Christopher G. Nuttall's Blog, page 7

SIM: The Free Lands

For an upcoming novella and novel …

The Free Lands

The Free Lands – formally the Free Lands of Nesbyen – are a historical anomaly that would never have come into existence, were it not for a combination of a brave and daring founder and the sheer chaos unleashed by the collapse of the empire. A combination of terrain, tactical brilliance, and a willingness to fight for their territory have ensured that the Freelanders maintain a certain degree of independence, despite the constant pressure from the Duchy of Hardwick and, to some extent, the Kingdom of Ruthenia itself.

Surprisingly, their history is well documented. Marion Nesbyen – a young freewoman, born on the edge of the Duchy of Hardwick – ran away to sea at a very early age and spent fifteen years of her life exploring the world and learning techniques for farming and animal husbandry that were uncommon, if not unknown, in the kingdom. Upon her return to the Duchy, she made a deal with the then-Duke Hardwick, offering to purchase Scorpion Swamp  – a vast and incredibly treacherous patch of land to the south, which technically belonged to the Duchy but served little purpose beyond providing a natural barrier against enemy attack – and turn it into a new settlement. The terms of the agreement, in hindsight, seem foolish: if the debt was paid back on time, the free lands would be independent of their aristocratic masters. But to the Duke, this would not have seemed a very likely outcome.

He had good reason to be confident. Scorpion Swamp was a wasteland, a mixture of flat and incredibly treacherous swamps and hillocks that were almost as dangerous; the swamp had a reputation for dangerous magic, dangerous creatures, and generally being incredibly unsafe even to the locals. The idea of a small party of freemen entering the swamp and turning it into something habitable would have seemed absurd; indeed, it was quite likely the party would die in the swamp and the debt would never be repaid.

Marion Nesbyen knew better. She had learned techniques for turning their watery landscape into fish farms, and obtain seeds from halfway across the world that would grow in such conditions and blossom into food. She knew how to build stilt houses that would take full advantage of what solid lands there were, as well as homes that strange mixtures of buildings and bolts. Her first settlement expanded rapidly as it cultivated the land, clearing out the more dangerous monsters and inviting more settles to set up home with the new community. It also started develop a militia that was of dubious legality, and a fighting tradition that very definitely was not remotely legal. And within five years, well before the deadline, she had repaid the debt.

This was a challenge the aristocracy could not ignore. It was bad enough that the Freelanders – as they came to be called – had paid their debts, but far worse that they were inviting runaway serfs into their territory, as well as developing roads that allowed a certain degree of travel from north to south in relative safety. It was not long until the aristocracy mounted the first invasion of the territory, although – in raw numbers – it was little more than an aggressive raid. The aristocrats grossly overestimated their power, and underestimated their enemies, and the invasion became a total disaster. They would mount similar invasions four times in the next two decades, only to be turned back – with heavy losses  – every time. The King eventually convinced the two sides to agree an uneasy peace, although the aristocracy have kept up the pressure as much as possible – often violating the edge of Freelander territory and daring them to respond – in hopes of eventually suppressing the Freelanders.

On paper, the Freelanders own title to most of the original swamp. In practice, there community is a number of semi-independent cantons scattered throughout the territory that cooperate with their fellows, but rarely – if ever – subordinate themselves into a greater whole. Each settlement has two elected headmen – one to serve as the canton’s leader, the other to serve as its representative to the great council – but their powers are very limited, deliberately so. Every citizen has the right to speak in front of his fellow villagers, and decisions are generally made through consensus – after a great deal of argument – and once a clear consensus take shape it is considered legally binding. This process is hedged around with custom, guaranteeing that villagers may speak freely and bluntly; the taking of revenge for anything said during the meeting, whatever it may be, is strictly forbidden.

The vast majority of homes are extremely communal, even by the standards of most peasant villages. There are few cases of truly private property; everything is expected to be shared, from basic household tasks to the family business. Many families are centred around a single cottage industry, such as blacksmithing or woodworking, and everyone is expected to support the business. The adults all have a certain degree of say in family affairs, although the elders tend to have more influence and anyone who believes he can have a say without doing any of the work is normally set straight very quickly. This unity endangers very strong feelings of communal solidarity among the Freelanders, and it is rare for one Freelander not to come to another’s aid if required. There is no shame or guilt in accepting help from a peer, as far as they’re concerned; the only shame lies in not returning the favour when called upon.

Unlike most other places, that is a strong tradition of sexual equality. Adult men and women – after passing the test of adulthood – are regarded as members of the community, as everyone else. There is also a considerable degree of sexual freedom, although – again – this is hedged around by custom and a young couple who have an unplanned pregnancy are expected to discuss the matter with their parents and arrange for the future care of their child. As a general rule, marriages are agreed between the couple themselves, but their parents and extended families do have a say if the couple expects to live with them after marriage. There are also strict limits on just who is considered an acceptable partner, with custom decreeing about anyone closer than second cousins cannot wed.

Children are raised communally, taught their letters in school – unsurprisingly, the New Learning went through the Free Lands like lightning – and generally offered a choice between following their parents into their trade or taking up an apprenticeship with someone else. They are also taught military skills, mainly archery (technically, as commoners, the Freelanders are not supposed to own swords), and a number find themselves drafted into the militia, hunting parties, or scouts. It is not uncommon for a young Freelander to leave the community for a year or so, in honour of their founder, before returning to the world that gave them birth. A number never return.

Magic is fairly common amongst the Freelanders, but few choose to develop it. The ones that do leave and rarely return. There is no autonomous magical community within the Free Lands and what few magical services exist are generally no more than hedge witches or local apothecaries, although there are rumours of evil sorcerers lurking within the darkest recesses of the swamp.

It is unusual for a Freelander to commit an outright crime, although crimes of passion are not unknown. The near-complete social and sexual equality removes most of the incentive for any other sort of crime. If accused of a crime, a Freelander is generally judged by his village and, if found guilty, can be sentenced anything from exile (temporary or permanent) to execution. More limited offences against custom can be punished by ostracism, on a case-by-case basis, although enforcement is somewhat spotty.

