Title and my name are at the top; over all summary and disclaimer are on the first five chapters. These will hold for the rest of the story. The title action will finally occur in this chapter, all from the point of view of our "mystery person." Again, shame on you if you can't figure out who it is. I have only vague ideas about where to go next, so any suggestions will be welcome.
I would like to apologize for my extraordinary lateness in getting up another chapter. I do have reasons, but I am ashamed. I was grounded, I had AP tests to work for, I had finals, the computer got a virus, we moved to the middle of Dorothy and Toto land, we couldn't get internet to work on the computer, and then I went on vacation. That is the reason(s) that I have not updated in roughly six months. Again I feel horribly guilty and am very sorry. Please don't hurt me.
Also, I don't really dislike Jon or anything, and I don't think that he is that much of a whining baby; it is the effects of the spell Roger and Delia have placed on him.
Chapter the Ninth
"No, Hoffryn! That's too much to the left." I yelled. "The blade can be any-which-way that you want, but keep the tip pointed at Clason's chest. It won't do you any good to charge at him if your point's already going past his shoulder. Contrary to popular belief, he is not as wide as the palace gates."
Hoffryn blushed at the rebuke and realigned his tip while his much larger partner grinned.
"And Clason," the other page glanced up. "Stop dodging the damn blade. He might not have hit you that time, but if he kept on pushing, you would have tripped over your own feet from trying to run away." No longer grinning, the boy solemnly nodded his head.
"Alright then boys," I stood up and raised my arms, "Ready?" They slipped the padded practice helmets, stained yellow from years of sweat and hard use, over their heads and dropped into the en garde position, nodding. "Then fight!" I bellowed, brining my arms forward and together in a thunderous clap.
I sat back down on the upturned barrel of the courtyard that served as my seat and leaned on my elbows as I studied style and weaknesses of the two boys. They had come to my apartments the day before, asking if I could critique them as they practiced this afternoon. After all, everyone knew I was "one of the best knights in the whole palace!" "One of the best" But I'm not their hero my treacherous mind whispered. I'm just convenient. A flash of copper from the east entrance caught my eye. He is their hero. Alan of Trebond. Brilliant, Gifted, a very pretty boy. Everyone just adores him.
I cut off that train of thought to refocus on the two sparring boys in front of me. Clason was doing much better but… "Hoffryn! Keep your point on line!" His blade wavered back into position at the same time a shadow fell onto my face.
"Hello Alan." I said calmly to the squire's hovering presence. "Take a seat." I waved at the barrel next to mine."
"Thanks," he said, hoisting himself up onto the seat next to mine. I was amused to note that his feet were left hanging a few inches away from the ground. I may be slight, but at least I don't end up looking like a three year old. "What happened to your cheek?" he asked me once he was settled.
Surprised, my hand rose involuntarily to the recently healed mark on my face, souvenir of trying to follow him into the city two weeks ago. Despite Alan's innocent expression, I couldn't help wondering if there was more to his question. "Just a brawl in the city," I answered casually. "You know how the commoners are."
He grimaced in return, although I couldn't tell if he was agreeing with me or not. "So what are you doing down here Alan?" I asked, deciding that a change of subject might be prudent. "I thought you usually helped Jonathon with his papers about now." I marveled at how normal my voice sounded even as he groaned in dismay.
"I usually do. But I told him that I had promised to go over some old documents with Myles today." I faked a censorious expression at his confession. "You wouldn't blame me if you'd been there, with that disgustingly hopeful expression and that embarrassing attempt at literature that should never be heard unless the listener is almost unconscious with morphine." He burst out with vehemence. "Or dead," He added as an afterthought.
"You seem to feel quite strongly about this." I noted. He stared at me for a moment, and then burst out into near-hysterical laughter.
"I'm sorry," he said a moment later, trying to catch a breath. "But you are the only one that I can talk about this with."
I began to get an idea about what, exactly, "this" was, but had him spell it out anyway. "Talk about what Alan? What can you talk about with me that you can't with Jonathon?"
"Delia," he replied on a gust of breath, but not the lovelorn sigh my lord had hoped for, more like pained exasperation. "She's making everyone crazy. Jonathon's writing the most horrible love poems ever to be seen in this kingdom, and he, Gary, and Raoul nearly eviscerated me a few weeks ago just because she was talking to me. I didn't even want to be there. Everyone seems to go absolutely nuts if her name ever comes up in conversation. Except you." He turned to me, pleading evident in his wide violet eyes. "I just want things to be like they used to be, with the five of us, all together."
"Things change Alan," my voice grated harshly on the words. "People change, and nothing you do can change them back." His surprise was evident at my tone, but that didn't stop my tongue. "Besides, there were six of us, remember?"
His head snapped back as though he'd been slapped with that reminder of shy, blond, Francis of Nond. I knew that Alan held a fair amount of guilt, carefully buried away in his subconscious, for the page. Only one year older than Alan himself, Francis had been one of the first to die of the sweating sickness. Granted, if Alan had managed to save Francis, he probably wouldn't have been able to save Jonathon. But logic doesn't matter to guilt.
