most difficult, that of Telamathon against the Five Disciples of the god Reelos. Aliver had his doubts as to whether Telamathon, the Five Disciples, or the god Reelos ever existed, but he looked forward to learning the Form. A large section of it, he knew, recounted how Telamathon fought weaponless and with one shoulder dislocated. Even so incapacitated he managed to beat back his opponents with a dazzling whirlwind of aerial kicks.
The other students were working through the Fourth Form. Aliver, as per tradition, worked on the Fifth Form, learning the method by which the Priest of Adaval went to work on the twenty wolf-headed guards of the rebellious cult of Andar. The prince had just begun the study of this. For most of his lesson he stood holding the birchwood staff, listening, and trying to imagine the scene his instructor detailed. As usual, the Form detailed an almost impossible triumph, the old priest managing to crack skull after canine skull with only a sapling for a weapon.
Aliver sometimes felt the eyes of the others on him. At other times he could not help but glance at them, interspersed as they were among the pillars, almost a hundred of them in total, so many pairs in the stop-start motion of swordplay. Every now and then a student would get caught by another’s winning strike. With the padded swords this was almost a pleasure, a thing to be laughed at, yielding oaths and promises of revenge. Not so when the hard ashwood swords stung someone’s thigh or jabbed unprotected ribs. Aliver was never prey to such contact, and he was keenly aware of it each time someone called out in pain.
When the day’s session concluded, the instructors left the students to return the weapons to their rightful places. Privileged sons and daughters that they were, they should still learn reverence for the tools of war. Aliver, once more mingling with the others, did the best he could to banter in a natural style. He tried to throw about casual comments, the jibes and jokes of youth. But what seemed to come effortlessly to the others was as concentrated an effort for Aliver as anything in his training.
It was with a feeling of relief that he slipped on his soft leather boots, rose from the floor, and gathered up his training vest and slippers. As he passed a cluster of boys near the exit, Hephron rose from a squatting position. He spoke under his breath, ostensibly to the youth standing near him, but loud enough and at just the right moment for the prince to hear. “I wonder how you lose when you only fight the air or how you win? Strange that some of us are measured against each other, while some are not measured at all.”
The opening to the hallway was just a few steps away. Aliver could have been there and outside in just a few seconds. Instead he spun on his heel. “What did you say?”
“Oh, I said nothing, Prince. Nothing of consequence…”
“If you have something to say to me, just say it.”
“I just envy you, of course,” Hephron said. “You sword train, but you never get cracked atop the skull like the rest of us.”
“Would you like to fence with me, then? If you think my training is lacking…”
“No. Of course, no…” A note of caution appeared in Hephron’s voice. His eyes darted to his companions, checking to see whether he had over-stepped himself or if he should push farther. “I wouldn’t want to be the one who bruised the royal flesh. Your father could have my head for that.”
“My father wants no such head as yours. And who says you would be able to touch me, much less bruise me?”
Hephron looked sad, something Aliver would think on later, though he barely noticed it in the heat of the moment. “We don’t need to do this,” he said. “I meant no offense. Your training is rightly different from ours. You will never need to fight in a real battle anyway. We all know that.”
Though Hephron spoke these words with a measure of sincerity, Aliver noted only the aspects of it that seemed a taunt, an insult. The prince started toward the equipment rack. “We’ll fence just as you do with the others, with wooden swords. Hold nothing back. Touch me if you can. You have my word you will give no offense.”
Properly suited up a few moments later, the two youths faced each other inside a hushed circle created by the other students, many of whom glanced over their shoulders, worried lest an instructor return. Hephron had a deceptive style of swordplay. He did nothing with a clear and predictable rhythm. He changed his rate of movement and even the direction of his strike in mid-motion. He would parry in a certain manner for a time, his wrist loose, his sword making sweeping arcs. Just when Aliver had come to anticipate and almost find comfort in the rhythm of it, Hephron would change everything mid-stroke. He would drop bodily an inch or two lower. His stroke would become a thrust. His arm would switch from a downward motion to a jab so quickly that the two differing motions seemed to have nothing to do with each other, one neither the precursor to, nor the result of, the other.