The long-term future of the Free Lands remains in doubt. The Duchy of Hardwick has not abandoned its conviction that it was somehow cheated of its territory, and that it has the right to seize control of the new trade routes running through the Free Lands. The prospect of the kingdom bringing its full might to bear against the  Free Lands remains ever present, although – so far – successive monarchs have declined to take the gamble of launching a military operation that could easily end very badly. The collapse of the Allied Lands, and the de facto collapse of the Magical Compact, has unleashed a surge of social change that could easily threaten or undermine the Free Lands.

WorldCon Update

Hi, everyone

Sorry for the cross-posting, but obviously I want this spread as far as possible.

I’m going to be attending Glasgow WorldCon (August 8-12) and am currently making preparations for which books and suchlike I will be bringing to the convention to sell. Obviously, I have to order the books I don’t have in stock fairly soon to make sure I have them on hand by the time I pack up for Glasgow.

If you want to order a book now, please contact me directly via email with the details and I will do my best to accommodate you. I cannot guarantee having a copy of any specific book on hand in Glasgow; owing to space limitations, I will be mainly concentrating on the first books in any given series and not bringing many of the later volumes (unless they are specifically ordered). I will be placing the order roughly five days from this post/email; please let me know before then if you want to order anything.

And if you are coming to the convention, please stop by and say hello.

Chris

New Themes For Fantastic Schools Collections

As you may be aware, the fantastic schools collections have published (or will be publishing shortly) anthologies centred around the holidays, the staff, sports (forthcoming) and wars(forthcoming), as well as a collection of general anthologies. We are currently planning the next collection of themes for later anthologies, which include (so far):

Fantastic School Bullies – stories about bullies getting their comeuppancesFantastic School Isekai – stories in which a person hops into a school in another world.Fantastic School Outsiders – stories featuring people who interact with the school in some way, but not students.Fantastic Schools Parents – parental involvement (this and outsiders might wind up getting merged)Fantastic Schools Familiars – stories focused on animal companions and suchlike.Fantastic Schools Activities – stories focused on non-sporty activities, such as school plays or game clubs or suchlike.Fantastic Schools Horrors – dark stories, focused on the less savoury aspects of boarding schools of horrors.Fantastic Schools Apprentices – stories focused on apprenticeships, rather than schooling.

Which of these would you like us to focus on, and do you have any suggestions for other themes?

Snippet – Exiled to Glory (Morningstar I)

This is a completely new series, set in a completely new universe. I do have a fairly detailed plan for the long-term development of this universe, and this character (and the supporting cast) but this novel is intended to serve as both a stand-alone book and the launch pad for something greater.

If you have any comments, suggestions, spelling corrections, or any other feedback please don’t hesitate to offer it. I read every piece of feedback I get and often integrate it into the final whole.

You can find some universe details here:

An Introduction To The Morningstar Universe

Prologue I

From: Transcript of Remarks by Grand Senator (Admiral) Sullivan, Presented at the Daybreak Naval Academy Graduation Ceremony. Daybreak. Year 204.

There is a question we are asked, time and time again, and that is this: why empire?

The people who ask that question, by and large, wish to believe that our empire is evil, and that by extension we are evil, that we are building our empire for our own self-aggrandizement. They do not wish to consider that we might have good cause for reuniting the human race under our banner, nor that their former independence was doing them more harm than good. They cannot be blamed for mourning their lost freedoms, nor can they be punished for questioning our motives. But they cannot, also, be allowed to be free.

It is a strong trait of our society that we always look truth in the face, that we do not permit the punishment of those who speak truth, no matter how unwelcome. It is not an easy standard to maintain, as no one enjoys being told something they do not wish to hear, but it has been the key to our success for so long that anyone who tries to sugar-coat the truth, or suppress it, must be counted as an enemy of civilisation.

And it is of civilisation that I wish to speak to you tonight.

Civilisation is a constant struggle. Those of you who have studied history will note that there have been hundreds of civilisations that had flourished, then collapsed and vanished … either through conquest, as has happened many times, or internal decay. The former is often spurred by the latter. A strong and resolute civilisation, with the ability to make best use of its manpower, technology and weapons – and develop more – is unbeatable, as long as it does not fall to internal enemies. And yet, such civilisations often have fallen? Why?

The paradox of civilisation is this; to maintain a civilisation, one must maintain the laws that created and shaped that civilisation. Yet, as that civilisation gets more developed it starts to forget the underlying reality of human nature; they start to forget that there is nothing natural about their peace and freedom, which leads – inevitably – to the collapse of their peace and freedom. They make excuses for bad behaviour, rather than confronting it openly; they allow themselves to be shamed into passivity, rather than standing up for their rights and upholding the foundations of their civilisation; they tolerate the smart prissy intellectuals who make subtle arguments that sound good, and defy anyone to speak against them, yet have no experience of the real world and therefore make fools of themselves. A civilisation, therefore, often harbours the seeds of its own destruction.

Maintaining civilisation requires, therefore, a certain degree of balance between too much freedom and too little. A completely free society, with no rules or customs, will collapse into chaos, either leading to extinction or the rule of the strong. A society with no personal freedom will decay from within, eventually – again – collapsing into chaos or the rule of the strong. It is not easy to strike a balance between the two points, to grant the maximum of personal – private – freedom while preventing individuals from infringing on the rights of others. Too much intrusion into private lives is often just as dangerous as too little.

If a failure to maintain the law through upholding and enforcing it can weaken or destroy a civilisation, a failure to uphold the convents of international – and interstellar – law can destroy an entire species. The intellectuals I mentioned above spoke of international codes of conduct that would bind nations, on the assumption that all nations would consider them binding and therefore war would be civilised … and ran, hard, into the cold reality that it was, and remains, incredibly difficult to force a nation to abide by such codes. They were unenforceable, save by force, and the lack of any power with both the demonstrated ability and willingness to enforce them ensured they were worse than useless. Indeed, having proven that international convents were worthless, they spurred the decay of older convents drawn up by wiser men, ensuring that war, never civilised, became even less so.

