10. Holding Back
Holding Back
The summons came before the dawn bell. A single sharp rap on our door woke me instantly, and I knew what it meant before I opened my eyes.
I dressed in darkness, pulling coarse wool over muscles that still ached from the day before.
My arms burned from holding the spear through all those demonstration forms. My legs protested from the extended horse stance I’d maintained while Lord Henrik watched and judged.
The others didn’t stir. Maise’s breathing stayed deep and even. Perrin remained curled tight into his blanket against the cold. Good. This lesson was mine alone.
◇ ◆ ◇
Rulfen waited in the Pale Yard. His cane tapped against frozen earth, marking time with each strike. Frost crunched beneath my boots, and my breath fogged white in the pre-dawn gray. The yard smelled of iron and old sweat, the accumulated residue of generations learning to kill.
“You’re late.”
“By thirty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds is all it takes to bleed out.” He pointed to the yard’s center with his cane. “Start with the spear forms. Everything you showed Lord Henrik yesterday. This time without an audience to impress.”
The practice spear settled into my grip. My body was young, but my hands remembered years of ashwood and iron from another life. The disconnect remained: a child’s frame wrapped around veteran knowledge that struggled to express itself through underdeveloped muscle.
“Begin.”
The spear moved through the cold air. I focused on eliminating wasted motion. Every thrust could rip open a gut or a throat. Every sweep could hamstring a horse. The movements rose from memory deeper than thought, from muscles that struggled to remember what this body had never learned.
“Better.” He grunted approval. “Again.”
Twenty repetitions became thirty. My shoulders burned and my tendons pulled tight, but the spear stayed true. Each form grew cleaner than the last as I leaned on technique even through exhaustion.
“Change the form. Defense pattern. Against cavalry.”
Memory hit me hard. I remembered screaming horses and mud thick with blood, the desperate hedge of spears against armored weight bearing down.
I shifted to a horizontal guard and delivered short thrusts toward the phantom chest of a horse, followed by an overhead arc for the rider who thought height meant safety.
The pattern flowed automatic and uninterrupted.
Then Rulfen’s cane cracked against my elbow.
Pain traveled up my arm, hot and immediate, clearing the ghosts from my vision.
“Stop fighting phantoms,” he snarled. “Fight what’s here.”
He was right. The past bled through and made me sloppy. I took a deep breath and let the cold wind fill my lungs, centering myself in this moment. I was a child of de Blaise, standing in this yard, living this life .
The next pattern came easier because memory didn’t interfere. I had only wood and will to guide me.
“Acceptable.” He drew his practice sword with a movement that stayed efficient despite his limp. “Now show me why Henrik shouldn’t feed you to the crows for wasting his time.”
Spear against sword. Distance meant life, but if I let him close the gap, I’d be holding nothing more than an expensive stick.
I kept him at reach, probing with quick jabs, making him pay for every step forward with bruised knuckles and scratched mail.
His first rush came fast, the blade sweeping in under my guard.
I gave ground, let the steel pass close enough to part fabric, and delivered a counter-thrust at center mass.
He parried.
Surprise flickered in his good eye.
“You’ve done this before.”
“Never.”
The word was true enough. I’d never done this in this body, with these short arms and weak shoulders. The knowledge ran deep in me from another life entirely.
“Liar.” The grin cracked his leather face. “Again.”
We fought through the morning mist. Thrust and parry.
Advance and retreat. When true dawn finally came, we were both breathing hard, white puffs of breath rising between us.
The sun crested the eastern wall, turning the frost to gold and the mist to pale fire.
The forms had finally settled into this body’s memory.
Years of spear work in my previous life, and I’d just earned the first real rank in this one.
“You’ll have sword drills in one hour,” Rulfen said, sheathing his blade. “Eat something. You’ll need it.”
◇ ◆ ◇
I dragged myself to the mess hall.
The hall held the usual morning noise among the older ones until I walked in. Conversations died mid-sentence. Forks paused halfway to mouths. Yesterday’s choosing ceremony had spread through the compound, and now everyone wanted to see the bastard who’d declared for two weapons.
I claimed my bowl of porridge and chunk of black bread.
The porridge was thick with barley and flecked with salt pork, steam rising in lazy curls.
The bread was dense and dark, the kind that stuck to your ribs and kept you moving through cold mornings.
I sat at our usual table. The bench stayed empty except for the space I occupied.
Maise appeared first, sliding her tray across worn wood. Her red hair was still tangled from sleep. “They’re wary of you now.”
“Smart of them.”
Perrin settled beside her, already tearing into his bread. “Kasimir’s telling everyone you’ll be dead before winter.”
“Kasimir talks too much.”
Grit arrived last, silent as always. He set down his bowl without comment.
The four of us ate while the rest of the hall watched from corners of their eyes.
The food had no taste today, but I forced it down. Fuel for what came next. My body needed every calorie it could get if I was going to survive dual training.
The other children kept their distance. That suited me fine. Respect meant space to work .
When the bell rang for sword practice, my right arm was already exhausted from the morning’s work.
Kasimir noticed immediately.
“Tired already, bastard?” His voice carried lazy cruelty, loud enough for anyone watching. “Yesterday was pretty words after all.”
During paired drills, he made sure to choose me. This was a performance for the gathered audience, and he thought it his chance to humiliate me. The other children formed a loose circle. They could tell someone was about to get hurt.
“Let me see this dual training you’re so proud of.”
His first strike was a blow aimed at my ribs, meant to crack bone and teach lessons. I caught it on my crossguard, and the impact rattled up arms that screamed exhaustion.
He followed with an overhead, then a thrust. Each attack was heavier than the last, testing how much punishment I could absorb.
