Foundation

Landing on all four hooves, Dallen spun in a circle, pivoting on his hind feet, snapping at the Guards as Mags flailed the air above their heads with his own wooden sword.

As they scrambled out of the way, Dallen caught sight of the man with the hook. Rearing up on his hind legs, he “hopped” forward, lashing out with his forehooves viciously, aiming for that man alone of the dozen. Unnerved, he dropped the hook and dropped to the ground. Since that was exactly what Mags and Dallen had been waiting for, the two of them soared over his body in a huge jump, whirled again, then bolted for the open spaces of Companion’s Field. They didn’t return until they were well and truly sure the sands had run out.

As they ambled back, finally, they could see the Guardsmen making short work of another Trainee. The Herald who was in charge of the instruction gave them a brief glance and an approving nod, then waited for the unseated Trainee to pick himself up out of the snowbank he’d been tossed into.

“People,” the Herald said, with just a hint of impatient his voice, “Show some sense. This is not an exercise in fighting back, it’s an exercise in escaping. Stop trying to prove you can out-fight any six attackers, and do what those two did.” His eyebrow rose. “So far they’re the only ones of the lot of you that beat the turn of the glass.”

Mags felt a flush of accomplishment, and Dallen tossed head and arched his neck a little. Then the Herald sent them to do the jumping course before they could bask in the envy of the others, and at that point they became much too busy to think about anything else.

Mags gave Dallen a good rubdown and turned him loose when the time for weapons training came around. Dallen trotted off with his tail flagged proudly, presumably to take in the congratulations of the others, while Mags shouldered the burden of his practice arms and armor and trudged off to the salle.

His growing expertise with weapons was more of a shock than his aptitude for riding. The revelation that he had a knack for such things literally came out of the blue. When he had been beating on that padded pole for a few days, the instructor had looked him over, then, without any warning at all, had picked up a stick of his own and come after him. Startled, Mags had held onto his stick and scrambled out of the way. And somehow, blocked the teacher’s blows. He had been graced with a grim smile and a nod of approval, and suddenly the stick was taken from him, a hilt shoved at him, and before he knew it, he had found himself with a practice sword in hand.

He had frozen then, every memory of every person who had ever been punished at the mine for daring to even raise a hand in self-defense flooding to the fore.

But the instructor had no intention of letting him stay that way.

“Here! Euston!” the Herald had called. “This lad has the parterns down, so come show him how the patterns become fighting!”

A young man with bright red hair, dressed in the Bardic Trainee rust, disengaged from his current practice partner and came straight over to Mags. Without saying a single word, he simply saluted Mags with the “blade,” and launched straight into an attack.

Mags reacted without thinking, getting his guard up in time and deflecting the blows. Before he knew it, he was bouting with the Bardic Trainee, a boy who gave no quarter, nor asked for any, and he was too busy defending himself to think about how it was all wrong to be holding, and using, a weapon.

Maybe the fact that he himself had never been punished for using anything weaponlike was the reason why this fear broke down so quickly. After all, he had never even given the Pieters boys so much as a threatening look. But as he got used to the feel of the thing in his hand, those fears and inhibitions melted away. Having a weapon made him feel as powerful as being on Dallen’s back. Being able to use it made him feel more confident that no one would be able to treat him as Master Cole had, ever again.

And his aptitude for weapons work was no more of an illusion than his aptitude for riding. His body seemed to have a better memory for things than his mind; he only had to be shown something once to be able to do it himself. It felt like a kind of magic, but the Weaponsmaster said that it was just a natural thing that some people had. It certainly explained why he had been so skilled at harvesting sparklies.

Today the Weaponsmaster took him aside and actually put him to drilling some of the others at his old friend, the padded pole, which he now knew was called a “pells.” And the two he was asked to help were—Beren and Lyr. The poor fellows were as clumsy with their wooden batons as a pair of puppies. Mags felt horribly sorry for them, for they were clearly feeling terribly humiliated, and he did his earnest best to get then sorted out.

They actually made a little progress by the time the Weaponsmaster dismissed them all—they were at least not smacking each other anymore—and as usual, Mags did his best to fade into insignificance in the rush to get to the bathing rooms and then to the eating hall. He generally slipped off to his own room to get a change of clothing and set the place to rights before getting his bath. Such precautions meant he had the bathing room to himself, and after the drubbing he had gotten at the unskilled hands of Beren and Lyr he needed the soak in hot water to ease his bruises.

And after all, there was no need to hurry to get to dinner He never ate with anyone in particular, mostly choosing his isolated seat where he could keep a wary eye on all the company. So it was with a start of surprise that he felt his elbow seized as soon as he came in the door.

“I’ve been waiting for you forever, Mags,” said Lena, looking up at him with eyes still red-rimmed from weeping. “Come on. I’ve saved you a place.”

Chapter 9

The thing about having a room in the stable, Mags was discovering, was that people, Heralds included, tended to forget that there was someone here besides Companions. And because he would sequester himself in his room long before most of the other Trainees were in theirs, he was the unintended witness to a lot of conversations he was pretty sure shouldn’t have been overheard. Or at the very least, conversations that no one wanted overheard.

Most of those conversations were merely embarrassing; most were stablehands in eager pursuit of women —and women eager to be pursued. Since the Companion’s Stable was heated when the others were not—the stable proper was not as warm as the couple of rooms that were here, but with the exception of Mags’, those rooms were shared. So when privacy was wanted, maybe a stall was the best choice these fellows had. He and Dallen often shared a sardonic word or three about some of what they overheard.

Mags got to hear an awful lot of lies, to put things bluntly. “Of course I love you,” was the one he heard most often, along with “You’re the only woman in my life,” coming a close second. Though to be fair, the women lied almost as often. “You’re all I think about,” and “Never change.” It was interesting. He’d heard that Heralds