The great mistake of the United Nations was in launching thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of colony missions without laying the groundwork for any framework of interstellar law, and enforcement, that could prevent large-scale interstellar conflict. It was a failure that would cost it dear, as jump drives improved and military operations became more than just random pirates and raiders preying on worlds too weak to defend themselves. The lack of any strong authority to keep the spacelanes open led directly to war, a series of minor conflicts that rapidly expanded into a holocaust that came far too close to destroying the entire human race. It may seem absurd, but so too did some fool thing in the Balkans that led to a war that set the entire world on fire.

That is the reason behind our empire, our ever-expanding control over the spacelanes and our determination to ensure the human race is reunited. We are a strong, ruthlessly pragmatic power that can and will impose our will on the rest of the universe. We keep smaller conflicts under control, sometimes by enforcing a peace and sometimes by transporting one side to another world; we provide a neutral forum for debates, and courts which follow a series of simple laws, backed by naked force. We do not allow ourselves any illusions about the true nature of humanity, or the universe itself. Our goal is to prevent a second war, because – in the end – there is no guarantee there will be anyone left, after a second war, to rebuild and fight a third.

As the old saying goes, “good times make weak men; weak men make hard times; hard times make strong men; strong men make good times.”

We are the strong men. And we will do everything in our power to ensure weak men do not have the chance to tear down what we’ve built from within …

You cadets have all passed through the most gruelling space naval training program known to man. You are well-versed in everything from modern engineering to history, moral philosophy, and basic interstellar law. You will go to your ships and serve the empire, and in doing so, serve the human race itself. You must never forget that you are part of a society – a ruling class – that seeks to prevent a second war, you must never let yourself get too close to local concerns and forget your duty.

And as you advance in the ranks, as many of you will, you must never forget how the universe truly works.

We are harsh and stern father figures. It cannot be denied. But the alternative is worse.

You must never forget that, either.

Prologue II

The young man waiting in the antechamber, Deputy Commandant Horace Valerian thought sourly, could have stepped off a recruiting poster.

He had been on a poster, according to his file. The Daybreak Naval Academy regularly showcased the careers of talented young cadets, highlighting their struggles as they tried to become naval officers in a bid to invite others to sign up. The training program was deliberately hard, to ensure that only the best passed the four years of training they needed to become an officer and start a climb that could easily take them to the very top, and the young man had been one of the best. No, the best. He wouldn’t have become class valedictorian three years out of four if he hadn’t had the right combination of aptitude, skill and luck – and a willingness to work hard – to pass. And yet …

Horace rubbed his eyes, cursing the young man under his breath. It was impossible to think him a fool – space was an unforgiving environment, and anyone who lacked a brain and the wisdom to use it was unlikely to survive long enough to be expelled – and yet, he’d done something incredibly foolish. Or had he? The timing was exact, almost perfect. A week earlier and the politics could have been finessed, ensuring the Academy wouldn’t have to tolerate such a cad giving the final address at graduation; a week later and it would be someone else’s problem, someone who might solve the problem by summarily busting the young idiot down to crewman or assigning him to detached duty, ensuring he’d never be troubled again. Horace had no idea if the twit had done it deliberately or not – there was no hint, in any of the overt and covert assessments he’d passed over the years, that he harboured a deep hatred for the Academy – and yet, it hardly mattered. The Academy was going to take one hell of a black eye, and it was all the fault of the young man waiting outside.

A flash of anger ran through Horace, a reminder of the old shame that came from spending most of his career in the rear. He’d always been more of a bureaucratic administrator than a warfighter and he knew, without false modesty, that he’d never be anything more. The odds of him becoming Commandant were very low, and the odds of him ever rising high were even lower. The cadets might respect his administrative ability, how he judged schedules and balanced the egos of training officers who were often experts in their fields and complete naifs in others, but they knew better than to emulate him. They wanted to win glory, to carry the flag into the distant reaches of space, to bring new worlds and civilisations into the empire and, in doing so, boost their careers into heights even they could barely imagine. Horace had thought, privately, that the class valedictorian was just another overly-ambitious young man, one who would learn many hard lessons before he rose to the top. And instead …

He shook his head, trying not to glance at the antique clock ticking in the corner. There were bare hours before the graduation ceremony was due to begin, when the academy would have to decide between allowing the valedictorian to give his damned speech or coming up with some excuse, no matter how absurd, to deny it. They were fucked either way, Horace thought, using words he would never say out loud. If they let the fool speak, they’d wind up with egg on their faces; if they denied him, the young man’s patron would be angry and the consequences of that were incalculable. The Grand Senator might believe his young client deserved punishment – no one reached the highest senatorial rank without a firm grasp of reality and a willingness to cut a misbehaving client loose if they became an embarrassment – but no patron could afford to be seen as abandoning a client without very good cause. A week earlier and it might have been possible to come to terms, to ensure there was good cause, but the timing simply hadn’t worked out. Horace was an old master at playing the political game and he knew there was no time. No matter what he did, the Academy was going to get a black eye …

… And Horace was morbidly sure he’d be the one taking the blame.

Angry boiled through him. Commandant O’Hara could not be faulted for stepping aside and allowing his deputy to handle the crisis, damn the man. No court martial board in existence would accept a man so hurt, so betrayed, passing judgement on the man who had betrayed him. Horace knew anything his superior did would be questioned savagely, perhaps overturned, by the board of inquiry. Commandant O’Hara had enemies – no one rose so high without making a few enemies along the way – and they’d gather like flies on shit, pointing out the sheer injustice and undermining his position, without a single care for the legalities of the affair. Why would they care, when they had a perfect opportunity to bring their enemy down? No, Horace could hardly fault the Commandant for passing the poisonous charge to him. But his understanding would not save his career.

His thoughts ran in circles. The young fool cannot be allowed to give the address, because the Academy cannot afford to turn a blind eye to his conduct, or be seen to be affirming it. The young fool cannot be stripped of rank and title, because it would bring his patron down on our heads. We don’t have time to call the Grand Senator and discuss the matter and … what the hell are we going to do?

