Exile's Valor

ride to the Home Farms? Just the two of us?:

***

This was the best day for practice that they had gotten in a long time. Spring rains hadn’t yet begun, the ground was good and dry, and although the air was chill, it was not cold enough to be uncomfortable even if you weren’t moving.

Alberich watched his teams as they writhed in a knot of flying sticks and flailing bodies; the view was excellent from the sidelines, and he allowed himself a moment of grim satisfaction. They were good. And they were ready. He had believed in them, and they had repaid that belief in full.

Even young Mical, that most unlikely of prodigals.

The boy had flung himself into his self-appointed niche with the controlled energy of a tightly-wound spring, and a concentration Alberich suspected he never would have had if he had not spent those moons in the glassworks. You dared not lose your concentration around hot glass, for if you did, the best you could expect was the total ruin of all your work. And the worst—the worst could cost a limb, or a life, or worse than just your life, if you were a glassblower. He didn’t know if the Collegium Healers could do anything about scorched lungs before the patient died of the injury. He did know that it was one of the nastier and more painful ways to die.

Although no such disaster had occurred at the glassworks while the two Trainees had been serving their time there, Mical had probably been witness to several minor accidents, and certainly had been told all of the horror stories. It was amazing to see the level of steadiness and concentration he had attained—

It was nevertheless true that steadiness and concentration couldn’t make up for a difference of three years of age and growth. The boy was not the most skilled of the skirmishers. Although in the normal Hurlee games Mical was a star player, in these practices he was merely at the level of all the others. Still, given that they were three years older than he, and had several moons of learning and practice that he hadn’t had, that was absolutely astonishing.

Part of it, Alberich was sure, was a natural ability in combat, or exercises that were combatlike. Alberich had taught a few youngsters who possessed that near-magical combination of reflexes, strength, coordination, cleverness, and the instinct for combat; Mical was definitely one of that number. Take, for instance, the way that he and Eloran worked together, moving through the pack, smooth as an otter in a fast-flowing stream. Never a wasted moment, often managing to anticipate the next blow and thwart it by the simple expedient of not being there when it fell—

—the next blow—

Flash of blue.

Alberich clung to his pommel as the Foresight Vision slammed him between the eyes,

Selenay—

But it wasn’t a long one.

It didn’t need to be, actually. He had spent the last several moons anticipating exactly what it showed him; all it needed to give him was the where and the when.

Where—

Outside the city walls, on the Home Farms. He recognized that spot, along the riverbank, beyond the point where he and Selenay had fished for eels. It was secluded there, quiet, and out of sight of any of the farmworkers.

When-

Soon—

Too soon. Moments at most. Terror rose in him.

:Not for us!: Kantor said fiercely, before he could even begin to panic, as the players suddenly froze in place, their Companions relaying to them what Alberich and Kantor already knew. “Weapons!” cried Harrow. “No time!” shouted someone else, and suddenly they were all in motion, Alberich and Kantor in the lead, flying across the grass, leaping obstacles, scattering Trainees and courtiers out of their way, and out of the main Palace Gate before Alberich even had time to think about what they were doing.

They knew! How did they know?

No—no they didn’t know—or hadn’t known consciously before this moment. But the peak of readiness they had attained was such that at this point they had been ready for anything.