“We don’t want these, do we?” The armorer’s face was drawn into a scowl of disgust, as he pointed to five jagged-edged curved blades with hooks at the tip.
“Gods, no! Hammer them into a lump and we’ll sell the lump.”
“Might want a Marshal or Captain to say a prayer over them first,” the armorer said.
“That bad?” Arcolin leaned closer; a wave of malice made him stagger; the armorer caught his arm to steady him. “You’re right. I’ll send someone. We should get that taken care of tonight.”
The rest of the weapons were daggers and some simple knives of various lengths, useful more as camp tools than weapons. “Knives to the cook tent,” Arcolin said. “We’ll let them decide which they want. That one”—he pointed—“is stout enough to cut leather; that could go in the tack kit. I’ll see about getting us a Marshal.”
He sent Burek on that errand, and went to his tent to read the letter from Kieri.
30
Arcolin sat in the folding chair, the letter on the table—Kieri’s table, around which he and Kieri and Dorrin had sat so many times—and opened the letter.
My dear Jandelir,
Forgive the hasty note—all I had time to write and not all my thoughts—upon leaving from Vérella. I can think of no one better fit to take charge of the Company than you, my friend. I had never thought to leave it, but since I must, I know I leave it in the best possible hands.
I am certain that by now you have heard more of what happened, including the sacrifice made by Paksenarrion. I do not know when you will have reached Vérella or what news will then have been received there. She is alive and hale, beyond all our hopes. We were attacked by Verrakai and Pargunese before reaching Lyonya, nearly overwhelmed until my relatives, the elves, arrived. Yes, I say relatives and elves. You will understand how I felt when I found that my grandmother—my mother’s mother—is an elf. All the jests I ever made have come back to haunt me.
My hope is that you found a contract and are receiving this in Aarenis. Should you have any problems with my banker or other persons with whom I worked, this letter should, in addition to what I sent before, be sufficient to prove that you are entitled to all that was mine. I mean that literally, Jandelir. My old life is over; I must commit to my new realm, or I will not do it justice. You can be trusted, I know, to deal justly with my—no, YOUR other captains and with those in my former domain—which I hope Tsaia will confer on you permanently.
You are ever welcome at my court in Lyonya, and if I can do aught to make this easier on you, you have but to ask. I think of you sitting at the same table, somewhere in Aarenis, reading this on a quiet evening—too hot, perhaps, for comfort.
Take care, old friend, and be not surprised by what may come. I never expected to be a king. Who knows what the gods will send you?
Arcolin read the letter twice, feeling tears sting his eyes. Kieri had never expected to be king; he himself had never expected to inherit the entire company and domain. It was … ridiculous.
And yet the finality in the letter, Kieri’s determined turning away, the lack of questions, of any request for information, made it all real. Kieri had gone away—for a good reason—and left him a gift worth—he could not guess how many crowns or natas. A gift beyond price … and the greatest part, Kieri’s trust that he could—no, he would—nurture it as Kieri himself had done.
“Well,” he said aloud, to the person who was not there. “I will do that. I will.”
He refolded the letter and put it back in its case, tucking the case under the blanket of his camp bed.
Outside, he heard the sergeants scolding some hapless recruits for being lazy and slow with their shields. It had been days since he himself drilled; he walked to the area the sergeants had laid out.
“Captain!” Devlin called. Arcolin waved, pointed to the stack of bandas, and took one, shrugging into it, then put down his longsword to pick up a short one and a shield. The sounds died down; Stammel shouted at them, and the thuds and clangs speeded up again.
They had finished the warm-up drills and were well into file-on-file. Arcolin signaled Devlin, who made space for him on the second row and told one of the others to stand out. Short-sword formation work wasn’t his usual way of fighting, but he practiced it regularly anyway—Kieri had done so, on the grounds that a commander might need to fight in formation in a tight spot. With only one cohort, that chance might come oftener.
“Shield position,” Devlin muttered. Arcolin shifted his shield a hand to the left. Devlin called the front rank to drop back through the second; Arcolin managed the side-step to open ranks and then close again. Now he was in front; the front-rank center of the opposing side made a tentative poke at him, easily blocked, and Stammel yelled.
In a few minutes, Arcolin was sweaty and had two new bruises, one for missing a parry and one from holding his shield at the wrong angle. He could feel the mood of the cohort better this way—they liked it when the captains got dusty and sweaty, too, and they particularly liked it when they took some lumps. Devlin called a shift to the right; Stammel, anticipating, moved his group, too, but Arcolin saw an opening and gave someone—Tam, he saw—a hit in the ribs that would bruise even through the banda.
Then he heard Burek call his name; the sergeants called a hold, and the noise stopped. Arcolin moved out of the formation with a wave to Devlin; Burek and a Gird’s Marshal were riding up to the drill field. Arcolin pulled off the banda, set the short sword and shield down, and picked up his longsword, sliding it into the hanger then wiping the sweat off his face.
“There’s a rumor from up north that your Company’s gone Girdish because a paladin visited you,” the Marshal said. “I’m Marshal Harak, and we’d be pleased to see you at the grange.”
“Not entirely Girdish,” Arcolin said. “It’s a long story. One of our soldiers—from this cohort, in fact—did become a paladin, but not everyone’s Girdish. I put no pressure on anyone to change faiths, if their character’s good. But there’s a grange building back home, in the stronghold, and a Marshal living in Duke’s West.”
“That’s good,” Marshal Harak said. “Some things happened that last year of Siniava’s War—”
“That none of us are proud of, yes,” Arcolin said. “I’ll not argue that. Did Burek tell you our problem here?”
“Something about bad blades—Siniava’s, do you think?”
“I can’t tell, but definitely evil. I felt the malice myself. We want to destroy them, beat them into lumps, but our armorer thought we should have a Marshal or Captain present.”
“If the malice is strong enough for you to feel, then yes, you need help. Let us go.”
In the armory, the armorer had set the bad blades far from the others, near his forge. He had a fire going and his tools set out.
“These are the blades, Marshal,” Arcolin said.
“Bad blades indeed,” Marshal Harak said. “You did well to send for me. Let us see …” He took out his Gird’s symbol, freed the chain from his neck, and dangled the symbol above the blades. Arcolin was not sure, but fancied he saw a sickly yellow-green glow gather between the blades and the medallion. “Oh, that’s nasty,” Harak murmured. “Gird won’t like that.” Still holding the medallion, he held out his other hand. “Armorer, lay one of those blades on the anvil, and give me a hammer, if you please.”
“Marshal?”
Marshal Harak grinned. “My father was a smith; I’m no master of the craft, but I know the use of a hammer.”