He scowled as another message popped up on his terminal. Preparations for the ceremony were well underway. Families, patrons and journalists were already arriving in the nearest town, to watch the cadets pass out – and take their relatives out for lunch – before the young men reported to their first real duty stations. He should be out there, supervising his crew and making damn sure that everything was in order, before the crowd arrived at the Academy itself. The slightest mistake could – would – be horrifically embarrassing. The eyes of the galaxy were upon them, some looking to the benefits of empire and others watching for signs the empire’s ability to enforce its will was declining. Horace had no illusions. If something went wrong, no matter how minor, the consequences would be felt hundreds of light years away.

And they won’t stop, he reflected ruefully, with the destruction of my career.

He sat back in his seat, trying to think of something – anything – that could get him and the navy out of the political nightmare the young idiot had created. It was hard to remember – to force himself to believe – that the fool hadn’t intended to craft such a nightmare … in truth, Horace didn’t really believe it. The timing was just too good. It was … far too good.

I can’t demote him, I can’t expel him, I can’t …

Horace stopped, his mouth hanging open as a thought occurred to him. What if … his hands darted to the terminal, bringing up nearly two hundred years of naval history in a desperate search for a precedent. The idea was absurd, on paper; it was the kind of concept that, under normal circumstances, would land him in very hot water indeed. There were limits to just how much a patron, no matter how important, could boost a client’s career. And Horace wasn’t even the young fool’s patron. People would talk …

But would it solve the problem?

A flash of excitement ran through Horace, even as he checked and rechecked the files to make absolutely sure he wasn’t crossing a line. The precedents existed … barely. It would be one hell of a court martial, if the matter became public before it was too late, but who would discuss the issue openly? Everyone involved, even the young fool himself, had excellent reason to keep their mouths firmly shut. Horace was too old a hand to believe it would remain a secret indefinitely – the political graveyards were littered with men who believed their secrets would never be uncovered – but by the time it came out the issue would be resolved, one way or the other. It galled him to be rewarding the young man, even if it was a reward that came with a sting in the tail, yet …

It wasn’t a perfect solution, Horace reflected as he worked his way through the paperwork with terrifying speed, then called a handful of friends in various departments to ensure the paperwork was submitted and processed. It helped that the post-graduation assignments were never revealed, not even to patrons, before the ceremony was completed. There’d be no one in a position to both notice the discrepancy and do something about it … and anyone who did, he was sure, wouldn’t realise what had really happened. Whoever heard of punishing someone by giving him a promotion?

The terminal pinged. The orders were ready. Horace printed them – by long custom, duty assignments were always on paper – and leaned back in his chair, congratulating himself on his own cleverness. It had been a very close run thing, but he’d made it. One way or another, he told himself, the matter would be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. And there was no way the young idiot could protest, not without sinking his entire career.

And if nothing else, he reflected as he called his secretary and asked her to send Cadet Morningstar into his office, he would never have to see the young man again.

Chapter One

Cadet – Provisional Lieutenant – Leo Morningstar sat outside the Deputy Commandant’s office and waited.

He was not, precisely, under arrest. The provosts who had taken custody of him, after the shore patrol had caught him in flagrante delicto, had neither handcuffed him nor stripped his rank badges from his uniform, before marching him to the outer office and ordering him to wait. Leo had spent a couple of nights in the guardhouse – it was almost a rite of passage, after completing the first year at the academy – and he knew what it was like, but this was different. He wasn’t sure just how much trouble he was in, although the fact he’d been brought to the office – rather than the guardhouse – suggested he was not on the verge of being expelled. That would be awkward, to say the least. And yet …

His lips quirked, briefly, as he tried to force himself to relax. He had graduated. He couldn’t be expelled, not now, and he doubted he could be put in front of a court martial board. The Old Man – Commandant O’Hara – was no doubt trying to find a way to do just that, but it was a legal impossibility. The mere fact he was sitting outside the Deputy Commandant’s office suggested O’Hara agreed, although there was no way to be sure. Leo hadn’t been in naval service for long, but he was all too aware that the letter of the law could be manipulated to evade the spirit. Daybreak prided itself on keeping the law as simple as possible, to make it harder for a planet to ignore its responsibilities to the interstellar union, yet there was plenty of precedent for a legal officer finding ways to get whatever his CO wanted done with a veneer of legality. They didn’t always get away with it, when their decisions were reviewed by the Senate, but it was often too late to help the planet adversely impacted by the poor legal work. And that meant …

He took another breath. He had gradated. And he had a powerful patron. He was safe.

The secretary looked up. “Cadet Morningstar, you may enter the office.”

Leo stood, keeping his irritation under tight control. A cadet who passed the first two years had the right to be addressed as Midshipman, and Leo was one of the few – the very few – cadets who had been promoted to Lieutenant before formally graduating. It was a provisional rank, and it could be lost very easily, but it was still a mark of accomplishment, as well as the faith his tutors had in him. He had promised himself that he would not lose the rank, and indeed he would strive to see it confirmed within the year. It was not unprecedented. And the few who had achieved it before had gone on to great things indeed.

He stepped into the Deputy Commandant’s office and saluted, trying not to look around with interest. It was hardly the first time he’d met Deputy Commandant Horace Valerian, but he’d never actually been in the man’s office before and he had to admit he was a little curious. The office was surprisingly spartan – like most of the academy – but there were a handful of antiques scattered around, including a grandfather clock that ticked loudly, something that bothered Leo more than he cared to admit. The man himself wore a dress uniform carefully tailored to hide his paunch, but he still managed to give off the air of being more at home behind a desk than on a starship’s bridge. Leo wondered, idly, how he’d managed to avoid being rotated back to front-line service, a legal requirement to keep rear-area officers losing track of what was actually important. Perhaps Valerian believed he would never be promoted again. It wasn’t impossible. The Daybreak Navy was constantly expanding, but there were limits to just how many men could hold high-ranking positions at any one time. The senatorial rolls listed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of officers who would never see a combat command again.

