Alanna Page 3

  Someone behind Alanna grabbed her. She spun. A tall, gangling boy of nearly fourteen looked her over, a sneer on his thick mouth. He had cold blue eyes and sandy-blond hair that flopped over his forehead.

  “I wonder what this is.” His crooked teeth made him spit his s’s. Alanna wiped a drop of saliva from her cheek. “Probably some back-country boy who thinks he’s a noble.”

  “Leave him alone, Ralon,” someone protested. “He didn’t say anything to you.”

  “He doesn’t have to,” Ralon snapped. “I bet he’s some farmer’s son trying to pass for one of us.”

  Alanna blushed a dull red. “I was told pages were supposed to learn manners,” she murmured. “Whoever told me that must’ve been mistaken.”

  The boy grabbed her collar, lifting her off her feet. “You’ll do what you’re told,” he hissed, “till you earn the right to call yourself a page. If I say you’re the goatherd’s son, you say, ‘Yes, Lord Ralon.’”

  Alanna gasped with fury. “I’d as soon kiss a pig! Is that what you’ve been doing—kissing pigs? Or being kissed?”

  Ralon threw her against the wall, hard. Alanna charged, ramming into his stomach and knocking him to the floor. Ralon yelled and shoved her off him.

  “What is this?”

  The young male voice was clear and forceful. Ralon froze; Alanna slowly got to her feet. The watching boys made way for a dark-haired page and his four companions.

  Ralon was the first to speak. “Highness, this boy was acting as if he owned the palace,” he whined. “King of the castle, he was, and he insulted me like no gentleman insults another—”

  “I don’t think I spoke to you, Ralon of Malven,” the boy called “Highness” said. His bright blue eyes fixed on Ralon’s. The two boys were about the same height, but the dark-haired boy seemed to be about a year younger and much more commanding. “Unless I’m mistaken, I told you not to talk to me at all.”

  “But, Highness, he—”

  “Shut up, Ralon,” instructed one of the boy’s friends. This one was big, with tightly curled brown hair and coal-black eyes. “You’ve got your orders.”

  Ralon stepped out of the way, red with fury. The boy who seemed to be running things looked around. “Douglass.” He nodded to a boy who had been there all along. “What happened?”

  A stocky blond page stepped forward. His hair was still wet from washing. He was the one who told Ralon to let Alanna alone.

  “It was Ralon, Jon,” Douglass said. “The new boy was just standing here. Ralon started on him—called him a country boy, said he was a farmer’s son. The new boy said he thought we were here to learn manners. Ralon grabbed him and said the new boy had to do whatever Ralon told him to do, and say ‘Yes, Lord Ralon.’”

  The boy called Highness looked at Ralon with disgust. “I’m not surprised.” He turned his bright eyes back to Alanna. “Then what?”

  Douglass grinned. “The new boy said he’d as soon kiss a pig.” The pages started to giggle. Alanna blushed and hung her head. Ralon’s behavior was bad, but hers wasn’t much better. “He said it looked as if Ralon had been kissing pigs. Either that or being kissed himself.”

  Most of the boys listening laughed outright at this. Alanna could see Ralon’s fists clench. She had made her first enemy.

  “Ralon threw the boy against the wall,” Douglass continued. “The new boy tackled him and knocked him down. That’s when you came, Jon.”

  “I’ll speak with you later, Ralon,” the darkhaired boy instructed. “In my rooms, before lightsout.” When Ralon hesitated, Jon added in a soft, icy voice, “You’ve been dismissed, Malven.”

  Ralon hurled himself out of the hallway. The boys watched him go before returning their attention to Alanna. She was still studying the floor.

  “You have good taste in enemies, even if you do make them your first day here,” Jon said. “Let’s have a look at you, Fire-Hair.”

  Slowly she looked up into his eyes. He was about three years older than she was, with coalblack hair and sapphire-colored eyes. His nose was straight and slightly hooked. His face was stern, but a smile touched his mouth, and a glimmer of fun slipped from his eyes. Alanna linked her hands behind her back, giving him stare for stare until the large boy who had silenced Ralon whispered, “This is Prince Jonathan, lad.”

