Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

Like all of the children of the noble houses, Aliver Akaran had been raised in opulence. He always woke to find his slippers resting in place on the floor beside him and flower petals in the basin of scented water he washed his face in. From the moment he took solid food, each meal he had eaten had been prepared to the highest standards, with the best ingredients, with the effect on the palate considered down to the last detail. He had never walked into a cold room on a winter’s day, never drawn his own bath or wet his hands washing clothes. He never even witnessed the washing of plates soiled by a meal. If asked, he would have had to create from fancy the process by which items were cleaned, mended, replaced. He had lived at the center of a massive delusion. It was a most pleasant one in which the world functioned largely for his gratification. At sixteen years of age, however, none of this stopped him from viewing the world through disgruntled eyes.

Leaving his private quarters a week after the seashore ride with his father and siblings, the prince grabbed up his leather training slippers and flung his fencing vest over his shoulder. In the corridor outside his room he strode between guards that stood like statues at either side of his door, and then he passed down a row of actual mannequins that lined one wall. These life-sized figures were carved of pinewood down to the minutest human detail, sanded to textures as smooth as skin and evocative of flesh over bone. They had been positioned in differing stances and wore military garb from the various nations: a Talayan runner, the wood stained to near-black to mimic his skin color, an iron spear poised in the fingers of his right hand; a Senivalian infantryman in scale armor, curving long sword at his belt; a horseman of the Mein with his characteristic thick breastplate, draped in hides that hung around him in tattered bands; a Vumu warrior adorned in eagle feathers; and Acacians in their various tidy uniforms, bare armed, with loose, flowing trousers under fine chain mail.

Aliver’s rooms had more objects of warfare than the king cared for. He had once pointed out that Acacia had overseen a largely peaceful empire for generations. But on this matter the prince did not mind his father’s disapproval. His daily interactions with his peers were a more challenging jostle than his relationship with his father. Leodan no longer elbowed through life among a throng of young men. Aliver, on the other hand, had yet to come through his manhood trials. As he saw it, all of the higher pursuits his father enjoyed had been made possible by the bravery of men and women willing to bear arms. It had been their earlier military prowess that allowed their ancestors to take the feuding, disparate elements of the Known World and unify them into a partnership of nations that benefited them all. How but through force could this have been achieved? How but through the threat of force could it be maintained?

In angry moments Aliver imagined his father trying to hold forth to that earlier rabble, to explain to them the virtues of peace and friendship. They would have laughed him away from the campfire. They would have kicked him into the cold, spat, and called him a coward. And then they would have commenced the snarling battle that decided things in this world. Sometimes during these imaginings Aliver came to his father’s rescue, sword in hand; other times he simply watched. It was not that he failed to love his father. He cared for him dearly. He hated that he thought such things. They came to him unbidden, no easier to submerge than the unexplained pangs of carnal desire that had plagued him the last couple of years. But this was also beside the point. What mattered was that the Akarans were the benevolent masters of a magnificent realm. They had been for twenty-two generations, and would be for much longer if Aliver had any say in the future. That was why he took martial matters so seriously.

The walk to the Marah training hall took only a few minutes, most of it downhill. The bulk of the palace, the town below it, the island, and the sea around it stretched out before Aliver. The receding scale of it was difficult to reckon with. The near buildings were hulking structures of clean Acacian architecture. Roads wound down in the switchback fashion the hillside’s natural steepness required. Beyond the gates, figures on the visible bend of the main road were slow-moving pinpricks, like deer ticks crawling across a man’s arm. The spires of the lower town were little more than sewing needles pointing upward, so tiny they could be squished between the thumb and forefinger. It was hard to imagine that all of it had begun with a simple fortress built by Edifus, a defensive structure perched high so that the nervous monarch could scan the seas around him in fear that his newly conquered subjects might yet unite against him.

Flushed from the brisk walk, Aliver entered the large pillar-supported space. It was lit by oil lamps hung on the wall or from three-legged stands and by skylights cut in the ceiling that cast slanting beams down on the gray-white stone of the place. The scent of the burning oil was almost sweet, stronger than the smoky flavor given off by the stoves used to keep the chill at bay. He greeted his instructors, nodded at other youths entering with him, boys mostly, although a handful of girls attended also. They received military training on an even footing with their male counterparts. Indeed, women made up almost a quarter of the Acacian armed forces. For this Marah training, however, they were all children of aristocrats bound for high posts as officers and government officials. Many of them were from the Agnate, the privileged group that could verify an ancestral link to Edifus’s family tree.