Valerian nodded curtly, then studied a datapad thoughtfully. Leo remained calm and composed, standing at attention and waiting to be ordered to relax. The Deputy Commandant was playing a power game by forcing him to wait, something that would have been a little more effective if Leo’s old headmaster hadn’t done the same, back when he’d been a simple schoolboy. He might have been firmly convinced that sparing the rod was spoiling the child, and he’d often put theory into practice, but making someone wait just betrayed a certain kind of insecurity. Leo knew he was young, barely twenty, and yet even he could tell the difference between someone who knew what he was talking about – and was therefore worth listening to – and someone who was faking it in the certain knowledge there was no way he could make it. The two men would have been shocked if they knew he’d compared the two, but they had a great deal in common …

“Leo Morningstar,” Valerian said. He didn’t look up from his datapad, although there was something in his manner that suggested he’d read the file already, before summoning Leo into his office. “Born, Year 184. Father, Senior Crew Chief Davis on RSS Morningstar, who was awarded the Navy Cross by then-Captain Sullivan and took the name of his ship in thanks, as was and remains customary for recipients of the Cross. Mother, Hoshiko Davis, nee Yu, the daughter of a pair of immigrants who were granted citizenship in Year 160 and, after doing her planetary service, became a teacher, married Davis, and gave birth to six children, including you.”

He paused, as if he were inviting comment. Leo knew better than to say a word.

“You grew up in Cold Harbour, a suburb of Augustus City, because your mother worked in the local school. Your father died saving his commander’s life, for which he gave you and your family patronage, ensuring you would study at a very good secondary school and then enter the Naval Academy itself at sixteen, a year younger than most cadets. You did very well, in your first year, and would have probably made valedictorian if you hadn’t got into a fight with a senior cadet …”

He looked up. “Why?”

“He insulted my mother, sir,” Leo said.

The Deputy Commandant cocked his head. “And that justified beating Senior Cadet Francis Blackthrone to within an inch of his life?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. It had been one thing to be harassed himself – he understood he’d be put through the wringer, to make sure the men were separated from the boys before it was too late – but quite another to tolerate suggestions his mother had been a whore, earning a patron through providing sexual services to her husband’s CO. “He deserved it.”

It was hard not to smile. Blackthrone had been an idiot. It was bad enough to make the snide accusations, time and time again, but far worse to do it when he was well within range. Leo had struck fast and hard, ramming his fist into the older cadet’s chest and then following up with a kick that had ended the fight for good. It hadn’t really been a fight, to be honest. Leo had no idea how Blackthrone had gotten through the unarmed combat course, but even he should have known to keep his distance if he was going to shout unbearable insults. But then, it was rare for a junior to try to put a senior in his place. The few who tried followed protocol and did it openly.

“You were nearly expelled, and your career was only saved through the direct intervention of Grand Senator Sullivan,” Valerian continued. “You went on to do extremely well in your second year, which ensured you did your third year on a training ship rather than a station, and you earned a converted – if provisional – promotion to lieutenant after saving the lives of both your peers and training officers. The only black mark on your record, as you went into your fourth and final year, was that you asked the training supervisor if the incident had been faked to test you. He was not pleased.”

“No, sir,” Leo said. The supervisor had never raised his voice, but he’d still managed to put him in his place with a sharp lecture, pointing out that the staff would never risk putting the cadets in very real danger. Not like that, certainly. “He wasn’t.”

Valerian nodded. “You recently completed your fourth year, without losing your provisional promotion, and became – for a third time – class valedictorian, ensuring you were granted the right to give the valedictorian address at the graduation ceremony. Your classmates also voted you the Marty Sue Award, although you were denied the full honours” – his lips quirked – “because you didn’t make valedictorian during your first year. There was no reason to believe you wouldn’t give your speech, then report to your first duty station and go on to a long and honourable naval career.”

He paused. “And then, only a few short hours ago, you were caught in bed with the Commandant’s wife.”

“Yes, sir.”

Valerian looked up at him. “Explain.”

Leo said nothing. He hadn’t known who Fleur O’Hara was, when he’d met her the first time, and even after he’d realised he hadn’t abandoned the affair. She’d been bored and desperately lonely, her husband largely uninterested in her … Leo had wondered, privately, if picking up a cadet was her way of getting back at her husband, although the sex had been great and completely without any strings attached. They had both known the affair would come to an end, eventually, but … he cursed, inwardly. In hindsight, it might have been smarter to insist they went to a love hotel, rather than her apartment. But she had insisted she could not be seen anywhere near such an establishment.

“Explain,” Valerian repeated.

“I met her in the bar,” Leo said, keeping the details as vague as possible. He wasn’t sure how much the older man knew. “I didn’t realise who she was, at first. We had sex, which is how we were caught …”

It was hard to hide his anger. Fleur had assured him her neighbours were discreet and yet … someone had clearly called the shore patrol. Who, and why? It was rare for cadets to visit the married quarters, certainly so close to graduation. A previous commandant had landed himself in hot water after ordering a cadet to mow his lawn, from what he’d heard, and a surprising number of military spouses thought they shared their partner’s rank. Better to stay away, the cadets had been cautioned, rather than wind up on report for ignoring orders from civilians – even citizens – who thought they had the right to issue them.

“You are fortunate that Mrs O’Hara swore blind she seduced you, rather than insisting you picked her up … or raped her,” Valerian said, coldly. “Regardless, your actions have brought great shame on the Naval Academy, and the Commandant is insisting you be severely punished.”

He paused. “You may not have openly broken any regulations, young man, but you certainly bent the honour code into a pretzel. You have also ensured, thanks to the mystery informant, that the incident cannot be covered up. Worse, your timing was extremely good. You cannot be punished, not easily, and yet you are unworthy to serve as valedictorian. A young naval officer is expected to be a model of pure-perfect rectitude at all times. How does that square with an illicit affair with a senior officer’s wife?”

Leo took a breath. He had read the rules and regulations and he was fairly sure he couldn’t be given more than a slap on the wrist, not now. Any demotion – let alone expulsion – would have to be justified and doing that would be difficult, if not impossible, without provoking the wrath of his patron and – or – a public enquiry. The Commandant and his Deputy had to answer to the Board of Directors, which in turn answered to the Senate, and it would be difficult to convince all of them that their actions had been justified. His patron would certainly not be very pleased.

