Chapter 49

Arne sat down slowly. “A long talk? What a–”

“About your inability to keep this one,” Lisa pointed towards Friedrich, “under control.”

“What of it?” he pressed out through clenched teeth. “Your strike will have set him straight.”

“If you truly believe that, you are a fool.”

She was right, Arne knew. It would be a temporary solution at best, its effectiveness ceasing with Lisa leaving the academy again.

“You cannot borrow my authority,” she said. “Not yet, at least. As much as you dislike it, you are the heir to Hohenfels. Act like it.”

“Believe me, I have been trying my very best.”

“Then your best is not good enough,” she simply stated.

Arne felt irritation flare up. “I realize that. Which is why I’d much prefer that duchy undertaking to be done already, with authority firmly rooted in Father’s hands – and yours.”

Now Lisa’s aura was spiking with anger. “You should be ashamed to talk like this. You are a Hohenfels.”

“Again, I am very aware of that,” he growled. “I don’t resent it. In fact, I quite like it. I love our lands, I love our people. I love our House. Which is why I want to commit my very best to its future, not something I will inevitably fail in.”

“I will never understand why you and Father consider me the superior choice, Arne. I am a warrior first and foremost. Frankly, I have more in common with Fritz than I have with you.”

“Fritz will be a good count,” Arne replied. “He is a natural figurehead. People are drawn to him, just like they are to you. He only needs someone capable to support him. And for you, that should be me.”

“Or perhaps it is the duty of someone like me to be an instrument in the hand of a capable ruler. A personable instrument, perhaps,” she chuckled, “but an instrument nonetheless.”

“Father disagrees.”

“Father only disagrees because you are too weak to handle your gift.”

Arne felt his face contort before he noticed the boiling rage. “Easy for you to say, Lisa. You got the useful parts. The fun parts, that help you in combat. I got the auras of everyone in my head, always.”

“Do you think becoming a Paladin was easy for me?” Fury.

“Obviously not,” he scoffed. “You faced innumerable hardships and overcame unreasonable odds. But you chose it. Nobody expected you to become the first female Paladin. You still would have been a great asset to Hohenfels without that title. Even if you were half as strong, you would be more formidable than most.”

Arne took a deep breath, then continued. “I have not chosen my ‘gift’, as everyone loves to call it. Without it, I would not even be opposed to remaining heir. With it, I remain a liability at every soirée, every audience.”

“Then get it under control.”

Arne’s hand twitched towards the saber before he could stop himself. When his hand reached it, Lisa’s blade already pointed at his throat.

“Are you really going there, little brother?” Rage. Disappointment.

Parchment. Herbal tea. A window over the bailey.

Arnold slowly rose from his chair, hand still on the hilt of the sheathed blade.

“Put that away, Elisabeth.”

She took a step back and lowered her sword. “What are you doing? Stop that.”

“Get out,” he said, pointing towards the door. Raban growled at her from below.

“I would rather–”

“Out.” The growling intensified, and Elisabeth stowed her saber. She left the room with an unreadable glance, her aura conveying… Unease?

The door slammed shut, and Arne sank back into his chair. The young dog put its paw on his knee, and he lifted it up, absentmindedly scratching its head for a minute or two. Then, a gnawing hunger entered his awareness.

It was not his, he realized quickly. It felt more like Hadumar’s, but a little more…familiar. Raban looked at him with expectant eyes.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” Arne smiled. “I’ll find you something, give me a moment.”

He walked over to the crumpled form of Friedrich and began poking him, first with his finger, then with his boot. “Wake up, Fritz.”

The oaf stirred awake after some prodding. “Ouch,” he complained, then sat up to look around. “Where’s Lisa?”

“She left some time ago. Want to grab some food?”

“Always,” Friedrich enthusiastically agreed.

= = = = =

“If you are here to curry favor, leave. At the very least, do not bother coming to the next lesson,” Lisa declared, pointedly glancing at a gaggle of silklings in colorful duelling attire. Arne sincerely doubted they got the message, but he also suspected that his sister would drive the point home in a more physical manner later.

“I am not here to teach you courtly fencing. I am here to teach you war.”

She paced from side to side in front of the assembled students, like a general mustering his troops. The audience was suitably awed, judging from their auras.

“Compared to what you will find on the battlefields out there, you are weak. Any experienced knight would wipe the floor with you, regardless of your difference in magical capacity. You will have to adapt to that reality. Today’s lesson will be a step towards that goal.”

