Sunset Mantle by Alter S. Reiss

Author:Alter S. Reiss [Reiss, Alter S.]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2015-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

It did not take long for the word to spread that Cete was rehearsing the fighting forms in public, and had invited all who wanted to join him in the practice. They were the rightful property of all men, but for most the practice was dropped when it became too demanding, when youths became men, and the days filled up with other concerns. Now the news of what Radan meant to accomplish was spreading. Sickle heads were being beaten into daggers, axe heads were being polished and fitted with new hafts. And men who now felt the absence of martial training were looking for instruction.

The Reach army had left with no more than a week’s rations. There was no hope of turning the masses of Reach Antach into a force that could oppose them in that time. But the fighting forms were a foundation. They taught the cuts and the blocks, pressed them into the mind and the muscle. Cete went through them, time after time. Morning form, evening form, the variants for holiday and public fast, again and again.

Some of those who came to participate fell out after a few repetitions, returned to their homes or to their work. Others remained until they could not continue. Cete was no commander, no hired teacher, and he was careful never to act as though he were; when he offered a correction, it was always, “I have been taught this,” and never, “You must do that.” The people who attended learned, for what good it would do.

That is, the people who had come to learn learned. As Marelle had predicted, there were some of Radan’s men left behind in the Reach, and as Marelle had predicted, they did not leave Cete to teach the fighting forms in his orchard in peace. Two different men tried to trip him, another let his axe slip at a critical point, so that it went skipping out where Cete had been standing. It was the hardest thing in the world to let that pass, to continue to teach in the face of insult. Cete had the tribal dagger in his belt, and it leapt up into his hand, as though it had a will of its own.

Each time, he forced it back to its sheath. The attacks were blatant enough, there were witnesses enough that if he called them on it, the law would probably be with him. But then he would spend two days, three, making his claim before the judges, one of whom would have been appointed by Radan to sit for him when the army was in the field. That Marelle was right didn’t mean it was easy to do what she had told him.

Then came Mase, and Cete could feel the madding throbbing behind his eyes, had to fight to keep control of his hands.

The sergeant was careful, and cleverer than Cete had expected. He had brought along a jug of wine, and he sat himself down beyond the line of Cete’s land, in the path between the fields.

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