Chapter 1241: The Drill

Arcten had dismissed them from the lecture room just long enough to leave their notebooks behind and collect practice weapons, and by the time Cedric reached the training yard, the pass from the map had become a lane between two rows of waist-high barriers. Chalk marked the bend where his first line would stand; from its far end, a second line of chalk ran toward a wooden post that stood for the road. The yard had no ridge, but it had room enough for each side to find out what happened when an order had to pass through men already fighting.

Cedric tested the edge of his blunted longsword with his thumb. Across the yard, Kaireth was briefing the students assigned to attack, indicating the mouth of the lane with the butt of his spear. Lucavion stood among them with a practice estoc at his side, a weapon the Academy had added to its training equipment. Kaireth had put him in the reserve and spoke to every other fighter on that side but him.

Cedric noticed it without knowing what to make of it.

Arcten gave the defenders a withdrawing group of three students and a wooden marker, to move along the road when signaled. A runner would bring Cedric reports at intervals, though Arcten declined to say how many there would be or how far the group had to travel.

"Set your line," the instructor said.

Cedric placed two fighters beyond the bend and kept a third far enough back to replace either, while the runner waited nearer the road, where he could see the withdrawing group without standing in the defenders’ way. The forward position he took himself; from there he could give ground without turning his back on the mouth.

One of his fighters looked over the arrangement. "You’re leaving a gap between us and the runner."

"He needs a way through when we move," Cedric said. "If you have to fall back, leave it open."

The student nodded and shifted half a step, and Cedric checked the width that remained and let him keep it. From the attacking side the gap would look too narrow to matter; under pressure, it would decide whether a message reached him or a runner stood waiting for a sword to move.

Years ago it would have been House Valoria’s men at the front of a drill like this, his father among them, with Cedric drilling behind. Even now the memory pulled at him, and he made himself let it go.

He had been trained as a personal knight to the heir, Elara, and beyond the combat drills he had learned to judge a doorway by how quickly she could pass through it and to stand where an approach would reach him before it reached her. In Loria, everyone had understood why a knight watched the room while his lady spoke. Here, as Reilan Dorne, he served a baron’s daughter from the Caedrim coast, and the records held even when strangers looked closely.

At Arcten’s call Cedric returned to the lane, where Kaireth’s first rank was advancing, spearheads lowered to make the narrow entrance costly. He raised his sword and signaled his line to wait behind the bend. The attackers could see one shoulder and a strip of steel; to learn how many stood behind it, they would have to come farther in.

The first spear entered low. Cedric met its shaft near the head and turned it into the barrier, showing its owner a glimpse of the opening beside him. When the student stepped toward it, the defender on Cedric’s left brought his practice blade across the space. Wood struck wood. The attacker pulled back before a second blow could land.

Kaireth watched from beyond the mouth and gave a short instruction. The next two came through together.

Cedric let his left fighter take the nearer spear and caught the other on his longsword, feeling the force run up through the hilt. He yielded a pace and set his feet again. The lane made Kaireth’s numbers hard to bring against him. It also meant that if a defender fell badly, the others might have to fight over his body to reach the road.

His replacement stood ready behind them. Cedric glanced back once to make sure the student could still move through the space they had left, then returned his eyes to the spear in front of him.

Across the weapons, Lucavion hung back with the attacking reserve.

The boy from the Valoria scandal had once been easy for Cedric to name as the cause of everything that followed; he had watched what Elara suffered after that night and had stayed beside her through the years it took to stand again. When Luca appeared at Stormhaven, Cedric had disliked how readily she trusted him before either of them knew the name beneath it, and it had galled him more when the man reached her at the vortex first.

Cedric turned a thrust into the barrier, drove its point wide, and forced the student back around the bend.

At Stormhaven he had run. He remembered the distance closing beneath his feet, Elara’s hand reaching through the pull of the vortex, and Luca crossing the last of it before him. That memory had lost none of its clarity once the man returned alive. Neither had the duel afterward, when Cedric’s best strike was turned aside and an estoc came to rest beneath his chin.

"Remember your place."

Since then Lucavion had worn his usual careless expression through lectures and corridors, spoken to people Cedric expected him to provoke, and intervened where Cedric could find no easy reason. Cedric had kept his opinion to himself more often, though he had never taken back his judgment of the man.

The runner reached the end of the lane and called the first report. The group had passed the first marker. Cedric repeated it so his line would know how much road remained. His right fighter’s breathing had grown heavy, though his stance still held.

