Crusader

Chapter 50

Cyrus

“So you want to learn to be fearless?” The Guildmaster smelled of sweat and leather, as Cyrus’s own father had. “You want to know what it feels like to be empty of all dread, to be free from worry, to unconcern yourself with that gut-ripping, heart-rending sensation they call fear?”

Cyrus’s hand wavered in the air, his six-year-old, thin arm quivering from being in this strange place. “Yes,” he said, quietly.

“What was that?” The Guildmaster asked again.

“Yes, Guildmaster,” Cyrus said, louder this time, adding the honorific because adults liked that. He knew they liked that. Belkan had told him so.

The Guildmaster towered over him, his six-year-old self, Cyrus realized, dimly aware that this was not him now but years ago, a strange divide in his consciousness between the awareness of memory of how he thought then and how he thought now, whenever NOW was. The man’s armor was scuffed from use, yet the polish was there, impressive in its way, and his gauntlets were stiff, as though his fingers were locked into position all in a line. “What do you fear, Cyrus Davidon?”

Cyrus blinked, uncertain. How did one know what they feared? There were so many things, so very many … they hung out there, a thousand ideas just below the surface of his mind, things that he could snatch at but that wisped like vapor when he made to grab at them, to seize them and put them into the light where all could see. “I … I don’t know, Guildmaster.” Maybe if I add the title he won’t be mad at me for not knowing …

The Guildmaster’s face honed in on him, watched him, but there was no malice there, Cyrus thought, no anger. “It would be hard indeed to eliminate fear when you cannot even say what it is that you are afraid of.”

“My father,” came the voice to Cyrus’s right. He turned his head, and saw the boy with the brown hair, the unkempt and bushy hair that grew long, and his hand was raised too, though for how long Cyrus was uncertain. “I fear my father. When he had too much to drink, he always came after me-”

“Good enough,” the Guildmaster said. “You fear your father, Cass Ward?” The man took a step toward the boy named Cass, and Cyrus watched him go, turning away, and he felt regret for not knowing the right answer straight away, felt the burn of shame for being too embarrassed to name his fear, to shout it out loud and look it in the eye the way the boy named Cass had. “You fear your father because he hit you?” Cass nodded, eyes disappearing under the mass of hair. “Because it hurt?” Cyrus watched the Guildmaster, wondered if he was going to hit Cass, as though there were some lesson in that. “A reasonable fear for a normal person. Pain causes fear. You fear pain, it paralyzes you, holds you back, keeps you from giving it your all in fight. You feared your father because he was bigger than you, stronger than you, could hurt you and cause you pain.” The Guildmaster stood over Cass now, and Cyrus saw the man’s hand come down on Cass’s head, not to hurt him, but to rest in the boy’s hair, and the Guildmaster gave him a slight mussing, as though in affection. “Good on you, boy, for admitting it. Fathers can frighten, no doubt. But you fear them because of the phantom of pain. I will teach you not to fear pain. I will teach you to make the pain your own, to live in it, to turn it against those who would use it on you, who would seek to make you fearful-and to make them fearful instead. There are worse things in life than pain.”

The Guildmaster looked over the crowd. “This is the Society of Arms. I teach the art of war to those who want to learn. I will teach you how beat your enemies, to make them fear you. I will teach you to purge this weakness, to exploit it in others. I will make you brave and fearless-at least those who want to learn. Some of you are fearful even at the prospect of what I have said, of living in pain to overcome it. You won’t last very long.” The Guildmaster walked back to the enclosure at the far end of the arena, where a healer waited for him, the white robes the brightest color in the room. “This is the path of the bold, the brave, the strong. This is the path for those who will fight fear to its natural death, who will pass through the fire and come out fearless.” The Guildmaster looked over them again, the half a hundred. “And we will start to determine who those among you are … right now.” He clapped his hands together, gauntlets ringing their metal chime, discordant, across the pack of children who waited. “This is your first test. Are you ready?”

There was still muffled crying in the crowd, a few sobs here and there, but most of it had ceased in the course of the Guildmaster’s speech. He looked at the boy called Cass, saw Cass looking back at him from beneath his mop of hair, and felt his voice join a very small chorus of “Yesses.” He knew, instinctively, that Cass’s voice was in there, too, even as he saw the boy’s head nod and his lips move.

“Very well, then,” the Guildmaster said, and then raised his voice, the low guttural, reassuring sound turning harsh and discordant. “Then you will fight amongst yourselves until there is only one of you standing … and we will judge which of you will remain, will learn to be fearless … and which of you will spend the rest of your lives living like an ordinary person … in all the requisite fear that brings with it.”