“You are thinking you cannot be punished,” Valerian said, as if he’d been reading Leo’s thoughts. Leo remembered, too late, that Valerian might be a paper-pusher, rather than an officer who led from the front, but he was very far from being a fool. “In a sense, young man, you are quite right. We cannot demote or expel you, nor can we contrive an excuse to deny you the position and honours you have earned, certainly not without causing problems we cannot overcome.”

Leo felt a flash of hope. Perhaps, just perhaps, the whole affair could be buried …

“So we’re prompting you,” Valerian said. His lips curved into a humourless smile. “Congratulations, Lieutenant-Commander Morningstar.”

“What?” Leo boggled. His Lieutenancy was provisional, a point that had been made clear to him time and time again. The idea of being jumped up two ranks without even a day of real starship service was just absurd. No one would take him seriously, and everyone would check his service record and ask pointed questions of the men who’d promoted him. “Sir, I …”

Valerian’s smile grew wider. “It is a honour to be promoted so quickly,” he said. “And your new duty station has already been assigned. You will be heading there shortly, to take up your new post. Unfortunately, you will not have the time to attend your own graduation and give your planned speech, but everyone will understand that there was no choice.”

Leo stared at him. “Sir …”

“You are aware, of course, that we have recently started the process of incorporating several new sectors into our empire,” Valerian continued. “Those sectors have seen little law and order since the First Interstellar War, and they have suffered for it. The Senate believes it is vitally important to establish our authority, and in doing so convince the locals that they have a better future with us, rather than remaining independent and vulnerable to both pirates and predatory neighbours. They have put pressure on the navy to assign more ships to the sector, despite the massive commitments elsewhere. One of those ships is RSS Waterhen.”

Leo frowned. He’d never heard of Waterhen.

“It is a sad story,” Valerian said. “She was a noble ship, in her time, but now she is somewhat outdated, and would be withdrawn from service if we were not so desperate for hulls. She remains on the fleet list, yet her commanding officer is very hands-off. So hands-off, in fact, that he has managed to ensure his command remained in-system, allowing him to spend most of his time in the pleasure dens rather than doing his job. If he were not so well-connected, he would have been ordered to get on with it by now, or summarily stripped of rank, but …”

He shrugged, expressively. “His ship remains in-system. And he remains planetside.”

“Sir …” Leo found it hard to put his thoughts into words. “And he gets away with it?”

“It is astonishing what someone can get away with, if they have good connections and they avoid unwanted attention,” Valerian said. “If Captain Reginald Archibald were in command of a modern starship, he would have been court-martialed by now and even his connections wouldn’t be enough to save him. As it is, Waterhen is simply too unimportant for anyone to notice. The handful of crew assigned to her are the dregs of the service – anyone with any common sense starts bucking for a transfer, the moment they realise that staying on Waterhen will kill their careers – and none, I suspect, have any inkling that they’re supposed to be preparing to leave Daybreak and make their way to their assigned posting.”

He met Leo’s eyes. “And you will be in command.”

Leo blinked. That was impossible. “What?”

“Oh, not on paper,” Valerian assured him. “On paper, Captain Archibald will be in command and you will be nothing more than third-ranking officer. In practice, you will be the commander because the CO is going to remain behind and the XO managed to get herself transferred to an asteroid station. It must have seemed an improvement over Waterhen.”

He paused. “Your promotion is quite valid, I assure you. But you won’t be back here in a hurry.”

Leo felt a flicker of dull respect, mingled with anger and horror. The promotion was bad enough. No one would believe he’d earned it, because he hadn’t. And yet, there was no way he could refuse it either. It was vanishingly rare for anyone who declined a promotion to be offered a second chance … hell, there was no way his patron could complain. On paper, he was being rewarded … he cursed under his breath, realising just how well he’d been stitched up. He might be the de facto commander of an entire starship, but his assignment to the far edge of explored and incorporated space would limit his chances to be noticed. His unearned promotion would be the last, no matter how well he did …

And the moment another ship was assigned to the sector, he’d find himself effectively demoted.

Valerian passed him a folder. “Everything is in order,” he said. “Your shuttle is already arranged; you have just under an hour to grab your bags, then hurry to the pad before it’s too late. Your mother will be informed of your promotion, and we’ll arrange for her to be greeted and honoured instead of attending the graduation. I imagine you’ll have time to message her before you jump out. If you miss the shuttle, you’ll find yourself in very hot water indeed.”

Leo swallowed, still stunned. “Sir, I …”

“You were the most promising cadet we had over the past few years,” Valerian said, bluntly. “You knew your worth very well. And now you have thrown it all away, and risked hitting us with a scandal that could – that still might – do immense damage to the Academy and the Navy itself. If we had time to arrange it, your fate would not be so kind.”

He met Leo’s eyes. “I hope you enjoy your new assignment. Command at such a young age will look very good on your record, even if you don’t enjoy command rank. But one way or another, young man, we will never see each other again.

“Dismissed.”

OUT NOW – The Alchemist’s Secret (The Zero Enigma 12)

The Next Book of The Zero Enigma! Pick up the first through KU here!

For centuries, the Great Houses of Shallot have ruled the city through a complex network of power and influence, dividing and destroying factions that posed a threat to their rule, but the latest crisis may be beyond their power to subvert and defeat. The commoners have finally found a leader, while the aristocrats are deeply divided amongst themselves; their magic no longer trustworthy, their right to rule threatened as never before. As protest marches explode onto the streets, and the guild leaderships are openly challenged, it seems only a matter of time before the entire city catches fire.

In the mansions of North Shallot, Akin Rubén – new to his position as family patriarch – finds himself battling extremists who want to crush the protestors by any means necessary and hampered by his ties to the rebel leader; in the streets of South Shallot and the slums of Water Shallot, Rebecca Travis finds herself dragged into the revolutionary movement and experimenting with potions and spells that will either tip the balance against the aristos once and for all, or lead to all-out war on the streets that will burn the city to the ground …

… And, hidden in the shadows, the real threat is slowly inching into the light.

