Kerowyn's Ride

you won’t hold back. Against the pells you might. Against me, you already do.” This time Tarma laughed outright, but Kero couldn’t resent it; somehow Kero knew the Shin’a’in wasn’t laughing at her expense. It was more as if Tarma was sharing a sardonic little joke. “Out on the plains we were set to working bellows at the forge, toting water for the entire camp, or any one of a hundred other things. Be grateful it’s wood-chopping I’ve got you doing. Ax calluses you’re getting now are going to be in about the same places that you’d want sword-calluses.”

Kero sighed and took her first, methodical blow. Now that she knew why she was engaging in this exercise in frustration, it wasn’t quite so frustrating. And, she vowed silently, I’m going to be a lot more careful in placing my hits. I just might impress her.

She certainly wasn’t impressing her grandmother. Kethry had tested her in any number of ways, from placing a candle in front of her and telling her to light it by thinking of fire, to placing various small objects in front of her and asking her to identify which of them were enchanted. She’d evidently failed dismally, since Kethry had given up after three days and told her she’d be better off in the hands of the Shin’a’in.

But she won’t take that sword back, Kero thought in puzzlement, swinging the ax in an underhand arc, repeating the motion over and over, switching from right to left and back again under Tarma’s watchful eye. It’s hers, but she won’t take it back. I don’t understand—it’s obviously magical, and no one in her right mind would give something like that away—but she keeps saying that it spoke for me, and it’s mine.

So, marvelous. It spoke for me. Now what am I supposed to do with it?

“Faster,” Tarma said. Kero sped up her blows, trying to keep each one falling in exactly the same place; right on top of and within the narrow bite she’d incised on the sides of the logs. Those logs were strapped tightly to either side of what had once been a tree. When it had been alive, it had somehow managed to root itself in the exact middle of this clearing and had taken advantage of the full sun to grow far taller than any of the trees around it. Perhaps that had been a mistake. From the look of the top of the stump, some two men’s height above her head, it had been lightning-struck. That top was splintered in a way that didn’t look to be the hand of man.

Maybe Grandmother got in a temper one day....

This was not where Tarma schooled her new pupil and practiced her own sword-work; this was just what it seemed, a kind of primitive back court to the Tower, with a large outdoor hearth for cooking whole deer on one side, the pile of firewood ready to be chopped on the other, and in the center, the old, dead tree with iron bands around it. A big old, dead tree. Kero could circle what was left of the trunk with her arms—barely.

“That’s not too bad,” Tarma observed. She pushed herself off the woodpile, and gestured to Kero to stop, then strolled over to the two logs and began examining the cuts closely. Kero wiped sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, and shook her arms to keep them loose.

“That’s not too bad at all. And considering what a late start you got—can you finish those in double time?”

She gave Kero the kind of look Dent used to—the kind that said, be careful what you say, you’ll have to live up to it. Kero licked salty moisture from her upper lip and considered the twin logs. They were chopped a little more than halfway through. The target she’d been creating was just above the iron bands holding them tight to the tree trunk.

So when I get toward the end, they’ll probably break the rest of the way under their own weight. She squinted up at the sun; broken light coming down through the thick foliage made it hard to tell exactly where the sun was. It was close to noon, though, that was for certain. Her stomach growled, as if to remind her that she had gotten up at dawn, and breakfast had been a long time.

The sooner I get these chopped, the sooner I can have something to eat. Some bread and cheese; maybe sausage. Cider. Fruit—and I know she magics that up; pears and grapes and just-ripe apples all served up together are not natural at any time of year.

“I think I can,” she said, carefully. “I’ll try.” Tarma stepped back, and nodded. Kero set to, driving herself with the reminder of how good that lunch was going to taste—Especially the cider. At double time she was getting winded very quickly; there was a stitch in her side, and she couldn’t keep herself from panting, which only parched her mouth and throat. Her eyes blurred with fatigue, and stung from the sweat and damp hair that kept getting in the way. Finally, though, she heard the sound she’d been waiting for; the crack of wood, first on one side of the trunk, then on the other. As she got in one last blow, then lowered her arms and backed off from the tree, the two half-logs bent out from the center trunk, then with a second crack, broke free and fell to the ground.

Kero rather wanted to fall to the ground herself. She certainly wanted to drop the ax, which now felt as if it weighed as much as the tree trunk. But she didn’t; she’d learned that lesson early on, when she’d dropped a practice sword at the end of a bout. Tarma had picked it up, and given her a look of sheer and pain-filled disgust.

She’d never felt so utterly worthless in her life, but worse was to come.

Tarma had carefully, patiently, and in the tone and simple words one would use with a five-year-old, explained why one never treats a weapon that way, even when one is tired, even when the weapon is just pot-metal and fit only to practice with.

Then, as if that wasn’t humiliation enough, she put the blade away and made Kero