[Empire Army 01] - Reiksguard Read online

“Falcons!” they cried back.

  “What’s that?” Delmar asked.

  “Just a name the pistolkorps called us. The others are quite fond of it.”

  “Falcons?” Delmar said. “After you?” Falkenhayn shrugged.

  “It is a shame you were not with us then. We could have used your strength. But come on, let us make up for lost time.” Falkenhayn took him over to join the others. “And let us only hope that the war continues long enough for us to show the Empire’s foes how the sons of Reikland fight!”

  Siebrecht and the other Provincials made their way, slowly but steadily, back to the chapter house. Siebrecht and Krieglitz walked side by side, Bohdan and Straber supported each other, Alptraum walked on his own and Gausser carried the unconscious Weisshuber over his shoulders.

  The wine had insulated Siebrecht nicely against the cool night and the human squalor in the streets around him. He was far happier now he was on the other side of the cup. He found himself singing an old nursery song, written as a learning rhyme to teach common children the provinces of the Empire. As Siebrecht recited the first line, Krieglitz and Gausser, strangers from across the Empire who had never met before that day, joined in and sang together.

  A voice from a window above gave the novices a short, sharp critique of their abilities as minstrels. Siebrecht responded by launching into the second verse with all the greater gusto. Krieglitz very firmly clamped his hand over Siebrecht’s mouth.

  “Be quiet, you idiot. You’ll get us into even more trouble.”

  Siebrecht flailed but could not slip from the Talabheimer’s grip.

  “Talabec! Talabec!” One of the beggar women rose from the gutter and stumbled towards Krieglitz. “You are from Talabecland?”

  “What of it?” Krieglitz said, pushing Siebrecht away and moving his hand to his sword. The beggar woman saw the movement and cowered away.

  “Nothing, noble lord! I did not mean any harm. Be generous and spare your fellow countryman.”

  Krieglitz let his sword drop back. “You would have been better to stay at home.”

  “Our homes were burned, noble lord. The beastkin in the forests.”

  Krieglitz grudgingly flicked her a coin, which she caught and hid instantly beneath her clothes. “That is my last one. Do not send your friends after me looking for more.”

  “More trouble,” Krieglitz muttered under his breath as he led the Provincials on.

  “You concern yourself too much,” Siebrecht said, far more sober than he had been a few moments before. “We will be fine.”

  “I doubt that indeed.”

  “I would wager it.”

  “What?”

  “Come, I shall prove it,” Siebrecht retorted. “A gold crown that we have not been missed.”

  “You are ridiculous, Siebrecht.”

  “Think of it as simple prudence, Gunther. Would you pay a crown to guarantee there was no trouble?”

  “Perhaps,” Krieglitz admitted.

  “Then if we are not, you have your money’s worth. And if we are, you have another crown to console you for your loss. It is prudent, I would say. Are you Talabheimers not known for your prudence?”

  Krieglitz shook his head but said, “Very well.”

  “Done and done. Come on, Gausser, let us get the young Stirlander to his bed.”

  “I cannot believe it, Siebrecht,” Krieglitz said. “You have got me gambling on my very career.”

  Siebrecht laughed at his friend. “And it is only the first day. Imagine what there will be tomorrow!”

  “Are you awake, Novice Matz?” Brother Verrakker said gently.

  Siebrecht groggily cracked an eyelid. It was still dark. He closed it again.

  “Good,” Verrakker said. “Take him.”

  * * *

  Siebrecht was very much awake as the sergeants hurled him into the deep pool of black water beneath the chapter house. He gasped at the shock of the icy water and quickly surfaced, then instinctively ducked again as the struggling forms of the other Provincials were thrown in after him. All of them rose, spluttering protests.

  The only one of them still dry was Gausser, who was wrestling on the side with three sergeants trying to restrain him. One of them lost their grip, and Gausser picked him up and launched him bodily into the pool. The sergeants who had been handling the other novices glanced at each other, then threw themselves onto the struggling Nordlander.

  “Enough!” Verrakker said, and the sergeants carefully loosened their grip. “Novices, you will clean this pool. You will empty the water, scrub its walls, wash them clean, then refill it.”