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An Introduction To The Morningstar Universe

A bit of background for an up and coming new series …

An Introduction To The Morningstar Universe

In theory, humanity’s expansion into interstellar space should have been greatly accelerated by the invention of the jump drive, which – in theory – from one end of the universe to the other in the blink of the eye. In practice, many of the early explorers vanished without trace, never – or very rarely – to be seen again. It was not until the invention of the gravimetric scanner that humanity realised that the presence of large gravity masses warped and twisted interstellar space, ensuring that the ship that tried to jump too far would either go wildly off course or simply fly straight into a gravity mass and vanish. This discovery put limits on the use of the jump drive – it was very difficult to travel more than a light-month, in the early days, without being blown off course – but it still opened interstellar space to human expansion, the domain of STL slowboats. It was not long until the expansion reached an unbelievable pace.

This was not surprising. Earth had become overpopulated and heavily polluted and the unsteady rise of a planet-wide government had done little to quell either global pollution or political unrest. That government worked hard to ensure that hundreds of thousands of restive  groups – some national, some religious, some simply wanting to be left alone – received colony ships, a certain amount of funding, and title to a world that might – or might not – prove hospitable. Over the next century, hundreds of colony walls were founded, ranging from spectacular successes like New Caledonia to disasters that remain unnamed, because when starships arrived to try to open communication links they discovered that every last member of the original colony population had died. A number of those worlds even sent out colony missions of their own, creating tiny unions of stars that held together surprisingly well … at least at first. A new golden age appeared to be at hand. There was no need to fight, humanity told itself, when each and every human faction could have a planet of its own. Surely, ancient hatreds could be buried and forgotten if there were light-years between former enemies?

The golden age came to an end five hundred years after it began. In hindsight, the outbreak of the first major interstellar war was inevitable. Improved sensors had allowed humanity to chart interstellar routes – jumplines – in a bid to speed up interstellar travel, giving the planets that held domain over the faster jumplines an edge over their peers and allowing them to tax starships that pass through their territory. The sudden return of territorial competition led to a series of minor wars and conquests, as weaker but well situated planets found themselves overwhelmed by their powerful neighbours, and a period of cold war between various hastily-formed alliances that eventually culminated in a major war. Precisely what event triggered fighting is difficult to say, but there are so many flashpoints that is properly accurate to state that most detonated in very quick succession and ensure that nearly every major power would be dragged into the fighting. There were very few powers that managed to stay out of the fighting and those that tried often found themselves targeted anyway.

Historians argue for decades over the course of the war, and there still many questions historians have been unable to answer, but is impossible to deny that the war was unbelievably devastating. Hundreds of worlds were bombarded, billions of people wiped from existence; thousands upon thousands of starships, space habitats, and industrial facilities were destroyed. Even the worlds that got off lightly, by the standards of the war, were still badly damaged. A number, dependent on interstellar trade for their very survival, found themselves reduced to barbarism or simply doomed to slow and yet inevitable death; others were cut off from the rest universe and developed more or less independently. Nearly every pre-war major power found itself crippled if not destroyed, barely able to patrol its own core systems, and suffering under a resurgence of piracy and/or insurgent attack they could not handle. It looked as if a new dark age was at hand.

It was at that point the Daybreak Republic made its appearance on the galactic stage.

Daybreak, like many other worlds founded during the golden age, was based on a political ideal (drawn, with a handful of modifications, from a book entitled  Starship Troopers (required reading in Daybreak schools)) rather than a historical nation, ethnic group and/or religion. The founders had laid claim to a star system that, owing to a freak of interstellar gravity masses, was supposed to difficult to approach without passing through a handful of chokepoints. There was only one jump route that led straight into the system and that was easy to guard. Furthermore, Daybreak had successfully concealed the true size of its military power, and industrial potential, ensuring it was not considered a priority target by anyone (certainly when compared to planets that controlled numerous jumplines). If the war had not exploded, it is quite likely that Daybreak would have remained a minor and independent power. As it happened, Daybreak became the core of a new interstellar union.

This process started more or less by accident. The breakdown of interstellar law and order forced a number of the remaining powers – most of whom had very little military power – to do what they could to police the spacelanes, just to keep what remained of interstellar traffic alive. Daybreak rapidly took the lead in this project, finding itself dealing with numerous issues that required a degree of territorial expansion, developing new military fleet basis and forging close alliances with local powers that were prepared to trade political hegemony for protection. The discovery that it had effectively created an empire provoked numerous debates in the Daybreak Senate, ending with a decision to formalise the process of empire building, on the grounds that the failure to produce a workable interstellar government that could settle disputes between planets and star unions had contributed directly to the First Interstellar War. Not everyone on Daybreak was happy with the inauguration of a new process of expansion, but they were outvoted.

And so Daybreak set out to reunite humanity, whether or not it wanted to be reunited.

***

The Daybreak Republic is a semi-timocracy, although the Daybreakers themselves would deny it. Put crudely, an inhabitant of Daybreak (a term that includes the Daybreak System and the Daybreak Outposts) is a civilian until he spends two years of his life serving the planet, after which he becomes a citizen who can vote, be elected to Congress, serve on juries, and enjoy a number of other rights that are designed to civilians. He can also become a ‘mustang’ – an enlisted man who becomes an officer – and start a path towards the Senate, perhaps even the Consulship. The planetary government is obliged to take all civilians who wish to volunteer for service, and to find something they can do (if they are physically incapable of doing basic military service), and it is actually very rare for anyone with any sort of ambitions refuse to become a citizen. Civilians do have rights, but Daybreak has a certain contempt for civilians to insist they have the right to lead without first serving.

A mustang – or a volunteer who goes straight into the officer track – will work his way up the ranks until he becomes a Captain, whereupon he is enrolled in the Senate and expected to add his voice to political debates as well as leading men into battle. Every five years, the senate elects ten Grand Senators, who form the planetary council, and two Consuls, who serve as both Heads of State and Heads of Government. Ideally, the Consuls are expected to work in harmony, with one taking command of the military – if the planet is fighting a war – and the other remaining behind to supervise political developments and ensure total backing. In practice, it is not uncommon for the Consuls to be at odds, although disputes between them tend to be sorted out before a Senator or a Congressman proposes a bill of no confidence.