“Slowing down,” he taunted, breathing hard from his own exertion. “All that stick-waving for nothing.”
I gave ground. Let him think he was winning.
Let him burn energy in flashy combinations while I cataloged his patterns.
He attacked in sets, took a breath, and reset.
That was the rhythm of someone who’d never been hit back properly, who’d learned technique in safety and never tested it against someone willing to hurt him.
His confidence built with my apparent weakness. His stance opened as he pressed his advantage. His next thrust came high and obvious, telegraphed by shifted weight and a dropped shoulder.
I didn’t parry.
I dropped, bending low and sliding under the arc.
As he overextended, committed to empty air, I rose into my counter.
A fist backed by sword pommel drove into soft meat below his ribs.
The blow was hard enough to bruise and hard enough to teach him something about overconfidence.
He staggered back, face flushing red above his collar.
The yard went quiet except for his wheeze.
The other children recognized the shift. The boy who’d been winning was suddenly the boy who couldn’t breathe.
“Can’t keep this up forever,” he gasped, trying to recover stance and dignity both.
You’ve no idea what I can keep up. I’d fought with my guts spilling into my hands in another life. Kasimir was a boy who’d never lost anything that mattered.
His next attack abandoned form for rage. He delivered an overhead chop that would split firewood. The strike was telegraphed and desperate, and it made him stupid.
I turned his blade aside with a flick of the wrist and stepped inside his guard while he was committed to the swing. A second pommel strike, harder this time, to floating ribs. The crack carried across the yard.
“Yield?”
He shook his head, stubborn beyond sense.
I could use that.
His final attack came weak and slow. I caught his blade on my crossguard and locked the steel, then twisted. His sword clattered across stones. The point of mine found his throat before the echoes faded.
He tried to push up against the blade. The point dug into the skin above his collar.
“Yield. ”
He kept rising.
My left fist caught his jaw clean, snapping his head sideways. He dropped hard and stayed down.
The yard stayed silent except for his labored breathing. The word came strangled, forced through pride that tasted like copper.
“Yield.”
I stepped back and lowered my blade. The yard stayed silent, children processing what they’d witnessed. Efficiency beating strength, even when the efficient one was half-dead from exhaustion. Patience outlasting passion. Caution mattering more than courage when steel decided outcomes.
Rulfen’s cane cracked against stone.
“Entertainment’s finished. Back to drills.”
The circle dissolved. Children returned to their partners with nervous glances. Kasimir retrieved his blade and refused to meet my eyes. He’d learned a lesson about testing someone he only thought was weak.
“Danarre. With me.”
Rulfen led me to the weapon racks, voice dropping low enough for privacy. “Tired fighters make mistakes. You didn’t. You waited for an opening.”
“He was predictable.”
“Because you made him predictable.” His scarred fingers tested a blade edge, checking for chips. “Clever technique. Or cruel calculation. Sometimes the same thing.”
“Victory matters. Method doesn’t.”
“Lord Henrik values that thinking.” He set the blade back. “His favor carries a price. ”
“What price?”
“Attention.” The word fell cold between us, heavy with unspoken warnings.
“Legitimate heirs don’t appreciate bastards getting private lessons.
Their fathers don’t like their sons training with wood while you measure for steel.
Politics kills more children than cullings ever managed. It’s even worse with the main line.”
The threat settled into my understanding. Accidents in the yard. Bad herbs in evening meals. Falls from high places when no one was watching.
“Why favor me at all? He has true-born sons.”
Rulfen’s weathered face shifted, expression closing off. He checked for listening ears, scanning empty corners before speaking.
“Your mother.”
I’d suspected as much. The firewood deliveries, the protection, the way he’d come barefoot through the nursery door. But suspicion and confirmation were different things.
“Clarissa was just another servant girl,” I said, testing the waters trying to find out more about the woman who bore me.
“No.” The word came fierce, with protective instinct bleeding through careful control.
“She wasn’t a servant, and she wasn’t just another girl.
Lord Henrik will never admit it openly. But those who’ve served long enough notice things.
They notice which name makes his voice catch.
They notice which unmarked grave gets winter visits when he thinks no one watches. ”
I’d known there was more between them than a lord taking his pleasure with a servant. The way he’d held me that night in the nursery, the grief behind his cold mask. Now Rulfen confirmed what I’d already guessed .
“Changes nothing,” I said.
“Changes how you understand it.” His eye drifted toward the main house, where legitimate children learned softer lessons. “It’s why you breathe, boy. Don’t waste the gift.”
He left me with that truth, walking away with his uneven gait. I stood among practice weapons, understanding the real price of yesterday’s ambition.
Exhaustion from double training, the physical toll of proving worth. Those were the obvious prices. The real cost ran deeper.
I was my father’s guilt given flesh, protected and endangered by the memory of a dead woman. The balance between favor and fatal attention could shift at any moment, and I stood on the narrowest part of the blade.
「The thread tightens. The vessel learns what it costs to be noticed.」
The next bell rang, calling us to more sword work. I lifted my blade with arms that shook from use.
Tomorrow would hurt worse. Every day forward would demand more than the last.
Survival was paid in blood and sweat. That was acceptable. Pain meant I was still moving forward, still breathing, still fighting for purchase in a world that wanted me dead.
The spear taught me distance. The sword taught me patience. Both would keep me alive long enough to matter.
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 821 | Age 6
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: de Blaise Estate, Pale Yard
「Knight of Swords」 — Stirring
「Emperor」 — Sleeping
「Magician」 — Sleepin g
Active Charge: Find the one who broke Hel’s claim.
A sword learns who holds it. Or the other way around.