Chapter 51
Tremblefist was grinning. Kip could hardly believe his eyes, but the morose giant was grinning.
All the squads were crowded into the Prism’s training room, and every last young man and woman was agape, barely blinking for fear of missing a critical moment. Tremblefist was faced off against his brother Ironfist. Both wore training armor of leather imbued with luxin that would burst with spectacular yellow light if struck, to declare a solid hit. They wore steel helms with bars woven like wicker, thick leather gauntlets, and they bore bamboo swords.
And they moved. How they moved. The bamboo swords beat a tempo against each other that was like the music of the spheres, the great soft swish of the grinding gears of the universe keeping its time.
But not for long. Each point was scored within five seconds. With warriors at this level, a single mistake led to a touch. It was too fast for Kip to even tell sometimes who’d scored the point. Other times, he only saw the luxin bloom.
Ironfist and Tremblefist didn’t rest between points, didn’t move back to the center of the circle, merely took ready positions, touched swords and began again. The score stood at five to five. Tremblefist readied himself, but instead of tapping his bamboo, Ironfist removed his left hand from his sword.
Tremblefist nodded and took his own left hand away. Kip had trained with those swords, and though both men were taller and bigger than he was, even then those swords were too big, too long to wield perfectly in one hand. If you had the hand and arm strength of an Ironfist, you did gain reach, but you lost speed. A good trade if you could hold a shield, perhaps, but not to hold nothing.
But each man moved fluidly into a fighting style Kip had never seen. They didn’t hold the sword in one hand, they merely held the hilt in one hand. Each put his other hand almost halfway down his blade. What followed was some odd blend of sword-fighting, staff-fighting, and body throws. Lunges flowed into blocks into foot sweeps. It was just as fast, but more muscular, each circling, constantly moving, using not just the point of the sword but also blade and even pommel, dodges and even jumps blurring past. The speed of the men was incredible, but in this, Kip could see the full flower of the seeds his own training was planting. Those dodges, this strike, that way of rotating the hips to get force.
A clash and a rattle of bamboo, and Tremblefist’s hips twisted and his sword point was batted aside low, but he was merely cocking the gun, his hips snapped back, the sword point dipping behind Ironfist’s knee and pulling sharply back toward Tremblefist and up.
Ironfist leapt with the cut, trying to avoid what would be a hamstringing. He did a backflip, but before he could land, Tremblefist shoved his blade in that two-handed grip against Ironfist’s stomach. Without any base, it flung Ironfist backward. There was no way he could keep his feet. He flew across the circle and landed, skidding, on his back.
Seeing Ironfist put on his ass was like seeing the moon outshine the sun. The nunks were aghast. Of course, they’d heard of the famous battle between the brothers, more than a dozen years ago in front of the whole Chromeria, so they’d known that Tremblefist was nearly as good as his elder brother. But Tremblefist had somehow quietly faded into the background since then. He wasn’t even a watch captain, while Ironfist was legend. It was said in the Battle of Garriston Ironfist had taken out whole batteries of artillery by himself. The man could walk on water. Seeing anyone equal him was a shock. Seeing someone best him? Blasphemy.
But Ironfist merely leapt to his feet and shook his head while Tremblefist grinned. They began again. They traded points, but Tremblefist led all the way. Ironfist barely tied it at nine-nine when his brother dodged back from a blow, but not far enough, and got his head yanked to the side as Ironfist’s bamboo brushed the steel bars of his helmet. In a real fight, it wouldn’t have hit him at all.
Ironfist racked his sword and pointed to Big Leo and to a nunk named Antaeos. “Pick weapons.”
“Clawed bich’hwa and a sword-breaker,” Antaeos said. It was an odd combination, both usually secondary weapons. But of course, that was part of the fun of putting masters through their paces—seeing not just what they could do if they were in a strange position, but seeing what was possible even in strange positions. As Commander Ironfist had told them many times, in the chaos of battle, you might end up with any weapon in hand, and you had to make it work.
Big Leo grinned. “Heavy chain.” He’d been working on using thicker chains. When he draped the thick chains over his draft horse shoulders, he was quite the sight. But chain weapons were difficult, brutal. You were more likely to hurt yourself using a chain than any other weapon.
“That’s a bludgeoning weapon,” Ironfist said.
“It’s not only a bludgeoning weapon,” Leo said defensively.
“But most of its attacks are, Leo,” Teia said. “You’d be making one of them fight with half a weapon.”
“Uh, then…” The big man suddenly felt the weight of everyone’s stares on him and got flustered. He shrank into himself, which made him merely much bigger than everyone except Ironfist and Tremblefist.
“Rope spear,” Teia suggested under her breath.
“Rope spear!” Big Leo said, like a starving man reaching for bread.