"Change," Cedric told him.

The student began to protest. Cedric lifted his sword to receive the spear coming through the bend, giving him room to leave. The replacement stepped in as soon as the line opened. Their shoulders nearly touched in passing, but neither had to turn sideways.

Jesse’s account of Mornrock Vale had stayed with him, weirdly enough.

A man could keep standing long after he lost the ability to follow his next order. Cedric had heard the strain in his fighter’s breath before it reached his feet. Had he waited to see him stumble, the change would already have come late.

Kaireth pressed the new defender at once, driving his spear through the space where the exchange had happened to test whether Cedric had left the lane in disorder. Cedric caught the shaft on his blade and held it while the younger student found his footing. Kaireth twisted free and drew back.

He was good. Cedric had expected that after the lecture, and the first assault confirmed it. Kaireth looked for the moment a defender had to split his attention between the enemy ahead and the people behind him, and each time Cedric gave him an inch, Kaireth used it to bring the next attacker forward.

That was why Cedric had argued for the bend. He could afford to spend those inches.

The second report came as they fell back to the last chalk mark. The group was still on the road. Cedric acknowledged the runner and watched him pass behind the replacement, out of Kaireth’s reach.

Movement beyond the spears caught his eye. Lucavion had turned his head toward the wooden marker traveling down the road. He looked back at the lane after only a moment.

At the Rotunda, Elara had chosen to dance with him in a room full of people, and Cedric, watching her make the choice, had found no objection that would not have made it his decision instead. Now Lucavion sat in her classes, heard her answer questions, saw how she carried herself when she forgot someone was watching. What passed between them outside those public places Cedric did not know; the places he could see were trouble enough.

Eveline’s concealment was thorough, and Elara knew where it could fail; she had held her cover through questions Cedric himself had feared would expose her. Still, Lucavion had known her before, and given enough time near Elowyn, he might notice a habit the disguise could not change.

Kaireth’s spear came in again, and the thought had to wait while Cedric kept its head away from his fighter’s ribs.

Elara would resent it if she knew how often he measured the distance between her and Lucavion, and she had already made that clear. He could warn her about a danger he saw and stand beside her while she decided what to do about it; he could not decide for her and call it protection.

Lucavion, of all people, had told him much the same thing earlier in the semester. The words still grated, partly because Cedric had wanted to reject them and found that Elara would have agreed.

Kaireth struck the barrier with the butt of his spear. Two attackers surged at the sound. Cedric brought his longsword across the first blade, then stepped back with it engaged, drawing its wielder farther around the turn than he intended. His left fighter checked the second. Steel met blunted steel in the cramped space, and nobody had room for a broad swing.

"Back one," Cedric ordered.

His line moved together. Kaireth’s men gained the chalk mark they had abandoned and followed, but their front rank crowded the narrowest part of the lane. Cedric stopped his defenders before they reached the road. Here the replacement could still step forward, and the runner could still get past them. Kaireth would have to break that arrangement to reach the withdrawing group.

He tried twice. The first time, Cedric caught his spearhead before it could turn toward the open side of the line. The second time, Kaireth sent another fighter ahead and came in as Cedric’s blade met hers. Cedric shifted his rear foot, taking the impact on a shorter guard. His replacement struck the spear shaft, and Kaireth had to pull it clear.

The attackers withdrew beyond immediate reach. Cedric heard one of his fighters let out a breath and made himself check the road before he looked at Kaireth. The marker had moved again. The group was nearly clear.

Kaireth lowered his spear a fraction, his weight shifting as though he meant to send the fighter on his right around the barrier. Cedric signaled his replacement to watch that side.

Lucavion had seen the shift; Cedric could tell from where his gaze rested. Yet he stayed where he was, estoc lowered, making no move to support Kaireth or to warn him that Cedric had adjusted. Cedric could read the choice Kaireth was about to make, but Lucavion gave him nothing to read, and he could not tell whether the man approved of it, expected it to fail, or had simply found a more interesting place to look.

Kaireth noticed Cedric looking past him. His gaze followed Cedric’s to Lucavion, and Cedric watched his face change, the easy set of it pulling tight and then smoothing over, too quickly to have been an accident.

Kaireth’s eyes returned to the defenders.

"Your Elowyn Caerlin," he said, loud enough to carry through the lane, "does seem to collect men around her."