บท 80: Are We Going Back?
There was only one person waiting for them at the docks.
Boone glanced at the person who was allegedly a sword-master. He'd heard from Vesen's sister of the person willing to teach orphanage children the sword, but he didn't think the person to be the same age as him.
He'd been skeptical of Sedni's claims but her friend Muriel, who Boone knew was aiming to volunteer for the yearly recruitment the moment she was fifteen, had talked of her teacher with stars of admiration in her eyes.
Seeing the age of this teacher, Boone was even more doubtful.
The only reason he had not left yet, was the fact that the one who called himself Defi did not brag about his prowess or induce them to be his students with promises of strength or fame or fortune.
He simply told them he wanted them to commit, and that to learn the basics of the halberd and sword would take one year.
Willing to trade sword lessons with farm work?
That was too suspicious. What was this, the beginning of some adventure story?
He had seen a swordmaster to a merchant's son once. His father was still alive and took Boone traveling south to visit relatives in Tonblad, paying passage with a trade caravan going the same way.
He'd seen the so called swordmaster strut and order the guards about, had seen the back of the fine silk-lined wool cloth fluttering as its owner spurred his horse down the road to leave the caravan to bandits.
Boone had never forgotten. They'd been lucky the bandits were only interested in ransom.
He glanced to the side. When there was only one person who returned of the prospective students who left, the one called Defi had the same expression of unreadable cordiality as before.
He did not appear to be disappointed that the others did not appear.
"You are?" asked the alleged sword teacher.
"I'm Mally, Malaury if you want me to call you 'mother'," said the person waiting, smiling brightly. He gave a few rond coins to Defi. "Mureil's a friend from school. I got three boats but a girl took one and went ahead."
"Who's a friend, you?" Sedni's friend Mureil burst out. There was aggravation in both her tone and stance. Sedni looked exasperated.
The boy called Mally smirked, ran a hand through his hair, all the cockiness of a fourteen-year old. "Who wouldn't become friends with me, lovely?"
He was the grandson of one of the councilors, Boone now remembered. One of the brats Vesen complained about hanging over his little sister.
Mureil turned to Defi. "If there was a girl, she probably left because of him."
"Oi!" Mally sniffed. "She did not. Some people are just rude. I was in the middle of talking abou--"
Mureil interrupted. "She definitely did."
Defi only laughed briefly. "Let's go then."
Boone watched two of the orphanage kids help secure the cask of wine in what he supposed was the other's scow, seeing as it was already half-laden with wooden tubs and packages, before he jumped onto one of the hired boats and took up the pole.
Twelve people clambered into the three scows and they were off.
"Wait!" There came a faint call, breathless, from the dockside. "I'm coming too!"
Boone, whose scow had some space because it held most of the smaller people, stopped himself from pushing off the pier. A tiny body flung itself into the boat, threw up its arms, and grinned at Boone.
"I made it!"
Boone laughed at the boy's antics and only hoped this sword-teacher was the real thing, if only not to disappoint that face that was full of hope and cheerfulness.
He braced the pole against the pier and pushed off. The two others scows were ahead. His back twinged in pain. Boone ignored it.
An injury to his back and shoulder had caused the dockboss to free Boone of responsibility for this day and the day after, and he'd decided to see this sword-master was the real thing.
He didn't want to admit it, but he was nearly desperate. He was eighteen, at the age where people were starting to look for spouses. Most of the more fortunate people would be advancing in their various trades by now, but not him.
He was a dockworker. The only advancement available was to work until one of the dockbosses retired and there was a spot to fill, or join a fishing crew and rise in ranks to someday own a fishing boat himself.
The problem was that Boone became seasick during prolonged periods over deep water. For fisher-crews who sometimes stayed for days on the lake, Boone was not a desirable crewmember.
He did not want to be a dockworker forever.
His mother was pregnant. His teeth ground together at the remembrance of the fact, and he forcibly dug the pole into the river bottom, trying to relax himself. His father had died seven years ago, leaving them with his younger brother just birthed.
He'd understand if his mother married again, but she did not.
Boone's current wage of thirty ronds a day as a dockworker was barely sufficient to feed his mother and younger brother. Much of the daily costs were borne by his sister and brother-in-law.
Ilma was a dockworker as well, and her husband was crew on a fishing boat called the Gasperone. It was one of the fisher guild's ships, so even if advancement was slow, the work was steady.
Even with the nine klaud that was the weekly wage of a fisher, his brother-in-law could not support his wife's mother, youngest brother and a baby, in addition to his own family.
Boone's sister and her husband had been planning to have a child in the most auspicious year after their marriage. It would be bad luck to miss that year, which was the year after next.
By then, Boone hoped to have established himself in a profession that had options for advancement. The military was that path, the only path open. As a poor dockside brat, he had no other prospects than that.
