The Warrior Heir
Page 43

“What d'you mean, wait a minute?” The man scowled indignantly. “You called me to a bout, and I came as ordered. Now, go to.” He spread his arms wide, a weapon in each hand, ready to receive Jack's charge.
“Well,” Jack said uncertainly. “I thought perhaps we could talk a little first.”
“Talk a little?” The warrior snorted, then spat on the ground. “What the devil for? We're fighting, not making love.”
“I was just wondering where you were from, how you became a warrior, things like that.” Out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see Hastings standing by, hands on hips, shaking his head. Probably rolling his eyes, too, but he was too far away to see.
“Why do you care about that?” the warrior demanded.
“I thought we probably have something in common,” Jack persisted. “Being as we're both warriors, you know.”
The warrior looked him up and down, at Jack's sweatshirt and athletic shoes. "You don't look like any warrior I've ever seen. If you must know, I started out fighting against the French when I was fourteen. When I tired of that, I went and lived with the Shawnee. Then I was captured by wizards. They chained me up and put me on board a ship back to the Old Country. Put me into the hands of the Warriormasters. I would've cut my own mother's throat by the time they finished wi' me.
“I probably fought eight or ten bouts over here before I bought it. And I think what we have in common is that a bloody wizard has us by the privates.” He jerked a thumb at Hastings. “Now, go to, before he does something neither one of us will like.”
Reluctantly, Jack brought the tip of his blade up and assumed a ready stance.
"Wait a minute!” This time it was Hastings. The wizard was striding purposefully across the field.
“Now you've done it,” the other warrior muttered to Jack, swearing softly. He swung around to face Hastings. “It's not my fault!” he shouted, when Hastings was still twenty feet away. “I wanted to fight 'im, but he'd ruther talk. But give me a chance, and I promise I'll give him a game.” He wiped the sweat from his face with his grimy sleeve and shifted his feet nervously.
“What's your name?” Hastings asked the warrior.
“Brooks, m'lord,” the warrior replied, licking his lips. “Jeremiah's my Christian name, m'lord.”
“Did I hear you say you'd fought in a number of tournaments?” As Hastings drew close, the warrior backed away.
“I did say that, sir.” Jeremiah Brooks spoke reluctantly, as if unsure whether to admit it or not.
Hastings nodded. “Good. I need you to help my student, here.”
“That's just what I was about, m'lord,” the warrior said, turning back to Jack and crouching as if to spring.
“No!” Hastings said quickly. “I had something else in mind. Something a bit more … direct.”
Brooks began to backpedal. “Please, m'lord. I came to fight a bout, and I'm willing. Don't spell me.”
“I won't hurt you,” Hastings assured him.
Not reassured, Brooks turned to run, but Hastings extended his hands and the air shimmered around the frontiersman. He was bound tightly, his hands at his sides, his weapons useless. He tried to squirm free, unsuccessfully. His eyes were fixed on Hastings, wide with fear.
Now it was Jack's turn. “Don't hurt him,” he protested.
“Don't you start,” Hastings snapped. “I'm not going to hurt him. I'm just going to borrow what he knows on your behalf. Come here, Jack.”
“What are you going to do?” Jack asked warily.
“If we're going to work together, you're going to have to trust me now and then,” Hastings growled. “I said come here.”
Angrily, Jack slammed Shadowslayer into his scabbard and crossed the distance between them, and stood next to Brooks. Hastings shoved them both to their knees and squatted, facing them. He placed his hands on their heads. Brooks was muttering softly to himself, swearing or praying. Swearing, Jack guessed, based on what he'd heard so far.
“I'm going to try to edit this, Jack, but it's an art and not a science, so bear with me,” Hastings said, which made no sense at all. The wizard closed his eyes, concentrating, speaking a charm, and then the power begin to flow through his fingers. Jack felt as if his scalp were being stretched away from his skull, heat and light pouring into his mind, an invasion. He wanted to twist away from the wizard's hand, but found he couldn't move.
His breath came quick and shallow, in ineffective gasps. He thought he cried out, and then images began to slide across his consciousness, slowly at first, and then faster, like bright frames in a jumbled videotape. There were landscapes: dense green forests, never touched by an axe, the ground open under a canopy of trees, an Indian trail that twisted and turned, following a creek with a Shawnee name that sang over the rocks as it descended to the Ohio. A broad valley, shrouded in mist, surrounded by mountains, filled with bones, where warriors were brought to fight.
