Kadhael’s father would be very, very unhappy about this.
“I can. I have.” Alberich eyed the boy consideringly. Should he?
:Oh, go ahead, do,: Kantor answered.
He bent down, and grabbed the boy by the back of his tunic and hauled him to his feet. Without much effort, be it added—Kadhael was just about Alberich’s size and weight, but he was still an uncoordinated adolescent, not a trained, honed warrior. Alberich tightened his grip just enough that the fabric half-choked the boy, eliminating any more babble out of him.
“I will, because you do not seem to understand your own tongue properly, repeat myself,” Alberich said, with no anger whatsoever. “You are banished from the salle and the grounds. You are no longer a student here. You are leaving now, and you will never return. If you do, I will personally thrash you until you cannot stand, and throw you off the grounds again. Training here is a privilege, not a right. You have just proved you do not deserve to enjoy that privilege.”
And with that, he frog-marched the boy out the door, down the path, to the very edge of the training grounds. And with great care and utmost precision, he pitched the insolent brat right into the biggest, muddiest patch of slush that he thought he could reach.
He did not even wait to see if Kadhael went headfirst into it, or managed to somehow save himself. He turned on his heel and marched back into his salle.
No one had moved. This was good. He wasn’t going to have to discipline anyone else—yet.
He raked them all with his stony gaze. “More objections, do I hear?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.
Silence.
“Then outside you will go. All of you.” He turned a stern gaze on the Trainee, who was still sitting on the floor—Osberic, that was the boy’s name. “Osberic,” he continued, and the Trainee flinched. “Since no opponent you have now, yet equally of guilt you are to have brought a fight within my walls, it will be me that you face. Fetch two staves, and follow. Even practice swords, I will not ruin in this muck.”
He would not be too hard on him. Putting him on his face or back into the mud two or three times would be enough.
:He started the fight,: Kantor put in. :Not that Kadhael wasn’t trying to goad him into starting it, but he did start it.:
All right. Four. Teach the boy to hold his temper.
:Good answer. I’m going to watch.:
Alberich smiled as he walked out into the cold again and saw that there was no sign of Kadhael, other than a vaguely human-shaped depression in the slush. :Please do.:
The boys had formed up in a rough circle, and Osberic came up to Alberich with two fighting staffs and a hangdog look. Alberich took one without looking at it,
“Consequences, Osberic,” he said as he squared off against the boy, who began circling him warily. “Say I will not, that a Herald loses not his temper—but aware a Herald is, that consequences there are for doing so.”
His staff shot out at ankle-level, tripping Osberic. Down he went.
He picked himself back up, and aimed a blow at Alberich’s head. Alberich blocked it, riposted, and let the boy block him. “So think you—had there a fight been, what consequences there would be?”
“Uh—” Osberic tried again, was blocked again. “Lord Corbie would get me in trouble?”
“Wrong.” Alberich flipped the staff at Osberic’s ankles; the boy dodged, and Alberich flipped the other end around to thwack him in the buttocks and send him into the slush again. “Lord Corbie would protest to the Queen, who would be forced to go to the Dean, who would have to answer to why discipline was so lax among the Trainees that a highborn fought a Trainee.”
Osberic picked himself up, flushing. “My fight would get the Heralds in trouble?”
“Correct.” Alberich let the boy try a few more blows; not bad, but he wasn’t going to get through Alberich’s defenses any time soon. “And who else?”
“The Queen?” Osberic hazarded.
“Correct. Now, why will there be no trouble for what I did with Kadhael Corbie?”
Osberic didn’t answer, being a little too busy fending off a flurry of blows from Alberich, only to trip over a hardened lump of snow and land on his backside in an icy puddle.
:That should count,: Kantor said from the sideline.
:I agree.:
“Because,” Alberich continued as Osberic picked himself back up for the third time, “A proper and correct order gave I. Insolence I was given. My proper authority I exerted—no temper, no beatings, no punishments, and only when more insolence and refusal was I given, did I remove Kadhael with prejudice. To his father he will go, yes, but his father will likely box his ears. Now, know you why I am drilling you thus?” Osberic came at Alberich yet again, Alberich let the boy drive him back.
“To punish me!” Osberic shouted, his cheeks burning with humiliation. “To make me look stupid in front of everyone!”
“No, that would the act of a bully be,” Alberich told him. “So that, should Lord Corbie protest it was you who began the fight, I can tell the Queen that you were punished, and all here will swear to that. This is not for you, it is for the Heralds, that all know that we tend to the misdeeds of our own in proper measure.” He then neatly sidestepped the last rush and tripped Osberic as he went past. Once again, Osberic measured his length in the mud. “A Herald cannot merely right be, Osberic. A Herald must guided by the law be. He cannot dispense the law, if he follows it not himself. He cannot dispense the law, if he thinks himself immune from it. He cannot dispense the law, if he will not deal it to his fellows in the same measure as he does to those whom he has in charge.”
“Yessir, Herald Alberich,” Osberic groaned from the ground.
“And that is why, for fighting, you have also been punished in this way,” Alberich continued. “Now, back into the salle. There is work to be done.”
They were all quick to follow the order, but none so quick as Osberic.
10
Kadhael Corbie disappeared from the Court and Collegia entirely. Not that Alberich would have noticed his absence, having banned the boy from the salle, but it wasn’t long before there were murmurs and speculations among his students and the Court—and being that it was his business to know things, he heard every one of them. Rumor had it that the boy’s father was so enraged that he had gotten himself thrown out of Alberich’s class and forbidden to enter the salle that he’d sent the boy straight down to the family manor, there to languish in what the young lords and ladies called “rustification.” Since it was said to be a particularly dull and cheerless place, lacking in anything that a young man might find amusing, and since rumor also had it that Lord Corbie had sent orders for his son to be confined to the house and grounds until further notice, Alberich was perfectly satisfied that the punishment fit the crime.
On the other side of the table, Lord Corbie went to Selenay and also demanded the punishment of “the Trainee who started it,” and allegedly was nonplussed to learn that “the Trainee” had already been punished. And that the punishment fit his crime, since all he had done was to bring a fight into the salle and after being reprimanded, had behaved with the proper respect for the Weaponsmaster. The trouncing—with lecture—at the hands of the Weaponsmaster in front of his peers was deemed both painful and humiliating enough, even for Lord Corbie.