The military was a steady source of income, in any case. The conflict in the Jebrimean peninsula had been sparked again and again for the last forty years, and likely will do the same for the next forty. The soldier pay had been raised again, to eleven klaud fifty a week.
If he passed the recruitment process and assigned directly to a company without being sent to the training camps, the amount should be enough to lessen the burden on his sister's shoulders.
If he died as a soldier on a long-term contract, the army would give two year's pay to the soldier's family as bereavement compensation.
If he knew how to wield a sword, he would have a greater chance to be promoted to sergeant, with a pay of fourteen klaud a week. Maybe he would be able to gain his younger brother an apprenticeship, with a bit of saving up.
He had never been more than average at school, so he knew had no chance of gaining an officer position higher than sergeant. The next rank, the vice-captaincy, was given to soldiers who could pass an examination. In other words, the higher ranks were limited to those of wealth who could afford better education.
A sword teacher for anyone wishing to enter the military was a godsend, if said teacher really could teach.
He glanced at Vesen.
His friend had been orphaned just a year ago, his mother was swept off the deck of the Sea Wisp in a bad summer storm. Vesen had not recovered yet despite the cheerful façade he kept up for Sedni, his younger sister.
He'd been surprised when Vesen accompanied him, his friend had stirred in interest for the first time in months.
Boone was hopeful, but realistic.
He'd heard of the current owner of the Garge homestead, of course. The docks were buzzing about the giant slimes for months. Newcomers were always fodder for fresh gossip, and if you knew where to look there was a lot of gossip about Defi of the Garge homestead.
The slime farmer was said to have buried smugglers and decimated a line of troops with the swing of a blade, in other talks he was the relative of a cooking sage who was hidden for his own good, in others a liar who forced Leraine and Kern to hand over their land for peanuts, in yet others a summoner who was too weak to summon more than a slime, or some drifter who would leave sooner or later anyway.
Boone eyed the loose linen trousers, tucked into soft leather boots, and the fitted wool coat. His skin was kissed a light bronze by the sun, and his hair and eyes were dark.
He looked innocuous, the average common citizen of the empire.
Which of the rumors would he believe?
He listened to the boy the same age as him who professed to teach them weapons talk with the others, easily maintaining a conversation with multiple people even if there was sometimes shouting across the water when the distances between the boats increased.
The other acted like an old man, Boone realized, his choices of phrase sometimes slightly old-fashioned. His composed and quietly sociable demeanor despite Vesen and Mally's almost rude questions did not help the impression.
It was for some reason reassuring.
Boone decided to watch until he was certain of the other.
If this Defi was a fraud, well, the docks had hardened his fists.
*
"You!" cried Josel, anger growing on her features upon recognizing the girl waiting for them on the docks.
The girl peered at her, looking slightly horrified. "Chelua damn me. The years haven't changed you at all."
"It's been less than a year," growled Josel as she leaped off the scow and caught the line thrown at her. "What are you doing here, Cote?"
"Same thing as you, I imagine," responded the other with a look of sudden distaste.
Josel laughed. "No, really."
"If you don't believe the answer, why ask?"
"The lady of the town school, wanting to learn the sword? The sun rose in the west this morning."
Boone eyed Defi, who was ignoring the spat.
"Not going to stop them?"
"I've learned that in situations like this, it's best to leave women to their entertainment."
Boone smirked. "Weak."
Defi's lips curled slightly, and Boone felt a shiver at the sight of the faint smile.
*
An hour later, Boone was leaning against a tree in the homestead with twelve others, groaning as muscles he did not know existed protested the exercise he had put them through.
Defi distributed cups of water, looking as fresh as morning dew.
Boone glared at him as he tossed back the water and held out the cup for a refill. "What did you just have us do?"
"An exercise to increase the flexibility of the muscles and joints, and to teach the vitality of the body how to move when in battle. It's needed before everyone touches the practice weapons."
"What? You can't move vitality, it's just there."
"But Shade can be controlled."
"That's different."
"Why? Shade is part of the power of the body, and nothing I've read says it's separate from vitality. Therefore, you might say that Shade is just the excess vitality that people don't need for the functioning of the body."
Boone had an epiphany. It sounded the same as what the teachers in school said, he'd just never heard it put that way. Or did they? Tsk, he'd stopped school four years ago. He might misremember.
He sipped his water, thoughtful. Refining control of Shade gave a person access to Shade-abilities. His Shade was Red Flame. It was the most numerous Shade according to statistics, the next being Orange Earth, then Yellow Sunlight.
The Shade-ability of Red Flame was body-heat control, which was useful in winter and summer but not much else.
Boone only got control of that this last spring. He spent the summer in delight, being able to cool his body down slightly when under the hot sun.
Did Defi mean that in one year, everyone here would be able to refine control of their Shade to use it in battle? That would be impossible, right? The two youngest brats in the group were eleven years old.
