Valdemar 06 - [Exile 01] - Exile’s Honor (17 page)

:Yes,:
Kantor replied, simply.

:Then I understand.:
The Night-demons did not leave very much to bury; often it was only enough to tell whether the victim had been male or female, and sometimes not even that much.
:I hope that Taver will not be too hard on him. Shall we go back to the salle?:

:You do have the first class in the morning,:
Kantor reminded him,
:I believe it would be wise.:
Then, very quietly,
:You are a man of much honor, Chosen.:

Alberich started. Then, slowly, smiled.

“I hope I may be,” he said after a moment, “I only hope I may be.”

A
LBERICH contemplated a substantial pile of books waiting beside his chair in the sitting room with a sigh. If he'd seen half that number of books in the past several years, he'd have been very much surprised. Lessons.
Classes!
At
his
age—

Still, only a fool wishes to stop learning.
And he needed these classes if he was going to understand these Valdemarans.

He had two of these classes (not three!) for now, both of which entailed an enormous amount of reading. In the interests of preserving his authority as Dethor's Second, however, he was not having his classes, his lessons, with the rest of the Trainees. That idea had been suggested and discarded within two days of being officially appointed and functioning as the Weaponsmaster's Second—-four days after actually accepting the job. Dethor had been the one insisting on some alternate form of tutoring, though; Alberich hadn't had anything to do with that particular decision. Not that he'd been particularly enamored of squeezing himself into a desk beside a lot of children. It wasn't just that it was undignified, it was that he needed to impress those same children with his authority, and he wasn't going to do
that
if he was bumbling through classes as one of their “peers.” Evidently Dethor felt exactly the same, and had gotten rather testy about it.

In fact, he hadn't even
seen
the Collegium yet. All of his time had been spent in or around the salle; when he wasn't kicking youngsters into shape, he was catching up on the thousand and one little things that Dethor hadn't been able to get to for the past few years since the bone-aches got into his hands. He tried, Sunlord knew, but he had to do things slowly and the work built up faster than he could do it. And often enough, he couldn't do it at all.

There was a shed full of practice armor and real armor discarded by the Guard and Heralds that needed only a bit of mending to be useful again. Shoulder plates and elbow and knee protection just needed broken leather straps or the padding replaced, the bit of chain lying about could be repaired with a few new rings and some patient weaving. Practice armor of leather and canvas generally had to have the same treatment, or tears mended. It took a little bit of skill and strong fingers, nothing more.

Then there were practice weapons in need of mending, and archery targets to be salvaged. The things that got mended soonest tended to be in the sizes that everyone could use, which left children who were smaller, taller, or thinner than the usual struggling with poorly fitting armor.
He
was fixing the odd-sized items first, and had the satisfaction of seeing at least two of his smallest pupils looking comfortable in practice.

In the shed he had also uncovered two or three crates of oddments. The oddments were very odd indeed and, unlike the things needing mending, had been packed carefully away. Alberich hadn't had a chance to do more than look into the crates, but it almost appeared as if the Weaponsmasters of the past had been collecting and storing anything that ever came into their hands that
might
have been a weapon, on the chance that someday, someone might be able to add it to the weaponry lessons.

Now, Alberich just might be that someone, for Weaponsmaster Aksel had learned a great many strange forms of weaponswork over the years, and had passed it all on to Alberich—at least in the form of knowing what a particular piece was
for
and how it was handled, if not in expertise. He wanted very badly to go delving into those chests . . . but the Collegium had other ideas for his so-called “free time.”

Those lessons, for instance. The first of which was History; not only of Valdemar, which he had expected, but also some of the history of their neighbors. It was a good thing that the understanding of the written language had come part and parcel with the spoken word, or he
would
have been floundering. Though how something that looked like a horse could come to know how to read—or have any reason to—was beyond him. At the moment, he wasn't asking many questions of his world; he was just taking things at face value and trying not to think too hard about them. It wasn't that he didn't want the answers, it was that the answers only led to more questions, and
those
to more in their turn. He needed to budget his time carefully; he needed to concentrate his mind (and his questions) on the matters at hand.

His History tutor was yet another Herald, a little bird of a man called Elcarth, who had probably read more books in the past year than Alberich and any two other Karsite officers combined had seen in their lives. He did have a knack with history, though, being able to get at the story behind the history—and breezing right past the things that didn't have a lot of relevance to what was going on in the world at the moment. He'd concentrated on the Founding of Valdemar in regard to Baron Valdemar's issues with the Great Empire and his decision to flee with his people, then skipped over all the years between settling and the coming of the Companions with a dismissive “hardship, suffering, sacrifice, the usual sort of tales of our heroic ancestors that you'd expect to see, and you can read about it all later.” Then, stopped on the tale of how Valdemar had prayed to
all
gods for help in ensuring that his Kingdom was well led after his death. The answer had taken the form of the Companions . . . which had given Alberich a double shock, for Elcarth had unearthed a dusty account of the event, too tattered and ancient to have been created just for Alberich's benefit. If it didn't date all the way back to King Valdemar, it was old enough to have been copied directly from a document of that time. And in that account was the supposed litany of all of the gods that Valdemar had prayed to. One of them had been Vkandis Sunlord. . . .

Which implied that either Valdemar had been familiar with Alberich's God, or the author of the account had been. Now, in either case, the further implication was that Vkandis would be favorably inclined to Valdemar and her King. Oh, there were a lot more implications than just that one, but that single suggestion was enough to undermine everything
he
had thought of as “history.”

