Chapter 3 – The Flower of the Andelin
A coded 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.
There were 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 considered how he 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 intensely aware of 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—when would they 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.
“Get his sword!” someone shouted behind him.
Remin twisted, but more hands seized him, dragging at his hands.
They were trying to take his sword from him and Remin reared up in instinctive rage, throwing off the weight of half a dozen men.
In him was a banked fury that never wholly died, terror at the thought of failure, disgrace, a defeat that would be worse than death.
“Stars blast it, get his knees!” another man behind him gritted, and a heavy boot slammed into the backs of his knees. His legs buckled and a dozen men hurled themselves at him at once, toppling him backward with an almighty crash of armor.
White plumes puffed from the visors of a dozen men.
“Are you done, Your Grace?” one of the men on his arms panted.
“Please be done,” said the man Remin had landed on, sounding rather smothered.
“We’re done,” Remin said, sitting up painfully. His whole body was one immense ache.
Even as he was dismissing his men, he could hear the cheers and excited conversation from the pages at the end of the yard.
Normally, the boys would be beneath his notice; the attention of one’s lord was not an honor lightly given.
But now that it was clear that Tresingale was not going to be wiped out by devils, a few far-sighted lords had sent their sons to be trained by the Knights of the Brede. Remin’s flock of pages was growing.
And he liked to know who was sworn to him, even if they were barely out of leading strings.
“Denin,” he said, beckoning one of Edemir’s boys. “Is there somewhere else you’re supposed to be?”
“Master Trezan sent us to help with cleaning armor, Your Grace,” Denin replied, a little fellow just going spotty with adolescence. He nodded to the men limping out of the practice yard. “Theirs is dirty.”
“I doubt he meant the armor currently in use,” Remin observed, amused. Cheeky little bastard. “When’s your next lesson?”
“Midafternoon, Your Grace,” said a blond boy, Gabrel or Gavrel. Suddenly, Remin was confronted with a sea of hopeful eyes.
“Go get your practice swords,” he said indulgently, the last word almost drowned by the shouts of excitement as the boys stampeded off to obey.
“I suppose someone ought to inform the armorer where his workers have gone,” said Tounot, as he and Juste approached together. Tounot had been supervising Remin’s attackers. “Are we giving them a lesson, Rem?”
“Might as well see how the new ones measure up,” Remin said, though all three of them knew it was as much a treat for them as the boys. They were already on their way back, tumbling all over each other and baying like hounds.
Remin put on a stern expression.
“All right, pair up, and don’t let me see you big fellows picking on the little ones. Give me two lines.”
The boys had sparred often enough to quickly pick partners and move into the yard, giving themselves room to swing their wooden practice swords.
Juste, who did not like small children, went to the end of the yard with the older boys, and Tounot obligingly took the nine, ten, and eleven year-olds to let Remin have the little ones.
There were four of those now, boys so young they were still losing their milk teeth. Little Valentin, who was one of Edemir’s pages and the pet of the barracks, offered a gap-toothed grin. Remin had always had a soft spot for the littlest lads.
Crouching down, he beckoned them over.
“Show me your grips,” he said, beginning with Valentin and working his way down, adjusting small fingers on the hilts of their swords. “Don’t squeeze, remember. Firm but not tight. Pretend it’s part of your arm. You can’t drop your arm, can you?”
“No, Your Grace,” said Valentin and Niccoliot together, echoed faintly by the new boys. They looked to be brothers, brown-haired and freckled, with light blue eyes.
“That’s right. That’s a good grip,” Remin said, patting the last boy’s head. “What’s your name?”
“Onsippe, my lord,” the boy piped, puffing up his small chest.
“All right, Onsippe, you’ll go against Niccoliot. Nicco, come here. Now, where are you not supposed to hit?”
“Not in the head,” said Nicco, who was one of Huber’s pages and had learned his lessons well. “And not in the balls.”