"Listen Alan," I started, "I didn't mean…" But what I didn't mean, I wasn't quite sure. Did I mean to bring up our dead friend? No. Did I mean to hurt Alan? Not as black and white. He looked up from his clenched hands with a half-hearted smile.
"It's okay," he half-said half-whispered. "I understand." We sat like that for a few moments. Separated by inches, and a chasm of words, magic, and a woman, that could be too deep to cross.
But, between old friends, awkward silences don't last forever, but are pushed to the back of the mind, still there, but unimportant alone. A skeleton full of arguments and old quarrels that will hopefully stay in its closet.
"So," Alan asked, gesturing around the practice court, "What is your excuse for coming here?"
I seized the new subject, tender though it was to me, with both hands. "A couple of pages asked me to supervise and give advice." I replied.
He nodded sagely. "Right, a few of them asked me the other day, but I just couldn't seem to find time. "
A bright flare of jealousy lit in my chest. So they'd asked him first. I was just second choice. I pushed the thought down, I was pretty sure that Alan was on the good side, and therefore needed to be alive. After all, he wanted Alan dead, and I was pretty sure that he wasn't working for the good of Tortall.
Besides, added the rational part of my mind, Everyone knew that Alan was the best after the duel with that Tuisane barbarian. Of course they would ask the hero first.
But, whispered that traitorous little voice in my mind, the one that got far more use under the duke. No one knows which of you is the best, not really. You haven't fought against him since you were both pages, you never actually tried to find out. I shoved a metaphorical sock down the voice's non-existent throat.
"It's a hell of a lot of stress isn't it?" I asked him, not really meaning it as a question.
"Hmm?" he queried, distracted by one of Clason's more elegant parries. The boy's shoulders straightened at Alan's nod of approval, just before Hoffryn stabbed him in the gut.
"Being the best," I continued, not looking at him. "Everyone looking up at you, all of the time,…"
He picked up from my pause, "All the pressure to keep being the best, because if you stop, the no one cares anymore."
A bitter laugh escaped me and Alan looked at me, surprised. "Gods, Alan! You're talking about the future! What could happen, what might happen. Look at me! It has happened. I was the best. I beat almost everyone here, and then most of the challenges from Tuisane, and they all said that I was the best. Then you came along." My voice grew softer, and I closed my eyes against any pity he might try and give me. "You the smallest of the squires, beat Dain of Melor, and you were the best, and I was nothing." The sourness of a past grievance was harsh in my mouth. I knew that I shouldn't hate him, but my lord certainly hadn't let any of my rivalry against his enemy die.
"Bull." Alan's calm tenor voice cut into me.
"Wh-what?" My shock must have been amusing in its exaggeration, but to his credit, Alan showed no signs of laughter.
"I said that's bull." His face was small and intent, and with the both of us sitting, he could look me straight in the eye. "Who says that I'm the best? I beat one guy, so what? You and I have never had it off, not really, so no one can know for sure."
I could only stare at him, dumbfounded, at his echo of my earlier thoughts. Moreover, he agreed with them. And it was true, we hadn't sparred since we were both pages. No one could be sure. I opened my mouth to try and find a flaw in this logic, but couldn't.
Alan hopped of his seat to land soundlessly on the ground, turning around to stare at me expectantly. "You coming?" he asked. "It's on my mind too now, and I won't be able to think straight 'til we know.
With renewed energy, and maybe even hope, I leapt off my own seat and the two of us headed for the arched exit.
The two pages called after us. "Alan and I are going to have a match of our own." I called back to them.
They glanced at each other. "Do you need a proctor, sir?" called Hoffryn. It was evident that the boy was more intent on gawking at a match between two of the palace's finest rather than judging. I glanced at Alan, and then back at the pages.
"That's all right boys, we wouldn't want to interrupt your practicing, besides," I remained stoically impassive to their crestfallen expressions and cast a measuring glance back to my new sparring partner. "I don't think Alan and I will need a referee. After all, they're just practice blades."
I leaned to my left, hands braced on my thigh as I stretched my right side. On the other side of the austere room, Alan Leaned across crossed legs, than moved fluidly up before mimicking my position.. A vertebrae popped, and I straightened up, shaking myself out. I walked to the cabinet on the wall opposite the mirrors, and tested the practiced blades one by one. The third weapon caught my fancy, purple wrappings around the black leather of the handle, frayed, but comfortable.
A small hand reached past me, and I restrained a shiver at the squire's sudden, silent appearance. Without hesitation, he reached for the weapon fifth from the right, wrapped in red and creamy tan.
He turned a quirky grin and a mock salute at me, informing me that my involuntary start had been noted. We took our positions, each two paces back from the grooved line that bisected the room. Then, with a more formal salute, we began.
Before the starting slap had stopped echoing in the bare, stone and wood chamber, I lunged forward, blade spinning over my head before it leapt toward Alan's, the only thing saving my friend, a half-step, half-fall backwards.
The bitterness in my mind began to thaw at this initial failing of Alan's. But with my hope came a glimmering of a presence in the back of my mind, one which I quickly pushed to the backmost of my thoughts.
