Natural Ordermage

LXXIII

For the next three days, Rahl, Talanyr, and Rhiobyn copied reports, slowly reducing the backlog piled on the copying table until, when Rahl arrived on fourday morning, there were only thirteen reports on the table-just those of the previous day.

In the evenings-those when he did not have desk duty keeping the logs and records for the duty mage-guard-he read both the manual and the short version of the Hamorian Codex. The abbreviated Codex, as Taryl had said, was mostly common sense. Mostly. There were several provisions that concerned him more than a little, particularly the one that restricted mages. He had read it several times, enough that he almost knew the words by heart.

…no Hamorian mage of any persuasion may engage in any venture involving commerce in goods, in coins, or in any other instrument of commerce….

Did the Hamorians really believe that mages could be that corrupt? Or was it just a way to assure that mages were all under the control of the Emperor? Or was it something else, as indicated in another section in the Manual, which gave commerce short shrift?

…the principal duty of a mage-guard is to maintain order and contain chaos, not to protect commerce or to side with one individual against another or one group against another. All will cite order as their cause, but order is not a cause, nor is chaos, and one must be maintained and the other contained against all those who would misuse them…

Then there was the section dealing with the military.

…any unregistered source or concentration of free chaos is forbidden within a quarter kay of any imperial military station, port, or vessel. If such a source cannot be immediately removed, its immediate destruction is required and authorized…

While that made sense, given what free chaos could do around various explosives, the idea that immediate destruction was authorized and required left Rahl with a cold feeling.

But…there were reports to copy, and he could not change the Codex. He reached for the first report on the stack.

“Did you actually read the Codex?” asked Rhiobyn, from his place at the middle of the copying table.

“Of course he did,” returned Talanyr humorously. “He didn’t have it read to him by tutors as a child. Some of us actually had to learn to do our own reading. By ourselves.”

“Sometimes, one wishes you had enjoyed a tutor, Talanyr. Then you wouldn’t sound like one, and you’d recognize how annoying it is.”

Rahl suppressed a smile and began to read the first report he had to copy.

He had finished four reports by early midmorning, when Thelsyn inspected what had been done. Shortly thereafter, Taryl stepped into the copying room. His eyes went from one clerk to the next. “Now that you clerks are generally caught up with the reports, we need to get on with your training. Talanyr, report to the duty desk for now. Rhiobyn, Mage-Guard Jaharyk will work with you. You know where to find him. Rahl…you come with me.”

Rahl cleaned his pen and replaced it in the open-topped box, then capped the inkwell. He was the last to rise, if not by much.

Taryl did not speak until the other two mage-clerks had left. “We’re going to see Khaill. He wants to test your weapons skills to see what sort of training you’ll need. He has to report on the ability of all mage-guards each season, just as I do for their order-skills.”

“You’re the head order mage-guard here, ser?”

“Effectively. There aren’t any titles here, except for Mage-Captain Wulmyrt. In the cities, most stations are headed by mage-captains, except for the largest, which have overcaptains. The districts are run by mage over-commanders, and they report to the Triad. I work with order-skills, and Jaharyk works with chaos-skills. We both know something about the other side, because some of the basics are similar and rooted in order. Now…go get your truncheon. I’ll wait for you by the duty desk.”

“Yes, ser.”

After his difficulties in Guasyra on eightday, Rahl was not looking forward to sparring or having his weapons skills tested, but there was no help for it, and he hurried to the juniors’ section of the west barracks wing of the mage-guard station. He returned quickly with the truncheon in place on his belt.

Taryl was beside the duty desk, talking to Talanyr, and Rahl stood back, listening.

“…most of the time, nothing happens. The logs and duty book go into a dusty file. If there’s trouble, and something goes wrong, though, the Mage-Guard Over-commander and the Triad demand all the records. If something’s wrong, or missing, you’ll end up at Highpoint station for the rest of your natural life, which will be far longer than you’d ever wish. Is that clear?”

Rahl didn’t hear what Talanyr said in reply.

“Good.” Taryl turned and motioned for Rahl to accompany him.

