8- A Band of Heroes

Connall ran to greet the riders as they entered.  He had finished all of the daily work that Frater Avrid had given him that morning, and had been lucky enough to slip away before the frater could assign him anything more.  He had planned to play in the creek for a bit, and then maybe sneak some bread into the dormitory and have a little nap.  Connall had started taking short naps during the day to keep his energy up, so that he could go to the garden at night.  He still held out hope that the sorcerer would come back there, and that he would get the chance to talk to him again.  But those plans had all been set aside when Connall saw the group of men approaching the Travelers’ Gate.

There were five of them, all on horseback.  Large, beautiful, healthy-looking horses.  They even had an extra horse with no rider, just carrying packs.  Most people would have used a mule or an ox for a task like that, but these travelers had given the job to a horse that was just as amazing as the ones they rode.  The men were even more impressive than their mounts.  They were big, strong-looking men with several days’ growth on their faces and hair that fell into their eyes and flapped in the wind as they rode.  They all wore thick leather armor that looked as if it had been repaired more than a few times, and a few of them even wore bits of ring mail here and there.  As Connall came closer, he saw that they all wore weapons, too– swords and daggers of all shapes and sizes.  One man even had a strange-looking axe strapped to his back, which Connall was fairly certain hadn’t been made for splitting firewood.

A few novices were rushing down the hill behind him, but Connall got to them first.  “Welcome to the Fraternary of Saint Covell!” he called out.

One of the travelers rode to the front of the group and leapt down from his horse, landing lightly on his feet, and flashed Connall a bright smile.  The others dismounted behind him.  This man was slightly thinner than the others, but a little taller, too, with honey-gold hair and sparkling green eyes.  “Good day to you, boy, and thank you,” he answered cheerfully, then he stooped down to Connall’s eye-level and ruffled Connall’s hair with one hand.  “I have some business with your pater.  I’m hoping you can take me to him?”

“Of course!” Connall replied.

At that point, the novices arrived, all out of breath from running.  “Our greetings to you,” one of them gasped, “Welcome to the Fraternary of Saint Covell.”  He looked around at the travelers, then added, “We’d be pleased to take your horses to our stables, where they will be well cared-for . . . and . . . um, w-we have a secure store-room where your . . . ah . . . armaments will be kept safe during your stay.”

One of the travelers, the big man with the axe on his back, began to grumble angrily, but stopped when the leader raised his hand.  “That will be much appreciated,” he said, turning his bright smile toward the novice who had spoken.  He made a show of removing his own sword-belt and handing it over, then he turned and clapped the axeman on the shoulder and added, “We all understand the rules here.  It’s not a problem.”

The large man looked at him for a moment, then sighed heavily and, grumbling under his breath, unstrapped the giant axe from his back and placed it in the arms of one of the novices, who dropped it immediately.  Connall was afraid that the man would be angry, but instead he laughed.  “Aren’t you Fraters supposed to work hard all day doing the Gods’ work?” he asked in a booming voice, “I thought you’d be stronger.”

The leader laughed with him.  “I guess the Gods’ work doesn’t include lifting heavy axes,” he quipped, then added, “Perhaps you can help them take it to their storage room?”  He turned back to Connall.  “Now, I believe this young man was going to take me to see your pater.”

He led the man to the sanctum, then to the small room off the side, where Pater Barthis had his office.  Connall tapped at the door.  “Pater Barthis?” he called out, “Are you in?  There’s a man here to see you.”

He heard some movement, and then the door opened.  The pater peered at the traveler for a moment, then smiled warmly.  “How may I help you, my son?”

The traveler grinned.  “Actually, I’ve come on the business of helping you, Pater.  May I come in?”

The two of them went into the office and closed the door, leaving Connall alone in the sanctum.  He didn’t bother listening at the door.  He’d tried to do that a few times before, and had never been able to make out any words through that thick wooden door and stone walls.  So instead, he skipped back to the travelers’ hostel, hoping to talk to the man’s companions.

Connall found them all standing outside the hostel, talking among themselves and waiting for their leader to return.  As he made his way toward them, one of the novices called out to him, and he stopped to see what he wanted.  “I don’t think those are the sort of travelers you want to talk to, Connall,” he warned.  “They seem dangerous.”

Connall rolled his eyes.  Just because a man carried a weapon while he was on the road, didn’t mean he was a bad person.  Good people carried weapons, too.  “They don’t seem all that bad to me,” he argued.