But Alberich wasn't allowed to dwell on that, for Elcarth had accelerated past the rest of Valdemar's reign, and that of the next few of his descendants with “there are a great many legends, songs, and tales, and you can look into them at your leisure,” settling into the point where Valdemarans first encountered folk who were as strong or stronger than they were, who were self-sufficient and self-governing, and had no interest in uniting with them. Up until that point, as they expanded their borders, all they had come in contact with were small and isolated settlements that were perfectly happy to have the protection of the Kingdom of Valdemar, or “countries” (more like “counties,” seeing that some of them could have been crossed in a day) that were willing to ally, and later be absorbed by, the greater nation. It was the Kingdom of Hardorn that they initially contacted, in a cautious probe back in the direction from which they had come, and that was the chapter that Alberich was dealing with now.

The other class was concerned with the government of Valdemar and how it worked; a good bit drier, this was. He'd been given the books yesterday by Elcarth, with instructions to read the first twenty pages or so. Apparently, his tutor would turn up this afternoon when Dethor would be instructing the youngest of the Trainees in their first lessons in edged weapons.

He'd read the first twenty pages as he'd been told and found it all rather . . . different. A complete contrast with Karse, which was ruled by the Son of the Sun who was in turn selected from the priesthood by the Sunlord Himself.

Supposedly.
Alberich
had never been near the Great Temple himself, never seen any of the Priests of the upper hierarchies or their ilk, nor had anyone he had ever met. Not bloody likely he ever would have either; the common folk were not supposed to trouble themselves about such things. Writ and Rule said that the Son of the Sun was selected by the Sunlord, and that was the extent of his personal knowledge. He had suspicions, of course, that the Sunlord had as much to do with the selection of His highest representative in Karse as He did in selecting Dethor's favorite hat. When had there last been a Son of the Sun selected from the village priests, for instance? They all seemed to come from among the high-ranking lot that never stirred out of Sunhame and were ever-increasingly out of touch with what was going on among the common people.

Karse actually had a king, but the position was purely symbolic, and had been for centuries. King Ortrech largely presided over a court concerned with the social functions of the old nobility and moneyed classes; the Sunpriests made all the real decisions insofar as the actual running of Karse. The King merely ratified what the priests decided, and occasionally the priests would in turn implement some small thing that the King wanted, such as the creation of a new title or the granting of property to make a court noble into a landed one.

This, of course, was probably one of the causes of strife between the two lands—that Valdemar was ruled by a purely secular figure, and Karse by (supposedly) a divinely-guided one. Alberich wished that he was far enough along in the History classes to see what had happened when the Borders of Karse and Valdemar first met. Had
that
been the primal cause of the enmity? Or had it been something else?

The first few pages of the text on Valdemaran law and government had been perfectly straightforward. But then, toward the end of the assigned segment, he encountered a passage that left him blinking.

The text had gone on to describe how such a selection was made, based less upon the degree of consanguinity than of ability. Most of that had seemed irrelevant to Alberich—until he came to the part that said
“. . . and the vote of the Heraldic Circle as a bloc in the election of a new Monarch—provided that the candidate is at least a Trainee, if not a full Herald—comprises one third of the total, with that of the Council comprising two thirds.”

Ordinary Heralds got a one-third vote in the selection of a King? That was tantamount to the officers of the Sunsguard having a say in the selection of the Son of the Sun!

He didn't know quite what to think about that. There was no question, however, that the Heralds had as much to do with creating the laws and government as they did in disseminating and dispensing it.

The morning classes kept him too busy to worry about all that, however, and by the time his putative tutor showed up, theoretical questions about the government of Valdemar had been pushed so far to the back of his mind that they didn't impinge on his thoughts in the least.

Then, when he saw his “tutor,” the question foremost was if someone at the Collegium intended to mock him.

The “tutor” was a young woman in student Grays, slim and blonde, with a determined jaw and blue-gray eyes that considered him thoughtfully. He recognized her from the advanced weaponry class held at the very end of the day, although Dethor had never yet assigned Alberich to work directly with her.

“You might not remember me from the afternoon classes, Alberich,” the girl said, in a matter-of-fact manner, as she held out her hand. “I'm Selenay.”

“My tutor you are?” he replied, clasping her hand briefly. He didn't bother to hide the doubt in his voice.

She laughed, which surprised him a little. “Unlikely, I know, but the powers that be intend for you to get a practical exposure to how things are done in Valdemar, and they decided that we might as well—as the saying here goes—shoot two ducks with one arrow. You see, I'm the Heir.
Princess
Selenay. And every other afternoon, I serve in the City Courts. No one likes me being there without a bodyguard, and with
you
as my bodyguard, you can observe—as Elcarth put it—‘government in action.' Anything you don't understand, I can explain, or Kantor can. Meanwhile, your presence will make the Council less nervous about my being there in the first place.”

Alberich controlled his expression, and managed not to splutter. “At your side, the presence of the
Karsite
less nervous will make them?”

“But they won't know it's the Karsite who's my bodyguard,” she replied, with a bare hint of irony. “Who I pick—with the senior Collegium staff's recommendations, of course—to act as my bodyguard is
entirely
the Collegium's business, not the Council's. All they will know, unless one of them decides to observe me, is that I've got someone in Grays to keep a weather-eye on my safety. They'll rightly assume that since Dethor must have had a hand in picking him, my escort will be quite competent. Oh, eventually they'll find out, you can't keep anything like that a secret, but by that time it will be so long established that objecting to my choice would make them look like idiots.”