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9:25 Dragon
Edgehall, the Arling of Edgehall, Ferelden
“Rutherford! A few of us are heading up to the Dozy Dragon later for a pint. Be glad to have you along.”
Cullen smiled at Timat. “I’d be glad to go,” he answered. “Unfortunately, I have the geography assignment for Brother Rowan to do yet, along with the anatomy sketches for Brother Orcus. And you know how I am with a pencil. I’ll have to redo them three times before they’ll be worthy of a pass, if I’m any judge.”
Timat rolled his eyes. “What’s the problem?” he asked. “You’re tops in all that they really care about. You can wield a sword and conduct a maneuver better than any of us. You’ll be able to slice and dice an apostate with the best of them when we’re done with training. Forget the academics! Come have a drink!”
“I wish I could be quite as sanguine about the unimportance of more scholarly pursuits,” Cullen said, brushing off the casual bloodthirstiness. Timat didn’t mean anything by it. He waved a hand at his dormmate. “Go. Have a good time. Tell me about it later, if you’re sober enough, and I’ll practice for the tournament with all of you as much as you like on Saturday.”
Timat rolled his eyes again, and walking by Cullen toward the door, shoved him lightly back toward the wall with another chuckle.
Cullen grinned and reapplied himself to his drawing. Despite himself, it was a skill he had not yet been able to grasp. He understood the importance of it. Templars, who might be called upon to travel at any time, had to be able to both read and draw a map. The skill was of less material value to his anatomy lessons, except in giving him a physical sense of where on the body the principal bones, muscle groups, tendons, and blood vessels were. He suspected he himself might learn more from direct discourse with and observation of the healers and the medics, but, their time being valuable, he could see why his instructor had substituted a different method.
But the fingers that had found they were well-suited to manipulating a sword continued to be both slow and clumsy with finer work. His spelling and vocabulary had improved since his beginning at Edgehall, but the brothers and sisters still decried his penmanship and held him up to the younger students as a bad example. He had attempted to learn sewing as one of the supplementary skills they taught to the recruits here—mending rips in tunics, socks, and banners was always useful in the barracks—but he had left small specks of blood on every garment he put his needle to and sewn lines so crooked, with stitches so rough, that he’d eventually had to give up the discipline as one that hurt rather than helped him and his dormmates when inspection came round. He’d taken on field medicine and camp cooking instead. He got on very well with the cooking, but when they handed down a drawing assignment in anatomy . . .
At times, he was tempted to simply trace maps from the book and outlines of human and elf bodies from the class texts, but he knew he would be caught if he exhibited any uncharacteristic improvement. So, he just drew everything out at least five times each and took the low marks he earned.
Cullen pushed aside his latest effort at the anatomy assignment and sighed, sitting back in the chair at one of the four dormitory desks.
He ran his fingers through his hair. He would need to get it cut again soon. Some of the recruits could wear their hair long, tying it back in plaits or horsetails when it was time to put on a helm. He couldn’t do the same. Without foul-smelling grease of some kind, his hair wouldn’t lie flat enough to tie back, so he was obliged to pay a barber every four weeks or so to keep the curls cropped short enough for convenience. Another reason he wasn’t overly inclined to multiple nights out at the tavern every week. Unlike some of the other recruits, Cullen had to live entirely within the small stipend the Chantry provided him for his training.
He held his drawing up and squinted at it in the candlelight. Once again, his proportions were off. One of the hands looked as though it had been shriveled by a Blight. There was certainly no room to label anything on that arm.
Cullen balled up the paper, threw it into the dormitory fire, and got out another sheet. He needed to buy more paper too.
He breathed in and out, slowly, trying to relax his arm, and started sketching out the figure again.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Cullen asked, stopping Florin, a recruit in a younger year.
The boy lowered his sword and adjusted his helmet. “Trying to build momentum, sir.”
“By spinning around and leaving your back exposed? Your shield’s no good if it’s on the other side of your body from your attacker.”
Florin went red. “I saw Ser Cassidy do it at the tournament four months back,” he said.
“Ser Cassidy’s a tournament knight,” Cullen told the boy. “There’s a big difference between swordplay on horseback, to entertain a crowd and against someone who isn’t actually trying to kill you, and swordplay on foot as practiced in actual battle.”
