Powers Read Free Page B

blind.”
    There wasn’t any water nearer than the Arca Fountain. Our commander kept his head: he ordered Tib and me to hide the weapons in the usual place and follow at once, while he led Hoby home. We caught up to them at the fountain in the square in front of Arcamand. Torm was washing the dirt and blood off Hoby’s face. “It didn’t hit your eye,” he said, “I’m sure it didn’t. Not quite.” It was not possible to be sure. The rough point of my wooden sword, driven upward by Hoby’s, had made a ragged cut above or on the eye, and blood was still pouring out of it. Torm wadded up a strip torn from his tunic and had Hoby press it against the wound. “It’s all right,” he said to Hoby. “It’ll be all right. An honorable wound, soldier!” And Hoby, discovering that he could see from his left eye at least, now the blood and dirt was no longer blinding him, stopped crying.
    I stood at attention nearby, frozen with dread. When I saw that Hoby could see, it was a huge relief. I said, “I’m sorry, Hoby.”
    He looked round at me, glaring with the eye that wasn’t hidden by the wad of cloth. “You little sneak,” he said. “You threw that rock, then you went for my face!”
    “It wasn’t a rock! It was just dirt! And I didn’t try to hit you, with the sword I mean—it just flew up—when you hit—”
    “Did you throw a rock?” Torm demanded of me, and both Tib and I were denying it, saying we had just thrown clods, when suddenly Torm’s face changed, and he too stood at attention.
    His father, our Father, the Father of Arcamand, Altan Serpesco Arca, walking home from the Senate, had seen us by the fountain. He now stood a yard or two away, looking at the four of us. His bodyguard Metter stood behind him.
    The Father was a broad-shouldered man with strong arms and hands. His features—round forehead and cheeks, snub nose, narrow eyes—were full of energy and assertive power. We reverenced him and stood still.
    “What is this?” he said. “Is the boy hurt?”
    “We were playing, Father,” Torm said. “He got a cut.”
    “Is the eye hurt?”
    “No, sir. I don’t think so, sir.”
    “Send him to Remen at once. What is that?”
    Tib and I had tossed our headgear into the weapon cache, but Torm’s crested helmet was still on his head, and so was Hoby’s less ornate one.
    “Cap, sir.”
    “It’s a helmet. Have you been playing at soldiers? With these boys?”
    He looked us three over once more, a flick of the eye.
    Torm stood mute.
    “You,” the Father said, to me—no doubt assessing me as the youngest, feeblest, and most overawed—“were you playing at soldiers?”
    I looked in terror to Torm for guidance, but he stood mute and stiff-faced.
    “Drilling, Altan-dí,” I whispered.
    “Fighting, it looks like. Show me that hand.” He did not speak threateningly or angrily, but with perfect, cold authority.
    I held out my hand, puffed up red and purple around the base of the thumb and the wrist by now.
    “What weapons?”
    Again I looked to Torm in an agony of appeal. Should I lie to the Father?
    Torm stared straight ahead. I had to answer.
    “Wooden, Altan-dí.”
    “Wooden swords? What else?”
    “Shields, Altan-dí.”
    “He’s lying,” Torm said suddenly, “he doesn’t even drill with us, he’s just a kid. We were trying to climb some trees in the sycamore grove and Hoby fell and a branch gashed him.”
    Altan Arca stood silent for a while, and I felt the strangest mixture of wild hope and utter dread thrill through me, running on the track of Torm’s lie.
    The Father spoke slowly. “But you were drilling?”
    “Sometimes,” Torm said and paused—“sometimes I drill them.”
    “With weapons?”
    He stood mute again. The silence stretched on to the limit of endurance.
    “You,” the Father said to Tib and me. “Bring the weapons to the back courtyard. Torm, take this boy to Remen and get him looked after. Then come to the back courtyard.”
    We all ducked in