  Siebrecht’s foot strained to reach the bottom while keeping his head on the surface; he found he could stand, so long as he stayed on tip-toe. He tried to shout back at Verrakker, but his breath still had not returned.

  “Novice Gausser,” Verrakker continued, and the Nordlander shrugged himself free. “You may leave with us, or you may stand with your brothers. It is your choice.”

  Gausser stood for a moment beside the pool, then, staring at Verrakker with bloody-minded defiance, he slowly lowered himself into the water.

  “As I thought,” Verrakker concluded. “We shall return when you are done. And here, something to help…”

  Verrakker dragged a bucket through the water and then held it up. Water poured out through its perforated base.

  “You can’t leave us. We could catch our deaths in here!” Siebrecht finally managed to gasp.

  “We have excellent healers, Novice Matz,” Verrakker replied as he and the sergeants filed out. The sergeant Gausser had soaked left with a pointed backwards glance.

  “And if they should fail…” Verrakker continued. “Well, you shall not be the first.”

  The cold remained in their bones the rest of the day, and Siebrecht spent most of their induction around the chapter house either shivering or yawning. He had expected the other Provincials to attach a certain degree of blame to him regarding their unfortunate experience. Weisshuber took it with equanimity, though; Alptraum acted as though nothing had happened; Gausser accepted it with his usual impenetrable stoicism; and Bohdan and Straber thought it had been a great joke.

  Only Krieglitz appeared to hold a grudge. Siebrecht decided to shake him from it. That evening, once the novices were sent back to their quarters, he wandered over to him and flicked him a gold coin.

  Krieglitz caught it sullenly. “You really do not care, do you?”

  “That I do not.” And Siebrecht did not. The Reiksguard had been no choice of his. Throughout his childhood, his father, the old baron, had done nothing but blame the Reikland emperors for all the woes in the world. He clutched his bitterness still, his one solace, as he blindly brought the Matz family to its knees. He allowed candles to be lit only rarely, as he said he could not afford them. He detested any sounds of laughter or mirth, and so Siebrecht and his brothers and sisters crept around like mice. The baron had turned the family home into the family grave.

  Of all them, only the baron’s younger brother, Siebrecht’s uncle, had escaped the poison of the household completely. And once he left, the baron never allowed him back. The uncle had gone into the merchant trade, and would return once every few years, laden with gifts. Even then, Siebrecht’s mother had to take him and his siblings into Nuln to meet him as the baron refused to have his brother set foot upon his land.

  As he grew older, Siebrecht had also kept away as best he could, gaming, drinking; he and his friends had even joined the pistolkorps when the war came and they took what excitement they could from the tedious patrols and brief alarms. Siebrecht had hoped that they might stay together and join the city regiments. He would have cut a fine figure indeed in their black uniform, and the Countess of Nuln was renowned for her fondness for having young officers entertain her at her grand dances.

  Instead his family had sent him here, far from his friends and his ambitions, to protect the life of the very man they had raised him to detest. So, no, he did not care.r />
  “Understand me, Siebrecht,” Krieglitz said, with deliberate import. “This may not be important to you, but it is to me. To my family. So I will be your comrade, I will be your friend, but I will not let you be my undoing. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Siebrecht said, and they shook hands on it. “I will not be your undoing, Gunther, I would wager a crown upon it.”

  “Of course, you would.” Krieglitz shook his head.

  Verrakker called the novices to the practice field and had them stand in a loose semi-circle at the corner. They each wore their plain cloth tunics and had been given a sword, a wooden waster.

  They were met there by several of the order’s sergeants and two of the Reiksguard’s fightmasters. The first fightmaster stood formally at ease, his feet a shoulder-width apart, his hands behind his back. Or, to be more precise, hand, singular, for the fightmaster’s left arm ended no more than an inch below his elbow. Nevertheless, the knight held the arm at the perfect angle, as though his hands still grasped each other. The second knight stood a step directly behind him. Unlike the first, his face was downcast, his eyes were bandaged and his head was completely bald, not a hair upon it, not on his scalp, nor above his eyes, nor on his chin. He had his hand on the shoulder of the fightmaster before him.