The prince knew that previous Akaran rulers had formed tight bonds with their young peers. His grandfather Gridulan was said to have been constantly in the company of thirteen male companions, dining and sleeping, ruling and wedding in a close tangle. Though his peers were deferential to him, Aliver found no such feeling of group connection. He tried to spurn the absence of it and value his independence of mind and position, but he feared something was lacking in his character, something he seemed powerless to correct.

Aliver smiled when he saw Melio Sharratt, a young man his own age, enter. Melio was the nearest thing the prince had to a friend. They had been born only a few weeks apart, and from their first classes together, the kind intelligence in the boy’s eyes drew Aliver to him. For a while, when they were both ten, they spent days at a time hiding out in the palace labyrinth, playing a game wherein one of them became a storyteller and the other the main character in what invariably became a tale of warfare and adventure, of mythic beasts slain and evil vanquished. Aliver felt comfortable with Melio in a way he did not with others. Still, despite his fondness for the lad, the prince never fully dropped his aloofness with him, or anyone else. If anything, it had grown as adolescence shifted and altered their bodies and emotions. So the smile that once would have been friendly changed into an expression harder to define.

“Hello, Prince,” Melio said. “I hope the day finds you well.”

“It does,” Aliver said, looking past him as if something at the far end of the training grounds interested him.

Melio combed the longish bangs of black hair back from his forehead with his fingers and good-naturedly copied Aliver’s examination of the other students as they arrived. “Have you been practicing your Fifth Form? I saw that Biteran was coaching you on it last week. If you passed it, you could start spear training.”

“I’ll pass it,” Aliver said. “You should worry about yourself. I’ll help you with the Fourth Form if you need it.”

“You?” Melio asked, laughing. “My royal tutor?” He had a face that might go unnoticed in a room, except when he smiled. Then all the various components of his features fell into place as if they had been designed with only mirth in mind. The whiteness of his teeth beside his olive skin made him glow with health. Both boys knew that in matters martial the ground between them was not even. Aliver may have been training at a higher Marah Form than his peers-such was the long tradition-but Melio had been suggested for training as an Elite. The Elite was quite different than the Marah. It was an even smaller group selected purely for ability, without regard for rank or social status. The suggestion that Melio might join them was an honor that meant the instructors saw inordinate skill in the young man.

“Look, there’s Hephron,” Melio said. “He’s getting quite good. He fought Carver’s father to a standstill the other day. You can be sure it surprised the old fellow.”

As he spoke Melio gestured at the boy in question with his chin. Hephron Anthalar was a year older than most of the others, taller by a head, with reddish hair that sprung in disheveled curls from his head. The Anthalars were also Agnates, of a line that had intersected several times with the Akarans through marriage. Hephron could claim royal lineage. He could, in fact, count the steps between himself and the throne on the fingers of his two hands. He walked with his followers tight around him; a sycophantic group that clung to him because the status found in his shadow was greater than any of them could have managed singly.

Hephron bowed on reaching the prince, a motion that his companions copied with less feigned and more genuine deference. “Prince,” he said, “ready to fight the ghosts?”

Aliver knew what he referred to in an instant and felt the cut of the barb. A peculiarity of his training was that after the initial lecture and demonstrations, Aliver and the other boys parted company. The others paired off and went at each other with the padded swords, sometimes using the wooden variety, which had no blade to cut but could still issue a painful rap or jab, or even break bones when wielded skillfully. Aliver, on the other hand, trained only with an instructor who further worked him through the classic Forms, the teacher attuned to the minutest detail of his student’s posture and positioning, the intake or exhalation of his breath, the position of his head or even his eyes. Using the wooden swords, they fenced together in slow motions honed to the finest precision. In this Aliver had thought himself special. His training had a purity that would always set him apart from the others. It was a gift to be envied. So he had believed until Hephron undermined it all with a single question.

“Ghosts?” Aliver asked. “I don’t believe in ghosts, Hephron. I do believe that the instructors know how best to train the nation’s next king.”

“Yes,” the other said, “I suppose they do. Quite right, as ever.” As he turned away, his eyes canted upward in a signal to his companions. He said something Aliver could not hear, and the other youths moved away with amused murmurs.

