The King's Gauntlet

Boarding Party

I crept up higher in the rigging, breathing in the sea air and taking in the sights and sounds around me. Three months of Gauntlet training had given me calluses and muscles in places I'd never had before. We were on a three-masted ship-of-the-line, one of Castle Ambry's naval vessels named the Indomitable and given the rather audacious task of patrolling the Inland Sea for smugglers.

It wasn't nearly enough.

Before we set sail, Captain Menalus had mentioned that they were down to investigating every seventh ship sighted off the coast. Vandros had volunteered a dozen Gauntlet candidates for this work, and I was thrilled to be selected. Already I'd seen about twenty candidates withdraw. Some had been dramatic—toppling from the obstacle course and breaking a leg, coughing blood after hand-to-hand instruction—while others had simply disappeared.

A Rosvene language class dwindling from eight to five students.

A half-remembered face, never to be seen again.

Yet it wasn't as though they might fade away forever. It was as likely as not that a former candidate might be spotted in the marketplace, blushing perhaps, clad in a squire's garb and trailing a knight in gleaming mail. There was no shame in quitting, as the instructors emphasized, with there being many ways to serve the throne—but I can't say that we ever really believed it. I, for one, took enormous pride in remaining among those training at Castle Ambry.

"Sails at full!" the Captain barked from below. We had been floating calmly off the shore, drifting with the tides, but with the seventh vessel sighted the crew scattered about to stretch every sail possible in the rigging. I'd received some basic training in seamanship along with the other candidates, but the last time anyone had tried to help Captain Menalus had barked for us to remain in the rigging.

So I stayed in place, swaying on the ropes as the Indomitable picked up speed.

The merchant vessel we were tracking was remarkable only for its lack of distinguishing features. A squat tub flying the flag of the distant Pomeriate Confederation, this unlucky vessel was hugging the coast, only now rounding Cape Spinathra. They'd see us now—a patrol vessel streaming in with the wind to our backs, with forty cannon belowdecks—and most ships would shrivel up by now, weighing anchor and heaving to in a rush to demonstrate compliance. It had happened the previous four times I'd been assigned this duty, as if an unwary street cat found themselves face to face with a pit bull.

Yet this time was different.

"Ohoh, how about this!"

The remark came from Iseldin, a scrappy short-haired woman seated precariously on the mast rigging a few spans away. She gazed at the ship with bright green eyes as it turned away from the shore. Other Gauntlet candidates crouched in the rigging like resting birds of prey, and their excitement was palpable as the merchant vessel began to flee. Below us the Captain frowned, stepping up to the prow and shouting for the merchantman to stop.

It did not.

There is nothing particularly exciting about a stern chase. The initial thrill soon wears off, and then you're straining to tell whether or not you're even making progress. The Indomitable was a tough old craft, but not the fast one around, and even with the sails stretched out it wallowed in the wake of the merchant ship. Yet, by and by, the vessel we chased came just that little bit closer.

"It'll be hours yet," Iseldin mused.

"Apples, anyone?"

I turned to see Harold making his way up the rigging, moving at a steady, agile speed. He'd shone himself to be surprisingly resilient, outlasting a number of other Gauntlet candidates in both physical and academic subjects. When it was clear a subject stumped him—which was often—he would ponder it with a level of patient deliberation that I'd never seen in someone our age. He smiled now, pausing at the top with two apples clutched in his grip.