THE COMING OF THE GREATCOATS
Those early days were the best, I think. King Paelis and me, sitting and playing ancient war games, talking about strategy and tactics, philosophy and ideology, justice and law. We ate a lot in those first few months – neither one of us had much meat on our frames at that point, so every meal felt like a grand event. My wounds still hurt and he continued to have the occasional coughing fit, which wasn’t surprising since the weather was turning, but all in all we were hale and hearty. I taught him how to swing a blade and he showed me sword techniques from books I had never heard of.
‘The only luxuries my father granted me in those three years I spent in the tower were books,’ he told me one afternoon in the practice field outside the barracks. ‘He would have denied me those, too, but I asked him if he was truly so afraid that I could beat him with books. I thought he’d kill me then, but you know, the old superstition against spilling royal blood was strong in him.’
‘So what did you read?’ I asked.
‘Everything,’ he said. ‘We had only twenty books in the castle library – fantastic old books on war ways and fighting styles. Falcio, I could show you books from swordmasters from four hundred years ago, great masters, whose techniques are hidden amongst layers and layers of verses. But when I finished with those, my mother, bless her, sent to the monastery in Gaziah for more. I read the works of philosophers and tyrants and clerks and kings, and when I was finished, I turned back to the beginning and read them again.’
‘You never talk about your mother,’ I said.
He looked down. ‘She prefers it that way.’
I felt as if I’d embarrassed him somehow. ‘I read a book once,’ I said. ‘It had some dirty parts in it. Those were nice.’
Paelis smiled and cuffed me on the back of the head. ‘You speak to your King that way? Besides, you don’t fool me for one second, Falcio. You’re a man of words as much as I am. The servants have seen you sneaking books out of the library at night.’
I stuttered, ‘I don’t sleep a lot any more and there’s not that much to do with my evenings …’
I thought for a second he would make some remark about the ladies of the castle but, if he had intended that, he thought better of it. ‘Books make good friends sometimes, Falcio.’ He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Take as many as you like from the library.’
*
Kest was the first one to join us. I found him back in Luth where I’d left him as the days of our childhood friendship had waned and we moved on to other companions.
‘Waiting for you,’ he answered when I asked him what he was doing still forging swords in his father’s smithy. Before I could say anything further he put down the blade he was working on and pulled a pack down from the top shelf. ‘Well, let’s go,’ he said.
‘Don’t you want to know what we’re doing?’ I asked, ‘or at least tell your parents that you’re leaving?’
‘My parents have known for some time that I’d be going. I said my goodbyes long ago. As for what we’re doing, well, I imagine it must be interesting if you came back to find me.’
As we left the smithy, Kest finally noticed Paelis.
‘Oh, hello,’ Kest said. ‘Who are you?’
The smithy was full of smoke and dust and the King coughed for a bit before he answered. ‘Paelis the First,’ he said. ‘Your King.’
‘Ah. That must be nice. Well, let’s go; I can see clouds up ahead.’
Kest was a strange man, but I had missed him. And setting out across that field on horseback, the best friend of my youth at my side and the two of us following a young, idealistic King who wanted to bring the Greatcoats back, was truly one of the happiest moments of my life.
*
The high point of those years happened a few months later. There were twelve of us by then, nine men and three women: Kest, Brasti, Shana, Quillata, Morn, Bellow, Parrick, Dara, Nile, Winnow, Ran and me: twelve travelling Magisters who knew the King’s Law and could judge fair, ride fast and fight hard. We were a little cocky, perhaps, but we were ready, too.
The first day of spring is a good time to bring change to the world. The King summoned us to the throne room and we assumed this would be some kind of event in our honour, with flowers and a parade maybe. I had purchased a long coat from a local seamstress – I knew I was probably trying to live a fantasy, but I had always dreamed of being a Greatcoat as a child and this was most likely as close as I would get. If nothing else, it gave Brasti a good laugh.
‘Gods, Falcio,’ he said sniggering, ‘if you’re captured and tortured, I beg you, don’t reveal that you’re one of us. I don’t think I could stand the embarrassment! And please, try not to make a fool of yourself in front of the throngs of adoring women the King promised me.’
I let the jibes pass because nothing Brasti could say would make me take my coat off. It was shabby and not very sturdy but I would wear it even if the entire court laughed at me.
When we entered the throne room there was no one there but the King and an old woman.
‘Tailor!’ I said. I had not seen her since the day I awoke in the King’s room to the sound of her sewing.
‘Aye, boy, it’s me, come to see you off proper.’
Brasti snorted. ‘This is my throng of adoring women?’
‘I don’t know about adoring,’ the Tailor said, ‘but if you really need it I suppose I can give you a tumble.’ She smiled crooked old teeth at him and made a rude gesture that seven Saints couldn’t get me to repeat.
I noticed the King was sitting on a large crate.
‘Travelling gear?’ I asked.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ he answered. He opened the crate, and inside there were some kind of rough packing reeds, which he pulled out carefully and set on the floor. When he was done he stepped out of the way and beckoned me to come forward and look inside.
Inside that battered wooden crate I saw the foolish ideals of a young boy made real: greatcoats, twelve of them in all, and each one perfectly tailored to our individual bodies. They were made of the toughest leather you can imagine on the outside, and inside, a fabric softer than fleece and warmer than wool.
‘You won’t freeze on the road with one of those on your back,’ the Tailor said. ‘Nor will a man put a knife in your kidneys by surprise.’
She showed us the panels inside that held the strange pliable plates textured like bone. They could stop a knife-thrust and maybe even an arrow, she said. She showed us secret pockets that concealed small blades, pieces of tough string, flint, almost everything one might need to survive a long journey in the middle of nowhere.
Each coat had a different but subtle inlay embossed into the leather panels in the front. The King took mine out of the crate and held it up for me. It was nothing at all like I had imagined, and exactly what I had always dreamed it would be: armour, shelter and badge of office. On the right breast I saw the inlaid pertine in subtle blue crossed with a silver rapier.
‘I think we’ve finally found what the pertine was meant for,’ the King said.
I couldn’t speak, but I took the greatcoat from him and put it on.
I wasn’t ashamed of the tears I shed that day, nor were any of the eleven others whose tears washed their faces and their pasts clean.
‘Saints, it’s a good thing I made these proof against the rain,’ the Tailor said. ‘With this bunch they’re likely to get good and wet often.’
The others laughed, but I stood straighter and taller than I ever had before, and I marked that moment indelibly in my memory, proof against tears and proof against sorrow, because that was the proudest moment of my life.