The Sentinel Mage

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT





JAUMÉ ATE HIS breakfast, chewing bread and cheese, gulping cider.

“Where are you from, boy?” Nolt asked. His vowels were as short and clipped as his beard.

“Girond,” Jaumé said, aware of the other men watching him as they ate. Seven men. Eight, counting Nolt.

“Girond?”

“Two hundred leagues east of here,” one of the men said. “On the coast.”

“Two hundred leagues?” Nolt pursed his lips, nodded. In the daylight, his face was older than Jaumé had thought, the skin leathery, creased and tanned. “What happened to your family?”

Jaumé’s throat closed. Tears came to his eyes. He forced himself to blink them back, to swallow. These were not men to cry in front of. “The curse got them.”

“But not you.”

He shook his head.

“How did you get here?” another of the men asked, the one with the curly red-blond hair who’d winked at him last night.

“I walked,” Jaumé said.

“Alone?”

He nodded.

“Two hundred leagues.” Nolt studied Jaumé’s face a moment longer, and seemed to come to a decision. “You may come with us if you wish. Bennick, he’s your charge.” He stood. “Let’s move out.”

The men stood, except for the one with curling red-blond hair.

“Are you Bennick?” Jaumé asked him.

The man nodded. He had a young, cheerful face and blue eyes that twinkled in the sunshine. “You want to come with us?”

“Where are you going?”

“To Ankeny. We have business there.”

“Ankeny?”

“It’s north of here, lad. And west.” Bennick winked. “Don’t worry. The curse won’t catch us.”

Jaumé stuffed the last of the bread and cheese in his mouth. Around him, men were packing up the camp. They worked quickly, but without urgency. There was discipline in their movements, in the way they worked together.

“What kind of business?” he asked, once he’d swallowed.

“We’re meeting a man.”

“A merchant?”

Bennick laughed. “No. A prince. If he gets as far as Ankeny—which I doubt.”

“I’ve never met a prince before.”

“They’re nothing special. They die just as easily as other men.”

Jaumé drained the mug of cider. He saw bundles of arrows being loaded on the pack horses, bows being strapped down. He saw men slinging baldrics over their shoulders, saw sword hilts protruding from scabbards. “Are you soldiers?”

“After a fashion,” Bennick said. “We’re Brothers.”

Jaumé looked at the men. They were short and tall, dark and fair, lean, stocky. He saw skin of all shades and hair of all colors, from Bennick’s red-blond to a dark-skinned man with hair so black it seemed to suck up the daylight. The only things they seemed to have in common were their efficiency of movement and their quiet, unhurried discipline. “Brothers?”

“Brothers of the sword.” Bennick pushed to his feet and looked down at him. His eyes smiled, the way Da’s eyes used to smile. “We were all like you once, lad. Orphans. You can be our Brother, too. If you have what we need.”

Jaumé looked up at him. “What’s that?”

“Courage. Quickness. Toughness. You have all those, lad. It just remains to be seen whether you have enough.” Bennick crouched. His face lost its good-humor, became serious. “The training’s hard, lad. Very hard. But I think you’re strong enough. And so does Nolt. You’re a survivor, else you wouldn’t have made it this far.”

Jaumé stared back at Bennick. His heart was beating loudly. He knew he was on the brink of something momentous. “Training?”

“In Fith. Our home. We’ll be going there after Ankeny.” Bennick’s eyes held his, steady and serious, blue. “Journey home with us, lad. Undergo the training. Become our Brother.”

Home. Brother. The words resonated inside him, in time with the beating of his heart.

Bennick straightened. “You coming, lad?”

Jaumé took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said.