But they were good. Even to Gil’s inexperienced eye, their quickness and balance were obvious; they were professional warriors, an elite corps. Lying here, as she had lain most of the day, she had seen them come in from duty; she knew that all of them had fought last night and, like her, bore the wounds of it. She had noticed in the confusion of last night that very few of the dead were Guards, and now she saw why; the speed, stamina, and unthinking reactions were trained into them until the downward slash-duck-parry motion of attack and defense was as automatic as jerking a burned finger from flame. They trained with split wood blades like the Japanese shinai, weapons that would neither cut nor maim but which left appalling bruises—nobody was armored and there wasn’t a shield in the place. Gil watched them with an awe that came from the glimmerings of understanding.
“What do you think?” a cool voice asked. Looking up, she saw the Icefalcon standing beside her, indistinct in the murky shade.
“About that?” She gestured toward the moving figures and the distant clacking of wooden blade on blade. He nodded, pale eyes aloof. “You need it, don’t you, to be perfect,” she said, watching the quick grace of the warriors that was almost a dance. “And that’s what it is. Perfect.”
The Icefalcon shrugged, but his eyes had a speculative gleam in their silvery depths. “If you have only one blow,” he remarked, “it had better be perfect. How’s your arm?”
She shook her head wearily, not wanting to think about the pain. “It was stupid,” she said. The bandages showed a kind of grubby brown through the torn, ruined sleeve of the shirt that had been part of a corpse’s gown. “I was tired; it shouldn’t have happened.”
The tall young man leaned against the wall and hooked his thumbs in his swordbelt in a gesture common to the Guards. “You didn’t do badly,” he told her. “You have a knack, a talent that way. I personally didn’t think you’d make it past the first fight. Novices don’t. You have the instinct to kill.”
“What?” she exclaimed, more startled than horrified, though on reflection she supposed she should have been more horrified than she was.
“I mean it,” the Icefalcon said in that colorless, breathy voice. “Among my people that is a compliment. To kill is to survive the fight. To kill is to want very much to live.” He glanced out into the gray afternoon, his long, thin hands folding over his propped knee. “In the Realm they consider that such ideas are crazy. Perhaps your people do, too. So they say that the Guards are crazy; and by their lights, perhaps they are right.”
Perhaps, Gil thought. Perhaps.
It would look that way from the outside, certainly. That striving, that need, was seldom understood, any more than Rudy had understood why she would turn away from her home and family for the sake of the terrible and abstract joys of scholarship. In its way, it was the same kind of craziness.
A little, bald-headed man was moving through the mazes of the combatants, watching everything with beady, elfbright brown eyes. He stopped just behind Seya, scratching his close-clipped brown beard and observing her efforts against another Guard of about her size and weight. She cut and parried; as she moved forward for another blow, he stepped in lightly and hooked both her legs from under her, dumping her unceremoniously in the mud. “Stronger stance,” he cautioned her, then turned and walked away. Seya climbed slowly to her feet, wiped the goop from her face, and went back to her bout.
“There are very few,” the Icefalcon’s soft voice went on, “who understand this. Very few who have this instinct for life, this understanding for the fire of perfection. Perhaps that is why there have always been very few Guards.” He glanced down at her, the light shifting across the narrow bones of his face. “Would you be a Guard?”
Gil felt the slow flush of blood rise to her face and the quickening of her pulse. She waited a long time before she answered him. “You mean, stay here and be a Guard?”
“We are very short of Guards.”
She was silent again, though a kind of eager tension wired its way into her muscles and a confusion into her heart. She watched the little, bearded, bald man in the square step unconcernedly between swinging blades to double up a tall Guard with a blow in mid-stroke, step lightly back with almost preternatural timing, and go on to correct his next victim. Finally she said, “I can’t.”
“Indeed,” was all the Icefalcon said.
“I’m going back. To my own land.”
He looked down at her and raised one colorless brow.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered.
“Gnift will also be sorry, to hear that,” the Icefalcon said.
“Gnift?”
He gestured toward the bald man in the square. “He is the instructor of the Guards. He watched you in the vaults at Gae and last night. He says you could be good.”
She shook her head. “If I stayed,” she said, “it would only be a matter of time until I died.”
“It is always,” the Icefalcon remarked, “only a matter of time. But you are right.” He looked up as another shadow loomed beneath the low, shingled roof.
“Hey, Gil.” Rudy took a seat on the hay bale beside her. “They said you were hurt. Are you okay?”
She shrugged, the movement making her wince in spite of herself. “I’ll live.” In the dimness Rudy looked shabby and seedy, his painted jacket a ruin of mud and charred slime, his long hair grubby with sweat, though he’d managed to come up with a razor from someplace and was no longer as unshaven as he’d been yesterday. Still, she reflected, she couldn’t look much better.
“Their council meeting’s broken up,” he informed her, scanning the wet, dreary court before him with interested eyes. “I figure Ingold should be around someplace, and it’s high time we talked to him about going back.”
Across the court a small group emerged from the shadows of the tall gatehouse. Alwir, Govannin of Gae, Janus of the Guards, and the big, scarred landchief someone had said was Tomec Tirkenson, landchief of Gettlesand in the southwest. The Chancellor’s cloak made a great bloody smear of crimson against the grayness of the murky day, and his rich voice carried clearly to the three in the shadows of the barracks: ” … woman will believe anything, rather than that she left her own child to die. I am not saying that he did substitute another child for the Prince, if the Prince were killed by the Dark—only that he could have done so easily.”
“To what end?” the Bishop asked, in that voice like the bones of some animal, bleached by desert sun. Under the white of the bandage, Janus’ face reddened. Even at that distance, Gil could catch the dangerous gleam in that rufous bear-man’s eyes.
Alwir shrugged. “What end indeed?” he said casually. “But the man who saved the Prince would have far greater prestige than the man who failed to save him, especially since it is becoming obvious that his magic has little effect upon the Dark. A Queen’s gratitude can go far in establishing a man’s position in a new government. Counselor of the Realm is quite a step for a man who started life as a slave in Alketch.”
Anger flaring clearly in his face, Janus began to speak, but at that instant the Icefalcon, who had detached himself from the shed and made his way unhurriedly over to the group, touched the Commander’s sleeve and turned his attention from what could have been a dangerous moment. They spoke quietly, Alwir and Govannin listening with mild curiosity. Gil saw the Icefalcon’s long, thin hand move in her direction.
Alwir raised graceful eyebrows. “Going back?” he asked, surprised, his deep, melodious voice carrying clearly across the open court. “This is not what I have been told.”
There was no need to ask of whom they spoke. Gil felt herself grow cold with shock. She threw off the cloaks under which she lay and got to her feet, crossing the court to them stiffly, her arm throbbing at every step. Alwir saw her and waited, a look of thoughtful calculation in the cornflower depths of his eyes.