  She bowed slightly, afraid that if she bent over any more she would fall. It wasn’t every day a person met the heir to the throne. “Your Royal Highness,” she said. “I’m sorry about the—the misunderstanding.”

  “You didn’t misunderstand,” the Prince told her. “Ralon is no gentleman. What’s your name?”

  “Alan of Trebond, your Highness.”

  He frowned. “I don’t remember seeing your family at Court.”

  “No, your Highness.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s my father. He doesn’t like it, your Highness.”

  “I see.” There was no way to tell what he thought of her answer. “Do you like Court, Alan of Trebond?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “I could let you know in a couple of days.”

  “I look forward to your views.” Was he laughing inside? “Have you met the others?”

  With royal permission given, the others all tried to introduce themselves at once. The big friendly boy who had given her Jonathan’s name was Raoul of Goldenlake. The large young man with chestnut hair and eyes was Gareth—Gary—of Naxen, the Duke’s son. The slim, dark boy beside him was Alexander of Tirragen, and Raoul’s shy blond shadow was Francis of Nond. There were ten others but these four—and the Prince—were the leaders.

  Finally Jonathan said, “Now that we’ve met our newest member, who will sponsor him?”

  Five of the older boys raised their hands. Jonathan nodded. “Your sponsor keeps you from getting too lost,” he explained to Alanna. “I think Gary had better take you in hand.”

  The big youth nodded to Alanna, his brown eyes friendly. “A pleasure.”

  Alanna bowed politely.

  A bell rang. “We’d better go,” Jonathan announced. “Alan, stay close to Gary and listen to what he tells you.”

  Alanna followed her new sponsor to the great dining hall. This was closed only during the summer, when most nobles went to their estates and the rest of the Court went to the Summer Palace by the sea. The other three seasons of the year, the entire Court ate here, served by the pages. Gary stationed Alanna in a niche, where she could see everything. As he hurried back and forth on his serving duties, he whispered explanations to her. It was Gary who showed her to the pages’ dining hall after the banquet was over, and Gary who woke her up (she fell asleep over dessert) and guided her to her room.

  “Welcome to the palace, young Trebond,” he said cheerfully as he handed her over to Coram.

  Alanna crawled sleepily into bed, thinking, Not so bad—for the first day.

  A bell that hung in a tower high over the pages’ wing awakened Alanna at dawn. Moaning, she bathed her face in cold water. She was still exhausted from her five-day ride. For once she could have slept late.

  Gary—a wide-awake, disgustingly cheerful and large Gary—came for her just as she was finished dressing. When Alanna, who hated breakfast, would have taken only an apple, Gary filled up her plate. “Eat,” he advised. “You’ll need your strength.”

  The bell gently chimed. The pages hurried to their first hour of lessons, Alanna trotting to keep up with her sponsor.

  “First class is reading and writing,” he told her.

  “But I know how to read and write!” Alanna protested.

  “You do? Good. You’d be surprised at how many noblemen’s sons can’t. Don’t worry, young Trebond.” A grin lit his face. “I’m sure the masters will find something for you to do.”

  Alanna soon discovered that most of what nobles called “the thinking arts” were taught by Mithran priests. These orange-robed men were stern taskmasters, always quick to catch a boy letting his attention wander or nappi
ng. When the priest who taught reading and writing was satisfied that Alanna could do both—he made her read a page from a book aloud, then copy it out on paper—he assigned her a long and very dull poem. Alanna was to read it and be ready to report on it for the next day. The bell rang the hour when she was only partly done.

  “When do I finish this?” she asked Gary, waving the scroll on which the poem was written. He was guiding her to their next set of lessons.

  “In your free time. Here we go. Mathematics. Can you do figures, too?”

  “Some,” she admitted.

  “A regular scholar,” said Alex, who had caught up with them, laughing.

  Alanna shook her head. “No. But my father is very strict about book learning.”

  “He sounds a lot like my father in that respect,” Gary said dryly.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Alanna replied. Remembering what the Duke had said about her father the day before, she added, “I don’t think they got along.”

