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INTERLUDE:

Way of the Warrior

 

DUN LIDJUN LET the morning sun wash over his tired bones as he made his way out to the courtyard, Lord Arefai, seventh son of Lord Toshtai, at his side, the four warriors of his immediate guard at his heels, a physician and apothecary—both warriors in theory—tagging along behind them.

The morning sun hit the sides of the granaries just right, the stone shattering the light into rainbow flickers. The stones of the path clicked beneath Dun Lidjun’s sandals, while a crow, its feathers glossy as fine oiled leather, mocked them from the branch of a mute, gnarled oak.

“You should let me do the testing, Dun Lidjun,” Arefai said, giving an absent swing with one of the pair of wooden practice swords that he carried. “Father left it in your hands.”

“Precisely, Lord,” Dun Lidjun said, choosing each word as carefully as an artist would choose each brushstroke. “So: when you are lord of Den Oroshtai, you may decide into whose hands to put the testing. For now, the decision remains in these old ones.”

“Yes, yes, the decision is yours. And—”

“And so I shall do the testing,” Dun Lidjun said. He had planned to allow Arefai to take charge this morning, but some distasteful undercurrent in the younger man’s manner had made Dun Lidjun change his mind.

Perhaps he was irritated with the easy way that Arefai held the practice sword wrongly: tightly with his thumb and forefinger, loose with the outer fingers.

Pulling at it, not balancing it. Treating it as a toy, not a simulacrum.

That was not the Way.

That was one of the things Dun Lidjun never liked, how men born into the noble class had to be treated as though they were warriors, even when you could see that they didn’t have the ka-zuh, would never have the kazuh.

Unfair, old man, unfair, he chided himself.

Arefai was a true kazuh warrior; Dun Lidjun had felt his kazuh flare a dozen times. The young lord was simply being thoughtless and lazy, a perquisite of youth, one rarely underexercised.

Dun Lidjun worked his shoulders under his brightly burnished bone armor, the reticulated segments of his lacquered pauldron and gorget clicking like dice.

Four young men waited for him around the challenge sword. They gathered about the stone altar where the sword lay protected from the elements by a silk fly, protected from theft by the certainty of Lord Toshtai’s retribution. An occasional killing was perhaps something to be shrugged off, but theft was not permitted in Den Oroshtai, or anywhere else within Lord Toshtai’s dominion.

Lord Toshtai did things differently than most lords, and while much of that irritated Dun Lidjun—then again, the old man had to admit to himself, much of much irritated Dun Lidjun; it was part of getting old—some of it pleased him.

The challenge sword was one example. Both the Scion’s law and even more ancient tradition required that a sword be kept available to the men of the lower classes who might claim the kazuh and status of a warrior; but in many baronies, the challenge sword was old and rusty or, if a sound weapon, kept within the walls of the lord’s keep.

Lord Toshtai’s challenge sword was not only of fine gleaming nebbigin steel, it was a Sunder sword, one of the handful of the master’s blades remaining, and it lay in the open courtyard at the foot of the hill leading up through Old Town to the castle.

The blade was available to anyone who wanted to challenge a warrior: to be tested, perhaps to the death.

Everything was to be a lesson: the sword was there as a reminder to the lower classes that they were the lower classes, and not noble, not warriors; taking the testing was a reminder to the lower classes that they belonged in the lower classes; and doing the testing was a lesson to warriors on how to handle peasants, bourgeois, and middles who would dare to take up the sword.

Arefai had irritated Dun Lidjun, but he couldn’t let his irritation affect the testing. That was not the Way of the Warrior—anger had no part it in.

“Your name, boy,” Dun Lidjun asked of the first of the four boys, a well-made lad with brooding eyes and nervous hands.

“I am Ben Der Donesey, Lord,” the boy said.

“And you think yourself a warrior?”

Ben Der Donesey cocked his head to one side. “I would hope so, Lord,” he said, too eagerly, too confidently.

Far too confidently.

