Noble Beginnings (6 page)

Kell looked at Iain and smirked. "You got
that? Try not to get killed, and this should go just fine."

Iain squared his shoulders. "Sure, and you
make sure to actually hit more than air with that stick you call a
sword."

Dorran turned to Marcus. "As for you...with
your abilities, it'd be good for you to practice taking advantage
whenever the opportunity appears. Stay close to the action, but try
to stay out of her clear view of sight. Your main purpose is to
Interfere where she least expects it, get a swing in whenever you
think you can reasonably expect an opening. But don't get caught,
or she'll have you on your back faster than you can blink an eye.
Got it?"

Marcus's eyes were glinting with excitement,
and Dorran reflected that he was looking forward to seeing how the
youth performed in the exercise. "Understood."

"Good. I'll be trying to make things harder
for her, working with you two for the most part and playing off of
Marcus some of the time. Don't worry about what I'm doing, it's my
job to focus on you." He hefted his sword. "In battle, talented
fighters like Edith are important to wipe out as soon as possible.
Let's see how quickly we can put her down, shall we?"

They nodded, and his small knot of soldiers
broke, moving to their starting positions. Edith raised her sword
and crouched, anchoring herself in the ground. She wasn't planning
on retreating in this fight.

The plan worked well, though not quite as
well as Dorran had hoped. Edith had eyes in the back of her head,
and the power of their superior numbers was impeded by the fact
that Dorran and Kell spent most of their time trying to coordinate
smoothly with the two younger, inexperienced swordsmen. Edith only
had to worry about herself and didn't take it easy on any of them.
As always, she fought with a fierceness and drive of someone with
something to prove. Dorran took some touches trying to draw her
away from the others, but they managed to avoid getting hit for the
most part.

Edith knew that in a real battle scenario,
she would have only a few minutes at most before she would be
overwhelmed by yet more enemies, so as the battle continued, she
started to pick up her pace, taking more risks. In the end she
lunged just a bit too far in an effort to separate Kell and Iain,
and Marcus jumped in for an opening. She saw him out of the corner
of her eye and corrected her lunge in a near-impossible feat of
flexibility.

Dorran, watching, realized what was going to
happen a split second before it did and moved on instinct. The next
thing he knew, Edith's sword was poking hard into his side, but his
was in a swing towards her throat. He carefully twisted the blade
at the last second so that the flat of it smacked against her skin.
The rest of the fighters froze on instinct, waiting for the
communal verdict.

"Hm," he said, trying not to gasp from the
pain that throbbed from the hit that would turn into an ugly bruise
in a few hours. "Mutual kill?"

"Probably," she admitted. "Certainly, given
this one..." She indicated Iain with her head; the youth was frozen
in a lunge with his blade aimed for Edith's heart, with Kell
covering him, ready to parry or counterattack. "I'll have killed
you first, but I'd follow you right after."

Dorran grinned and stepped back, hissing a
bit as he fingered the few layers of broken skin where the edge of
Edith's sword had dug deepest into his flesh. "Well, I'm just as
dead either way. I guess that's a draw."

"A draw with three more fighters on your
side," Edith pointed out, a small smile gracing her fine features.
"Not really that impressive on your part."

"You know that isn't how it works," Dorran
retorted casually, but he wasn't really interested in the argument
at this point. "I think I made a decent team player, and you did
very well on your own." Edith shrugged, and he continued, forcing
himself to keep the casual tone. "Want to try a different
style?"

She shrugged and settled into stance, the
hint of a smile tugging at the edge of her mouth. "One-on-one?"

"Your wish is my command," he replied
quickly, then looked over his shoulder at the others. "You may want
to get back I think she wants to prove a point and whoever gets in
her way might need a bandage or two."

About an hour later, both of them were slick
with sweat. Dorran could feel bruises blossoming in half a dozen
spots across his body, and suspected that Edith was in similar
shape or a part of him at least hoped she was. Edith wasn't the
kind of fighter he could afford to pull punches on, though he did
try not to be unnecessarily forceful. "I think you win," he
admitted with a shaky grin. He brought a hand gingerly to his hip,
where a particularly nasty hit of hers had landed squarely on the
bone.

