Rounds

This piece of short fiction was written for another world. More specifically, it was written for a Reign game Tim was trying to get off the ground, which featured me and Jordan playing the leaders and founders of the worlds first Order of Knights. Based heavily on the 7th sea swordsmans guild, the Order had more or less singlehandedly invented the concept of strict martial honor, dueling, and the like. Teaching 4 styles (and 4 styles only), they spread the concept of resolving violent disputes by hiring two men of comparable skill to fight for you. Not mercenaries, but Knights, honorable men trained to fight for victory, but to also remain civilized. In the years since it's founding, the Order has found places of employ for hundreds of highly trained and disciplined warriors, from marks of status and sophistication to full on bodyguards, and everything in between. Since Tim's game never got moving, I quietly stole the whole Order out from under his nose, and drop the keep, towers and all, just outside my as-yet-unnamed Great City. They seem to find the fit comfortable enough. This is a character study of Gerald Highborn, my character for that game and one of the founders of the Order, written about a year ago and lightly updated for its new home. Enjoy.

Gerald Highborn ambled down the Hall of Shields, his soft leather boots making almost no sound on the cold stone floor. He was considering, as he often did on rounds, what he had come to term the Goatee Issue. At some point, though Gerald could not pinpoint exactly when, his deep red facial hair had developed gray flecks. Certainly this had happened after the portrait in the Great Hall had been painted, for there his goatee was free of any intruding color, but now every glance in the mirror greeted him with the face of a man “a few summers past flowering,” as the Dalish said. He had resigned himself to the gradual progress of time, until a foreign merchant had caught his sleeve a few weeks ago at market. The merchant, a small, bent man from some dead desert city with an accent that made it sound like somebody was ringing a bell at the back of his throat whenever he talked was a purveyor of dyes, and had promised that with a single bottle, Gerald could look ten years younger. Thus, the Issue arose. Grey suggested age, wisdom, and perhaps power, while a more youthful appearance might suggest vitality and strength, not to mention being more popular with the girls at the local taverns.

Gerald’s reverie was interrupted as he shouldered his way through an oak door, onto the battlements. From his right, the sounds of clashing blades and shouted instructions wafted up from the courtyard below. Pausing to watch, Gerald saw thirteen figures, twelve engaged in the dance of blades, and one circling the others, calling mantras and encouragement. As he watched, Gerald found himself mouthing the mantras as the instructor called them. “Be as waves crashing on shore, destructive yet unharmed. Be as the wind in the trees, your movements unknown until after you have passed. Feel your bla-.” But no, the instructor was chanting a different, improvised mantra. “Be as a swarm of hornets, deadly yet untouchable.” Gerald smiled in approval, and mentally filed the new verse away for future use. His gaze drifted, and came to rest on a young woman, sword in each hand, clad in studded leather emblazoned with the symbol of the Order, face dripping with sweat. She swung low at her sparring partner, a young man easily a head taller than her, and Gerald felt himself wince. The blow seemed as slow as the movements of a drunken ox, and twice as clumsy. However, the lad did not see it coming, and cried out as the dull practice sword slammed into his unarmoured calf, causing him to lose his footing. With a clatter, he fell to the ground, his blades spinning away. Gerald had to remind himself that to an ignorant nobleman or a peasant spearman, the girl’s slash would have seemed as fast and unpredictable as lighting. There was great talent at work in the courtyard, even if one had to squint to see it.

Leaving the clamour behind, Gerald pulled open the door of the Library Tower, and was instantly plunged into a gloom of flickering lamps, musty vellum, and scratching quills. True to its name, the bottom level of the tower was a library, but this floor was given over to the coinmen and money counters. The soft jingle of gold in velvet, the murmuring of hushed conversations, the sounds of items being checked off lists, all these made their home on this floor. Gerald would be the first to admit that he had no head for figures, so he wound his way through the stacks of paper and wooden desks with great care, so as to avoid disturbing those he hired to do the Orders accounts for him. Few of the clerks spared him a second glance. Out there, he was a Grand Arbiter, but here he was simply a distraction. It was a great relief to finally reach the far door, and step out on to the battlements again.

Emerging squinting into the daylight, Gerald almost slammed into a young man engaged in another training exercise. The boy was sweating heavily, and heaving large, solid rubber balls over the parapet, his arms weighted to make the task more difficult. Gerald knew without looking that down below, a student clad in full plate would be hauling themselves up a rope, bombarded from above by 15 pound projectiles. Though rubber, the balls could very well knock a man off his rope, sending him plunging ignominiously into the hay piled at the base of the walls. Sideling up beside the straining youth, Gerald murmured “Lift with your legs, boy. Wouldn’t want to hurt yourself.” The youth spun around, some caustic retort on his lips, but seeing Gerald’s face, he quickly swallowed it. “G-grand Arbiter!” He stammered “I did not see you there, my lord!” Putting on an expression of mild disinterest, Gerald leaned over the periapt, glancing at the struggling, steel-clad figure below. “He seems to be making headway, doesn’t he?” Gerald observed, and then stepped back with a thin smile as the student began franticly grabbing false rocks from the basket at his feet and hurling them down with as much force as possible. Whistling softly to himself, Gerald continued along the parapet, past several other students diligently focused on their training. None made eye-contact.

Just before reaching the gatehouse, a glint of sun on metal caught Gerald’s eye. Riding from the great City on the mountain above, a group of two-score armoured figured approached the castle, the flag of the Counsel flying above them. As they rode closer, he could see their colourful family heraldry, and the wide assortment of weapons they carried. Two-handed mauls and paired warhammers, great axes and war picks. Weapons born from peasant practically, from lumberjacks realizing that axes hued the limbs of man and tree with equal ease and from quarrymen who found that picks could shatter skulls as simply as stones. And more esoteric armaments, as well: a braided steel whip, here, and a pair of bladed fighting gauntlets there. A motley assortment of death dealing tools, weapons for warriors, but not for knights. Never for knights. One of the front-riders began blowing a tuneless blast on his horn, urging the gates to be opened. Gerald took measured strides towards the gatehouse, refusing to run for any man, even one who flew the Counsel’s colors. Stepping into the gatehouse, he found a guard peering through an arrow slit at the approaching warriors. “My lord, should we...?” the guard said, gesturing out the window. “Oh, by all means, open the gates” Gerald said with a tinge of resignation in his voice. “Let us see what the City’s finest want with us.”