“But I—”

Sir Polquin’s eyes sparked with annoyance. Dain realized belatedly that he was protesting direct orders. That transgression alone proved he was too unskilled to be on the field.

His face grew hot. He shut his jaw, clenching it so hard his muscles jumped.  This wasn’t fair. He’d worked extra hard to be ready to compete. He should be allowed to try, even if he came out defeated.

But to protest further was to embarrass Lord Odfrey and the knights who’d been trying to train him. Dain knew how he was expected to act. He had to pretend it didn’t matter. Had to pretend he didn’t care.

Somehow, although his body felt so stiff he didn’t think he could bend it, he managed to bow.

“Yes,” Lord Odfrey said. “You may watch the contest if you wish, but no later than this afternoon you are to report to Sulein for lessons. It’s time we concentrated on improving your mind as well as your muscles.” Dain bowed again, his face on fire. His throat had swelled with anger and resentment. He couldn’t protest now even if he wanted to.  “That is all,” Lord Odfrey said with a nod of dismissal. His dark gaze snapped to Sir Polquin. “Take down the circled shield. They’ll go at unseating each other.”

“And if they break their fool necks?” Sir Polquin asked.  “Time to stop coddling them,” Lord Odfrey replied mercilessly. “I’ll not be squired by an untested sprout.”

“Aye, m’lord.”

Sir Polquin turned away to start issuing orders. Over by the horses, the boys cheered with new excitement. Babbling with the others as they mounted up, Thum paused briefly to glance Dain’s way with a frown, but Dain couldn’t bear his pity right then.

Unstrapping his padding and jerking off his cap, Dain carried it over to where the rest of the equipment was stacked and dropped it, then marched himself rigidly off the field.

Sir Terent and Sir Nynth intercepted him, their faces red in the heat. “What’s amiss? Why are you leaving?”

“The lord ordered me away,” Dain said, his voice tight and hard. He did not want them to see his choking disappointment, how much he cared. “He thinks I am not good enough to compete.”

“Morde a day!” Sir Nynth exclaimed, his keen eyes snapping. “Of all the injustice—” “It’s for his squire,” Sir Terent interrupted, casting his friend a warning look. “Dain’s a bit green for that.”

“Aye, and what of it?” Sir Nynth retorted hotly. “I’ve money bet on the boy.” “Better get it off,” Dain said, and pushed away from them, ignoring their calls to come back.

He would not watch the contest. He would not hang about taking hearty slaps of pity or watching the knights talk about him. This was the first opportunity he’d had to prove that he really could fit in, and Lord Odfrey had taken it away from him.

How had he displeased the chevard? What had he done wrong? If the chevard wanted to punish him, Dain would have rather been flogged than humiliated like this.  Perhaps Lord Odfrey had seen him in practice and believed he was no good.  Dain gritted his teeth, walking even faster, and kicked the dirt in front of him. He was good now, and he could be even better. He knew it, knew already how natural and right a sword felt in his hands.

The sentries at the gates looked startled to see him. “What’s amiss?” one of them called to him. “Are you ousted already?”

Why explain? Dain scowled at them. “Aye,” he replied, and strode on while they laughed and called out commiseration that he didn’t want.  He walked across the hold to the innermost courtyard and nearly entered Sulein’s tower before he stopped, scowling ferociously at the door leading inside.  Lessons? What kind of lessons? Did the chevard think him so hopeless at arms that he would make a scholar of him?

It all came welling up—the months of hard work, the stress of trying to fit in, the brutality of today’s disappointment. Dain kicked the door and spun away. He wasn’t going to have anything to do with the stinking old physician. He was tired of following orders, tired of doing what he was told.  He hurried away, wishing he’d gone to the woods instead of coming inside the hold. As he reached the outer keep, however, he found it astir. Prince Gavril was mounting his fancy horse. The red and fawn hunting dogs were out, barking and wagging their tails in excitement. Sir Los was climbing into his saddle, as cheerless as ever. Five other knights assigned to Gavril’s protection were milling about as well.