  Verrakker introduced his brother-knights: “This is Brother Talhoffer and Brother Ott,” Verrakker said, indicating the lead knight and then the second. “While you are novices, you will not address them as such. Until you can prove yourselves worthy and become full brothers, you will address them as Fightmaster Talhoffer and Fightmaster Ott, or simply as master.”

  Verrakker bowed to the fightmasters deferentially and hobbled away. As the other novices turned their attention to the fightmasters, Siebrecht, thoughtfully, watched Verrakker go.

  “We are well met, noble sons,” Fightmaster Talhoffer declared. “I see in you the burning need to serve your Empire and I can tell you now that the Empire has great need of that service. You will have heard already that before you may become a brother of this grand order you must prove yourself in three disciplines: strength of body, strength of mind and strength of spirit. Of these three, strength of body is the most important, for without a strong body you will never protect the Emperor from those who seek to do him harm. Strength of body is what you will learn from me.”

  There was a shifting amongst the novices. Some of the Provincials and the Reiklanders were not impressed. They were not children who needed to be taught basic drills.

  “You have all served before,” Talhoffer continued. “You have all fought. You all show promise, else you would never have been allowed here. Promise, though, is not enough. We do not entrust the life of our Emperor to those who merely have promise, we entrust it only to those who have proven their ability. Not simply to fight, but to fight as a knight of the Reiksguard must. We will train you to fight and we will test you. You may think you are a great warrior already, but if you cannot or will not learn what we have to teach, then there is no place for you here.”

  Talhoffer drew out the pause, waiting for one of the more prideful novices to speak and knowing that none of them would. The novices stayed silent.

  “We will teach you how to fight as a Reiksguarder in every circumstance, on horse, on foot, in the crush of a regiment, in a single combat, against one opponent and against many. For we must be prepared to serve in whatever manner the Emperor demands.”

  Talhoffer beckoned to one of the sergeants attending him, who passed him a halberd.

  “You must become adept in all the arms of the Empire as well.” Talhoffer easily hefted the heavy weapon in a single grip. “Skill with lance and sword are not sufficient, you must be ready to use whatever weapon is to hand. While you will spar with each other to learn and to practise, the purpose of your training is to fight the enemies of the Empire. Not each other. Some of you, I warrant, have drawn your sword in anger against a comrade because of injury to your honour. That ends here. Duels of any kind between members of the order are strictly prohibited. For we are a brotherhood, and from this point on you must be brothers to each other.”

  Siebrecht stole a glance in the direction of Delmar, but he and the rest of the Reiklanders merely looked on.

  “Now, I shall call each one of you up in turn to judge what you have learnt already, or rather, how much work I will have to undo the bad habits that poor teaching has already instilled within you.”

  He told the novices to sit and then called Harver forwards. Siebrecht had expected that Talhoffer himself would spar, but instead one of the sergeants squared off against him. It was a surprise: the sergeants were all common-born, and while noblemen learned to use a sword from childhood, few commoners had the money or the time.

  In a few blows it was over, and Harver was flat on his back.

  Siebrecht dropped his pretence of uninterest and watched the bouts closely. He had been quietly confident, for in Nuln duelling was a constant pastime for his band of libertines. He had had to defend himself not only in single combats but also in the sudden and deadly street fights that erupted between different bands over the important things in life: wagers, women and honour. But these sergeants had been taught well.

  Novice after novice stepped up and, no matter what their past experience, each was defeated. Siebrecht allowed himself a small smile when Delmar had his sword knocked from his hand.

  “Novice Matz, your turn to spar,” Talhoffer ordered. “Let us see whether you Nulners are as eager with the sword as you are with your pistol.”

  There was a stir amongst the Reiklanders: news of the clash between Delmar and Siebrecht on their first day had spread quickly amongst them.

  As Siebrecht rose, he whispered to Krieglitz, “A crown of mine says I mark him.”

