Bloodline Awakened: Rise Of The Nameless Knight

The fourth door closed in Ryn's face before the steward finished his sentence.

"House Marrowick regrets," the man said, reading from a scroll he did not bother to look up from, "that the ward has proven unsuitable. He will be returned to the barracks by morning."

Ryn stood in the cold marble hall with his single bundle clutched against his chest. Four houses in six years. Four families who had looked at a nameless orphan with no mana and decided, one after another, that the honor of pretending to be generous was not worth the bother.

"What did I do?" he asked.

The steward finally met his eyes. There was no cruelty in them, which somehow made it worse. Only boredom. "Lady Marrowick's daughter tested at Common rank last week. She does not wish to share a roof with a Null. It is considered unlucky."

"Unlucky," Ryn repeated.

"You may take bread from the kitchen on your way out. Lady Marrowick is not an unkind woman."

Ryn almost laughed. He took the bread anyway. Pride was a luxury for people who ate regularly.

By midday, the whole barracks yard knew. News of a noble rejection traveled faster than plague, and twice as eagerly.

"Marrowick too?" Perrin Hale spun his practice sword lazily as Ryn crossed the sand. The other squires drifted into a loose circle, the way they always did. "That's four, isn't it? Even stray dogs in this city have better odds of being adopted."

"Maybe the dogs have better manners," Ryn said.

A few of them snickered. Perrin's smile thinned. "Spar with me, Null. Let's see if you can at least bleed with dignity."

"I have a lesson with Master Bram."

"Master Bram is busy. Spar."

It was not a request. It was never a request. Ryn lifted the dull wooden blade and took his stance, and for three breaths he was good, truly good. He read Perrin's shoulder, ducked the first cut, turned the second. Years of fighting without any advantage had made him sharper than any of them.

Then Perrin's free hand came up, and a flare of orange mana kissed the wooden sword, heating it.

The blade cracked across Ryn's ribs. He hit the sand hard enough to taste blood.

"Mana-enhanced strikes aren't allowed in training," Ryn gasped.

"Aren't they?" Perrin looked around innocently. "Did anyone see me use magic?"

"Not a thing," said one squire.

"Not a thing," echoed another.

Up on the Spire balcony, two robed mages leaned against the rail, watching. One of them murmured something, and the other laughed. "Does the furniture know it's allowed to stand up?" The sound drifted down across the yard like ash.

Ryn pushed himself to his knees. His ribs screamed. He looked up at Perrin and said, very evenly, "Again."

***

Old Bram was waiting at the stable door when Ryn limped in that evening, a wet cloth already in his scarred hands.

"Sit."

"I'm fine."

"You're bleeding on my floor. Sit."

Ryn sat. Bram pressed the cloth to his ribs, and Ryn hissed through his teeth.

"Mana-heated wood," Bram muttered. "Perrin Hale's father owns half the grain in the eastern provinces. His son could set the barracks on fire and they'd call it a training accident."

"They nearly called me an execution once," Ryn said. "I'm used to it."

"Don't joke about that." Bram's voice dropped. "Three years ago, I stood in front of the High Marshal and begged for your neck. Do you remember what he said?"

"That I'd wasted a training slot meant for someone with blood worth spending."

"And what did I say back?"

Ryn almost smiled. "That you'd never seen a man waste anything by working harder than everyone else in the yard."

"Aye." Bram took the cloth away and studied him, the old eyes gone soft in a way the rest of the barracks never saw. "I'll be honest with you, boy. I don't know how long I can keep standing in front of that axe. The Marshal has reassigned you."

Ryn's stomach tightened. "Where?"

"Rear guard. Prince Aldric's convoy leaves for the northern border at dawn. The Marshal wants the escort to be quick and quiet." Bram's jaw worked. "Which means the rear guard is the part nobody will miss if something goes wrong."

"They're sending me to die."

"They're sending you where they think you'll be forgotten," Bram corrected. "Not the same thing. I need you to remember the difference."

Ryn stared at the floor. "Does it matter?"

"It matters to me." Bram gripped his shoulder, hard. "Listen, I've trained a hundred noble sons with bloodlines as long as my arm, and not one of them fights like you. Not one of them tries like you. Whatever the Spire's little stones say, you're no Null in my eyes. You're a knight. Say it."

"Bram—"

"Say it."

Ryn's throat ached. "I'm a knight."

"Louder."

"I'm a knight," he said, and his voice cracked on the last word, and he hated that it did.

"Good." Bram stood, brusque again, as though he had never said anything soft. "Now get some sleep. And Ryn?"

"Yes?"

"Stay low on that road. Whatever you hear, stay low."

***

The convoy left Highmere under a bruised gray dawn, forty riders and six wagons winding north through dead brown hills. Ryn rode last, on a half-lame mare, eating the dust the nobles ahead kicked up without a glance behind.

Near midday, Perrin Hale dropped back long enough to grin at him. "Try to keep up, Null. If the road gets rough, we'll tell them you were brave."

"Tell them whatever you like," Ryn said. "You will anyway."

Perrin laughed and galloped away.

By nightfall, the world had gone strange.

It began as a warmth under his skin, a slow heat that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He pressed a hand to his chest. His fingers came away dry, but the heat crept along his ribs, down his arms, into his skull, until his vision swam gold at the edges.

*Odd,* he thought. *I must be feverish.*

Then he heard it.

A vast, slow pulse rolling up from the earth itself, like the heartbeat of something enormous asleep beneath the mountains. And beneath that, so faint he thought he was imagining it, a voice. Old as stone.

*...there you are...*

Ryn jerked in his saddle. "Who's there?"

"Who are you talking to, Null?" a rear rider called, not even turning.

The mare screamed. Every horse in the convoy screamed. Far ahead, near the prince's golden carriage, the air itself tore open with a sound like ripping canvas, and violet fire poured down the hillside from a dozen directions at once.

"Ambush!" someone shrieked. "Protect the prince!"

Mages scattered. Nobles wheeled their mounts toward the carriage, leaving the rear wagons burning behind them. Ryn's mare reared, and he was falling, and above him the sky turned the color of a bruise, and the first curse struck him square in the chest.

The last thing he heard, before the dark took him, was that ancient voice again, closer now, almost gentle.

*...at last.*