Rahl didn’t dare say anything, and Taryl didn’t volunteer anything, but Rahl did wonder what Talanyr had done to displease Taryl.

The exercise room was a long stone-walled room beyond the armory. The south side had three narrow windows, and there was a single small skylight. The floor was slightly roughened redstone, but a section of the northern end, perhaps ten cubits by fifteen, was covered in thick cloth mats.

A mage-guard was working there with two of the women guards on hand-to-hand tactics, but when he saw Taryl and Rahl, he said something to them and walked toward Taryl.

“Khaill, this is Rahl. I mentioned him to you.”

“You did.” Khaill resembled Magister Zastryl in bearing and in general size, but Khaill was older, with a worn and rugged countenance and fine limp brown hair. He was also stockier. He studied Rahl for several moments. “So…you’re an exile, a merchanting clerk, a loader, and now a mage-clerk?”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl met the mage-guard’s glance evenly, without challenge, but without looking away.

“You prefer the truncheon, I hear.”

“Yes, ser.”

Khaill walked to the side of the exercise room and returned with a truncheon similar to the one that Rahl bore. “I would like you only to defend against my attacks.”

With those words, he immediately jabbed his truncheon toward Rahl.

Rahl slid-parried and sidestepped, not wishing to give ground, then blocked the return strike, giving a half step, then moving forward to the left.

Khaill offered two quick thrusts in succession, and Rahl beat both aside, continuing to move, first to one side, then the other, not allowing the mage-guard to force him toward a wall.

After another series of engagements, Khaill was fractionally slower in recovering, and Rahl managed to step in and catch the other’s half guard with enough force to jerk Khaill forward slightly. Rahl did not take the opportunity to strike, but beat Khaill’s truncheon down almost to the floor, stepping on it for a moment, before dancing back, and then parrying the uppercutting strike

Khaill stepped up his attacks, but Rahl wove a defense effective enough that none of the mage-guard’s blows came close to striking other than Rahl’s truncheon.

After a time, Khaill stepped back. “That will do.”

Rahl also moved back and blotted the dampness off his forehead.

“You have only recovered a small fraction of your order-skills, Taryl says. Is that correct?”

“Yes, ser.”

The stocky arms-mage nodded. “Even so, your skills with the truncheon are more than adequate. Can you handle a falchiona?”

“I used to be able to…for a short time.”

“Pick one out.” Khaill gestured toward a rack set against the west wall. “Then put on one of the heavy jerseys.”

Rahl studied the blunt-edged weapons in the rack, hefted one, then another. Although all of them felt somehow wrong, he finally selected the one that felt the most balanced in his hand. Was that wrongness because he was regaining some slight ability to sense order and chaos? The heavy jersey he struggled into had thin plates set in what looked to be shimmersilk and stitched over a padded woolen tunic. He was sweating even more heavily by the time he walked back to where Khaill waited, holding a falchiona similar to the one Rahl had selected.

“I don’t want you to attack here, either. Just defend.”

Khaill’s weapon was clearly the blade, and Rahl felt far more awkward with the falchiona, but he managed to deflect most of the attacks, although Khaill did manage to strike the plates on his right shoulder twice. One would have been crippling in a real fight, although the other would only have been glancing.

The arms-mage stepped back. “Now, try to defend with the truncheon.”

Rahl fared far better using the truncheon against the falchiona, although it was shorter than a blade, but that sparring only went on for a short time before Khaill once more stepped back.

“Interesting.” Khaill nodded. “You can go, Rahl. I would like a few words with Taryl.”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl struggled out of the practice jersey/armor as quickly as he could and hurried from the exercise room.

Once outside the training chamber door, which he did not fully close, he slowed almost to a halt, listening and hoping to overhear what might be said.

“…if he didn’t have that hint of order all the way through,” said Khaill in a quiet voice, “I’d have said he’d been trained as a bravo.”

“In a way, he was…Recluce armsmasters, he said. He might do well in time, perhaps in a port city…”

“…don’t know where you find them, Taryl…”

“…where I can…where I must…there are never enough.”

Taryl’s words would have chilled Rahl…except that the conversation suggested that Rahl might have a future away from Luba.