“Pick a number, one or two,” Ironfist said to Ferkudi. Obviously, he was making a lottery for himself and his brother for who would get to pick which weapon he fought with.
“One,” Ferkudi said.
“To yourself,” Ironfist said flatly.
“Oh.” Then, light dawning, “Oh! Oh, sorry.”
“Brother?” Ironfist said. “Be my guest.”
“Two,” Tremblefist said.
“Two it is,” Ferkudi said.
Kip and the rest of Cruxer’s squad all looked at him.
“What?” he asked, defensive. “What?”
“I’ll take the bich’hwa and sword-breaker,” Tremblefist said. The bich’hwa was Karris’s favorite, Kip knew. The clawed variety could both be used as a normal dagger (the scorpion’s tail) and as a punch dagger (the clawed feet). The training variety had the claws made of the same boiled rubber-tree sap that full Blackguards used on the soles of their shoes, dipped in red ink to make its ‘cuts’ obvious. The sword-breaker was a short sword with thick barbed notches all down one side, made to catch sword strokes, and used correctly could twist a sword out of an opponent’s hand or even break the blade.
The rope spear was even more interesting, though Kip wasn’t surprised Teia had suggested it. She’d been practicing with it in private lessons with Ironfist and sometimes Kip, who as her partner got to be her target. The rope spear was like a short gladius attached to a long rope. It could be used as a simple dagger, as a flail, or as a spear when sharply redirected from spinning to fly out straight. But the rope was what made it amazing. An opponent would think that if only he could get inside the whirling death that the blade cut through the air, he’d be safe. It was almost impossible to resist catching the rope and trying to disarm the rope spear wielder.
But that was where almost half of the rope spear’s techniques began. With a flick of the wrist, the wielder could throw nooses over her opponent’s fist or neck. Grabbing the rope was a prelude to defeat. It was still a secondary weapon—not good against armored opponents, not good in tight spaces—but it was so unusual and challenging to use well that even Ironfist had confessed he needed to do a lot of brushing up before he’d started training Teia.
Of course, he’d done the brushing up.
And he’d done it privately. Tremblefist most likely had no idea that he’d just assigned his brother to a rare weapon that was exactly what Ironfist had been practicing.
Kip still wouldn’t have wanted to try a rope spear against a sword-breaker, which was made to entangle weapons.
But that was a sidelight. Ironfist wasn’t fighting his brother to entertain the squads. That wasn’t his way. This was a lesson of some kind.
So what was the lesson? It wasn’t how to fight with these weapons.
The two men began fighting, and of course it was dazzling. To most of the nunks, it had to look like Ironfist had picked up a weapon that he hadn’t even thought of in years, and had total mastery of it. It was a good way for Ironfist to use the time he’d had to put into brushing up his skills to a second use. It also gave him an edge on Tremblefist, who obviously hadn’t trained with his own weapons in a good long time.
Ironfist won, despite having what seemed a worse weapon, nine to six. The brothers finished with double swords. Tremblefist won, but only ten–nine. The total of all the bouts went to Ironfist.
“Form up,” Ironfist said.
And here’s where we get the lesson, Kip thought.
The squads were, by this time, highly efficient at getting into place. In seconds they stood in neat lines.
“Tremblefist, thank you,” Ironfist said. He bowed low to his brother, as to an equal. His brother bowed a bit lower, but a smirk played on his lips. Ironfist motioned that Tremblefist could go. “Squad Yod!” he barked. “Being the worst has its perks. Take the rest of the day off. You’re dismissed.”
The members of Yod looked at each other. Some were dumb enough to look excited at getting the day off. The smarter ones looked stung. They’d been called the worst. It was the truth, of course. Of ten squads, they were tenth. But those few had the sense to see that being dismissed early was a perk, but it wasn’t all perk.
Nevertheless, they bowed and left.
“Squad Teth,” Ironfist said, addressing the ninth squad. “What did you learn today?”
“That you’re fuckin’ awesome,” someone whispered in the back. It carried more than intended.
They fell silent as they realized Commander Ironfist had heard it. “Squad Teth, Blackguards guard their tongues. One hour running.” They quietly groaned and hung their heads. He paused. “Minus half, because I am.”
The squads all laughed and cheered.
Ironfist cracked a grin. “Squad Teth, dismissed.” They left, clapping the one who’d spoken out on the shoulders and giving each other a hard time.
After they closed the door behind themselves, Commander Ironfist said, “Squad Kheth, what’d you learn?”
Kheth, Zayin, Vav, and He squads each came up with some technique or combination they’d never seen before. Some of the comments were quite good, noting that a counter only worked because of Ironfist’s or Tremblefist’s reach or strength.