There were people: red-coated British regulars, scruffy colonials who could slide through the forest as well as any Shawnee, a girl in a tavern with hair the color of buttercups and a blouse that slid softly from her shoulders. Wizards, hard-faced and ruthless, with their black arts, with their metal collars and chains, who tortured him until he begged for the chance to kill somebody, who put fear into him for the first time in his life. The warriors who came to him, tall and short, some of them very young, but none of them very old. He read their faces, could see hope and then death in their eyes.
And sensations: the scent of rain racing across the lakes. The ring and spark of steel on steel. The stench of too many unwashed men, too long together. The quick and deadly dance of the Game. The yielding of flesh and bone to his blade, and the wet sucking sound as he freed it. And in the end, that soft slipping away of life as he lay flat on his back staring up at the sky, the blood pumping from his body, knowing that someone else would fight the next time.
When Hastings released him, Jack fell forward onto his face and lay there, trembling, for a long time. He didn't want to look at the other two, because he didn't want them to see him crying. He could hear Hastings speaking softly, to Brooks, he assumed. When he finally lifted his head, the warrior was gone.
From then on, Jack knew all about Brooks—too much. For all intents and purposes, he was the heir of the warrior's experiences, but whether that boded well or ill for him, he didn't know. He had a body memory of bloodshed, in the New World and the Old. He could tell which way a man would go in a fight by a shift in his weight, or the look in his eyes. He could throw a hatchet and hit a tree a hundred paces off. He didn't have to try it, he just knew he could. He feared wizards and their burning hands the way some men feared snakes and flying things: with an irrational and paralyzing terror.
There were other things. He knew the taste of pemmican, and venison, and squirrel. It wasn't until Becka commented on it that he realized he'd acquired a colorful new vocabulary. After that, he tried his best to keep his tongue in check.
Be careful what you wish for. Once again, he was angry with Hastings, who had given him a history he'd never asked for. At the same time he knew it for the gift it was.
He won the next ten bouts he fought.
The days went by, more than the few Becka had promised, and still she stayed. She was an almost ethereal presence, drifting through the corridors and gardens, reading in the courtyard, writing poetry. Because Jack and Hastings spent a lot of time in practice, she spent considerable time alone. But she never complained.
The three of them always had dinner together. In the evenings after supper, Becka and Hastings would go for long walks in the hills. It was during those times that Jack took advantage of the library. It was a wonderful collection of books, some rare and valuable: English literature, studies of the great philosophers, scientific works, volumes about Eastern mysticism. The contents of a glass case in one corner held a particular fascination for Jack. It was a collection of books on wizardry. Although it was protected by a locking charm, it was one that Jack could easily disable. So he spent hours reading through ancient texts, some in Latin, some in Middle English, some in French (which he had taken in school, but there wasn't much overlap in vocabulary). He wished Nick were there to translate. He could use some advice anyway.
Jack had been careful not to reveal anything about his training in wizardry to Hastings. He figured that keeping it a secret might be an advantage in a game where he had few advantages to claim.
After fighting most of the day, Jack was always exhausted by early evening, and fell into bed early. Not even his reluctance to leave his mother alone with Leander Hastings could keep him awake.
Jack was ambivalent over Becka's continuing presence. He was well aware that his mother would never approve of his decision to fight in the tournament, but he welcomed the chance to spend what might be his last days with her before Midsummer's Day.
Sometimes he gazed into Blaise's mirror, hoping it would reveal something. But a mist lay over the silver surface like the fog that shrouded the mountains at sunset.
Then came an evening ten days into his stay in Cumbria and four days prior to Midsummer's Day. Becka and Hastings had gone out walking as usual. Jack was deep in a book on convertere, that is, the art of transforming one thing into another. He heard a sound as of a door closing elsewhere in the house. He thought perhaps that his mother and Hastings had returned early. Quickly he returned the book to its shelf, closed the cabinet, and reapplied the locking charm.
He heard no voices filtering down the hallway, no one calling his name. Curious, he crept to the door of the library and looked up and down the hall. Empty. Could it have been the wind? He thought it was unlikely any breeze could have moved the heavy wooden doors in that place. An intruder? Perhaps the wizards of the Red or White Rose had tracked them there.
Shadowslayer was in the Great Hall, where he'd left it after practice. He slipped noiselessly down the hall to the huge, two-story entry and scanned the room beyond. It was dimly illuminated by the fading light that leaked through the gallery windows. There was no sign of anyone or anything moving on the main floor or on the gallery above. His sword still leaned against the corner of the hearth. He took a deep breath and sprinted across the flagstones that separated him from his weapon. He had reached the apron of the huge fireplace when he heard a noise behind him. He seized his sword and spun around in a half crouch and came face-to-face with Linda Downey.