If Shade-abilities were manifested at the age of twelve, the town would support whoever prodigy that was in applying to a scholarium in Ecthys or an apprenticeship to one of the major guilds.
But now that his muscles were cooling down, he could feel…was his Shade just a bit more responsive?
Impossible.
He was hallucinating.
"Should you be telling people about the vitality thing?" He murmured the question, just in case.
There was a flicker of something in Defi's eyes, and the other inclined his head. "It's common knowledge in certain circles."
Huh, that meant the toffs and the money men keeping things from the commoners didn't it? Typical. Boone pushed off the tree. "Well, I'm good. What's next?"
Defi smiled, dropped Boone's cup along with the ladle into the rope-handled barrel of water, then turned to the others. "As everyone's rested, twelve and under will be picking starcherries, the rest will be digging holes."
Apart from the two boys aged eleven, there were four twelve year olds from the orphanage. Boone watched as Defi assigned two of them apiece to a large basket, distributed digging tools to the rest of them and then started to lead them west.
He studied the old spade in his hands, the metal head on it nearly half-gone with keeping the edge sharp. "This thing's older than the mayor."
Vesen, beside him, swung an equally old pick over his shoulder. "What a refreshing morning!"
"Hm." Boone looked up that the sun still climbing the sky. It was a past midmorning already.
They came across a patch of slightly sloping countryside already marked with sticks delineating the size of the holes and the distance from each other. The markers spread wide over the mounds and hillocks. How many holes were needed? Boone wondered. A hundred? Two?
Was this Defi attempting to exploit their labor for this?
But then he wouldn't have looked so earnest in teaching what he called flexibility exercises.
"Well, that doesn't look refreshing at all," Vesen groaned, looking at the sea of markers sticking up out of the ground.
Eight people of thirteen years to eighteen, digging in various degrees of enthusiasm, only managed to finish five holes in an hour.
"What in Chel are you burying?" Mally was looking miserably at his hands, which were threatening to blister once they finished.
"Trees," came the imperturbable answer.
Josel glanced at him. "You're growing fruit?"
Defi shook his head. "I'm raising slimes. The trees are for slime food."
"Are you crazy?"
"Not at all."
Boone felt the other was a little crazy, just the same. Who raised slimes? He watched as Defi ran them through the flexibility exercises once again, after they washed and put away the tools.
"You need to do this every morning. Once you memorize the forms well enough that you can do the entire series on your own, we'll start on halberds."
"Not swords?"
"The halberd is the main weapon of the Imperial army. Even officers carry one, or some other kind of pole-arm. Learning the halberd is more beneficial to those entering the military. The style I'm teaching can be used with staves, for those who do not wish to join the army. The sword will come later."
Boone helped carry food to the workers, and watched as the men and women working on the slime pen welcomed Defi enthusiastically.
Or maybe it was just the wine…
Later, poling one of three scows full of tired children back down river, Vesen nudged his own scow closer to Boone's. "So? Are we going back?"
Josel glanced at them, having chosen Boone's scow because it was furthest from the one with the girl named Cote.
Boone gathered his thoughts.
He was slightly jealous, he decided, that someone his age could seem so confident in their life, so calm in walking toward the future.
He'd watched the other and it did not seem that he was perpetrating a fraud. Defi had watched them struggle through the exercises, walking through the group, making corrections and small encouragements. Watched them so closely during the hole-digging that Boone was half-certain it was part of the teaching as well.
The builders had welcomed him with laughter, and they had been interacting with him for nearly a month now.
Defi had fed them as well, a good mid-day meal before farewelling them. He had noted the jugs of vital milk the other had bought for whoever returned that had not accompanied them to the tavern.
Boone decided that Defi did not appear to be a bad person.
He was sincere, Boone realized, in his teaching.
That was not something that a person who would cheat students would do. He might have other motives, but he taught purely.
Boone was still not completely certain. But if 'are they going to return' was the only question, then his gut had an answer.
"Yes. We're going back."
It would be a good thing.
**
Chapter End
**
Disclaimer:
The thoughts of the characters are not necessarily the beliefs of the author.
Notes:
The Ascharonians believe that there is an auspicious year after marriage that would bring good luck to their first child. To miss that year would be unfortunate for their firstborn.
Clossur – an old Abrechal term for vinyard.
Zamen – in the language native to the far west of Ascharon, means a 'noble domain'. The same term in Ascharonian is 'demesne'.
[Curiously, the value of the Ascharonian bronze coin, the klaud, in the year D678, to my thoughts, is fairly similar to the value of the coin named 'shilling' of the Earthen nation England in the year 1750. However, considering the differences in the growth of worlds, I expect the similarity to diverge sooner or later. – from the journal of the Magician of Dimensions.]
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