Aliver tried to forget Hephron in the hours that followed. The lessons began with a lecture. Today it was from the second instructor, Edvar, a bull-necked man of mixed heritage, his Candovian ancestry betrayed by the barrel stoutness of his torso. He talked about the technique of the sword soft block, a defensive tactic wherein one countered an opponent’s attacks with the bare minimum of force necessary. It was risky, he explained. You did not want to underestimate the opponent’s force, but it was a valuable maneuver in that you could use the opponent’s energy to initiate your own moves, thereby starting the next motion with a boost, before the enemy had recovered. It was an energy-saving method if one faced a long struggle, as had Gerta when she fought the twin brothers Talack and Tullus and their three wolf dogs.

After this the pupils divided up to practice the Forms. These were routines that derived from age-old reconstructions of specific sequences of moves by specific persons in ancient battles. The first was Edifus at Carni, when he fought singly against a tribal leader. The second was Aliss, a woman from Aushenia who killed the Madman of Careven with only a short sword. It was a unique Form, in that Aushenians themselves did not honor Aliss as much as Acacians did. Indeed, the Madman of Careven was considered to be somewhat more of a hero to Aushenians since he had fought to protect their old religions against the secular movement Aliss championed. The Third Form was that of the knight Bethenri, who went to battle with devil’s forks, short weapons similar to daggers but with long prongs stretching alongside of the central blade. Skilled hands used these to snap opponents’ swords.

Other Forms followed, each more complicated than the one preceding it, up until the Tenth and most difficult, that of Telamathon against the Five Disciples of the god Reelos. Aliver had his doubts as to whether Telamathon, the Five Disciples, or the god Reelos ever existed, but he looked forward to learning the Form. A large section of it, he knew, recounted how Telamathon fought weaponless and with one shoulder dislocated. Even so incapacitated he managed to beat back his opponents with a dazzling whirlwind of aerial kicks.

The other students were working through the Fourth Form. Aliver, as per tradition, worked on the Fifth Form, learning the method by which the Priest of Adaval went to work on the twenty wolf-headed guards of the rebellious cult of Andar. The prince had just begun the study of this. For most of his lesson he stood holding the birchwood staff, listening, and trying to imagine the scene his instructor detailed. As usual, the Form detailed an almost impossible triumph, the old priest managing to crack skull after canine skull with only a sapling for a weapon.

Aliver sometimes felt the eyes of the others on him. At other times he could not help but glance at them, interspersed as they were among the pillars, almost a hundred of them in total, so many pairs in the stop-start motion of swordplay. Every now and then a student would get caught by another’s winning strike. With the padded swords this was almost a pleasure, a thing to be laughed at, yielding oaths and promises of revenge. Not so when the hard ashwood swords stung someone’s thigh or jabbed unprotected ribs. Aliver was never prey to such contact, and he was keenly aware of it each time someone called out in pain.

When the day’s session concluded, the instructors left the students to return the weapons to their rightful places. Privileged sons and daughters that they were, they should still learn reverence for the tools of war. Aliver, once more mingling with the others, did the best he could to banter in a natural style. He tried to throw about casual comments, the jibes and jokes of youth. But what seemed to come effortlessly to the others was as concentrated an effort for Aliver as anything in his training.

It was with a feeling of relief that he slipped on his soft leather boots, rose from the floor, and gathered up his training vest and slippers. As he passed a cluster of boys near the exit, Hephron rose from a squatting position. He spoke under his breath, ostensibly to the youth standing near him, but loud enough and at just the right moment for the prince to hear. “I wonder how you lose when you only fight the air or how you win? Strange that some of us are measured against each other, while some are not measured at all.”

The opening to the hallway was just a few steps away. Aliver could have been there and outside in just a few seconds. Instead he spun on his heel. “What did you say?”

“Oh, I said nothing, Prince. Nothing of consequence…”

“If you have something to say to me, just say it.”

“I just envy you, of course,” Hephron said. “You sword train, but you never get cracked atop the skull like the rest of us.”

“Would you like to fence with me, then? If you think my training is lacking…”

“No. Of course, no…” A note of caution appeared in Hephron’s voice. His eyes darted to his companions, checking to see whether he had over-stepped himself or if he should push farther. “I wouldn’t want to be the one who bruised the royal flesh. Your father could have my head for that.”