Desperate not to let the prince see his disgrace, Dain dodged out of sight. No one called his name, and after a tense moment he relaxed. He hid until he heard the prince’s retinue clatter away.

Hunting mad, Dain thought with scorn. The prince went out at every opportunity.  Of late he’d grown even more fanatical, as though he thought that once he returned to Savroix he would never be allowed to hunt again. What did he see in this sport? Dain could not understand it, and had no wish to try. Gavril seldom returned with any game. He seemed only to want to gallop about through the Dark Forest as much as possible. Lord Odfrey had warned him again and again to stay away from there, but Gavril went anyway. The knights had orders to steer him in other, safer directions, but since spring these five men seemed to always be the ones that went forth with the prince. They were a scruffy, shifty-eyed lot, the lowest rank, hardly better than hirelances. To Dain’s eye, they seemed more loyal to Gavril than they did to anyone else. Certainly they let the prince have his way and go where he wanted.

Dain shrugged, and ventured out of hiding. He hoped the prince got swept off his horse by a tree branch and broke his arrogant neck.

Across the keep, Dain heard the steady plinking of the smith’s hammer. He scowled, indecisive for a moment, but then he turned his steps toward the forge.  He did not want to leave the hold right now. He was afraid that if he went off into the forest, he might not return. Though perhaps that was what he should do, leave and not come back, Dain was not yet ready to make that decision. He was too angry and confused to think straight. He knew only that he did not want to be alone—his spirits felt too dark and angry for him to stand his own company.  He had no wish to talk to anyone either, but the smith might put Dain to work, as he did sometimes when Dain felt lonely and missed his old life too much.  Sir Bosquecel and Lord Odfrey disapproved of Dain’s working in the forge. Such manual labor was beneath his rank, they said. But it was as good a place to find comfort as any. When he regained his calm, Dain would decide whether he should run away.

The smith’s name was Lander. A Netheran by birth, he’d come down to Mandria years ago to escape the civil war raging in his homeland. A local woman lived with him in the village and called herself his wife, but gossip said they were not church-wed. If Lander had any family back in Nether, he never spoke of them.  He would not talk about his past, except to say that he’d been born and raised in Grov, but that it was no fit place to live in now.

He was an excellent smith, especially with simple repairs of hinges and plowshares. He worked inside the hold rather than in the village because he was also a skilled armorer, and the knights kept him busy grinding out the nicks in their sword blades and repairing broken links in their mail. To Dain’s critical eye, Lander’s skill was finer than most men’s, although he lacked Jorb’s exquisite artistry. But then, Jorb had surpassed everyone, including the other dwarf master armorers.

On this summer’s morn, the forge blazed with the heat of its roaring fire. The air inside shimmered and danced. Shirtless, Lander wore only his leggings and a soot-blackened leather apron. His muscular arms and shoulders dripped with sweat.

Concentrating on tapping out a curve in a horseshoe, he barely glanced up when Dain entered the forge. Not until he plunged the shoe into a bucket of water, sending up a great cloud of hissing steam, did he pause to wipe his streaming brow with his forearm and give Dain a quick, shy smile.  “Hearty morn,” he said in his foreign way. His eyes were pale blue, almost as pale as Thia’s had been, like mist over a spring sky. The rest of him was bulky and hairless except for a tonsure of red curls around a bald pate. His pale flesh never tanned even in the summertime; his thick torso looked like a chunky slab of stone.

He seemed glad to see Dain as always, but his manner was preoccupied. “That’s the last,” he said to himself, lifting the horseshoe from the water pail and tossing it with a clank onto a pile of similar shoes. Putting away his set of tongs, he left his hammer lying atop the anvil while he stripped off his apron and wiped his face and shoulders with it. “Thought you’d be in the contest,” he said. “Over already, is it?”

“Not for the others,” Dain said. He scowled at the fire so he wouldn’t have to look at Lander.

“Eh? What? Oh. So that’s the way of it.”

