Crusader

Chapter 51

Cyrus found himself moving before the Guildmaster had even finished speaking. He heard the words, absorbed them, but after the command to fight, nothing else needed to be said. Belkan had told him what the Society was, after all-it was to learn to fight, like his father had fought the thrice-damned trolls. That meant hitting, it meant swords, it meant fists. He’d fought his father-wrestled, more like-trying to knock the man down to little effect. But his father was big, tall, muscled, could lay him out with a single swat-not that he ever would do that, but he could, and Cyrus could feel it. He’d fought with other boys his age, too, though, clumsy, uncoordinated fights, miming the things he’d seen the drunks do in the alley outside the Rotten Fish, the tavern just down from his home. Punches, kicks, biting-he’d seen a dark elf lose an ear that way, once, seen blood come down the face of another man and seen a dwarf kicked so hard in the groin that it looked as though his pants came up to his chest.

Cyrus head-butted the boy next to him, remembering what his father had told him about using his skull against the soft part of a face. His father had meant it as advice in case he’d been about the market and someone other than a guard had tried to take hold of him, but he used it now and watched the blond boy next to him, who was already near to tears, fall to the ground, his hands on his face and his low sobs turned to a high whine. Cyrus moved on, but the boy was already still. The child next to him was not as tall as Cyrus, and Cyrus jabbed the heel of his hand into the boy’s nose and felt pain shoot through his wrist from the impact. This was near to a punch, and his father had taught him how to throw a punch, a good one, straight on and with his weight behind it. The boy on the receiving end fell to the ground sobbing, too, just like the last, and Cyrus wondered if he was doing well, if the Guildmaster would teach him how to be unafraid if he knocked them all down. And if they get up, I’ll knock them down again until they don’t.

He kept on, the sobs and wails growing louder and more persistent. He saw other boys, too, making their way through, knocking down the ones who stood dumbfounded, almost as though they were prey. It wasn’t just the larger ones, either; Cyrus saw the two girls at the front, the ones the Guildmaster had nodded to, and he watched them both tear into a larger boy with a flurry of kicks that brought him to his knees.

Cyrus saw two come at him, both just a shade smaller than him, and he dodged the first and put a fist in his face. Blood trickled down the boy’s lip, but he only flinched a little. Cyrus hit him again, then again, and felt a heavy blow land on the back of his head, with enough impact to send him sideways. He staggered, came back up with his hands in front of his face, and lashed out with a foot to the nearest one’s leg. He tripped him sideways, leaving Cyrus to look at the other one, the one with a bloody nose. Cyrus leapt after him, caught him with another punch, then another, until the boy curled into a ball and Cyrus moved on, back to the first, whom he hit twice before the boy yielded, shaking where he lay.

“Enough!” came the voice, the call, over them, and what motion there was halted, all save one-Cass, the boy had been called, and he was pummeling another, hitting him in the face over and over. “I said enough, Ward,” the Guildmaster called again, and Cass stopped his assault.

The Guildmaster and the others came out of the enclosure now, down the five steps to the arena’s dirt floor. There was a wide gate opposite them, and it opened now, and a few men came out, waiting in a huddle behind the battleground, where at least forty of the fifty that had started lay on the ground, a few unmoving. “This was a good showing by some of you,” the Guildmaster said. “A good showing indeed. Some of you have the seeds of fearlessness within you, the roots to grow mighty and strong in the sight of the God of War. Others …” he touched one boy who was curled up with the toe of his boot, not hard, but the boy whimpered anyway, “… others of you will find paths more suited to your … tendencies, shall we say?” He pointed to a few of the fallen, including the two boys Cyrus had just downed, and whispered to one of the armored men at his side, a painfully thin one. The other, a dwarf with a face that was all jaw and beard, shook his head a few times during the conversation. Their healer was already moving about the children on the floor, using his magic, mending wounds, sending some of them on their way, out the gates, where Cyrus could see other men waiting for them, herding them like the cattle he’d seen run through the streets of Reikonos in the past.

“Fifteen,” the Guildmaster said, finished with his talk with the dwarf and the thin man. “Out of fifty-four, I’ll have you know. That’s how many of you will be inducted today. Twelve years from now, when your training is complete, perhaps five of you will remain. That is the way of things here in the Society of Arms. But don’t think you’ll be safe simply because you are one of the top in your form; there have been plenty of forms that haven’t graduated a single warrior.” The Guildmaster gave them a grin, one that highlighted that his smile was missing at least three teeth. “That’s how we like it. Toughness will become a second skin to you, fearlessness is earned, not given freely, it’s a confidence that comes with knowing that you will be able to deal with anything and anyone you meet or else you’ll die with a sword in hand, and that will be fine, too. We will take … everything,” his voice became throaty when he said this, “from you. You have no past. You have no future but war, weapons, and service. You will exist only in the present, in the moment, with your weapon in your hand, and conviction in your heart that whoever stands opposed to you will die by your hand.”

He made his way through those still standing, as he said this. Cyrus cast a sidelong look at Cass Ward and got one in return. He’s trouble, Cyrus thought. Not the others, just him. He’s the only threat in this room, the only serious one.

“Cyrus Davidon,” the Guildmaster said, and Cyrus looked up to find him lingering overhead. “Do you still wish to be a warrior, to lose your fear and look into the face of death unflinching?”

Cyrus heard the moans of those still fallen, the ones the healer was working his way around to, one at a time. The smell of sweat and sand was heavy in the room; fear, Cyrus thought with his six-year-old mind. “Yes,” he said. “Guildmaster.” He remembered the honorific at the last. Adults like that.

The Guildmaster studied him shrewdly, and Cyrus could smell the leather of the man, could see the scars where a blade had worked long cuts across the man’s forehead in a diagonal slash, an X above his eyebrows. His cheeks were pitted worse, and when he smiled at Cyrus only half his face lifted. “That’s good talk.” His hand came down on Cyrus’s head, gave it a tousle, then came back to his belt, where Cyrus heard a noise of metal on leather and steel, a screech of a blade running out of a scabbard, then it was in his face, in his hands, pressed into his palms by the Guildmaster, a blade longer than his forearm. “But let’s see if good action follows it. Take this …” The Guildmaster squatted, and pressed the weapon into his grasp then turned his eyes left, where Cyrus followed his gaze to a boy at his right, whom Cyrus had headbutted only moments before. Cyrus’s look flitted back to the Guildmaster, and he felt the first stir of uncertainty as the Guildmaster looked back at him, watching, assessing, judging. “… and kill him.”