“My father wants no such head as yours. And who says you would be able to touch me, much less bruise me?”

Hephron looked sad, something Aliver would think on later, though he barely noticed it in the heat of the moment. “We don’t need to do this,” he said. “I meant no offense. Your training is rightly different from ours. You will never need to fight in a real battle anyway. We all know that.”

Though Hephron spoke these words with a measure of sincerity, Aliver noted only the aspects of it that seemed a taunt, an insult. The prince started toward the equipment rack. “We’ll fence just as you do with the others, with wooden swords. Hold nothing back. Touch me if you can. You have my word you will give no offense.”

Properly suited up a few moments later, the two youths faced each other inside a hushed circle created by the other students, many of whom glanced over their shoulders, worried lest an instructor return. Hephron had a deceptive style of swordplay. He did nothing with a clear and predictable rhythm. He changed his rate of movement and even the direction of his strike in mid-motion. He would parry in a certain manner for a time, his wrist loose, his sword making sweeping arcs. Just when Aliver had come to anticipate and almost find comfort in the rhythm of it, Hephron would change everything mid-stroke. He would drop bodily an inch or two lower. His stroke would become a thrust. His arm would switch from a downward motion to a jab so quickly that the two differing motions seemed to have nothing to do with each other, one neither the precursor to, nor the result of, the other.

For some time Aliver managed to fend him off without taking a touch. He did so with motions slightly more frantic than he wished, quick jerks and clumsy shifts of his feet and exhaled breaths, convolutions of his torso that just barely kept him out of reach. The ash sword felt comfortable enough in his hands, but he realized that he rarely found a moment to drive an aggressive strike. He was all countermovements. What he wished to do was find a still moment to fall into a familiar sequence from his training. He fixated on the twelfth movement of the First Form, wherein he would slip away from a sweeping strike coming in from the left; step forward and block the inevitable return; push his opponent’s blade down and to the right, crossing beneath his knees; and then slice upward diagonally into the right side of his torso. With such a cut Edifus had managed to spill his opponent’s viscera in looping knots that caused the man to pause long enough to set his head in the perfect position to be lopped off a few seconds later, an unnecessary flourish, really, but one Aliver had often imagined.

Three times he began this sequence, but each time Hephron stepped out of it and changed his attack. On the last instance he did so with such speed that Aliver cringed beneath a round sweep that skimmed the crown of his head. Had he taken the force of this directly, he might well have been knocked unconscious. No instructor had ever swung at him like that. He heard one of the others say something, a jibe followed by a rustle of laughter. He realized just how silent they had been up until then, no sound in the room save for the swish and shift of their slippers across the tiles, the grunts of their efforts, and the dry cracks when the wooden blades met.

Aliver found himself backing, backing, barely able to slap away Hephron’s blows, needing space, and then space again. He expected to meet the wall of youths behind him, but they moved with him, the circle staying fixed around them. It even opened as the movement brought them to a pillar. He knocked the granite base of this with his foot. He half lowered his sword, for a moment thinking this was reason enough to pause. He glimpsed the possibility that they might halt this exercise, smile and joke about it, no damage done. But Hephron swung, his blade slicing below Aliver’s chin and striking the stone pillar.

The prince stumbled backward. He caught himself with his free hand and pivoted on it. Upright again, he remembered the anger that had started all of this. Hephron, the arrogant fool! It seemed absurd that he would strike at him that way, as if he wished to shatter his windpipe. He caught sight of Melio, who at that moment stood on the far side of the ring, his face ridged with concern. That annoyed him also. He wanted no sympathy. He raised his sword above his head and yanked it down, wishing to pound Hephron beneath it. Even if the hit was blocked, he meant to press such weight behind it as to batter him down with fury alone.

But Hephron seemed to know this was coming. He slid to the side of Aliver’s downstroke. He snapped his sword in a quick blow that bit the prince just at the edge of his shoulder, at the joint where the bones met. From this the boy twirled away, swung around in a complete circle, and caught Aliver-who had frozen in a twist of pain-at the midpoint of the other arm, with a force great enough that a real sword would have severed the arm cleanly. Aliver cried out, but Hephron was not done. He drew his sword back into his chest and lunged forward, pushing his weight before him and thrusting his arms so that the blunt wooden point of his sword hit Aliver’s chest at dead center. Already convulsed with two-armed pain, the force of this last strike rocked the prince back onto his heels and dropped him onto the mat.