After the door closed behind He, Commander Ironfist looked at the remaining four squads: his thirty-three best Blackguard inductees. “Daleth, Gimel, Beth, Aleph,” he said, looking at each squad in turn. “Being the worst has its perks. So does being the best. What’s your perk?”
Ben-hadad said, “We get more instruction; they get more time off.”
“And what’s that mean?” the commander asked.
“They’re being punished for their ineptitude,” an Archer from Gimel said. “They think they’re gaining something by getting free time, and thus they prove that they aren’t the best.”
“Did all of them look elated to go?” the commander asked.
“The smart ones looked heartbroken,” Kip said.
“Which means the smart ones will redouble their efforts to get better,” Cruxer said. “It’ll make the cream rise.”
“Yes, and?” Ironfist asked.
“Not an ‘and,’” Kip said. “A ‘but.’ But this means—”
“Hold,” Ironfist said. “Squad Daleth, you’re dismissed.”
It was clearly a shot in the gut for the eight nunks of Squad Daleth. Having been identified for one moment as elite, and then pushed out of the circle, not a one of this squad looked happy to get out early.
“Commander, please, let us stay,” the squad leader, Aria, said. Admirably, she didn’t make it sound like begging, simply a request.
“The best are not allowed to stay, they earn it,” Commander Ironfist said. “Dismissed.”
There was sharp silence as Squad Daleth left.
But Commander Ironfist ignored it. Kip had no doubt that everyone in that squad would double their efforts. “Breaker, go on.”
Kip took a breath. “By kicking them out, it just means that the best get better. By our training more, we’ll continue to be the best.”
“Is there any way around that?”
“You could give the most instruction to the worst squads,” Cruxer said.
“That would make them better, at the cost of making you worse than you could be. We’re not interested in mediocrity here.”
“You could have them train just as much as we do,” Teia said.
“They do already. They were here; they saw what you saw, but I guarantee that all the remaining intelligent comments would have come from Gimel, Beth, and Aleph, not the lower squads. Because we’ve done this before. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen how the worst—even in this elite group—slow down everyone. And my time is finite. I cannot teach a class of one hundred as quickly or as well as I can teach a class of ten. Nor ten as well as one. Would that it were not so.
“To have an elite of anything is to be at the best slightly unfair. There is always someone who almost made it, and if you expand the bounds to encompass that one, there’s someone else who almost made that circle. The question is always, what do you get in trade for being slightly unfair? The Blackguard could be a thousand strong, or it could be ten. We make the trades. We decide when to expand the circle to let in someone who is not quite as good as the rest of you.”
“At some level, though, there’s a kind of equality,” Kip said. “Or at least … the differences don’t matter. A Teia has such gifts you’d be a fool not to bring her onto the Blackguard, even if she couldn’t fight at all. You told me that. Ben-hadad can’t command like Cruxer, but he’s so smart, he brings us other things. Big Leo might lose eight bouts of ten to Cruxer, but his very size means there’s times we don’t have to fight at all. At some point, a person has enough gifts that even if he isn’t the best at all things, he’s too valuable to give up.”
The squads looked at Kip like he’d said something smart.
“I agree,” Commander Ironfist said. “That’s why I’m lecturing three squads here, and not just Aleph. Now, what lessons did you learn, Gimel?”
“That practice can get you killed in battle. That you have to always keep the limits of the training you’ve done in mind,” a singularly ugly young man named Cracks said.
“A truism from the very first days of our training,” Commander Ironfist said. “How’d you see it, exactly?”
“In the first sparring, you made a single mistake, and it led to a touch, instantly. Maybe that’s because Tremblefist has fought you so many times that he knows exactly what your skills are, but I think it was instead because in being totally aggressive, he only risked losing a single point. He could fling himself at you with abandon, trying to grab that mistake. Would he have been so fast to attack if he were risking his life rather than a point? I’d say no.”
Commander Ironfist nodded. “Great tourney fencers often kill many and die quickly in battle. Well done, Squad Gimel. You’re dismissed. Squad Beth, tell me something that good or better.”
After they left, a compact young woman named Tensit said, “You set up Tremblefist, didn’t you?”
“How so?”
“You’ve been training Teia with the rope spear. It’s an odd weapon, and she hasn’t practiced in the open. He assumed you’d be out of practice. But what I don’t understand is how you got Teia to choose.”
“I got that,” Cruxer said. “Inductees who use unusual weapons will always choose to see their own weapon demonstrated by a master. So you knew Big Leo would choose heavy chain; you could reject that, and Teia was standing right next to him. You’ve been working with her long enough to know that she’d jump on the chance. So you did set up Tremblefist.”