  Again Alanna had to prove her skills, this time to the priest who taught mathematics. Once he was satisfied as to the extent of her knowledge, he put her to learning something called “algebra.”

  “What is it?” Alanna wanted to know.

  The priest frowned at her. “It is a building block,” he told her sternly. “Without it you cannot hope to construct a safe bridge, a successful war tower or catapult, a windmill or an irrigation wheel. Its uses are infinite. You will learn them by studying them, not by staring at me.”

  Alanna was staring at him. The idea that mathematics could make things such as windmills and catapults work was amazing. She was even more amazed when she realized how hard the work was that she was supposed to complete for the next day.

  When Gary came over to give her a hand, she demanded, “When am I supposed to do this? I have to complete four problems for him by tomorrow, and it’s almost time for the next class!”

  “In your free time,” Gary replied. “And the time you have now. Look—if you get stuck, offer to help Alex with his extra-duty chores. He’s a mathematical wizard.” The bell rang. “Let’s go, youngling.”

  The next class was in deportment, or manners as they were practiced by nobles. Alanna had learned very early to say “Please” and “Thank you,” but she quickly realized that these were only the rudiments of deportment. She did not know how to bow. She did not know how to address a Lord as opposed to an Earl. She did not know which of three spoons to use first at a banquet. She could not dance, and she could not play a musical instrument. The master gave her a very large tome of etiquette to read and ordered her to start lap-harp studies instantly—in her free time.

  “But I have to read the first chapter of this tonight in my free time!” she told Gary and Alex, thumping the book of etiquette. They were sitting on a bench during their morning break—all ten minutes of it. “And four problems in mathematics, and the rest of that stupid poem—”

  “Ah,” Gary said dreamily. “‘Free time.’ I’ve heard about that. Don’t fool yourself, Fire-Top. What with extra hours of lessons for punishments, and the work you get every day, free time is an illusion. It’s what you get when you die and the gods reward you for a life spent working from dawn until midnight. We all face up to it sooner or later—the only real free time you get here is what my honored sire chooses to give you, when he thinks you have earned it.”

  “And he doesn’t give it to you at night,” Alex put in. “He gives it to you when you’ve been here awhile, on Market Day and sometimes a morning or afternoon all to yourself. But never at night. At night you study. During the day you study. In your sleep—”

  The bell rang.

  “I could learn to hate that bell,” Alanna muttered as she gathered up her things. The older two boys laughed and hurried her along to the next class.

  To her surprise, this one was different. The boys sat upright in their chairs, looking as if they were interested in what was about to happen. The walls were hung with maps and charts. A board with several large, blank sheets of paper fixed to it stood before the chairs. A box containing sticks of charcoal for drawing on the paper sat on the table beside it.

  The teacher entered to friendly greetings This man was not a priest. He was short and plump, with long brown hair streaked with gray, and a long shaggy beard. His hose bagged at the knee; his tunic was as rumpled as if he had slept in it. He had a tiny, delicate nose and a smiling mouth. Alanna met the man’s large green-brown eyes and smiled in spite of herself. He was the oddest mixture of disarray and good nature she had ever encountered, and she liked him on sight. His name was Sir Myles of Olau.

  “Hello,” he greeted her cheerfully. “You must be Alan of Trebond. You’re very hardy to have made it this far the first day. Has anyone said what we try to learn in here?”

  Alanna said the first thing that came to her lips. “The only thing I know is that I jump when I’m told to and I have no free time.”

  The boys chuckled, and Myles grinned. Alanna blushed. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I wasn’t trying to be pert.”

  “It’s all right,” Myles reassured her. “Your life here is going to be difficult. Our Code of Chivalry makes harsh demands.”

  “Sir Myles, are you going to start on the Code again?” Jonathan asked. “You know we never agree that it asks too much from us.”

  “No, I’m not going to ‘start on’ the Code today,” Myles replied. “For one thing, you boys won’t agree with me until the glamour of being knights and nobles has worn off and you can see the toll our way of life has taken from you. And for another, Duke Gareth has given me to understand that we are somewhat deficient in our coverage of the Bazhir Wars and that he hopes to find us more knowledgeable when next he stops to visit.”