“And how many battles have you been in?” Florin demanded.
Cullen crossed his arms. “That is beside the point. Poor technique is poor technique, and it’s even worse when you think you’re doing it right. Don’t watch Ser Cassidy and those others, who only come out for the tournaments. Watch your trainers, or the Templars in the practice yard against the residents here, when they come in with messages for the Knight-Commander. They’re much better models.”
“If you’re so smart, why don’t you show me how it’s done, Ser Cullen?” Florin muttered.
“Gladly, and I’m not a knight yet. Just your tutor. Unfortunately.” Cullen stepped up to the mannequin next to the one Florin had been practicing at. He picked up a round shield on the ground, drew his sword, and took up a ready position. Making use of a small counterswing before he began, he demonstrated the backhand side stroke they had been practicing. The blade of his sword sliced into the leather of the mannequin, and, even slowed by the thick-packed stuffing inside, still landed with an audible schwick! Cullen examined the cut—half a handspan deep. He had been more frustrated than he had thought. Using his foot for leverage, he pulled his blade free. He would have to sharpen the edge when they were finished here.
Not that the demonstration had been ineffective. Florin’s eyes were wide. The mannequins were designed to emulate the density and texture of a man, to offer the same resistance. Most recruits practiced on them with weighted wooden drill swords; slicing into the mannequins repeatedly, merely for practice on technique, was too hard on actual steel. But almost because of that, Cullen had carried his point. If he had been attacking a man, the blow he had just dealt would have been a mortal one.
“How do you—without even winding up—” Florin sputtered. He walked over to the mannequin, staring at the rip and looking back at Cullen. “I could never do that,” he said.
Cullen dismissed this. “Of course you could. You will, and without any weaknesses that could lay you open to a return blow like that one. You just need to make a few adjustments. Here, let me see your swing again.”
Florin demonstrated, not on the mannequin, but in the empty air. Cullen saw the problem. “Lift the sword with your body,” he told Florin. “Not just with your arm. Put some body weight behind your blows. Not all of it, mind. You need to stay balanced, but cut through your target, not at it.”
He illustrated the movement again, in empty air himself. Florin mimicked him. He staggered, unused to the kind of force he was using.
“You’ll get the feel for it,” Cullen encouraged him. “Keep practicing until it’s an instinct. The strength exercises the knight-masters have you working on in the yard will help you with control and endurance. Don’t neglect them. Eventually, you’ll build up enough strength for full workouts with sword and shield alone, but for now, trying to learn new moves with weary arms will just lead to poor balance and poor fighting technique. Remember to rest when you need it.”
This last bit of advice came right when Florin, after several lunges with something akin to proper balance, staggered again and tripped, his arms too fatigued with the weighted practice blade to continue. The boy grimaced, smiled, and threw down his sword on the grass. He braced himself on his knees, breathing. Cullen waited. He remembered back when he had first started. He had thought that practice with a quarterstaff and on the road with Ser Eoghan had prepared him for the more rigorous Templar training. Weeks of stiff, aching muscles had taught him otherwise.
“Do you ever fight in the tournaments, Cullen?” Florin asked when he’d got his breath back.
“I competed in the melees once or twice last year,” Cullen admitted. “I was curious to see how I was getting on against more experienced fighters. I knew nothing when I began my training here, you know. Probably less than you do.” The boy smiled at the mild jibe, taking it in the spirit in which it was meant. Cullen smiled back, forgiving Florin his earlier pride. “Got a few good knocks for my trouble.”
“Probably did better than I would,” the boy said glumly.
“You’d be surprised,” Cullen told him. “The melees are open to everyone, you know—knights, yeoman, men who have been fighting for twenty or thirty years. Fighting against apostates, but also bandits, Avvar and Chasind, and sometimes Orlesian chevaliers. Put a raw recruit who’s never even been in a skirmish into that and—well, you can imagine. I lasted long enough not to completely disgrace myself and my instructors, but I was knocked cold for hours the first tournament and had a sprained wrist and several painful bruises after the second.
“But the melees are about the only place you’ll see any real fighting in the tournaments,” Cullen finished. “At least in Edgehall. It may be different in Orlais, or in Denerim, where skilled knights might gain some advantage from a display. Here, there’s little to be gained but boasting rights, so the knights you see tilting or fighting together in the duels are precisely the kind who place their importance in boasting rights alone.”