Ignoring the wooden practice weapons, Dun Lidjun drew his own sword, once again reveling in the purity, the density of the dark striations of the fold-forged Eisenlith blade. It was a lovely sword, perhaps only two or three grades the inferior of a bright Sunder like the gleaming challenge sword, or a fine blue Greater Frosuffold like Lord Toshtai’s.

It was, as was often true for a warrior, his single most prized possession, easily worth a third as much as all the rest of his belongings put together: his horses, his house, his tributary villages, the collection of ugly ancient Eremai watercolors that Lord Toshtai had given him, the lot of it. Not that he would trade as much again for the sword. His Eisenlith blade had saved his life dozens of times; could that be said for a dozen villages full of peasants?

The boy’s eyes widened. “Not the practice sword, Lord?”

“Not for you, Ben Der Donesey. Take up the challenge sword and come at me. Or leave.”

Dun Lidjun waited, with lowered kazuh. One thing Dun Lidjun could do better than anybody he had ever met was to raise kazuh instantly.

Not swiftly, quickly, or hurriedly—instantly.

He stood with his head erect, releasing the tension in his mind and body until his forehead smoothed. His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared as he gripped the sword properly in his right hand: a light, floating grip with thumb and forefinger, last two fingers tight, welded to the hilt, the middle finger neither tight nor loose.

He held his neck straight, his belly tight, his shoulders down. Control flowed from his feet to his scalp, washing over him in a cool stream. He had raised kazuh, although at what moment, he couldn’t have said.

His kazuh was a river in which Dun Lidjun was a stone; the water rushed and flowed, and it was the water that was of consequence, not an unimportant slice of it. As a distant stream of kazuh flowed and spurted for just an instant, time washed Ben Der Donesey toward Dun Lidjun, the challenge sword held high. The boy cut downward, a stroke that would have done credit to a trained warrior.

Dun Lidjun’s kazuh raged; riding the stream of kazuh and time, Dun Lidjun sliced down and in.

Time split, a river dividing itself into many streams—

In one, Dun Lidjun’s sword could have spun the challenge sword into the air and then carved the boy across the waist with a simple backslash—

In another, his sword would have beaten the challenge sword up, and in a continuation of the same motion taken the boy’s head from his shoulders—

In yet another, his sword should have parried as Dun Lidjun’s own lunge took him past, another stroke opening Ben Der Donesey’s back to white spine—

—but in the real stream, in the one, true and only stream, Dun Lidjun gently batted the challenge sword aside and then stopped, the edge of his Eisenlith blade but a blade’s width from the frantic pulse at the youngster’s throat. Although neither of them moved, the stream of time slowed further, like honey in a honeypot: immobile, but potentially only a sluggish ooze. Time slowed even more, becoming like the years-slow flow of apparently motionless glass in a window, or the gentle seaward march of a mountain range.

Dun Lidjun waited, warm and secure in that frozen moment, until Ben Der Donesey lowered the challenge sword.

“You are accepted, Ben Der Donesey,” Dun Lidjun said, gesturing at one of the guards to lead the boy to one side. The arrogance would be a problem, but a curable one. You could beat the arrogance out of a boy, as Dun Lidjun knew from experience—on both ends of the stick.

Dun Lidjun had felt the boy’s kazuh flow. Only a trickle of a spring, barely oozing kazuh out, yes, but kazuh nonetheless. It was rare for such an untutored one to raise kazuh at all. It happened, though: sometimes, under the proper sort of pressure, the hidden spring could be made to flow.

That was a bonus; it was not what Dun Lidjun was looking for in a warrior candidate. He was looking for something more fundamental: for the promise of kazuh, the base of kazuh.

“Your name, boy?” he asked of the second of the four, a skinny dark-haired boy, peasant-bronzed by the sun beneath the band of paleness at the forehead.

“I am called Loud Noise, Lord,” the boy said, formally.

“Ah. Well, Evaki Belang, it seems you wish to be a warrior?”