We began with the ageless circling pattern, widdershins, I noted with a small grin, each checking for the other's weaknesses. Alan's eyes remained focused on my chest, looking for signals of my next move. Let him. Duke Gareth had taught me last year how to suppress those signals. And I'd learned before that Alan's strangely immobile chest never showed anything, it was his shoulders you had to watch.
Deciding that I would rather act than react, I threw in a vicious underhand slash before skittering out of the way of his riposte. While his arm was still extended, I swept in and threw my blade down and back, the tip cutting Alan's hose and leaving a deep scratch across his thigh. Not so dull then. I thought, surprised. The presence in my mind inched forward at the weak scent of blood. I moved to push him back again, but was distracted by Alan calling my name.
"Be careful!" he protested.
I would have answered, but my master's attention had come to our little duel, and his interference was not something I wanted.
Alan moved, back and to the side, forcing me to turn in order to keep him in my sights. Then he rushed forward, blade held straight out in front of him, on a direct line to my chest, before I caught it on my own, hilt to hilt,. Now the advantage was mine, because in cor-a-cor, or body to body, Alan's height, or lack thereof, et him be easily dominated. But he broke away, the flat of his blade swinging in his wake to slap me across the cheek. And that brief moment of my pain was all the Duke needed to take over my body.
Alan's apology, filtered through my ears and the Duke's awareness was ignored. The duke raised our sword, using my skill and his plan, and whispered with my voice. "Guard."
Looking vaguely annoyed, he complied, before being drawn again into cor-a-cor and knocked to the ground. Without waiting for him to move, the Duke swung our sword at the squire's head. I watched its descent, a prisoner in my own skin. At the last second, Alan rolled out of thee way, letting the floor take the hit. All three of us saw the chunk of wood knocked out by the impact.
Again the duke lunged forward, the supposedly elegant movement coming out more like a lurch, due to my horrified interference. Nevertheless, the blow connected my efforts only enough to make it the flat rather than the edge that hit.
Alan, with his Gift and his genius, started to realize that something was off. "I want to stop," he cried out. "Something's wrong."
The duke's mirth was only somewhat suppressed, emerging as a nasty smirk on my own lips. His next move knocked Alan's sword away from his hands. The squire, my friend, looked up at me, violet eyes full of terror and confusion. He leaned back, a futile attempt to escape the descending blade, and something in me snapped. A faint silvery flow surrounding my thoughts, I was imbued with a mental strength far beyond my own, and shoved the Duke out of my brain, into and beyond the little corner he had claimed for his own when I was fifteen.
But I couldn't stop the sword held in my hands. Desperately, I leaned back, so the sword hit his chest rather than his skull. I winced at the impact and following resistance as the not-so-blunted blade hit the collar of Alan's shirt and sliced downward.
Even as the blade fell free and I fell backwards, something in my brain registered that the amount of layers Alan had been wearing was far in excess of what was needed on this clear March day, even with Alan's paranoia of the cold.
I sat up slowly, rubbing my head where it had hit the floor. Glancing at the sword, I saw its tip coated thinly in blood, a few trickles running down the metal length. It wasn't much blood, but it was some. "Blunted my ass." I muttered, before looking for my friend.
"Alan?" I called as I spotted him using both legs and one arm to scoot himself closer to the mirrored wall perpendicular to the door. His other arm was curled protectively around his chest, shoulder hunched inward.
"Don't come near me!" he shouted, his voice high with stress. "Please!"
"Alan, we need to get you to a healer." Although he paused when I said his name, he shook his head vehemently and continued on his painfully slow way.
"I'm fine." Alan, I've got your blood all over my damn sword, don't tell me that's 'fine.'"
"I'll be fine." He maintained, reaching the wall and leaning sideways against it. "Just give me a few minutes."
"Very int- Dear Mithros!" Sir Myles rushed into the room Alan's strange familiar at his heels.
"NO!" came the squire's strangled yell, but the aging knight had already grasped the boy's shoulder to pull him around.
I froze in place, shocked, while Myles only paused before inspecting the shallow cut that ran from the hollow at the base of …Alan's throat to navel. And in the space between were to things that I had not expected to see. Yet even through my astonishment, I realized that the information explained many quirks about my friend's character that had been mysteries.
"Is he…? How…?" I struggled to find words as Myles raised one grizzled eyebrow at me. "Will Alan be all right?"
The squire himself did not respond, eyes squeezed tightly shut with misery. "That remains to be seen, "the knight replied, bending to lift Alan's slight form in his arms. Despite my initial doubts, the chronically tipsy knight lifted him easily. I stepped forward to help him, arms outstretched.
Sir Myles looked at me wordlessly, a gaze that made me shudder before him. "We were just…" the words trailed off, and no more came to fill their gap.
"I think you've played "Best Warrior" long enough Alex, or didn't you realize that you nearly killed…him."
With that, he carried the bleeding and suddenly female body of a squire out of the training room, leaving behind a bruised, troubled, and crying Alexander of Tirragen, standing in the middle of the doorway.