“I joined the Templars to be like the tournament knights,” Florin reflected, looking down at his practice sword. “You’re saying they’re no good?”
Cullen hesitated. “I’m certain a few of them are, and I certainly do understand how the crowds and the promise of honor can create an impression,” he said finally. “I just think that working knights and warriors are a better place to look for your examples—men and women who fight on a regular basis, as a matter of course and without fanfare or glory. Not just for how it looks.”
Florin was silent a moment. “I think I see what you mean,” he admitted. “And I think I’m rested enough, for now. Will you show me something else?”
Cullen shook his head. “Better to drill what you already know for now. You can win a battle more effectively with one well-executed basic technique than you can with three dozen poorly executed advanced ones.” He looked consciously down at Florin and smiled. “Or so they tell me,” he added.
Florin rolled his eyes, but he smiled.
“Square up then,” Cullen told him. “Show me your forward thrust.”
TAVISH
Tavish stood at the window overlooking the training yard. Rutherford was out there with one of the first-year recruits, the brash and hasty son of a minor noble in the area, younger than usual for Templar training, well-sponsored, well-funded, and full up with so many nonsense ideas about swordplay that Ser Horst, who taught the first-year recruits, had given him over for tutoring in his spare time.
Rutherford often tutored the younger recruits in feats at arms. As far as the knight-commander knew, it had started out unofficially. Halfway through his first year, Rutherford’s year-mates had noticed he had the knack—natural coordination and athleticism and the physical memory for maneuver. A few had asked him for help and mentioned it to their instructors when they were praised for their improvement. Rutherford had been advanced up to learn and practice with the fifth-year recruits now—those who were due to take their vows and join the Order soon, or even those who had done but were yet to be assigned to a Circle or a station. And now Ser Horst wasn’t the only one who had got into the habit of asking Rutherford to take on boys and girls who needed a little extra help, on the lower levels at least. As far as Tavish knew, Rutherford had only refused to help twice, when his studies pressed him too hard, devoting his own spare hours to the betterment of his fellow recruits.
They respected him too. Even ones like Hornby, nobly born, with every other advantage, and inclined to be prouder of it than they ought, eventually reverenced Rutherford. Tavish could see it now. Hornby, initially sulky and reluctant when Horst had told him his form needed work and to go see another recruit to work on it, was looking at Rutherford now with eagerness and appreciation. His whole body was lighter, more relaxed.
As far as Tavish could tell, Rutherford didn’t work at earning the respect the others gave him. He commanded it without recourse to politicking or base flattery of any sort—with just his skill and the force of his character.
Tavish turned away from the window, troubled. He himself wasn’t insensible of Rutherford’s appeal. Common-born, no advantages of education, funding, or connection, Rutherford was doing more than holding his own against the others; he was thriving. He was tall, well built, earnest, diligent. He had the makings of an officer soldiers would fight and die for someday. In fact, Rutherford was precisely the kind of man the Tavish himself would want to fight beside if there was ever any real trouble, would be honored to fight beside, and to an extent, the knight-commander had seen it from Rutherford’s first day in Edgehall.
And Tavish wasn’t sure Rutherford would ever make a good Templar for just that reason.
The boy was soft. Not scholarly by any means, but too thoughtful. Too compassionate. Too merciful. Within the Order, among his comrades, it was more than forgivable: it was laudable. With the mages the Templars were charged to watch? It could be deadly weakness.
Tavish thought back to the meeting he had just been to with Edgehall’s own Mother Leticia. She sat down with the brothers, sisters, and instructing Templars twice each year to review the recruits, to discuss which should be moved ahead in their training; which were ready for vows; and which, perhaps, should be dismissed from consideration from the Order.
Like the younger recruits and most who saw the lad at feats at arms, Mother Letitia was disposed to think highly of Rutherford. “A promising young man,” she’d said, when they’d come to Cullen’s name. “So neat and respectful, and one of your more devoted recruits, I am certain.”
She had been keeping abreast of Rutherford’s advancement through his arms training and, aware he was of an age with many of the trainees due to take their vows this autumn, was seriously considering passing him through with them.
