Jame moved a ten-commander.
Soon the board was busy with sliding pebbles and the players intent on their game.
Timmon attacked one of Jame’s pieces by moving into its square. “Two,” he said, indicating one of his cadets.
“Five.” A five-commander. “Five takes two.”
She removed his pebble from the board, first checking to make sure that they had both remembered correctly. If either had been wrong, their piece would have automatically been forfeit.
“They say that this is good training for the Winter War,” remarked Timmon, shifting another piece. “Two again.”
“Ten. Ten takes two. What Winter War?”
His eyes flickered up to hers, for a moment lit by unholy glee. He loved to catch her out on Tentir lore.
“You mean you haven’t heard . . . you don’t know . . . ?”
“Five.”
“Thirty. Thirty takes five.”
So that was where his commandant was, well to the back. It was worth a five-commander to learn that. Had he placed his major player next to the stationary flag? She would have to watch what pieces didn’t move and hope that they weren’t decoy hazards.
“As to the Winter War, no and no. So tell.”
Timmon practically wriggled with delight. He could be cute when he wasn’t trying.
“Every Mid-Winter’s Day, the whole college stages a campaign, to test our skills, to ward off cabin fever, to give us points toward our eventual placement as second-year cadets. Usually there are two teams. This year there will be three comprised of three houses each. That’s nine flags, rated according to each house’s importance. You have to protect your own three and try to get the other six. Failing that, you do as much damage to your opponents as possible.”
“Damage as in actually hurting them?” She slid one of her pebbles halfway across the board. “Hunter.”
“Hazard.”
He drew out his deck of hazard cards, each lovingly illustrated, and offered them to her. She drew a card.
“Rathorn.”
“How appropriate. Whatever happened to that rogue rathorn Gorbel stormed off to hunt?”
He meant Death’s-head. “The last Gorbel saw of him, he was being washed away by a flash flood.”
With her clinging to his back, she didn’t add. That had been the first time she had “ridden the rathorn,” not that she really counted it a success except in that she had prevented the wretched beast from drowning himself.
“So, is your hunter going to conjure up a flood?”
“That would have too widespread an effect on other players. Besides, the referee would consider it impossible.” She meant he of the wooden hand, whom no one wanted commandeering their game, however wild it got outside his classroom. “Let’s say she climbs a tree.”
“Fair enough. That keeps both stones stationary until either she comes down or the rathorn wanders off—at my pleasure, of course.”
“Of course. It’s your hazard, but watch your own pieces if you set it loose.”
He snorted. As if I need to be told. In the meantime, she had effectively lost the use of one hunter. Odd that such important pieces only ranked one point each.
“Damage.” He reverted to her previous question. “That depends. Usually it’s enough to incapacitate an enemy by seizing his or her token scarf. Lethal weapons are forbidden, which probably includes your claws, my lady, but things can still get rough. That’s why certain randon wander around masked, therefore technically invisible, to see that we don’t all slaughter each other. But it is a time traditionally to settle grudges, so walk wary. Ten.”
“Hazard.”
“Good-bye, ten.” He slid a piece several squares into the vacated place. “Hunter.”
“Same hazard.” She drew out her own deck of cards, reluctantly, since they were little more than words scrawled on slips of paper. A game such as this of Long Gen took up to two hours, time she seldom had to spare. In Short Gen, to attack any hazard piece was instant death.
Timmon drew a slip. “Avenger in the wall,” he read. “What in Perimal’s name does that mean?”
Jame had no idea. She hadn’t written that particular card. Shuffling through her deck, she found several more additions: “Guilt in a small room.”
“Bloody hands.” And a small, almost furtive scrawclass="underline" “ . . . help me . . . ”
Puzzled and disturbed, she laid the cards aside for future study and offered the deck again to Timmon. He drew another slip.
“Well mouth with teeth. That’s almost as bad. ‘Well’ as in ‘healthy’?”
“No. As in you drop a bucket into it.” She had been thinking of hazards she had faced herself, including the River Snake’s maw under the well at Kithorn. “Think of it as a pitfall that’s very hard to climb out of.”
“All right. My player—a two, by the way—disappears to the realms of mystery, otherwise known as your lap.”
“Funny. Wait a minute. You said there will be three teams. Who leads them?”
This time his smile glinted with something almost like malice. “Didn’t I say? Why, we three lordan, of course: you, me, and Gorbel.”
The game ended badly for Jame, who couldn’t quite keep her mind on it. Neither flag was captured, but she had spent so many senior pieces defending it that she lost due to pure attrition. Timmon, on the other hand, had played mostly with his cadets until he spotted a target worthy of attack. That was something worth remembering.
But a board game was one thing. How in Perimal’s name was she supposed to command three houses in a potentially dangerous campaign?
It had taken her all summer and most of the fall to become an effective master-ten to her own barracks and even so, she still had doubts about her ability. Tentir was supposed to be teaching her how to lead. For Trinity’s sake, she was not just a randon cadet but her brother’s lordan. Jame sighed. On the whole, she still felt more like a hunter than a commandant.
Supper came earlier as the days shortened, but she still had at least an hour to answer the horse-master’s enigmatic summons. Consequently, her way led her out the north gate and up among the boulders above Tentir.
She could hear the colt snorting before she saw him. Rounding a screen of bushes, she found the rathorn backed in between two tall rocks angled so that he couldn’t back out. Bel-tairi blocked the exit. Whenever he tried to duck past her, she stepped in his way. Given that he towered over her by at least three hands, he could easily have run her down; but, predatory fiend that he was, not even this indignity could induce him to hurt her.
The same couldn’t be said for the horse-master, who sat against one of the boulders nursing a flat, bloody nose.
“Oh, you missed a lovely time,” he said, getting painfully to his feet. It seemed that his ribs had also suffered. “Getting him in there was only half the fun.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
He hawked and spat blood. “You say he isn’t trying to kill you anymore nor even deliberately to throw you, but that you just can’t stay on him long bareback. Small wonder. Few could. So I’ve rigged something that may help.”
Peering around Bel’s dappled flanks, past the rathorn’s shoulders, she saw a girth around his barrel. Dangling from it were a pair of stirrups.
“Mind you, he rattled me around like bones in a box, but I reckon I got it cinched tight at last. Well? Climb a rock and drop down on him. Time to put this rig to the test.”
Jame almost said no. The rathorn pawed, glaring red-eyed at her, and her knees went weak. But there was the horse-master who had literally shed blood to bring this about. Moreover, she had never yet disobeyed him, however many times it had led to near disaster.
Gritting her teeth, she scrambled up the boulder, slid back, and tried again. One step at a time. Now she was above the rathorn who glared up at her over his shoulder.