Chapter Twenty-three: A Company of Survivors
As she trotted Hoshi around the quintain, her lance in one hand and Hoshi's reins in the other, she was aware of someone watching her. She finished demonstrating to the first year pages how to hold a lance correctly and then sent them to run at the quintain. None of them hit it and were promptly whacked by the sandbag. She hadn't expected anything more.
"Don't worry," she assured the pages, most of whom looked dismayed. "I didn't expect you hit it first time." She glanced over to where the forth-years were taking runs at the quintain. None of them missed, but only four of the five pages hit the little black dot in the middle of shield. The fifth page was Alan; it seemed he wasn't good at everything. In an odd way she was glad. Having seen him using a sword and bow this morning she had been intimidated by his skill, but that was to be expected. After all, he did have Shang training. She couldn't think why someone with that amount of skill he would drop out of training, but according to Lord Wyldon, Shang training had no longer interested Alan and he wanted to move onto something new.
Kel told the first years to continue taking runs at the quintain and moved to help a second year that kept bashing his horse's head with the lance.
"I want you to get the Wild Mage to have a look at that after this session," Kel instructed as she took the lance off of the boy. "And be more careful with your lance in future. You've got a good mount there, don't injure it, you can leave that to the enemy." She grabbed the page's hand and carefully placed the lance in his hand, then she angled the lance so that it should no longer hit the horse. "Make sure you keep lance at that angle, that way you shouldn't be whacking your poor horse over the head every time you take a run at the target. Go on, give it a go."
The boy kicked his horse into the canter and directed his horse towards the shield. As his lance started to fall, he brought his other hand up to support it and the lance smashed into the large red circle painted on the shield and the sandbag swung away. The force of the hit however had been too much and then boy fell sideways out of his saddle, the only thing preventing him from falling to ground was his leg entangled in one of his stirrups. Kel kicked Hoshi into a gallop and came up along side the boy's horse. She leant out of her saddle and reached for the reins and pulled the horse to a stop. Groaning, the boy tried to reach up to untangle his leg from the stirrup but he couldn't quite reach. Kel dismounted and yanked his leg free of his stirrup. He fell to the ground with a thud.
Lord Wyldon rode over, his face red with anger. "I would have thought that after two years you were capable of decent horsemanship!"
The boy said nothing but allowed Kel to pull him up off of the floor.
"You shall work for two hours in the armoury on Sunday."
"Yes, my Lord," the boy replied dutifully as Wyldon rode off.
Kel smiled at him sympathetically. "You wouldn't believe how much punishment work I got in my year here. Mind you, my best friend was worse and I highly doubt anyone has got anywhere near his record since. He must have spent at least six hours a week working in the armoury, the hay loft and writing essays."
The boy grinned. "I think you'll find Alan and Lachran have both easily equalled, if not exceeded that. Between them they manage to annoy my Lord so often that not a lesson goes by without one of them gaining punishment work. My Lord says that Alan's too used to the Shang style of learning and Lachran needs to screw his head back on and realise that he's here to learn, not to have a holiday."
Kel chuckled. That sounded like something Wyldon would say about her eldest nephew. Lachran had the habit of taking everything as it came and treating everything as a joke.
The feeling of being watched returned and Kel turned to the fence of the practise yard to see who it was. A young man was leaning with his arms crossed on the fence. His dark eyes studied her closely and she returned that stare. He wore the green armband of an off-duty knight and what she presumed were his house colours of red, gold and brown. From his waist hung a sword, it wasn't sheathed as was customary and Kel could see that it had been well used. He had plenty of battle scars on his arms, some of them recent, if how red and puffy they were was anything to go by. His face however remained almost untouched and almost quite handsome.
Not a patch on Dom though, Kel thought as left Hoshi where he was standing and walked towards him.
"Need any help?" Kel asked quietly.
"We're getting impatient. We've been waiting in the forest clearing for almost twenty minutes!" the man snapped and Kel realised that he was from the squad of men she was meant to be training. King Jonathan had ordered her to train them in the forest so that there was less chance of a Yamani spy spotting them and reporting back to the Isles with the information that troops were being trained in the art of Yamani fighting.
Kel shrugged calmly. "I was informed by his Majesty that I would be training you in the afternoon, for as you can see, I have other commitments in the morning. I'll meet you and your men in the forest clearing after your noon meal." With that, she strode towards Hoshi and mounted up, re-joining the pages in time to hear them being shouted at for not trying hard enough.