“Oh, yes, Lord.”

“Very well. Simply, you have two ways to do so: either defeat me, or impress me,” Dun Lidjun said, exchanging his Eisenlith sword for one of the two wooden practice swords that Arefai carried.

“Yes, Lord.”

“Take up the sword. Attack me. Now, boy.”

All mattered, and nothing mattered, as the boy approached him, the sword held high over his head, intending to slash down at Dun Lidjun.

A simple response was all it would take, really: a smacking parry as Evaki Belang staggered by, followed by a quick slap to the back, across the kidneys. A sword would cut, but the stick could kill.

No. Dun Lidjun had not raised kazuh simply to slap the boy’s kidney out through his belly or to snap his spine.

The purpose was to test, to see if he could get even a dim feeling of kazuh from the boy. Like resonates to like, and even the greater resonates to the lesser.

Still, the smacking parry seemed reasonable; the wooden sword, guided by his floating thumb and forefinger, slapped the mirror-bright Sunder blade to one side as Dun Lidjun stepped easily to the other.

The boy surprised him; he turned as he ran by, and tried to slash back at Dun Lidjun. But it didn’t matter; Dun Lidjun used a falling leaves cut, slashing down at the challenge sword and riding it down, like a golden autumn leaf descending to the ground on the back of a falling hand.

The challenge sword fell to the grass, and Evaki Belang stumbled on the gravel.

Dun Lidjun dropped kazuh.

“No,” he said.

With one word, with a wave of his hand, with no trace of regret or equivocation he dismissed Evaki Belang, sending the now stoop-shouldered boy back to his fields, to a life with his toes full of dung.

A pleasant lad, yes, but not a warrior. Never to be a warrior.

“Next,” Dun Lidjun said, gesturing to the third of the four boys.

“I am Erife Ver Hosten, Lord Dun Lidjun.” He was a well-made, although gangling boy, moving with too much self-confidence by half as he took up the sword, then tossed his head to clear his too-long hair from his eyes.

This one Dun Lidjun knew: he was the youngest son of a dauber, tired of spending days sweating over his black iron pots. The middle class had higher status than peasants, and often lived better, but sometimes all that meant was that they had more opportunities to be sneered at by both bourgeois and nobility, to be looked at as though no bath could ever remove their stink.

Dun Lidjun remembered that feeling all too well, even after all these years.

Erife Ver Hosten moved in smoothly, confidently—or at least with assumed confidence—the point of his sword rising high.

Trying to take his measure, Dun Lidjun tentatively slashed out at him, and the boy cut down at Dun Lidjun’s wooden sword. The Sunder sword sliced neatly through the wood, taking with it more than half the length.

Erife Ver Hosten tried to follow through, but Dun Lidjun raised kazuh and blurred into him, the remnant of his wooden sword catching the flat of the blade as Dun Lidjun came belly to belly with the boy.

Erife Ver Hosten broke away, and tried to slash down, but Dun Lidjun closed, blocked up against the descending hands. The old warrior expanded his body and spirit and cut down, hard, against Erife Ver Hosten’s head. The wooden sword split to the hilt.

For a moment, Dun Lidjun thought that his kazuh had deserted him, and in that moment, of course his kazuh did desert him; he staggered back, off balance.

But then the boy’s eyes rolled up, and his knees buckled, and he fell, stunned as though poleaxed. He would have fallen across the challenge sword if the fourth boy hadn’t quickly moved in and snatched it up.

The fourth boy turned toward Dun Lidjun, his head erect, his neck and body straight but not strained, his gaze perceptive.

“And why do you not strike?” the old warrior asked.

“I doubt that you could learn enough from me right now, Lord Dun Lidjun,” the last boy said. “Please take up another sword, so that the examination might continue.”

He stood calmly, balanced, waiting.

Dun Lidjun looked down at the broken hilt in his hands. “Don’t you think that you could kill an unarmed old man?”

