“If I’m successful,” Anskar pointed out, and all his old doubts returned. It wasn’t just anxiety about the possibility of failing; he was just as concerned about what success would mean for him. When he ceased to be a novice, he’d be expected to go outside the citadel. In all his seventeen years of life, he’d never left the Burg, nor did he have any desire to. There were perils that lay outside, and he uttered a swift prayer of thanks to Menselas, the god of five aspects, that he was safe within. Sometimes he’d asked visiting knights from the Order’s other strongholds throughout Niyas what it was like beyond Branil’s Burg; whether they’d seen the sea and the mountains; whether they’d ever been to the mainland; whether there really were dead-eyes out there that feasted on corpses—after they’d defiled them.
Larson sensed the change in Anskar. He clapped him on the shoulder and led the way outside the barn. “You’ll succeed,” he said. “Or you won’t.”
Anskar glanced at him sharply.
“And if you do,” Larson continued, “it’s only half the battle won.”
“I’ll be a knight-inferior,” Anskar said, and for a moment his anxiety was overwhelmed by a surge of pride.
“Which is still a step away from a consecrated knight,” Larson reminded him. “Just make sure you win each bout during the first trial, and win it decisively. Don’t leave it to the adjudicators to determine a winner.”
“I know,” Anskar said.
“To be the best, you have to beat the best,” Larson continued. “The Order doesn’t want mediocrity. It wants knights who’ll be superior to any enemy they face. Don’t be one of those spineless cretins who complains about getting the hard fights early on. In battle, you don’t get to pick and choose. And don’t do anything flashy, either. It doesn’t matter how impressive you look if you don’t win.”
“I know,” Anskar said again.
Larson stopped in the courtyard garden in the shadow of the citadel’s keep and stooped to rub his bad leg. “Did I tell you I failed the trials the first time?” he said. “Not the fighting. I’ve still to meet the person who could beat me in a fair fight. Not the forging, either. Like you, I was always good at smithing. It was the sorcery that tripped me up. A simple thing like that: the casting of a ward sphere. Guess it was my nerves. Course, they also screwed up implanting my catalyst.”
Larson opened his collar to show Anskar the ridged scar on his chest. “I reckon they used a flawed crystal. But you’ll not have that problem, not now the Order has a new supplier.”
“But you passed the second time?” Anskar said.
“Actually, it was the third, and then only by the skin of my teeth. Probably, they should have failed me then. My ward sphere flickered so much I thought the adjudicator was going to have a seizure. No, they should have thrown me out—then maybe I’d not have gotten this.” He slapped his bad leg.
“You never did tell me exactly what happened … to your leg,” Anskar said tentatively.
“Carred Selenas is what happened. Not her personally: the bloody rebels she leads. I was out with my squad, culling dead-eyes, when they ambushed us. Dazzled us with sorcery, they did, and then smashed into our flanks. Big ol’ Niyandrian came at me with a club. No way that should have penetrated a ward sphere, only mine failed, didn’t it? Like I said, they should never have let me pass the trials. Course, I was getting old by then. My ward sphere saw me through the war, so I should be thankful for that, I suppose.”
“I hate the Niyandrians for what they did to you,” Anskar said.
“Don’t you go hating no one on my account,” Larson said. “You think the Niyandrians should lie down like sheep and let us lord it over them?”
Anskar took a step back, not quite believing what he was hearing. “No, but—”
“I might not like what Carred Selenas’s rebels did in the early days of her rebellion—to my comrades or to my leg—but you have to admire a woman like that, Anskar. She’s persistent, if nothing else; though these past few years the Order’s turned the tide on her. She loses more than she wins nowadays, and that can’t go on forever. But let’s not forget, it was their land before we took it from them.”
“We liberated them,” Anskar said. Every tutor he’d had since childhood had convinced him of that. “Queen Talia was evil. Under her rule, Niyas was a land of horror, its people demons.”
“Believe that if you like, but just make sure you don’t judge them like some of us do: by the color of their skin.” Larson looked pointedly at Anskar, who dipped his head in shame.
Anskar’s skin had always had a reddish tint, but it was nothing like the deep crimson of the Niyandrians. Brother Tion had said it was likely a trace of Traguh-raj blood, although Anskar preferred to believe it was on account of him working so long outdoors. He ignored the fact that Larson’s skin was browned by the sun, not reddened. Anskar aspired to be the perfect knight one day, the epitome of all the Order stood for—even if the hue of his skin didn’t fit the image he had of what that perfect knight should look like. The Seneschal, Vihtor Ulnar, was his model: a man with the swarthy looks of a mainland noble.
“Not all Niyandrians are bad,” Larson finished.
“I know that. When I worked in the kitchens—”
The stablemaster cut him off again. “You don’t need to convince me, Anskar. Now, go get ready for tonight, and don’t think about anything else but the trials. I’ll have one of the new recruits look after Hazel and Monty the next few days. But I want to hear a full report of how you get on.”
Anskar took a deep breath and nodded, but his stomach twisted as Larson turned to leave.
“You’ll do fine,” Larson shot over his shoulder. “And if you don’t, there’s always next year.”
“And if I fail then?” Anskar asked.
Larson shrugged. “You’re good with animals. And on the mainland, there’s plenty of demand for blacksmiths. If Sned Jethryn’s to be believed, you have the skills. You’ll be fine. Know what I was going to do if I failed that last time?”
“Look after horses?” Anskar said.
Larson chuckled. “Sing.” His eyes gleamed with remembered fondness. “I was brought up in the highlands of Valborg where everyone sings. Our bards travel the length and breadth of the mainland keeping the old songs alive. No, if the Order didn’t want me, I’d already planned to buy one of them fancy Kailean guitars and take it traveling.”
“I had no idea you could sing,” Anskar said, but he was talking to himself. Larson had passed inside the keep.
With a sigh, Anskar turned and headed for the novices’ entrance. He needed to clean up too, then grab himself something to eat. But as he crossed the garden, he couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility of failure. It was all very well relying on a second attempt at the trials the following year. But what if he failed then, and the time after that? Three attempts and you were out. And what would he do then? The thought flooded him with dread. Even if he survived outside the citadel’s walls, where would he go? How would he earn enough coin to eat and to put a roof over his head? All he knew was the life of the Order of Eternal Vigilance. Without it, he was nothing. No one. He didn’t even have a family to turn to. Anskar had no idea who his parents had been; only that they were dead and the Order had taken him in as a baby. Brother Tion often speculated that Anskar’s parents had fought in the mainland army, but if they had Larson hadn’t known them.