She shrugged. "What did you expect? But it
was a good fight. You done for now?"

"I think so, yes." She was just as calm and
composed as she always was after a fight, Dorran noted, and
suddenly he was overwhelmed with the desire for matters between
them to be normal or at least less contentious. "Walk with me?"

"Sure." She waved to the others with him and
followed him out.

"So," he said, holding the hall door for her
and shutting it behind them. "How have you been?"

"Fine. Busy." She examined a couple of
knuckles that had been scraped in one of the skirmishes, then shook
her hand out. "Too busy to come out every day like I used to,
actually, so it feels like every time I do train I have to work
twice as hard to avoid falling behind. I feel like I'm slipping out
of shape."

"You're only getting better, as far as I can
see." Dorran rubbed his still-sweaty hand absently on his tunic as
they walked down the halls. "Look, I'm...I'm sorry for getting
angry at you before. Is there any chance you can tell me now what
you have been so busy with?"

She gave him a pointed look. "No."

He held up his hands. "All right, all right,
I was just checking. I won't press from now on, I promise." He cast
about desperately for a change of topic. "You want to go bathe?"
was the first thing that came to mind. "I haven't had much chance
to train, and today was unseasonably muggy so, I know I could use
one right now."

She considered the suggestion, then said,
"Sure." And then it was like they were small children again, as
Dorran led her down to the servants' bathing rooms, which thanks to
ever-running fires, were always ready to accommodate two more
guests.

As they set out their respective tubs and
retrieved several buckets of water from where they waited over the
embers, Dorran certainly remembered that they were no longer
children. He averted his eyes as they stripped and sank into the
small tubs, no longer anywhere near as luxuriously large as they
had once felt. But after that he did sneak a glance or two at her
bare body.

A raised eyebrow on her part ended up
deterring him from this, however. He'd figured she wouldn't be
interested in anything of that nature. While he suspected that
Edith did enjoy her own time with men, she seldom had the patience
for even flirting when her mind was elsewhere. And he'd been right,
he noted; she had a fair share of welts, the same as his.

"Hope I didn't hit you too hard," he said,
nodding at the bruises.

She snorted. "I hope you're joking. I was
considering scolding you about that. You do realize, I think that
the point of training is building habits. If you train yourself to
be afraid of bruising your opponent, how do you expect to be able
to kill a real one?"

He looked away. "I know that, but it won't do
me any good if I broke my fellow soldiers' trust in me. And
fighting is more about self-control, anyway. Isn't that what Vernis
has always told us?"

Edith shrugged and turned around, reaching
for a nearby bar of soap and beginning to scrub her back. "Should
that really matter, in my case?" she asked.

Her voice was perfectly casual, but Dorran
froze. They'd never talked about this, about Edith's chances of
being allowed to become a soldier. "What do you mean?" he
asked.

"I want to be a soldier," she answered, still
casual. "But..."

"I know." And he did, she had mentioned it so
many time over the years the fact had been branded into his mind.
"But how..."

"There already aren't enough men in the
kingdoms to sustain the war," Edith said, "and I don't intend to
have children for years yet, if ever. I don't see why I can't do
the same things my brothers did."

Dorran just shrugged, then used a basin to
rinse the soap off his body. He sat back and watched the ceiling,
enjoying the sensation of heat sinking from the water into his
bones.” I think you should."

There was a beat of silence, than a soft and
surprised sounding “oh," escaped her lips

"Yes," he said awkwardly. "I mean, you have a
point...there's no reason for women not to join the King's army as
soldiers. There's no law against it, and several of the other
duchies have started allowing it, I think. I bet the number of
women soldiers will only grow the longer the war continues...and to
be honest, I don't think that the war is going to stop anytime
soon. Don’t get me wrong I wish it would but with four different
armies trying to win the same throne and none of them with an
advantage over the others.”"

