There was a steely quiet that was finally broken by J’anda. “I admit my understanding of the Society of Arms is somewhat … flawed. But I was given to understand that every single child brought in was given a Blood Family-for kinship, for a familial structure and familiarity.” The enchanter spread his arms wide. “For support. So that even while learning the hardness of battle, you are not ever fully alone.”
“True,” Cyrus said, and put his patera aside, the stew now gone. “But occasionally an inductee is deemed unworthy of having a Blood Family and is separated out to survive on their own.” He felt a tightness in his jaw. “I was one of those.”
There was a silence. “But …” J’anda said, “they would have all been arrayed against you, yes?” He stared at Cyrus, and there was a horror behind the enchanter’s eyes. “They base everything in their training off of Blood Families?” Cyrus nodded. “Every exercise pits the Blood Families against each other?” J’anda kept on, and Cyrus nodded every time. “So if you are without a Blood Family, then you huddle with the others who are without one? Make your own sort of small circle?”
Cyrus smiled, but there was no warmth to it. “It’s a rare thing, being without a Blood Family. I was the first in five years. The one before me died two months into the training. Typically ‘outcasts,’ as they’re called, don’t survive six months.” He gave a slight nod. “And I do mean survive. They’re usually found dead in the morning hours, well past the time when a resurrection spell would be able to bring them back.”
“Murder,” Nyad said with a quiet whisper. “Nothing more than child murder.”
“Aye,” Longwell said, arms folded where he sat on a log. “That’s pretty savage, even for a guild that trains warriors.”
Cyrus shrugged. “If you know that’s how outcasts die going in-and they do tell you, by the way, probably as a suggestion to the Able Axes and Swift Swords, but I took it as a warning to me to be scarce during the nighttime hours-it makes it that much easier to avoid that sort of death.”
“Barbaric,” Nyad said, shuddering. “Absolutely barbaric.”
“I’m certain that back when Pharesia had a Society of Arms, they did it the same way,” Cyrus said lacksadaisically. “But it’s all rather irrelevant now.”
“How is this irrelevant?” J’anda said. “How did you survive? Most don’t make it six months? You were there for … twelve years?”
Cyrus shrugged. “I fended them off. I did what I did on that training exercise after the first year and gave the Able Axes a string of injuries that made them afraid of me. And I held the Swift Swords at bay until Cass Ward came of an age to keep them off me.”
“He was your friend, then?” Aisling spoke up at last. “Cass? He’s an officer of The Daring, right? But he was your friend?”
“No,” Cyrus said with a slight smile. “An outcast lives and dies alone in the Society of Arms. They’re not considered of the Society, you see, not part of the family. So you’re not allowed to talk to them. But he respected me because we fought together. We didn’t speak until after we graduated; but I did know him. Friends? Hardly. I didn’t have friend until …” Cyrus swallowed heavily. “Until Narstron. Or at least Imina, if you want to count her as that.”
There was a deadened silence after that, a quiet that settled on their party that no one seemed to want to break, so Cyrus did it himself. “Come on. This was all years ago. I don’t feel sorry for myself about it, so none of you should, either.”
“Sorry,” J’anda said, with a weak smile, “it’s just … uh … that is truly appalling. It might take a bit of adjustment to get over that. I’m no stranger to the cruelties that others may deal out, but that … is a special sort of disturbing, if I may say so.”
Cyrus felt a cool settle over him, like the waters deep in his soul became placid. “It was life. It made me who I am today.”
“The only one without a Blood Family to ever graduate the Society of Arms,” Martaina said from behind the stew pot; her gaze was not accusatory, but something else, her words tinged with slightest awe. “To survive being an outcast.”
Cyrus shrugged. “You do what you have to. It was just a day-to-day struggle, like everyone else experiences in life-” He held up a hand to stop Nyad’s protest, “a different level of struggle, perhaps, but a struggle. Everyone has adversities. I made it through, and we don’t really need to go sift it. I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t faced what I faced then.”
“And they do teach you how to be fearless?” Longwell asked, perked up with interest. Cyrus saw the others, as well, easing up, paying attention, waiting for his answer.
“As close as they can get,” Cyrus said. “They expose you to it, over and over, things that scare you, and it just gradually fades away, like night turning to day. Snakes, bugs, battle, blood, everything, all the major things. They talk about fear all the time, how it can hurt you, how it can make you flinch. Fear is death on the battlefield, the surety of injury and failure because you’ll hesitate at the wrong moment and it’ll cost you.”
“Interesting,” J’anda said, as though he wanted to say more, but didn’t. “I believe … I have reached my end for the evening. With a nod to each of them, he spoke once more. “Good night, all.”
“I should probably turn in as well,” Cyrus said, and stood, grasping his patera.
“I’ll wash that for you if you want,” Martaina said from behind the cauldron. “I have to stay awake a little longer anyway, and I’m going to take care of the cauldron before I go to bed.”
“Sure,” Cyrus said and set it next to her. Aisling did the same a moment after him, and he walked behind a tree, about twenty feet from the campfire, where he had set his bedroll alongside Aisling’s.
“You never had a friend until after you left the Society?” She watched him closely as he took to a knee, preparing to brush himself off and remove his armor. Her hand rested on his shoulder, and he could only just feel her touch through the metal.
He pulled the snaps and freed his neck from the gorget, then slid his pauldrons off before unfastening his breastplate. “It’s true.”
Her hand was on his chainmail now, and he could feel the lightness of her touch as her slightly elongated fingernails rose to his neck and applied the gentlest of pressure. “No lovers either, then?”
He shook his head. “Not until Imina.” He unsnapped his greaves, then slid off the chainmail pants and shirt while she watched. He looked at her, gauged her expression. “You’re feeling sorry for me, aren’t you?”
“Not too bad,” she said with a whisper. “More sorry that you didn’t have much of a life for all those years. That you didn’t get to feel so many things …” Her fingernails danced down the cloth that still covered his chest, and she tugged it up over his head, then ran her fingers down his chest hair, gently pulling the strands. “Like making love in the autumn woods as the leaves fell down around you.”
“Oh?” He took a look around, and a breeze came rustling through, shaking a few leaves loose and causing one of them to land in her hair. “It would appear to be autumn now, and leaves are falling around us.”
“You caught that too, huh?” She didn’t bother to pull the leaf out of her hair, just left it there as she kissed him. Even through the activity that followed, it stayed there as though some sort of badge until the breeze kicked up the following morning and it was carried it off on the winds in a way that Cyrus’s past never could be.
Chapter 72
The towers of Vernadam were higher than Cyrus remembered, as the castle appeared on the horizon the day after they passed over the bridge at Harrow’s Crossing. The former battlefield had been quiet, the dead all cleared and few reminders to show that there had even been a clash there some eight months earlier. It was a clear day, with little of the chill that had been so prevalent farther north.
They rode through the town at the base of the hill that Vernadam was built upon, and it was quiet as well, as though everything had died down after the harvest. There were no soldiers, no women plying their wares outside the inn. The market was much less active than when last they had been through, and by the time they were climbing the switchback road that led up to the castle, Cyrus wondered if Galbadien’s army was even still stationed in the area.