The White Order

LIV

CERRYL SAT AT the table, looking blankly at the slate and the wedge of chalk beside it. The whole room smelled of chalk, unlike any of the other mages’ chambers he had been inside.

Standing at the other side of the ancient table was the heavyset Esaak, wearing flowing white robes of the older style, rather than the white tunic and trousers used by Sterol and Jeslek and all of the younger mages.

“Master scholar Cerryl. . might I have your attention?” Esaak’s jowls wobbled as he spoke, and his voice rumbled.

“Ser?”

“Have you read any of the book I left for you? Naturale Mathematicks, it is called, if you do not remember.”

“Only a few pages, ser.”

“Why not more, might I ask? Is the ancient and honored study of mathematicks beneath you?” Esaak half-turned, walking a few paces across the dusty floor.

“No, ser. I fear I am beneath it.”

“Such refreshing honesty.” The older mage’s words dripped irony. “You seek to disarm me with false modesty.” He coughed several times, with a rumbling deeper than even his bass voice.

Cerryl felt tongue-tied, feeling he was off on the wrong foot.

“Well?”

“No, ser. I can read and write, but my education has been limited to history mostly. The honored Jeslek has insisted that I read all of Colors of White and complete a large map within a short period of time. I have to do some anatomie drawings for the mage Broka. I read the first section of the Mathematicks, but much of it was so unfamiliar. .”

“Tell me what you thought you read. .”

Cerryl wanted to sigh.

“Go on. What was the first section about? Surely, surely, you can tell me what the words said?”

Why did all the mages ask questions rather than tell anything? It seemed to Cerryl almost as though he were being asked to teach them. He moistened his lips. “Ser. . the very beginning I understood. That was about the history of reckoning, where the first use of numbers were words like ‘yoke’ and ‘pair’ or ‘couple’-two things because we have two hands. Then, as people gathered more goods or crops, or lived in larger settlements, larger numbers were needed, and they came up with terms to count larger groups of things, like ‘score’ and ‘stone’. .”

“What is similar about the two?”

Cerryl looked as blank as he felt.

“They’re each a pair multiplied by ten,” snapped Esaak. “A stone is a pair of fists ten times over. A score is a couple of hunters ten times over. Go on.”

“Then the book started talking about something called partition enumeration. .”

“And when it got a little difficult. . you stopped reading?”

“No, ser. I kept reading. I understood the idea of dividing groups of things into groups of the same size and using symbols to represent larger numbers, like ten score, but when it started on how to scrive such numbers, and that you had to have a symbol for nothing. .”

“Why shouldn’t there be a number for nothing? Isn’t not having something as important to know as having something?”

That wasn’t exactly what Cerryl had meant. At least, it wasn’t what he thought he’d meant. “It is, ser. I meant. .”

“What did you mean? Mathematicks is precision, not vague statements about a few stone or score. How would you like it if a lancer scout told you that the force you faced was a bunch of scores of armsmen?”

“I’d want to know more.”

“And you should.” Esaak gave an even louder and more dramatic sigh, readjusting his robes as he did. “You know. . you’re all alike. All of you seem to think that what we teach you is because we owe you something.

“Oh. . the days, the years I have spent pounding and prying knowledge into empty-ordered heads. For what? So that you can go off and dash your brains out against some evil-hearted order magician from the black isle? So you can overload a ship and sink it in the sight of rough water?” Esaak exhaled noisily.

Cerryl waited, not knowing what to say, or even if he should attempt to say a word.

“You all can see the value of even learning to fire-scrub sewers, or to memorize every bone in the body the better to destroy it, or to make maps for the day when you will direct lancers in battle. . But what is behind it all? Mathematicks! Calculations! Numbers!”

Cerryl felt like slinking out by the time Esaak was through, although the older mage had said enough-eventually-that Cerryl could grasp the idea of a symbol of nothing as a place holder for calculations. It made sense, but, like too many things, no one had ever explained it.

There was one question that Esaak had raised and not really answered-what did all the mages do besides make life difficult for student mages? If Jeslek happened to be any example, they didn’t spend all that much time with students, just enough to set them on projects and complain about the results. They came and went, and so did many carriages and wagons, and Cerryl had overheard talk about various rulers, and soldiers, and even sewers. Jeslek had talked about governing but said that it wasn’t ruling but guiding, without ever defining what he meant.

Cerryl felt dazed. He had learned much already, but none of it really answered the question of what exactly the white mages did. Everyone talked around everything without describing it.

Slowly, he walked back to the common, then began to hurry as he realized he was due to meet Eliasar. He dropped the book on his cell desk and practically ran to the common.

The blocky mage rose from the corner table and looked toward the flustered Cerryl. “You can slow down. Where were you?”

“Esaak was tutoring me on mathematicks. .”

“Is he still using that stupid example about ‘a bunch of scores of lancers’?”

“He did use a phrase like that, ser.”

“Let’s get you out to the armory, boy, and I’ll tell you why it’s a stupid phrase.” Eliasar turned and marched toward the rear corridor.

Cerryl found himself nearly running to keep up with the quick steps of the battered-looking Eliasar.

“Old Esaak is right about one thing. Numbers and calculations are important, but in battle-ha! Who knows?” Eliasar stepped into the rear courtyard, striding past six mounted lancers without even looking at them.

