Prince of Time

Chapter Five - Armed

Maple rose with the bell as she had done for years now, dressing in forest brown from head to toe. The clothes were soft and light, like a second skin. They were her favourite novice outfit so far.

 Pepper met her in the corridor, grinning from ear to ear. She had grown into a young lady, pixie-faced with short hair and a fluffy fringe. She and Maple were fierce rivals as well as best friends.

 The breakfast hall was nearly empty. Many novices had remained as orange-tunics or white-tunics, some even as greys. Maple and Pepper shared the privilege of being brown with two sixteen-year-old boys and an eighteen-year-old albino boy who had been there only as long as they had.

 This was the year that Maple counted her warrior training to have really begun. They had moved on from mind exercises and simple strength building. Now it was weapons and stealth and tactical thinking.

 Maple had long ago given up dreams of an early graduation. To be a thirteen or fourteen year old warrior cadet would be an achievement worthy of recognition. But as it was, she would be happy if she became a cadet at the official standard of fifteen.

 She ate quickly, nearly throwing the food down her throat. Training was the most important thing she did. She had to learn. She had passed the other levels at the traditional standard of one year each. She didn’t want brown to spoil her record.

  She moved soundlessly down the corridors, a skill that had taken weeks to master. She moved with the easy grace of a powerful animal and stood like a fighter. It would be clear to anyone how she was trained.

 Her trainer was waiting and bowed to her. Maple returned the bow equally. She had become a person now, a full entity rather than a ghostly novice. Months now, only months, and perhaps she could be a cadet.

“Take up your sword,” he ordered. “Begin with the standard defence.”

Maple lifted her sword and he lunged. She blocked, twisting sharply.

“I said standard,” her trainer said through gritted teeth.

“You also told me to win,” Maple countered and he smiled thinly, the smile that meant he was proud of her.

The duel commenced in full flourish and Maple blocked and parried, returning strikes. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, her eyes scarcely leaving her trainer’s face. She had learnt to watch his expression not his hands.

“Move your feet more,” he instructed. “Don’t be afraid to step back if it corrects you. Giving quarter can work to your advantage.”

They fought fiercely for several minutes before her trainer brought his sword down and meshed the hilts together, turning the blade so that Maple lost her grip and the point stopped millimetres from her chest.

“You improve,” he said, approvingly. “Well fought.”

A little breathlessly, Maple went to lift her sword up but her trainer shook his head.

“No more fencing. Archery.”

For the next two hours, he corrected her posture and stance as if he were teaching her ballet rather than shooting. Her aim was good but not perfect. Pepper, she knew, was far better with a bow.

“Enough,” her trainer said, eventually.

Maple placed the bow back in its place on the wall and turned to face the empty room. For ten minutes she stood still until her trainer nodded again.

“What are the laws on concealment of weapons?”

“There aren’t any,” Maple told him. “Unless you’re caught.”

Her trainer laughed. “Yes. And, as a warrior, you have the same dispensation as mercenaries. We consider ourselves beyond the normal law.”

Maple had heard that often enough. It was a common view of the First Tier, that normal rules would not apply. Warriors held it that they were sworn to do as they saw best for those they served.

“We turn to history,” her trainer announced. “And the acts of the infamous Duke of Sinon.”

Maple knew the history books well by now. Old campaigns, old warriors, old wars were all considered essential training. It was so that nobody ever repeated mistakes, so that they could learn from past failures.

 This particular Duke of Sinon had been a warrior risen to greatness from the First Tier and illegitimate brother to the King himself, back in the days before Merdia was a separate kingdom.

“Was what he did right?” her trainer asked her.

Maple considered. “Right and wrong are complicated.”

“Morality always will be,” the man agreed. “Yet of his motives?”

“His motives were just,” Maple answered, instantly. “He acted as a warrior should act. He judged what was best for the helpless. He took shame upon himself, dared to commit regicide, allowed himself to be branded a traitor, to rid the world of a mad king.”

She had thought long and hard about this case, as all novices did. At first, the thought of the Duke of Sinon had made her skin crawl. The nightmare stories of what he did invaded her mind and made her sick.

  She had come to understand him, even to speculate as to whether she would make the same choice. He sacrificed his own honour – and honour was everything to a warrior – for the sake of a nation crushed beneath the king’s madness.

“Many believe him worthy of loathing, a villain of the highest order,” her trainer noted.

“He is not a good man. He is a black-souled man but sometimes warriors must make such decisions.”

“Interesting,” her trainer regarded her thoughtfully. “How is fire oil made?”

Maple blinked. “Naphtha and limestone.”

“Where is it best to be in a siege?”

“Inside,” Maple nodded, as she had always regarded it this way. “You need less men and less effort to stand inside a properly-appointed castle than you do to break it.”

So the lessons rolled on with quick-fire questions and debates over history pages before her trainer leapt to his feet and demanded hand-to-hand combat. Maple obeyed, and lost time after time.

  Crawling into bed at the end of the day, bruised from the beating she had taken, Maple thought once again of the orange-haired girl in the creased blouse who had stood so nervously in the square.

  She was unrecognisable now, with her hair nearly brown and her body strong and her figure beginning to develop. Her mind was different, too. Hundreds of Maples stared at her from across the years, looking at what they would become. She felt that perhaps she made them proud.

She was Maple Greenberg.

She was fourteen years old.

 She was a warrior.