“No, I mean it,” the novice insisted, then whispered,  “I think they might be mercenaries.”

“What’s that?”

“Soldiers for hire.  They’ll fight and kill for anyone, just for money.”

Connall put his hands on his hips and stared at him.  “And what makes you so sure these guys are mercenaries?”

“Just a feeling I get from them,” he shrugged.  “I wouldn’t be alone with them, if I were you.”

So that was it.  He was just scared.  Connall thought about it for a minute.  No, their leader had said they had business with the pater.  Pater Barthis wouldn’t do business with bad people.  This novice only thought they were bad because they were armed.  “I’ll be careful,” he promised, then he skipped down toward the hostel.

“You, there!” one of the men shouted when Connall came near, “Weren’t you taking our friend to meet your pater?”

“Yes, sir,” Connall replied.

“Well, are they done, yet?”

“I don’t know,” he answered.  “They went into Pater Barthis’s office to talk.”

The man rolled his eyes.  “Allard is talking,” he said as he sat down on the ground.  “This could take hours.”

Another man laughed and sat with him.  “You get that fellow talking,” he explained, “and he never stops.”

Soon all four men were sitting on the ground outside the hostel, swapping jokes about their leader.  Some of them made Connall laugh, but most of them he didn’t really understand.

After a while, one of them looked at Connall.  “What about you, boy?” he asked, “You look a bit too young to be a novice.  Do you live here?”

“I do,” Connall replied.  “I was left here by some travelers when I was a fresh-born baby.”  He’d told this story so many times now, that he’d begun quoting this same explanation, word-for-word, every time.  “Been here ever since.”

“Now, that’s a sad tale,” said the big man who had carried the axe.

Connall stared at the man for a moment, then asked, “Are you mercenaries?”

This set all of them laughing again.  “What questions come from the mouths of children!” one of them exclaimed.

Another man leaned forward.  “I guess you could say we’re a sort of mercenary.  We do offer our services in exchange for payment.”

Connall’s eyes widened.  So the novice had been right, after all.  “Why?” he asked.

The axeman smiled at him.  “When you’re a soldier,” he explained, “you fight for whatever lord you’re born working for.  Whether you like him or not.  But men like us, we get to choose who we fight for.  If we don’t like a man, we don’t work for him.  And those we do like, they pay us in coin to do whatever needs doing, and then we go on our way.”  He sat back and looked around at his friends.  “It’s about freedom.”

“Oh.”  Connall thought about that.  That didn’t sound so bad.  Actually, it sounded like the perfect kind of life to him.  “So what are you going to do for Pater Barthis?”

A shorter man with a red-brown beard answered him.  “We’ve been going around to different sanctums and fraternaries.  We take a look around, inspect the defenses, then we help make them stronger, so little orphan boys like yourself can be safer inside these walls.”

“Oh, I’m sure the pater will like that,” Connall told them.  “And I know a few fraters and novices who would like that, too.”

The men laughed again, and this time Connall laughed with them.

But he was thinking about the sorcerer boy.  If these mercenaries made the fraternary walls bigger, would the sorcerer ever be able to come back again?

7- Acolyte

Soren woke to the sound of low voices.  He lay there with his eyes closed for a few more minutes, listening to them.  He couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but he thought he could recognize them.  Master Alred was one.  And there was Uncle Rudan’s deep voice.  And Elder Maebys was there too.  What were they all doing here?  He tried to clear the sleep fog from his mind and think, but his head was still full of the dream he’d been having.  He’d had so many strange dreams.

He opened his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows.  His uncle and the elder and the master all rushed to his side when they saw he was awake.  Soren looked up into Master Alred’s kind green eyes and asked, “What does ale taste like?”

His uncle laughed.  Master Alred suppressed a smile and exchanged a glance with Elder Maebys.  “Where did you hear about that?” the master asked him.

Soren frowned as he thought about that.  Where had he heard about it?  His people didn’t really drink ale, though he supposed he might have heard someone mention it after coming back from a trip or something.  But it had been in his dream.  He had smelled it.

Uncle Rudan sat down on the edge of Soren’s bed.  “What I’m more interested in,” he said, “is how you’re feeling.  Can you sit up?”

Soren blinked.  “The Binding!” he shouted.  Somehow he had almost forgotten about that.  Had it worked?  What had happened afterward?  How long had he been asleep?  He tossed his blanket aside and threw himself into a sitting position.  He looked at his uncle, then at Master Alred, then at Elder Maebys, trying to decide which question to ask first, and whom to ask.