“I wanted to see the tournament at Savroix,” Dain said, although he’d already decided not to talk about it. Lander, however, was safe. He made no judgments, offered no advice. The smith sighed sympathetically. “So would I like to go.” “You?” Dain asked in surprise. He’d been so wrapped up in his own plans of late, it had never occurred to him that probably everyone in the hold wanted to see the king’s tournament. “Have you ever been to Savroix?” “Nay, not I.” Lander smiled in his fleeting way and wiped his sweating face again. “But it would be good to go, if I can find a way.” Dain said nothing, sensing that for once the smith wanted talk.  “In my homeland I was a master armorer,” Lander said proudly. “Not just a smith, making horseshoes and repairing latches, but a fine swordmaker. Here, the knights will let me repair their armor. I am allowed to make new helmets, sometimes a shield, but never more than that. I am foreign-born,” he said striking his chest. “That means they think I cannot make a sword for them. Not even daggers. No, they go elsewhere. To the armorer at Lunt Hold sometimes, or to the dwarves. I ask you boy, is a dwarf not foreign? How can they think this way? But they do.”

Dain nodded with sympathy.

Lander cast Dain a sideways look. “You know the dwarf swordmakers.”

“Jorb was the best.”

Lander sighed. “Aye, they all say so. But now there is no Jorb. So will they let me make them new swords for the tournament? No. But there is a way for me to show them what I can do.”

Dain traced his finger along the worn handle of the hammer. He knew better than to pick it up without permission. “Make some swords, I guess,” he said, without much interest in Lander’s problems. “Show them what you can do.” “Hah! Better idea than that I have.” Lander tugged him by his sleeve over to a storage cabinet and pulled out a sheet of grubby vellum. He glanced around as though to make sure no one was watching, and showed the drawing to Dain. “What do you think of this?”

The sword depicted was beautiful. Its long tapering blade was carved with rosettes and scrollwork. The hilt guard made the Circle so many Mandrians wanted, thinking the symbol would shield them from harm in battle, and was carved to look like tendrils of gold ivy. The hilt itself was long enough for a two-handed grip, and wrapped ornately with silver and gold wire.  Dain’s brows lifted. He was impressed, and yet a drawing was not a sword.  “I could make this sword,” Lander said, tapping the vellum with a grimy fingertip. “I could!”

“Do it then,” Dain said. He rolled up the vellum to hand it back, but Lander grabbed it and whacked him across his chest with it.

“There is a way to make it better, to make it wondrous,” Lander said. He leaned close enough for Dain to smell his sour breath. His pale eyes flashed with passion. “I need magicked metal.”

Dain couldn’t help it. He laughed.

Muttering furiously, Lander shoved him away and thrust his drawing back in the cabinet. “I should never show you my dream,” he said. “Fool I am.” “No, I wasn’t laughing at you,” Dain tried to reassure him. “It’s just—I thought that was forbidden here. Using magicked metal, I mean.” Lander shrugged. “Mandrians have strange ideas. It is not always good to pay attention to what they fear. I have held some of the great swords. I know how they live in the hand. The difference is like night and day.” “Even if you got that kind of metal,” Dain said, thinking the man was crazy to have such dreams, “and even if you made it, no one here could afford such a weapon.”

“Hah!” Lander said, beaming and pouncing on him again. “Now you understand. The king’s birthday, it is a big occasion. Yes, and this year the king will give his sword to his son for knighthood. It is the custom, yes?” “I know not,” Dain replied, wondering where Lander was going with this. He hadn’t come to the forge to be a confidant.

But Lander wasn’t letting him go. “Yes, the custom. From father to son goes the sword. Valor is passed from the old hand to the young. But the king must have new sword to replace what he gives away. And so there is a contest among the smiths of the land. The sword that is chosen ... Well, then everyone in Mandria will know that Lander can make them best. Lander is a master, as good as any dwarf.”

Dain nodded and started edging away. “I wish you luck, Lander. Now I had better go before—” “Wait.” Lander blocked his path and leaned down, his pale eyes intense. “You were Jorb’s apprentice. That means you know his secrets. You know where he got such metal.”