Hephron’s smile lifted every component feature of his face into use. His eyes overflowed with such smugness that a single person could barely contain it. “You are armless, sir. Not to mention dead. What a strange outcome. Who would have guessed it?”

Moments later, Aliver surged out into air red faced and angry, more so at himself than at Hephron. How foolish of him! He had lowered himself by acknowledging Hephron’s taunts, in challenging him, by losing so completely and-almost worst of all-in showing all of them his frustration. Behind this he knew he had played a hand he had not needed to. All the mystery of his possible skill had vanished in a few strokes. He knew they were all surrounding Hephron even now, clapping him on the back, praising him, laughing at their dandy prince. How could he ever go back there again and dance through his choreographed motions while all the others watched him from the corners of their scornful eyes?

Melio caught up with him as he pounded up a long staircase. “Aliver!” he called. “Wait for me.” Twice he touched the prince’s elbow, only to have his hand ripped away. At the top of the stairs Melio jumped in front of him, threw his arms around him, and dragged him to a halt. “Come on. You care too much about this. Don’t do it. Hephron’s nothing.”

“He’s nothing?” Aliver asked. “Nothing? If he’s nothing, then what am I?”

“The king’s son. Aliver, don’t walk away. And don’t pity yourself. Do you think that little fight matters? I will tell you something.” Melio drew back a little, but pressed the palms of his hands on the other’s shoulders, as if indicating that he was letting go but not yet doing so. “Okay, so the truth is you are no match for Hephron. He is good. No, wait! But don’t let that bother you. Aliver, he envies you in everything. Don’t you know that? His swagger is a pretense. In truth he wishes he were you. He follows you with his eyes always. He listens to every word said by or about you. At lessons when he sits in the back of the class, he pins his eyes to the back of your head as if he wished to drill inside you.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that Hephron is a thin person. He knows this himself and he envies you. You are a prince and your family is wonderful. You have a beautiful sister… Okay, I am joking with you. It’s true, but I am joking. Hephron may grow into an enemy, or he may yet be a great friend. But for now, give him no feeling of triumph. Forget about that.” Melio motioned vaguely at something behind him. “Come back tomorrow as if nothing happened. Joke about it. Let him know that the small things he can do to you wash off like mud on your boots.”

The air had grown chillier with the approach of dusk and both young men felt it fill the silence. Melio withdrew his palms and rubbed his bare arms with them. Aliver looked away, his gaze settling on a square of fuchsia sky framed between the cold shadows of two buildings. The silhouettes of three birds flew through the space like darts in pursuit of one another.

Aliver heard himself say, “It just makes me look so stupid. I am mad that I let it happen. Made it…happen. You don’t know how it is for me.”

Melio did not disagree. A few moments passed in silence, and then the two of them, responding to the cold, mounted the next set of stairs and progressed slowly up. “Everyone loses a duel on occasion, and all of them back there know that. But how many of them could…” He searched for the words to say what he had to delicately. “Well, how many of them could embarrass themselves like you just did and find the courage to shrug it off? That’s another way to show strength, whether they ever admit to noticing it or not. And do not pout. The expression does not suit you. Aliver, you are skilled with a sword. And your traditional Forms are better than anyone’s. It’s just that you know only the Forms. Actual fencing is about making us adapt them, about splicing them together, forcing us to make up unthought-of combinations in an instant. You must let them flow together so quickly that it happens in a different place than conscious thought. Like when you knock a knife off a tabletop and manage to snatch it before it hits the ground. You cannot think about doing that; it just happens. That is what you must do when fighting. And then your mind is free to deal with other things-like just how you are going to place an upstroke in that bastard’s nut sacks.”

“Just how did you become so wise?” Aliver asked, not entirely kindly.

Melio mounted the top of the staircase and turned to face him. He grinned. “I read it in a manual. I know a fair bit of poetry, too. The girls like that. Now look, we’ll fence together sometimes. I won’t let you off easy, of course, but we will teach each other. We can work through the Fourth Form, as you suggested. There is much we can teach each other. How about that?”

“Maybe,” Aliver said, but he knew already what his actual answer was. He just was not ready to give it so easily.