A sly grin crept onto Ironfist’s broad face. “So sayeth the Tactician, ‘He who knoweth himself and his enemy dreadeth nought.’ Squad Beth, well done, you’re dismissed.”
They bowed low and left.
“Being the best has its perks, Squad Aleph,” Ironfist said. “But it also means you work longer than anyone else. Prove that you’re the best in mind, and not just in arms.”
“It’s the first time I’ve seen Tremblefist smile,” Teia said, musing aloud.
A cloud passed over Ironfist’s face. “True, but what’s the tactical significance of that? Is there any?”
“I don’t … I’m sorry.”
No one else said a word.
Ironfist blew out a breath. “You may know that my brother’s birth name is Hanishu. Mine is Harrdun. I was given my Blackguard name when I punched through a door and subdued a raider holding a hostage on the other side of it.”
“Subdued?” Ferkudi whispered. “I heard he nearly ripped the man’s head off.”
“But Hanishu picked his own name,” Ironfist said, pretending not to hear.
For one moment, Kip was struck by how different this was than learning under Magister Kadah. Where she mocked and belittled and ruled through fear, with Ironfist—a man whom the squad actually should fear—learning was like being yoked together with him. Everyone had to push as hard as they could to keep up with him, but one always felt that he was working, too. In comparison, Magister Kadah put the yoke on you alone, and then criticized how unevenly you pulled it by yourself.
Kip looked at the faces of his squadmates. They were intent, utterly focused, fearful of letting the commander down, but not fearful. He had them heart and soul and strength, not because he gave them a respect they didn’t deserve, but because he expected them to deliver the best they were able to deliver, always, and he thought their best was better than they thought it was.
This was a great man in action. It was a quiet greatness, but Kip wanted to emulate it.
The commander paused, as if he didn’t want to ask the question, but felt he owed it to the squad. “Do you know why Hanishu chose—”
“Better to be called Tremblefist than the Butcher,” Kip said.
An awkward silence reigned. But Commander Ironfist finally said, “Training makes us. War breaks us. Hanishu had something terrible happen to him, and he did terrible things in retribution. He’s never trusted himself since then. Has never wanted to lead. This is a personal matter, and I won’t discuss it further. But that it does happen is not a personal matter. As leaders and as friends, you need to watch each other, and help, and never, never, never give up on each other.
“Now,” he said, putting that aside, “what else did you learn today?”
No one said anything.
Kip moved to speak, but stopped.
Cruxer nodded to him. Go ahead.
“He’s better than you,” Kip said.
Commander Ironfist cocked an eyebrow.
“Breaker,” Big Leo said. “We just saw the commander win. As he won when they fought before.”
“With a trick,” Teia shot back.
“Tricks count,” Ben-hadad said.
“I’m not talking about today,” Kip said. “I’m talking about when you had your big public exhibition. Years ago. That didn’t involve strange weapons; it was straightforward, and Tremblefist was better than you, but you won. You won because he let you.”
“Breaker,” Cruxer said, “there were hundreds of trained fighters at that exhibition. No way someone could throw a match in front of all of them and not be noticed.” Ah, Cruxer, the idealist.
“At this level? What’s a couple points?” Kip asked.
“Why would he do such a thing?” Ironfist asked, low, dangerous.
“For the same reason he chose Tremblefist as his name. He didn’t want to lead, didn’t trust himself, but he trusted you. By taking a name that automatically made people think of you, any excellence he showed would make people think even more of you. ‘If Tremblefist is this good, how good must Ironfist be?’ He killed his own prospects for advancement to help yours. When you fought in that exhibition, it had to be close. It had to be incredible. But in the end, you had to win. He smiled because today, he could try to win. Because today, the match wouldn’t matter. Anyone can get lucky, and now it wouldn’t hurt your reputation.”
“Very good, Aleph Squad,” Ironfist said, his voice raspy. “Dismissed. Now.”
The squad moved out quickly. Kip went with them, but when they reached the elevator, he finally stumbled upon the obvious.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
He walked quickly back down the hall and opened the door, but the words dried on his lips. Commander Ironfist was on his knees, face buried in his hands, weeping.
Ironfist hadn’t known. All these years, he had thought his brother had merely had an off day when they fought that exhibition. All these years, he thought his brother had chosen to be called Tremblefist because of his own brokenness. All these years, and he hadn’t known what his brother had sacrificed for him, how Tremblefist loved him.
Kip stepped out silently—and found himself face-to-face with Tremblefist. Kip swallowed, looking up at the giant, but the big man merely put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed it briefly, and went inside. Kip closed the door behind him.
They never heard what was said between the brothers, but after that day, Tremblefist seemed to emerge from the shadows. He took over the training of Squad Aleph, and from time to time, he smiled.