“At least you will have familiar faces when you go to the capital,” he said reassuringly. “You surmised very quickly where Edemir was going. Where do you suppose Bram might go?”
Ophele had already been considering this question. He had gone east up the river, and what lay to the east? On the south side of the Brede, it was the lands of the eastern empire, most of which were in the hands of the Emperor’s strongest allies. It did not seem a promising place for Sir Bram.
On the other side of the river was the eastern range of the Berlawes, which bordered Rendeva, the mountainous land of metal and mercenaries. It could be that Sir Bram had gone there for the former, but this too seemed unlikely to Ophele; if Remin had wanted metal, Bram would not be the man he sent. No, a former mercenary could only have one errand in Rendeva. And Remin could only have one use for mercenaries.
But Ophele didn’t think she should say that out loud. If Remin had wanted her to know it, he would have told her himself.
“I think, Rendeva,” she said, meeting Justenin’s eyes innocently. It was a truthful answer.
“There is no better steel to be found,” he agreed. “But please remember to set down your utensils before you speak, my lady.”
There were a thousand such rules, and though she could have rattled off the list of them from memory, it wasn’t at allthe same asdoingit. Glumly, Ophele watched Lady Verr and Leonin going through the exquisite, soundless motions of their own meal, wondering if she could ever be so elegant.
It was an effective diversion. Ophele never noticed the gleam in Justenin’s pale eyes, and the contemplative air of a man who had taken a new tool in hand.
Chapter 3 – The Flower of the Andelin
Acoded message on a folded scrap of parchment, concealed in a post at the end of dock six in the harbor:
Manor too well-defended. Will attempt to separate target from guards.
***
Distantly, Remin was aware that he had acquired an audience.
It was one more detail to the mental picture he had of the practice yard and all its contents: the twenty small heads that had suddenly appeared in several rows around the fence, hoping to go unnoticed between the bushes and tall grass. No doubt the pageboys had somewhere else they were supposed to be, but the opportunity to see the Duke of Andelin at his training had tempted them from the path of righteousness.
Usually, Remin preferred private practice yards. Therewere many in the huge barracks, indoor and outdoor yards of varying sizes and configurations, with several for his personal use that had oversized equipment. If he worked his men hard—and with particular zeal for Davi and Leonin—Remin never spared himself.
The air was so cold it stung. In one of the larger practice yards, temporary barriers had been raised to mark off narrow corridors and chambers, mimicking the sort of treacherous ambush he might experience in the capital. Remin and his men performed their battlefield maneuvers religiously, which was why his enemies would never choose to meet him on that ground. Anyone who went with Remin to the capital must be prepared.
Having already taken his turn, Juste was seated on a nearby bench, nursing a bloody nose. He was not a Knight of the Brede merely because he could stomach the ugliest work of war. Alone, he had lasted nearly forty minutes before he was overwhelmed, using the narrow halls to devastating effect.
Remin had been at his own exercise for over an hour.
“Either stay down or get up and come at me,” he snapped at the man at his feet, who was twitching like he hadn’t decided whether he was really done or not. For the sake of realism, downed men remained where they had fallen, which made maneuvering that much trickier. Also for the sake of realism, Remin kicked any man that twitched in the head, to make sure he didn’t get back up again.
This was not the mannered fencing of capital gentlemen. His soldiers were well-armored and fought like they meant it, kicking, punching, slashing. They used every part of their swords, from hilt to pommel to blade. The hilt of someone’s sword crashed into the back of his helmet so hard, Remin’s ears rang, and he swung around instantly, his armored fist crashing down. The man folded up like laundry.
If this had been real, Remin would have put his sword through him too, kicking his arm up to slam his blade into his armpit and through his heart. That was an additional layer of reality he was mentally imposing on this exercise, kicking and jabbing with the tip of his blade, scoring the kill. In a real fight, those jabs would have been backed with killing intent.
“Do you rehearse it in your mind, my lord?” Juste had asked him once, after that infamous melee in Segoile, when Remin had left over twenty champions sprawled in the dust of the exhibition field. “It looked as if you planned every move before you made it.”
“I’m not really…thinking,” Remin had replied, a little surprised by the question. He had never consideredhowhe did what he did. “I just watch to see what they’re going to do, and then I stop them.”
Wasn’t that what everyone did? If Remin could have described it, he would have just said that he was intenselyawareof his enemies, where they were, the arrangement of their limbs, a sense of angles and weight and maybe even the shift of their balance upon the earth. He watched. He listened. He built a perfect mental image of the battle space and then moved himself through it in the blink of an eye, with lightning reflexes honed over almost twenty years of constant training.
In his mind, Remin was never defending. Not even now, as fresh opponents entered the yard. He had never defended anything in his life. He maneuvered his enemy into attacking him at a place and time of his choosing, and then he tore them apart.
“Go for his sword arm,” said one of his opponents, as five of them circled him warily. Sometimes they tried this, playing for time, hoping to increase their numbers before they attacked together. Remin feinted a lunge at the speaker and then went the opposite way, smashing two swords aside in one sweep—whenwouldthey stop standing so close together?—and then took two men out at once by simply knocking their heads together.
Three men left. Two more on the way, judging by the noise at his back. Remin inhaled, deep breaths all the way from the bottom of his lungs, resting while he could. This room was getting crowded. As soon as the next two showed up, he charged, driving them into the other three in a rush and then making all five of them trip over the bodies of the men he had just knocked out.
Distantly, he heard the pages shouting and applauding.
Another wave of fighters. He could feel the slow motion of the sun overhead, sense the deepening awe of his audience. He had no idea how long he had been fighting. But eventually even his mighty arms began to tire, and Juste’s voice called from the other end of the yard, strategizing with Tounot against him. More men, pushing him out of the narrow, defensible hallway and into the wider space at the end.
Hands grabbed for his arms. His legs. His feet. Remin kicked, driving an armored thigh into one man’s chest so hard, he flew backward across the yard.