Cerryl gave the mounts and their riders a slightly wider berth than the mage.

“Look-I need to know exactly how many horses I’m taking on an expedition to say, Spidlar. Spidlar’s as good an example as any. We’ll be fighting there before long, anyway, unless I miss my guess. How much feed does a mount require? How many mounts? How many days? So how much grain do I need? How many lancers? How many levies that we have to feed? How much can I count on from foraging? That’s the sort of things you need numbers for. Darkness, half the time in a fight, you can’t see how many, or where, or know if what you’ve got is even where it should be. And you don’t have time to use a glass, and even if you did, you probably couldn’t figure out what you saw quick enough to use it before it changed.”

Eliasar marched through an open doorway and into a long room filled, it seemed to Cerryl, with racks and racks of weapons. The white mage passed the line of white bronze lances, shimmering in their racks, and stopped in the rear before another set of racks, yanking out what appeared to be a padded shirt. “Put that on. Right over your tunic. Won’t be wearing it that long anyways.”

Cerryl pulled on the padded shirt.

“Now this.” Eliasar extended what appeared to be bronze body armor of some sort, a combination of breastplate and back plates and shoulder gauntlets or whatever they were called. “Over your head.”

The student mage struggled into the heavy bronze halfarmor.

“Remember this is white-bronze. Good steel is heavier.”

Heavier? Cerryl wasn’t sure he could have carried heavier armor.

“And this is only partial armor.” Eliasar picked up a long heavy blade and a pair of gauntlets and marched out, as if expecting Cerryl to follow. “You won’t wear this, probably not ever, but you’ll wear it today.”

The youth followed the older mage back out and across another courtyard, along yet another corridor and out into an empty practice yard where a heavy wooden post, more like a heavy slashed tree trunk, stood. Eliasar stopped a half-dozen cubits short of the post. “How do you feel?”

“It’s heavy,” admitted Cerryl.

Eliasar handed Cerryl a pair of bronze gauntlets. “Put them on.”

Cerryl pulled on the gauntlets, flexing his fingers. Surprisingly, the fingers of the metal gloves moved easily.

“Take this.” Eliasar extended the blade, then pointed to the wooden post. “Go ahead. Take a whack at it.”

Cerryl just looked. “I don’t know how.”

“Just lift the blade and chop.” Eliasar stepped back several paces.

Awkwardly, Cerryl lifted the blade and swung it. The white bronze bounced off the wood, and Cerryl staggered back a step, trying to keep his balance.

“Strike again.”

Cerryl levered the blade around, and his whole arm ached as the blade struck the post and rebounded.

“Do it again.”

With both hands on the big hilt, Cerryl forced another thudding blow to the post, followed by yet another, further numbing Cerryl’s arms.

“Keep at it!” demanded Eliasar.

When the arms mage finally allowed Cerryl to stop, the youth was drenched with sweat, and he could barely lift the blade to hand it back to Eliasar.

“It’s not so easy, is it?” asked the blocky mage, taking the gauntlets back as well.

“No, ser.”

“You barely swung that blade for a tenth part of a morn, and some battles last all day. Best remember that when you order armsmen to fight.” Eliasar turned, clearly expecting Cerryl to follow, leading him to yet another courtyard that Cerryl had no idea existed.

A line of straw dummies was set up before canvas hangings.

“Archery. There’s three sets of hangings. Easier on the shafts and heads that way.” Eliasar picked up a curved stave from somewhere, or so Cerryl thought. “Now. . here’s a bow. Here’s how you string it.” In a fluid motion that Cerryl could barely follow, the arms mage had the bow strung. “You try it.” As quickly as he had strung the weapon, Eliasar unstrung it and handed it to Cerryl.

Cerryl had to use his knee and most of his weight to even bend the bow, and scraped skin off the sides of two fingers in somehow stringing the weapon.

Eliasar took the bow, inspected it without words, then nocked an arrow and put a shaft through the left arm of the center straw figure. “Little off there.” A second shaft went through the middle of the figure’s chest. “Here you go.”

The first shaft popped off the string on the draw because Cerryl’s sweaty fingers lost their grip. He wiped them on his trousers and tried again. That shaft skidded along the sand in front of the targets. It took five attempts before a shaft even hit the hangings.

By then blood streaked the fingers of his right hand.

“That’s enough. Clear you’ve had no training in arms.” Eliasar took back the bow, unstrung it, and wiped it down with a cloth he produced from somewhere.

“You’ll never raise a blade-or a bow. So why do you suppose I made you do all this?” Eliasar grinned. “And you’ll do it a score or more times before you ever ride with the lancers.”

“So that I understand what lancers do?”

Eliasar smiled coldly. “So you don’t do something that kills them or you because you don’t understand. You don’t understand. You haven’t even started to understand.” The grin returned. “Least you can wear armor and move. Might be some hope for you.” Eliasar turned. “Let’s get that off you and get you back to the common.”

Cerryl forced his steps to match those of the older mage, although he found himself practically panting to keep up.

“Be another eight-day or two. Mayhap longer, if you get sewer duty, but I’ll see you again. Then we’ll be showing you how to ride proper-like. That’s something you will do, and we’ll make sure you know that.”

Cerryl had the feeling that Eliasar would, and that the mage enjoyed making life difficult for students.