Fortunately, the instructors attending to the education of Rutherford’s mind had vetoed that plan. Rutherford’s progress through the more academic courses of study Templar recruits undertook before making their vows was slightly above the average. More impressive than it sounded, given the level at which he’d come to them, but, in contrast to his more rapid progression through the arts of combat, in his other courses, Rutherford was keeping pace with the other trainees who had started his same year. He was a third-year trainee and working on a third-year level.
“If he had come to us at fifteen, I daresay he would be ready to take his vows this year with the rest of the young men and women his own age,” Brother Teo, Rutherford’s history instructor had explained to the Revered Mother. “Even given the . . . erm . . . early deficiencies of his schooling. But now? He would be at a disadvantage. It may be something of a disgrace for the young man, I don’t know. He’s shown little resentment of his peers thus far. But I advise we continue as we are, employing the young man as he can be useful to the less gifted recruits in the arts of combat, and continuing his education otherwise with the others moving into their fourth year. Two years hence, he will be ready.”
Mother Letitia had seen Tavish’s expression. “Knight-Commander, you have doubts?”
Tavish had cleared his throat. He liked Rutherford. He truly did, and he had been reluctant to voice an objection that could cast a shadow over the young man’s career. Yet he had spoken. “Of the man, not at all. Only about his suitability for the Order. His disposition.”
“Yet you agreed when I said he seemed to me to be a lovely young man, a promising young man.”
“Aye,” Tavish had admitted. “There’s the rub: he’s as fine a young man as I’ve ever seen. A promising warrior and more: a promising officer. And I know of no trainee currently in the barracks or I’ve seen over the course of my career more virtuous, or, as you say, with a more genuine faith in the Maker.”
“Such praise,” remarked Mother Letitia. “Yet you doubt him?”
“Fine men and fine warriors, even pious ones, do not always make the best Templars,” Tavish had explained. “My doubts are not about the excellence of Cullen Rutherford’s character but his strength of purpose against the evils of magic.”
Several at the long table had begun to look indignant, but at this, a few of the other Templars had nodded in sudden understanding—Ser Borthas, Ser Idigen, Ser Cythera.
“Will he do his duty,” Tavish had asked the Revered Mother, “when duty bids him strike down an uncontrolled child? A man who stands in absolute terror of him? Can he stand firm and watch mages without becoming corrupted, influenced by friendship or sympathy? I don’t know, Revered Mother. I’ve had my doubts since first he came to us and seen nothing so far in the boy’s character that’s set me at ease.”
Mother Letitia had not been completely convinced, though she acknowledged Tavish had more opportunities to closely examine the trainees than she did, living among them and supervising their progress, while she saw them only at the Chantry and on periodic visits and knew them mostly by report. “It is not unusual for our youngest Templars to err either on the side of too much zeal in their duty or too much compassion upon their charges. Time, in most cases, draws them toward the path of moderation,” she had pointed out. She had asked whether he thought the usual practice of obliging Templar trainees to observe one or more Harrowings and accompanying senior members of the Order to hunt for any rumored apostates in their final year might be sufficient to steel Cullen Rutherford’s resolve, and Tavish had had to admit that it might. He had seen a few of Rutherford’s persuasion harden when they came face to face with their first abomination. The difficulty was that he had never seen one of Rutherford’s persuasion also in possession of his particular gifts and abilities, and in such strength. It gnawed at him whenever he saw the young man, the worry that the one might blind his superiors in future to the other. He had seen good men die and mages fallen and spoiled through Templar weakness.
In the end, Mother Letitia had agreed they should proceed as they had been—make use of Rutherford’s martial talents and ability with the younger recruits and continue his education elsewise with others in his year. Tavish had to hope that he had done his duty and alerted her, and the others, to the possible dangers of Rutherford’s admittance to the Order, had to hope within the next two years that the lad would gain a better sense of the true gravity of the profession he aspired to than he had shown evidence of thus far. All the hard work, ability, and likability in the world wouldn’t help him when he was faced with a mage gone rogue, or the prospect of it.
Tavish strode into his personal quarters, disturbed as he always was when he considered Rutherford. The lad was too promising not to join the Order. But better he didn’t than any weakness of his should weaken his future comrades as well. “Maker be with him,” he prayed.