  Siebrecht stood up and walked over with his typical swagger. He took his position and settled into his guard, ready for the sergeant to attack.

  “Novices!” Talhoffer interrupted before the fight could begin. “You did not tell me that the Reiksguard had accepted a Tilean!”

  It took Siebrecht a moment to realise that the fight-master was talking about him.

  “I do not follow your meaning, master, I am no Tilean.”

  “If you are no Tilean, Novice Matz, then why do you stand like one?”

  Confused, Siebrecht looked down at his feet.

  “Take up a proper Imperial guard, novice, we shall have none of the Tilean ‘arts’ here. They are fit only for women.”

  The other novices, realising the fightmaster’s joke, laughed hugely, the Reiklanders especially. Embarrassed, Siebrecht shifted to a fair approximation of the “plough” guard that the sergeant had adopted, holding his sword at waist height, pointed at his opponent; Siebrecht cursed under his breath. All the duelling instructors of Nuln taught the Tilean style, there was no fault in it, and now he had allowed himself to be forced into a style in which he was less comfortable.

  Before Siebrecht could reconsider, the sergeant took the initiative and advanced, raising his sword into a roof guard, hilt by the shoulder, blade pointing straight up as he went. Anticipating the downwards slash, Siebrecht gathered his blade in and, when the blow came, was ready to lift his own blade in reply. The sergeant’s weapon crashed down upon his own with full force; Siebrecht felt his elbow give way and grabbed his hilt with his free hand to prevent his guard collapsing. On the sidelines he heard the fightmaster tut disapprovingly. Siebrecht had intended to beat the sergeant’s sword away and twist his blade to respond with a cut of his own, but it was all he could do to keep his opponent from his neck. The sergeant drew back, preparing another strike, and Siebrecht took the opportunity to step quickly backwards, giving him a few precious seconds to recover.

  The sergeant advanced again, but this time it was Siebrecht who attacked with a lightning thrust, not to his opponent’s chest but to his thigh. This was what true swordplay was about, Siebrecht knew, not words, nor tricks, but simply being faster than any opposition, and in that he
excelled. The sergeant corrected his strike, sweeping his blade down early to deflect Siebrecht’s thrust away. Siebrecht was ready for it and, just before the swords made contact, he flicked his wrist and brought the point over the sergeant’s hilt and up against his chest. It was a move designed for lighter, slimmer weapons than this ungainly practice sword, and his wrist muscles protested at such treatment. But the sergeant was surprised and had to throw his body back to evade the sword’s tip. Siebrecht thrust forwards again to realise his advantage, but the sergeant found his feet and managed to stumble backwards, before finally knocking Siebrecht’s sword away with a desperate swipe.

  There was another moment’s pause as both sides reassessed the other. Siebrecht could tell that his fellow novices had been impressed; none of them had managed to so much as trouble the sergeant, let alone drive him back. But he also knew that the sergeant had been too confident; he would not be caught out so readily next time. The sergeant, though, appeared to have learned nothing from the last engagement and once more advanced with a high guard, exactly as he had done the first time. It was obviously a trap, evidently the sergeant hoped for Siebrecht to draw his sword in again ready to block and allow him a chance to close the distance, perhaps even reverse his guard into a downwards thrust. Siebrecht did the opposite and threw himself forwards, thrusting straight at the sergeant’s chest this time, trusting to his sheer speed to succeed without any tricks.

  As Siebrecht moved, the sergeant leaped forwards, keeping his sword high but twisting to evade the novice’s point. Siebrecht’s blade slipped past the sergeant’s side and so he hurriedly stepped back to pull away. Too late. The sergeant’s free arm slammed down, pinning Siebrecht’s blade between his arm and his chest. Desperate, Siebrecht tried to twist the weapon to cut its way clear, but the sergeant had already snaked his arm around Siebrecht’s sword hand and locked the elbow. Dropping his own sword, the sergeant gripped Siebrecht’s shoulder and dropped his weight, dragging the novice down with him. They both hit the ground, but the sergeant landed on top and still with his grip. In mere moments, Siebrecht was face down with the sergeant’s knee in the small of his back.