She stopped in the middle of her impromptu stage. “Form units of four. Each unit will face one of my knights. You will work together to overcome them. They will not hold back.”

While the students began shuffling themselves into four-man groups, Lisa pointed out some familiar faces, ordering them into pairs instead. “Princess Klara, Prince Matthias. You face me. Prince Arnold, Lord Friedrich, you face Captain Armin. Prince Ludwig, Lord Leonhardt, you face Lieutenant Johann.”

Arne suppressed a sigh. Armin, though nominally the same rank as Arne himself, had decades of experience under his belt. More importantly, he had spent a lot of time and effort teaching Arne and Friedrich swordsmanship, from sabers to longswords. He would, as Lisa had so eloquently put it, wipe the floor with them.

The practice saber was nowhere near the quality of his own blade, which made him even less confident. ‘Still, I am glad I am not one of those sops,’ he thought to himself as he watched a few Westerners pick up smallswords. Much better weapons were available, and since Lisa had not set any sort of limitation, a spear would be by far the best pick for a relatively inexperienced fighter. Klara had even gone and set an example, to Arne’s great surprise. He had expected her to pick a saber, knowing what Katharina told him about her aspirations.

If Arne wanted to actually win against Armin, he would have gone with the spear as well. It felt more appropriate to face his old teacher with a saber, though.

The fight itself went as expected. The old knight easily outmanoeuvred them despite their best efforts to attack from opposite directions. He repositioned himself with clean bursts of magic, made terrifyingly efficient by many years of practice. Neither Arne nor Friedrich were slouches in that regard, but they simply could not keep up.

The one thing Armin could not bring to bear were the deep magical reserves granted by the most resource-intensive upbringing money and prestige could buy. Given enough time – and luck, to actually survive his attacks – the young scions might have been able to simply outlast him in battle.

But this was just a practice match. So, Arne did his very best to demonstrate that he had not slacked on his practice, and Armin’s satisfied smirk when he finally put his blade to Arne’s, then Friedrich’s chest let him know that he succeeded. Pride. Accomplishment.

A brief wave of frustration from Friedrich made it clear that his cousin had gone into this bout with different expectations. ‘Foolishness.’

Looking around the practice grounds, Arne saw a lot of four-man groups sitting in the dirt, defeated and exhausted. The knights went around and picked out the most promising contenders, putting them into pairs instead. The amount of Westerners among them was off-putting, though. ‘Mother’s instructions, perhaps?’

A loud clang drew all eyes towards one of the last ongoing fights. Lisa had parried Matthias’ blade, a longsword. A compromise between practicality and image, Arne assumed – the Falkenstein prince could not allow himself to be seen wielding a simple spear.

To his credit, he was very competent with the sword. Arne had sparred with him some years ago, and it seemed like he had not forgotten his training since then. If anything, his swordplay was faster and more polished than ever. A sudden spike of eagerness told Arne that Friedrich had come to the same conclusion.

Unfortunately for Matthias, it fell to him to cover for the increasingly erratic Klara, who had long since abandoned the idea of ‘practice’. She was spending magic like a silkling spent coin, fishing for a single clean thrust. Without Matthias’ efforts, the fight would have long since been over, but his well-timed strikes, ineffective as they were, kept Lisa from fully exploiting Klara’s foolishness.

Finally, Matthias lost concentration. The sword was flung out of his hands, he took a boot to the kidney, and subsequently bent over in pain with a hand raised in surrender.

Klara, however, sensed her chance. Arne saw her heel dig into the ground, her grimace tense, and with a desperate burst of magic, she thrust her spear towards Lisa’s abdomen. The Paladin was still regaining her footing after the kick, and could not turn around in ti–

FEAR.

A horrible spike of animal panic crashed into Arne’s senses. A burst of magic emanated from the Paladin, whirling her around faster than his eyes could process. Her blunt saber shattered the spear, sending splinters into the crowd of onlookers, and her fist stopped just short of Klara’s face. The wind from the strike was enough to make the Eisenberg princess stumble and fall.

While Arne was still reeling from the unexpected outburst, Lisa caught herself.

“This concludes the first round,” she stated, her steady voice betraying nothing. “I will briefly coordinate with my knights, then we rotate pairings and opponents. Rest for a few minutes, you will need it.”