The boy stood, calmly waiting. “No, I don’t think I could hurt you, Lord Dun Lidjun. And no, Lord Dun Lidjun, I don’t think you are unarmed.”

Dun Lidjun tossed the broken hilt away. “Set the challenge sword down, boy—what is your name?”

“I’m called Twan Rebet, lord,” the boy said, not lowering the sword, still balanced easily on his feet. “I would like to be tested, if it please you.”

“Ah. And if it doesn’t please me?”

“Then I will still be tested, Lord Dun Lidjun,” He said it not as a challenge, but in a measured way, as though commenting that thunder was loud, iron cool, or salt salty.

“As you will.” Dun Lidjun took up the other practice sword, and saluted Twan Rebet. “Lesson the second, boy: remember the first lesson.”

“Eh?”

Dun Lidjun raised kazuh, closed and disarmed the boy with one violent sweep, sending the challenge sword tumbling end-over-end into the air, leaving Twan Rebet empty-handed.

Twan Rebet bowed deeply, his eyes on Dun Lidjun, his feet solid on the ground as though planted. “I thank you for your consideration, Lord Dun Lidjun,” he said, starting to turn away.

“Stop,” Dun Lidjun snapped out.

The boy halted in midturn, almost losing his balance. “Lord?”

Dun Lidjun raised kazuh and kicked him in the buttocks, sending the boy sprawling forward. “Let that be the last time you do that, boy. Stop, stand, sprint, scurry, squat, sprawl, sit—but keep your balance, always.”

Dun Lidjun looked around, but he already knew that there was no harm in speaking bluntly. Erife Ver Hosten was still unconscious, and the rest of those in the garden were warriors, and all knew the secret of the warrior kazuh. Except for Ben Der Donesey, and he would have to be not only told the secret, but taught it.

“Now, up, up,” Dun Lidjun said, helping Twan Rebet to his feet.

Lord Arefai unbuckled his own everyday sword, a fine Least Frosuffold, and belted it about the boy’s waist. “Use this sword well, and in Lord Toshtai’s service, Twan Rebet.”

Ben Der Donesey’s brow seemed to have taken up a permanent wrinkle. A flicker of kazuh, that boy certainly had. But not understanding, the understanding that Arefai demonstrated as he stood next to Twan Rebet, beaming like a proud father.

Dun Lidjun wasn’t surprised, although he was disappointed in himself.

I grow old and foolish.

“A good day, eh, Lord Dun Lidjun?” Lord Arefai asked, as they walked back up the twisting path toward the gleaming keep above. “Two in one day?”

“That it is, Lord Arefai,” Dun Lidjun said, as though he had expected nothing more and nothing less. Which, in a sense, was true: he had expected that those who deserved to become warriors would, and those who did not so deserve would not.

“Father will be pleased.”

“As he should.” Dun Lidjun stopped. “Lord Arefai,” he said. “The next time, if you’re available, I would be pleased to assist you in the testing.”

“Ah.” Arefai broke into a broad smile. “I am honored,” he said. He leaned close to Dun Lidjun. “I hope I’m as successful as you were, today.”

“Fortunate, Lord Arefai.”

“Well, that’s true. But still—two at one challenge? Marvelous, Lord Dun Lidjun.”

“That it is.”

While Dun Lidjun’s kazuh wouldn’t desert him as long as life breathed motion into his tired bones, he decided that his judgment was starting to slip away. He should have given Arefai the chance to evaluate these candidates; of course Arefai would have seen how the boy balanced himself, and would have understood.

Even an old fool like Dun Lidjun could see that. Any trained kazuh warrior could have seen it, simply by looking at the way the boy stood:

Balanced.

It was the secret of the warrior, it was the basic truth of the warrior:

Balance—not the earnestness of an Evaki Belang or the cleverness of an Erife Ver Hosten, not even the fluke kazuh of a Ben Der Donesey—not speed nor power nor strength, but balance—is the Way of the Warrior.