But if it hadn’t worked . . .  Was he ready to hear that kind of news?  He watched the elder’s expression, trying to find some clue to prepare him for the answer before he asked.  But her face was the same as it always was.  Soren swallowed the fluttering heart that suddenly seemed to be trapped in his throat and took a deep breath.  “Am I . . . bound . . . ?” he asked her quietly.

Elder Maebys exchanged a glance with Master Alred.  “You are,” she replied, but something about the way she said it made Soren worry.

“But?” he asked.

The elder looked uncomfortable, or confused, or both.  “Well,” she said, “your Binding was . . .”

“Unusual,” Master Alred finished for her.

“But it worked!” his uncle put in cheerfully.  Too cheerfully.

Soren stared at the master.  “Tell me,” he insisted.

Uncle Rudan sat beside him, gently patting his shoulder while the master and the elder explained everything to him in turns.  Apparently his Binding had been a little different from what they had expected, and no one was quite certain what it would mean for him.  Normally, after the ritual was performed, an initiate would appear to glow with a soft light for a few moments, and they would feel a slight prickling and a warm heat that was slightly uncomfortable, but it only ever lasted for a minute or so, and then the newly-bound acolyte would be exhausted and would need to sleep through the next day.  But after Soren’s ritual was completed, his entire body had shone with a blinding whiteness for several minutes, and he had screamed and writhed in on the ground for almost an hour, oblivious to everyone’s efforts to help him, and then he had passed out and remained unconscious for nearly three days. 

“We can’t really be sure yet why this happened,” the elder told him.  “There are many opinions.  Some say that it was simply because the spirits had difficulty breaking through your fae-blessed body to bind your soul– which is nothing but speculation because no one really knows exactly how we become bound after our binding rituals.  Then there are those who think that it was some sort of punishment for asking to be bound when your parents were already bound before you.”  She paused a moment, then added, “And there are also a few who believe that it means your gifts will be more . . . potent than those of the other Covenant-bound.”  She smiled kindly at him.  “But we can’t be certain if it even means anything at all.  We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Soren knew what it was.  It was the curse.  It was the first taste of his life of misery.  The ill-luck that would follow him for the rest of his life, until an early death claimed him.  But he couldn’t tell them about that.  What would they think of him?

Master Alred clapped his hands together.  “Well I, for one, am eager find out!” he said.  “We’ll get you settled into my home today, and then tomorrow we’ll start your training!”

Soren grinned.  Of course.  He was an acolyte now, and Master Alred was his mentor.  He would live with the master and learn to use and control the gifts of the Covenant-bound until his mentor decided he was ready to move on.  Soren had been waiting all his life for this.  Curse or no curse, he planned to make the most of his time as an acolyte.

It took less than an hour to move Soren into Master Alred’s tent.  Soren’s uncle offered to let him bring along the bed that he’d always slept in, and Elder Maebys insisted that he wear his new acolyte’s clothes before he left his uncle’s tent.  It was a cloth jerkin in acolyte blue and a new pair of brown breeches.  Normally an acolyte’s mother would make a blue tunic or jerkin for wearing after the Binding, but since Soren’s mother had died and his uncle hadn’t yet taken a wife, the elder had been kind enough to find something suitable for him.  The jerkin had belonged to another acolyte who had grown too big for it, but it fit Soren well and was in good condition.  It had no sleeves, but Soren felt warmer than usual today anyway, so he didn’t bother wearing his old threadbare tunic under it.

After he was properly dressed and he and Master Alred had carried the small cot and mattress to the master’s tent, Soren felt like a real acolyte for the first time.  He felt the eyes of everyone he passed.  All of them stole glances at the fae-blessed boy in the blue acolyte’s clothes.  Soren Twice-Blessed, moving into the home of his mentor.  It felt good, and for once he enjoyed the attention.

The master had prepared a separate room in his tent, divided from the main part by a thin wooden partition and a cloth door.  That was where they placed Soren’s bed.  After they had everything set up, mentor and acolyte sat on the edge of the cot and shared a small loaf of bread.

“For today, I’ll let you rest and get your strength up,” the master told him, “but tomorrow, we’ll start your training.”

Soren grinned.  “I feel fine right now,” he said.  “Why wait until tomorrow?”

“Well, I’m glad you’re eager to begin,” Master Alred replied, “But your mentor hasn’t slept in three days.  I would like a rest.”