  “Sir?” someone asked.

  Myles looked at Alanna with a twinkle in his eyes. “I often forget—not everyone is a scholar like me, and I tend to use obscure language. Therefore, to translate—Duke Gareth wants me to go over the Bazhir Wars because he thinks I spent too much time arguing the Code of Chivalry and not enough time on the history of Tortall and the history of warfare—which is what I am supposed to teach you.”

  Alanna left the class thinking, something she seldom did seriously.

  “Why the frown?” Gary asked, catching up to her. “Don’t you like Myles? I do.”

  Startled, Alanna blinked at him. “Oh, no. I liked him a lot. He just seems—”

  “Odd,” Alex said dryly. He and Gary seemed to be close friends. “The word you want is ‘odd.’”

  “Alex and Myles are always arguing about right and wrong,” Gary explained.

  “Actually, he seems very wise,” Alanna said hesitantly. “Not that I know many wise people, but—”

  “He’s also the Court drunk,” Alex pointed out. “Come on—before lunch is over and we haven’t eaten.”

  After lunch came an hour of philosophy. Alanna almost nodded off to sleep as the teaching priest droned on about duty.

  At last Gary took her outside, down to the acres of practice courts and exercise yards behind the palace. Here was the center of training for knighthood. Alanna would spend her afternoons and part of her evenings here, going inside only when it actually rained or snowed—and sometimes not even then. Here she must learn jousting, fighting with weapons such as maces, axes and staffs, archery while standing and while riding, normal riding and trick riding. She must learn to fall, roll, tumble. She would get dirty, tear muscles, bruise herself, break bones. If she withstood it all, if she was stubborn enough and strong enough, she would someday carry a knight’s shield with pride.

  Training was endless. Even once a knight had his shield—or her shield—he still worked out in the yards. To get out of shape was to ask for death at the hands of a stranger on a lonely road. As the daughter of a border lord, Alanna knew exactly how important the fighting arts were. Every year Trebond fought off bandits. Occasionally Scanra to the north tried to invade through the Grimhold Mountains, and Trebond was T
ortall’s first line of defense.

  Alanna could already use a bow and a dagger. She was a skilled tracker and a decent rider, but she quickly learned that the men who taught the pages and squires considered her to be a raw beginner.

  She was a raw beginner. Her afternoon began with an hour of push-ups, sit-ups, jumps and twisting exercises. A knight had to be limber to turn and weave quickly.

  For the next hour she wore a suit of padded cloth armor as she received her first lessons with a staff. Before she could learn to use a sword, she had to show some mastery of staff fighting. Without the heavy padding she would have broken something that first afternoon. As it was, she learned to stop a blow aimed at her side, and she felt as if she had been kicked by a horse.

  Next she learned the basic movement in hand fighting—the fall. She fell, trying to slap the ground as she hit, trying to take her weight on all the right places and creating new bruises whenever she missed or forgot.

  The next hour saw her placing a shield on a bruised and aching left arm. She was paired off with a boy with a stout wooden stick. The purpose of this exercise was to teach her how to use the shield as a defense. If she succeeded, she stopped the oncoming blow. If she didn’t, her opponent landed a smarting rap on the part of her she had left exposed. After a while they traded off and she wielded the stick while her partner headed off her attack. This didn’t make her feel any better—since she was new to the use of the stick, her opponent caught every strike she tried.

  Feeling cheated, Alanna followed Gary to the next yard. Archery was a little better, but only a little. Because she already knew something about archery, she was permitted to actually string the bow and shoot it. When the master discovered she had a good eye and a better aim, he made her work on the way she stood and the way she held her bow—for an hour.

  The last hour of her day’s studies was spent on horseback. Since Alanna had only Chubby to ride, she was assigned one of the many extra horses kept in the royal stables for some of her riding. Her first lesson was in sitting properly, trotting the horse in a circle, bringing him to a gallop, galloping without falling off and halting the horse precisely in front of the master. Because her horse was too large for her and had a hard mouth, Alanna fell off three times. The beast was impossible for her to control, and when she told the riding master as much, she found herself ordered to report for extra study three nights a week, after the evening meal.