“Easy now,” Remin cautioned. “Remember to pull your strikes. I expect you to control your blade even if it is made of wood.”
Some of the twelve and thirteen year-olds were nearly ready for steel. Moving down the rows, Remin marked out the best of them, pleased. His corrections to these wolf cubs were sharper and less kindly; they were nearly men, and should not expect softness. If it came to it, they might be expected to go and fight, and they would not thank him for coddling them.
“Good,” he said as twelve-year-old Batistin disarmed his opponent, a lunging maneuver that drove his sword through the other boy’s guard and slapped the sword down out of his hand. “Did you intend to disarm him?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Batistin, straightening to look up at him with sharp green eyes.
“Why did it work?”
“I tried to knock it through his thumb,” the boy replied, which was exactly what Remin wanted to hear. The thumb was the weakest point of any grip. A twelve-year-old tactician was going to make a dangerous adult. Remin clouted the boy’s shoulder approvingly.
“Go show him how you did it,” he said, and moved on.
He did not have leisure for a full lesson, but Remin gave them half an hour of his time, memorized the names and faces of the new boys, and paused to see how Jacot in particular was getting on. It was a pity the boy had such a late start. Auber had agreed to take him as a page and said he had both grit and aptitude, but it was hard for a boy of nearly fifteen to practice against boys two or three years his junior. He could have bested them easily with his reach and strength alone, but that would just mean he got walloped by boys his own age, whose technique was leagues beyond him.
Jacot was trying to do it right. He was so focused on his footwork and form, he never once looked at Remin, and it reminded him forcefully of Ophele, struggling to learn things that she should have been taught years ago.
And that gave him an idea.
“I am pleased with all of you,” he told the boys when the short inspection was done, and he had gathered them all back together. “If things were different, there are some of you that I would bring to the Court of War, so you could test yourselves against the striplings of the capital. You would bring honor to my House, and your own. Work hard against the day when you can prove yourselves.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” the boys chorused.
“All of you have given me your oaths,” Remin went on gravely. “You’re young, but I will hold you to them. Even if you aren’t very big or strong yet, what have you got?”
“Sharp eyes and sharp wits,” they chanted together.
“I am going to ask you to use them,” Remin said, looking from one face to the next to impress the order upon them. “We’re teaching you to use a sword because the world is a dangerous place. There are new folk coming into the valley, and some of them might mean harm to our lady duchess.”
A great deal of the fun died from their faces.
“You boys are all over town every day,” Remin went on. “I want you to watch. If you see someone behaving strangely, or lingering where they ought not, then I want you to run and tell your master straightaway. You’re never too young to keep your eyes open, are you?”
“No, my lord,” they said together, and he was gratified to see a glint of ferocity in these wolf cubs.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll trust you to help me protect my lady. Go on, there’s your tutor looking for you.”
They would take his orders seriously. To boys training to be knights, it was very nearly a sacred charge; what else was a knight supposed to dobutprotect the fair lady? Twenty boys, aged from nearly-fifteen Jacot to seven-year-old Herebin, made an unlikely set of sentries. But he wouldn’t have asked them if he didn’t mean it.
That was one more measure against anyone that might come to his valley, seeking to do harm.
***
Ophele’s week was off to a rocky start.
It was her own fault. In an excess of enthusiasm, she had asked Lady Verr, Leonin, and Tounot if there was anything she was doing that she ought not, thinking that they might naturally feel reticent to say so, as she was their duchess and Davi kept giving them death glares every time they told her to speak louder. But with the example of Lady Verr before her,Ophele couldn’t help feeling that there were many areas for improvement.
So she had asked, and they had told her.
As a matter of fact, she got the impression they had beenburstingto tell her.
They told her, and at her request, theykepttelling her, a nonstop stream of corrections from the moment she left the bedchamber in the morning until the moment she returned to it at night. Stand up straight. Please don’t look at the floor, or above my head, or at my nose. Don’t fidget, don’t slouch, don’t hunch your shoulders, and above all: please speak louder, my lady.
“Iam,”she said, loud and clear, when Leonin said he couldn’t hear her for the dozenth time in less than an hour. She was sure he stood at the far end of the solar on purpose. It was the first time she had ever snapped at any of them, and Leonin barely had time to lift his eyebrows before she was apologizing. “I’m sorry. I am trying.”
“You are, my lady,” Leonin agreed, and she tried not to notice that he exchanged a glance with Lady Verr. “Habits are very difficult to break.”
They were. It was hard, and draining, to have to think about how she was sitting and standing and moving every moment of every day, never mind the incredible amount oftalkingthey expected her to do. In Aldeburke, she had sometimes gone for days at a time without ever once uttering a single word.
