Taryl kept walking until he came to an open section of stone floor on the south side of the rollers that connected the hammer forge to the cogging mill. There he stopped and lifted his truncheon, nodding to Rahl. As far apart as they were, even shouting would have been lost in the sound-chaos of the mill.
Rahl raised his own truncheon, concentrating on Taryl with his eyes, rather than order-senses. With the struggle between order and chaos that surrounded him, and the thundering roar that melded the hammer forge, the cogging mill, and the plating mill, not to mention the hot chaos from the regenerative furnace, Rahl found it difficult to order-sense anything.
The mage-guard circled, then moved in, tapping the end of Rahl’s weapon, then moving back and to his left. Rahl countered by edging to his right and moving forward, then trying a slight undercut.
Taryl parried and almost caught the edge of the iron band beneath the handguard’s ridge, pulling Rahl forward.
Off-balance, Rahl jerked his truncheon free and danced back, momentarily disoriented by a reverberating thud from somewhere.
In a flash, Taryl struck Rahl’s shoulder.
Rahl pivoted away, circling and trying to get a better feel for what Taryl was doing.
At first, Rahl was completely on the defensive, but slowly, ever so slowly, despite the distractions all around, and despite Taryl’s skill, Rahl began to stop most of the mage-guard’s attacks and even mount a few of his own.
Finally, Taryl stepped back, then motioned for Rahl to follow him out of the mill.
Rahl gratefully lowered his truncheon and, breathing heavily, walked after the mage-guard.
Even under the full morning summer sun, and without the slightest hint of a breeze, the unshaded causeway was far cooler than it had been in the mill.
Standing close to Rahl, Taryl said loudly, “You can rest for a few moments, but after that, you’ll go against Khaill and the falchiona.”
As far as Rahl was concerned, the respite was all too short, and he was all too soon standing back adjacent to the hammer forge and the cogging mill and looking at Khaill. From the side, Taryl watched intently, although Rahl had the feeling that the ordermage was watching Khaill more than Rahl.
Khaill moved slowly in toward Rahl, and Rahl half circled one way, and then back the other way.
Out of nowhere, the falchiona flashed toward Rahl, and Rahl could only block it, rather than parry or slip it, and the impact jarred his entire arm, even though he did manage to force the blade aside after the block.
From that moment on, Khaill pressed, and Rahl did his best to dodge, slide, slip, and deflect the longer and heavier weapon. Even though Khaill had managed to strike Rahl with the flatted blade several times, Rahl had managed to avoid a truly painful impact, and he was beginning to get a better sense of what the armsmaster was doing.
Suddenly, a chaos-probe jabbed at Rahl.
He deflected it-weakly-but he did manage to keep it from hitting him.
Khaill launched an attack with the blade, following it with another chaos-probe.
While Rahl managed to evade the blade, the jab of the probe threw him off-balance. Another probe followed, and Rahl managed to deflect it. Khaill was too strong for him to stop such an attack-but at least Rahl wasn’t totally defenseless.
The attack of blade and probe continued…and continued.
Rahl’s entire uniform was soaked, and his arm ached from evading and blocking an iron blade, and his body was sore in a few places from where the undefended or poorly defended chaos-jabs had struck.
Abruptly, Khaill stepped back, and Taryl moved forward, just enough to gesture for both to follow him out of the mill.
The wagon appeared, moving from a shaded overhang on the north side of the mill.
Rahl looked down at the truncheon, scarred, battered, and cut. If they kept him doing these kinds of exercises, he was going to need a new truncheon before long.
“You’re getting better,” Taryl said, “but you still get distracted when something unexpected happens.”
Rahl bit back the retort he felt. Who didn’t get distracted when something unexpected happened?
“We can’t do this often, Rahl. Do you know why?”
Rahl hadn’t even thought about something like that. He managed to keep his jaw from opening while he tried to find an answer. “I should, but I don’t.”
“Khaill is a chaos-mage.”
Rahl wanted to shake his head. He should have thought of that. “Was that why you watched so closely, and why he only used just chaos-jabs and not bolts?”
“Partly. Also, we didn’t want you burned if you failed to shield yourself adequately. As it is, by tomorrow those places where he got through will be twice as sore as the bruises you got from sparring in the dark. That’s another reason.”
Left unspoken, Rahl felt, was the point that training a so-called natural ordermage was far more work than other ordermages. Was that why Recluce had left him on his own? Or did they even know what he was?
LXXXII
After finishing the last of his breakfast, Rahl left the mess and began to walk toward the mage-guard duty areas…and the copying room, but he stopped beside the east-facing window because streaks of rain had created paths in the dust on the outside of the glass. He realized that he had seen no rain since early spring, not even the faintest of drizzles. The past eightdays since his sparring match in the mill had brought nothing new, just more copying, more rounds accompanying various mage-guards, more studying of the Manual and the abbreviated Codex, more questions from Taryl, and more and harder sparring with Khaill and others-although he had sparred only once more at the mill, and that had been with Taryl.
Outside, the rain was light, but it had dampened the dust and left traces of rivulets on the stone paving. Rahl studied the barren landscape to the east of the mage-guard complex for a moment. Although it had rained in Swartheld, he preferred to remember the last true rain he’d seen in Nylan, perhaps because it reminded him of Deybri, even though he really couldn’t explain why he linked the rain to her.
Had he been too forward in his letter? Had she even received it? If she had, it would only have been in the past few days. He would like to have sent another, but he had only saved a little more than a silver from his less-than-modest pay since he had written her. He could but hope that she would find a way to let his parents know he was alive and well.
After a few more moments, he turned from the window and walked toward the copying room, nodding politely to the handful of mage-guards that he passed in the corridor.
Once at the copying table, Rahl settled into his chair at the front and picked up the report on the top. He couldn’t help but smile, if wryly. Someone had switched the reports to be copied around. Those in his stack included the largely illegible and longer patrol reports, particularly those of Shaelynt and Sostrost. There was the faintest touch of chaos on Shaelynt’s report, and that suggested that Rhiobyn had been at it again, probably late the afternoon before, when Rahl had been sparring with Khaill.
Rahl started in on Shaelynt’s report and had struggled through deciphering the first few lines when Rhiobyn walked in, trying not to look in Rahl’s direction.
“I see you didn’t want to copy Shaelynt’s report,” Rahl said mildly.
“What do you mean?”
Rahl smiled pleasantly and continued to look directly at the other mage-clerk. “It’s the oldest in the stack, and it has a touch of mage-chaos on it.”
“I can’t read what he writes. You can. I would have asked you…”
“I’d be happy to do it, but I do like to be asked.”