- - -
Kel took in the scene in front of her with something verging on distaste. The men that she was supposed to train were lounging around on tree roots and fallen branches. They laughed and joked among themselves. It looked like they didn't have a care in the world. They should have known better. The Royal Forest was infested with immortals and bandits, and not all of the immortals were friendly. Anyone going into the forest should be alert at all times and completely aware of everything going on around them, unlike the men she saw in front of her. They did have weapons, but they were piled against a tree on the other side of the clearing, too far for them to reach in time if an attack came. She would have thought that trained knight would have had more sense.She sighed and strode out into the clearing reluctantly. The sun was high in the sky and she didn't want to leave the shade that the trees offered. "Why are you, trained knights all of you, sitting on one side of the clearing whilst your weapons are on the other?" she asked as she lay her glaive at her feet.
The men tripped over each other as they scrambled for their weapons and formed two straight lines of fifteen in front of her. They held a variety of weapons. All had a sword and a shield and most had a bow and a quiver of arrows. She spotted six axes and five long knives. Only three held a pole arm and even then they looked old and unused, she was willing to bet that if she were to fight against someone with them, the wood would snap after four blocks maximum.
Kel spotted the man that had talked to her that morning. "Your name, fief and rank please."
"Sir Edric of Harsveiw, knight of the realm of Tortall."
That was odd, Kel thought. She would have thought that the most senior knight would have come to talk to her. "Actually, when I said rank, I meant your position within this company."
"This isn't a company, my Lady," Edric replied. "We're the remnants of at least five companies. We're the ones who survived the Scanran border."
Kel nodded slowly, she couldn't decide whether that was a good or a bad thing. If they were the ones that survived, it meant that they had plenty of skill so she would have something to work with, making her life easier. But that could also work against her. If they had survived they could become cocky and think they didn't need to learn anything new and ignore her. "And do you know why you're here?"
"We're going to be taught to fight by some merchant's daughter who can't fight herself, let alone teach anyone!" a man from the second row piped up.
Kel ignored his comment. "I'm here to teach you to fight like a Yamani so that you can —"
"Why would we want to fight like a Yamani barbarian?" a coarse voice interrupted.
Kel continued, ignoring his comment, but making a mental note to remind the King to employ someone to protect the Yamani ladies. If that were the general feeling, then it probably wouldn't be long before someone attacked them. "So that you won't be slaughtered as badly as you may have been. At least if you have this training you will be facing the Yamani Warriors on an almost equal footing. They'll have the advantage of many years practise, but let me tell you, the amount of practise you shall be doing in the coming days will be enough to ensure you are at least competent."
The men snorted with laughter. "I highly doubt that those pigsticker wielding maniacs are any match for us. Do you think they have even trained a day in their entire life? I'd heard that they spent their days writing poetry and running up mountains." His last few remarks were directed at the men around him who burst into further laughter.
"Actually," Kel said in an almost calm and reasonable voice. "I think you'll find that the Yamani Warriors train harder than Tortallan knights do. When I was there, we trained with our weapons for six hours per day and still managed academic classes in the evening. As a page here you spend only four hours training per day and less once you are knighted."
The men clearly didn't believe her. They continued to laugh and Kel felt herself start to loose a grip on her temper.
"If you don't believe me, why don't I fight one of you? As I'm sure you know, I got most of my training in the Isles. When I was seventeen, I was ranked among the top ten young warriors at the Emperor's Court, but I'm older now. My fighting is nothing compared to the standard that you will face when the Emperor's Chosen Warriors face you in battle. So, who'll fight me?"
There was a moment of silence then Edric stepped forwards, pulling his sword from his belt. "I will."
Kel nodded and tossed her tunic onto the ground. She wore a short sleeved shirt and out of the pocket she pulled a headband to keep her hair away from her eyes. With her glaive in hand she advanced towards Edric.
The ensuing fight wasn't brief by any means but it was neither equally matched and long in length. Kel was certain that Edric would be able to hold his own if faced by a swordsman, but she wasn't a swordsman. She had a glaive and that made all the difference. It had a longer reach than his sword and gave her more protection from his blade. By the time her blade had reached his throat, there was no way he could remove it.
Kel let her glaive fall away and Edric stepped back into line.
"As you can see, the Yamani trainer's are perfectly capable people and turn out excellent Warriors. Now, my fighting was of a lower standard to most of the people that you shall be fighting, so think about that. If I, still a student in Yamani terms, can have my blade in the kill position within a short amount of time, imagine what a real Warrior could do in a battle situation. You would be dead within minutes of coming up against him."