"Good point." He heard the sound of water
sloughing off a standing body and respectfully kept his eyes turned
the other way as Edith stepped out of the tub. "Anyway, I'm leaving
now. I have work to get done back at home. Thanks for inviting me
down here."

"No problem," he said easily. "Take care,
And...Edith?"

There was a rustling of cloth, and then
silence. Dorran peeked over his shoulder, and when he saw that
Edith was already wearing her tunic and trousers, he turned around
fully to look at her. "Yes?" she prompted him with a smirk on her
face.

"Do whatever you need to," he said. "I like
to rely on you to help out with the barracks, since you've helped
me with it from the beginning, but I know you've got your own
priorities and in the end I trust you, so I believe that if you
find it important than it must be." He looked her straight in the
eye, watching as her eyes widened slightly in surprise.
"Just...take care, all right?"

She looked at him, face level but perhaps, he
thought, vaguely approving. "Yes. Thank you...my lord."

He sighed quietly to himself as she left, but
found himself smiling as well. It was far from a complete victory.
He still hadn’t learned what she had been up to but at least they
were back on friendly terms and that alone meant a lot to him.

CHAPTER VII

Striking a balance between training and his
study of court life proved difficult. Dorran asked Myriel for
advice as often as he could, and checked in with his sisters
whenever he was able to find them. He started to feel like he was
jumping at shadows in his attempts to be where he was needed
without having to be asked, for all that Myriel occasionally
assured him that he was improving. Those few words while heard
rarely were a great prize for him.

The most annoying aspect of balancing his
time, he thought, was how unrelated the two activities seemed. Even
though thousands of Farlan's men were fighting and dying abroad,
this topic was only rarely discussed in court, and even then never
in detail. It was the King's business, he supposed, rather than his
mother's, but he couldn't help but be frustrated nonetheless. Every
now and then he would dream about confronting his mother about
being sent with a band of soldiers to the King, a shadowy figure
who looked him up and down before gesturing with an imperious hand
and releasing a horde of shadowy soldiers on him. Just as his sword
was about to clash with that of the first foe, Dorran would wake
up.

He was absent mindedly contemplating his
latest dream as Thea opened the council. She looked pleasant,
almost jovial, but somehow more tired than usual.

"I'd like to begin this meeting with some
pleasant news," she announced. "I've decided to invite the family
of my late husband, Jaren, to live with us in the castle. Several
months ago, I invited the Lady Alven and her daughter to come live
with us, in my late husband's memory. They have happily accepted my
invitation, and after they have put their affairs on their
ancestral estate in order they will be arriving here at the castle.
I expect them to be here within the week. I hope all of you will
show them hospitality befitting the joy their presence will bring
me…and, indeed, all of us. I have organized a small feast to
celebrate their arrival, and they shall thereupon be honorary
members of our council."

Dorran had no particular reaction to the news
it only meant a few more nobles in the area of the castle and he
didn’t expect that was going to change his daily life much. Even if
they were family members, he only dimly remembered Lyrre as a girl
a year or two younger than he was. She had always been much more
interested in playing with his sisters than with him. As he tried
half-heartedly to remember more details about Alven and Lyrre from
his childhood, Thea briefly outlined her plans for their arrival at
the castle, and polite agreements were exchanged around the
table.

Then Thea straightened, looking solemn. "I'm
afraid that my next piece of news is not so easily prepared for,"
she said, looking around the table. "His Majesty has sent us a new
missive."

There was a low murmuring around the table,
but it quickly fell into a deep silent as everyone awaited the
news. "He says he has made significant headway on the southern
front, but that he needs a significant force to ensure the best
chances of a successful push into enemy territory. He is requesting
an additional muster…Thirty thousand healthy, equipped men of any
age and supplies to last them at least two months. He has also
asked that whatever additional soldiers we may be able to spare
would be greatly appreciated. He would hope for more, but thirty
thousand, he says, are all he is formally asking of us."