Bloodline Awakened: Rise Of The Nameless Knight

Latrines And Baggage

Three weeks at Greywatch Keep taught Ryn that there were exactly two kinds of recruits: those who carried swords, and those who carried everything else. He carried everything else.

"Ash! Another barrel!"

"Coming, Sergeant."

He hauled it up the muddy slope and stacked it behind the mess hall. Down in the yard, the noble-born recruits drilled with mana-forged blades, steel flashing blue and green in the thin morning light. The Nulls scrubbed pots and dug trenches under the cold northern wind.

*You are very good at carrying,* Vaelthor observed.

"Thank you."

*It was not a compliment. You hide so well that I forget you are anything else.*

"That's the point." Ryn wiped his forehead on a filthy sleeve. "A man nobody looks at gets to watch."

And he had watched. He'd seen the veteran lieutenant whose sword-light sputtered halfway through a drill, so that the man slipped the blade behind his back and pretended to adjust his grip. He'd seen two mages stop for a rest after a single ward-spell, gray-faced, drinking as though they'd run a mile.

*Their mana is thin,* Vaelthor said. *Thinner than the old stories. They do not know it yet.*

"They know," Ryn said quietly. "They just won't say it."

"You. Ash."

Ryn turned. A tall young knight stood at the edge of the yard, helm tucked under one arm, fair hair damp with sweat. His surcoat bore the crest of House Thorne, and every recruit within thirty paces had gone suddenly, carefully busy.

"Ser Lucan," Ryn said, and bowed his head.

"You were watching my drill." Lucan's voice was cool, without heat. "Three mornings running. Something funny?"

"No, ser."

"Then explain why a baggage-hauler keeps stopping to study a sword form he'll never be permitted to use."

Ryn's mouth went dry. "I was admiring it, ser."

"Admiring."

"It's a good form. The third cut leaves your left side open, though."

Silence.

Several nearby recruits stopped breathing. Lucan's eyes narrowed slowly, the way a man's might when a dog speaks.

"Say that again."

*Ryn,* Vaelthor warned. *Gently.*

"Forgive me, ser." Ryn bowed lower, cursing himself. "I'm a Null. I know nothing about swordcraft. I only thought—"

"No." Lucan stepped closer. "You thought you saw something, and you said it. That is not nothing." He studied Ryn's face as though trying to read small print. "I trained under the best masters in Aldermere. None of them ever caught that flaw."

"Then I'm sure I was wrong."

"Hm." Lucan's gaze lingered a moment longer. "Get back to your barrels, Ash. But I'm watching you now."

*Well,* the dragon said dryly, as Lucan strode off. *So much for invisible.*

***

The horn sounded at dusk.

Ryn was alone in the baggage yard with two other Nulls, stacking crates under failing light. One was a broad, sullen boy named Dorn. The other was a slight girl named Mira, who'd been conscripted from a burned frontier village and flinched whenever anyone raised their voice.

"That's the north alarm," Dorn said, frowning. "Is that a drill?"

"No." Mira had gone pale. "Drills use two blasts. That was one long."

From beyond the palisade came a sound Ryn had never heard: a wet, rattling howl, as though something had learned to mimic a wolf and gotten the details wrong.

*Gravehound,* Vaelthor said sharply. *A corpse-beast, stitched together by dark magic. Three of them, at least.*

"What?"

*Run. Now.*

The wooden gate at the yard's end exploded inward.

Three shapes poured through, huge and misshapen, with the bodies of wolves and the faces of men. Their eyes glowed sickly green, and ropes of black sinew hung from their ribs. Dorn screamed. The nearest hound lunged straight at him.

Ryn moved before he'd chosen to. He seized an iron-bound crate lid and slammed it into the creature's snout. The hound spun sideways with a shriek, claws raking splinters from the wall.

"Mira, get him out!" Ryn shouted. "Go, go, both of you!"

"What about you?"

"I'll hold them!"

"You're a Null!"

"I know what I am," Ryn said, and for the first time in his life it didn't sound like an apology.

They ran. The hounds closed on him in a wide, panting half-circle, and for one long breath he stood alone in the dark with a splintered crate lid in his hands.

*Do not use the river,* Vaelthor said, low and swift. *Eyes will come. Use a spark, little spark. Only a spark.*

"I know. I know."

He drew breath and reached, delicately this time, and felt the gold stir beneath his skin like a candle flame behind a curtain. He let it flow down his arm and into the splintered wood, one thin thread of light hidden inside the grain.

The first hound lunged.

Ryn stepped inside its leap, drove the burning wood up through its jaw, and felt the creature unravel like wet paper. Black ash crumbled where it had stood. The second hound came at his flank; he spun, ducked its fangs, and slashed. Gold flame flickered once along the edge, so brief that anyone watching would have sworn it was a trick of the dusk.

The third hound stopped.

It stared at him, green eyes gone wide with something that wasn't hunger. Something older. Something almost like fear.

"Go on," Ryn said softly. "Run."

It didn't. It bared its fangs and charged, and Ryn met it with one clean cut, and then there was only smoke drifting across the broken gate and the sound of his own ragged breathing.

"Ash!"

Boots pounded through the yard. Ser Lucan skidded to a halt at the gate with a dozen knights behind him, swords drawn and glowing, and froze.

Three piles of black ash. A shattered gate. One filthy Null standing in the middle of it, holding half a crate lid, smoking faintly at the edges.

"Gods," someone whispered.

"Who killed them?" Lucan demanded.

"Him!" Mira had crept back behind a stack of barrels, shaking, and now she pointed. "It was him, ser! He told us to run, and he stayed, and he—" Her voice cracked. "Nobody ever stands in front of us. *Nobody.*"

Ryn winced. "Mira—"

"It's true!"

Lucan crossed the yard slowly and crouched beside the nearest pile of ash. He ran a gloved finger through it, then looked up.

"Gravehounds. Three of them. Killed by a baggage-hauler with a wooden board."

"Lantern oil, ser," Ryn said, and prayed his voice sounded steady. "The crate was full. It caught fire. I got lucky."

"Lucky."

"Yes, ser."

Lucan rose. For a long moment he said nothing, and his eyes moved across Ryn's face, his hands, the scorched splinters, the clean cuts through the corpses. Whatever he saw, it was not a boy who had been lucky.

"Luck does not cut a gravehound's throat in a single stroke," Lucan said at last, very quietly. "Nor three times in a row."

Ryn lowered his gaze. "No, ser."

"I don't believe you, Ash."

"No, ser."

"But I find," Lucan continued, almost reluctantly, "that I would rather have a liar who stands in front of the weak than an honest man who runs." He turned to the other knights. "The Null is reassigned. He reports to my squad at dawn."

"Ser Lucan, he's a Null—"

"He's the only one in this keep who killed three gravehounds tonight. Do you want to argue with the results?"

No one did.

As the knights dispersed, Ryn exhaled shakily. Mira slipped up beside him and tugged his sleeve, eyes shining.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"You'd have done the same."

"No." She shook her head fiercely. "I wouldn't. But I'm going to try to be someone who would."

Ryn looked down at her, his throat suddenly tight. "That's the same thing," he said gently. "Go get some sleep."

When she was gone, the dragon's voice came, soft and thoughtful.

*He suspects.*

"Good," Ryn murmured, watching Lucan's retreating back.

"Suspicion means he's paying attention."

*And if he pays too much?*

Ryn smiled faintly, a thin, dangerous curve in the dark.

"Then we'll see what kind of man he is."