The men were standing nonchalantly, or trying to, but no matter how hard they tried to look unimpressed, Kel could see that her fight had made an impression on them.
"But I was lead to believe that the glaive was only a woman's weapon!" Edric protested. "Surely we won't be fighting women!"
Kel shook her head. "You're right, you won't be fighting women, but the men all use pole arms as their main weapon. The design they use varies on their skill, but it's all based on the glaive. The most advanced Warriors use a weapon that looks so fearsome you wouldn't ever want to come up against anyone fighting with it."
Yet again, the men scoffed what she said.
Kel ignored them and held out her glaive for them to see. "Where there is a metal cap at the base of the glaive, they have what looks like the head of a spear. They can stab with it, and sometimes the tips are poisoned. The wooden staff itself is heavier, thicker and stronger than this. So whilst it is actually possible to break a glaive with a single sword stroke, you would have to hack repeatedly to break this. And the Warrior isn't going to leave you alive long enough for you to do that. On the blade end, they have a blade similar to this, only at the very end the blade divides into three, giving three tiny, but deadly spikes at the end. My father had one, he couldn't use it, but it was a gift from the Emperor showing his appreciation for helping to secure an alliance between the Isles and Tortall. They call it a Targita, the God's Blade."
The men were silenced temporarily by her description.
"I shall see you here tomorrow at this time," Kel announced through the silence as she gathered her weapons up. "Between now and then I expect you to have collected yourself a glaive and got used to its weight and length." She turned to leave.
"Begging your pardon, my Lady," a voice drawled. Although the words were polite, Kel knew it wasn't meant politely. "But I highly doubt that the palace armoury has a singly glaive in stock, let alone thirty of them!"
Kel nodded as she turned around to face them. "You're quite right there. But you're not going to get them from the armoury. Since I talked with the King about training you, Raven Armoury has been frantically making us thirty glaives. If you go in there, mention my name and that you need a glaive, they'll take you to where they're hidden."
- - -
As the heat of summer faded into blustering winds of autumn which disappeared as soon as they came into cold blizzards of winter and then into the damp relief of spring, the men improved steadily. They worked every afternoon and increasingly beyond dusk. If someone walked into the clearing they would be met with a strange sight.
Flaming torches were stuck in the ground, forming a circle around which the dim glitter of magic could be seen. It was protection magic and it kept as much of heat in as possible, the King had ordered Numair to set permanent wards in the area that only Kel and her men could access. In the dim light of the torches an observer would be able to make out thirty men sparring in threes and fours. There wasn't anyway to tell which men were fighting for the same side apart from the coloured armbands that fifteen wore. They fought with long stick like weapons. Each was about five feet in length with a steel cap on one end and a long curved blade on the other. A woman stood at the edge with one such weapon in her hand, occasionally she would walk into one of the fights and take someone's place. When she fought it was with such grace and aptitude that it obvious she was the teacher and they the pupils. As she fought she would talk to the man whose place she had taken and as soon as she was certain he understood she would step back and allow him to fight.
Kel was showing one of the more advanced men a slightly more complex pattern dance he could do when she heard someone calling her. She turned and saw someone standing outside of the wards. He didn't try to walk through them, so he obviously knew they were there.
"My Lady!" he called, his voice was muffled from having come through the wards.
Kel ordered her men to cease fighting but stay alert. For all she knew it could be a trap lead by Yamani spies. As soon as she walked out of the wards she could be surrounded. She walked effortlessly through the wards, resisting the urge to twitch, which was what the wards always seemed to do to her. "Yes?"
The man bowed to her. "My Lady, Sir Myles wishes you to meet him in his room as soon as possible."
Kel breathed deeply. She had been expecting this for some time. Her orders to fight wouldn't come from the King like that of her friends; they would come from Myles. He would make the decision based on the intelligence he was getting out of the Isles and when there was a big enough threat, Kel and her men would be called in. "Thank-you. Tell him I'll be there as soon as I can." She bowed to the man who bowed back and then turned and walked back into the wards. "I've got something to attend to," she told the men, not wanting to tell them they would be going into battle until she was absolutely certain. "I want you to continue practising until I get back." As she turned and walked through the woods, the men started to debate between themselves what was so important that their commander had left them to their own devices.
- - -
A/N: Alright…And yeah, I know that was a crud ending, but this and the next chapter were originally one, but it was far too long so I split them, and this was the best place.
Hannah