Given their importance to the military as well as political system (Senators are expected to be serving military officers, which makes them think carefully about approving military operations they will have to lead), Senators are encouraged to develop patron-client networks that support promising young officers as they climb through the ranks and hopefully reach senatorial status themselves. These networks are technically not part of the government, but their existence is an open secret and a patron who discovers that his client is not worthy of his support often finds himself embarrassed, if not threatened with impeachment. It is not always easy to see the dividing line between reasonable support for a client and an embarrassing mistake; supporting your clients is seen as a virtue, but – at the same time – backing the wrong horse is a serious mistake. Most patrons will not hesitate to drop a client who crosses the line, or steer a client into a position where they can do no harm.

There are more checks and balances worked into the system than one might suppose. Congress has the right to approve legislation and either send it back to be rewritten or simply reject it entirely; Congress also stands in judgement of the Consuls and Senators, with the power to impeach either if they are found to have lost the trust of the citizen population. There is also a very strong Bill of Rights, including the right to free speech, property and gun ownership, and many other rights, which cannot be infringed save by a three-fourths majority in Congress. Civilians do not have the vote, but they are still able to influence debates in both planetary and local governments.

The de facto Daybreak Empire (Daybreakers persistently refer to it as a republic) is divided into four sections. At the top, there is Daybreak and the Daybreak Outposts; military garrisons and/or colony worlds that sit along strategically important jumplines, giving the Daybreakers unprecedented control over interstellar trade and make it difficult for anyone to organise a major military challenge to the empire. The Daybreak Outposts have full self-government and are legally considered part of the Republic, with the right to send congressmen to the homeworld and be represented in the Senate. Beneath them, there are Autonomous, Incorporated and Client worlds, the precise status of which depending on just how much independent military power they have and/or the degree of planetary unity they possessed before Daybreak rediscovered them. As a general rule, the more a world (or union planets) is capable of defending itself, the more freedom it has as long as it doesn’t break interstellar law. At the top, there are world that are effectively independent; at the bottom, there are worlds that are controlled by a Daybreak-imposed government and likely to be economically looted for decades before they work their way up to Incorporated or Autonomous status.

Daybreak attempts to be as hands-off as possible. Interstellar law is very simple and focuses only on interstellar issues, such as trade, immigration, and a handful of other issues. A planet may not, for example, impose excessive tariffs, or seize passing trading ships without very good cause. A planet may not prevent individuals or groups from leaving, if they wish to go, and it may not harass Daybreakers without prior consent of the Daybreak Republic. In theory, a person who is convicted of a crime may appeal to a Daybreak official for a review of his sentence, but in practice this is very rare. A person who wastes the time of such an official may find himself being sentenced to permanent exile, imprisonment on a penal world, or death.

As long as planets behave themselves, they are generally left alone. When they don’t, Daybreak will send a punitive expedition to assess the situation and take steps to deal with it, which can range from ‘encouraging’ the planetary government to deal with a rogue official to outright bombardment and occupation. The degree of punishment depends very strongly on just how much the guilty party challenged interstellar law. A planet that arrested a passing Daybreaker for an offence that is not a crime under Daybreak law will be forced to hand arresting officials over for judgement, while a planet that actively supported interstellar piracy will be reduced to client status and spend several decades under direct rule.

That is not say that Daybreak does not exploit other worlds, in manners both obvious and subtle. It is far from uncommon for promising young people – military officers, up-and-coming scientists – to leave their homeworld and immigrate to Daybreak, working to achieve this in step and become part of the interstellar government. It is also true that Daybreak merchants have an edge, when it comes to passing through the outposts and establishing networks with newly incorporated worlds, although it is rare for this sort of manipulation to be particularly blatant. In the early decades, after the war, there was little open opposition to such behaviour. The rewards of unity – and the likelihood of another war exterminating the human race – quelled opposition more effectively than any threats of force. Now, with the horrors of the war fading in the public mind, there is more opposition to Daybreak’s hegemony. It is generally believed that it is only a matter of time before one or more autonomous worlds attempts to challenge the system a little more openly, perhaps even rebel.

Daybreak itself is very much a planet of sexual and racial equality. The only real difference is the dividing line between civilian and citizen, and that line in thinner than one might believe; civilians, put simply, have everything citizens have save for the prestige of proving they put their lives at risk for the planet. Immigrants to the homeworld are legally treated as equals, once they prove themselves by undergoing planetary service and becoming citizens. That is not to say they are always accepted; as a general rule, immigrants who fail to assimilate and/or have cultural practices that clash with the law are rarely welcome, if their behaviour slips into outright criminality they are always deported.

This is not always true across the Daybreak Empire. There are planets where one gender is considered legally or culturally superior to the other; planets shaped by religious laws that are not very welcoming to heretics or outsiders; worlds that range from constitutional government to outright monarchical systems or dictatorships. Daybreak rarely intervenes in how the locals treat each other, although it does strongly suggest that heretics or unwelcome ethnic minorities be allowed to emigrate instead of persecuted. It also insists that outsiders, particularly tourists or traders who are just passing through, should not be held to account under local law (unless their offence is also a crime under Daybreak law) and should simply be deported, rather than punished in a manner that would challenge the underlying basis of interstellar law.

Two hundred years after the transformation from lone world to interstellar empire began, Daybreak has good reason to be pleased with itself. It controls, directly or indirectly, most of the original core worlds of humanity (Earth is an interstellar backwater, regarding itself as the source of art and civilisation instead of political power) and it is expanding rapidly to incorporate the remainder of the worlds settled prior to the war. The empire has brought great wealth to Daybreak, from trade and advanced technology to a selective immigration policy that brings in men of great ability and talent (and denies them to their homeworld), and that wealth is used to fund a military machine without peer. The combination of politicians, who are also expected to be military commanders and lead from the front, and the competitive nature of political society has produced a leadership that is capable, stubborn, and unwilling to give up even when it might rise to do so. There seems no reason to believe the Daybreak Republic will ever run into something it can’t handle.

And yet, trouble is brewing.

On Daybreak itself, the rewards of interstellar empire have not been spread evenly. The competition for political office, and military command, is growing ever more savage, fuelling a demand for more expansion. Outside the homeworld and its outposts, the autonomous world chaff under the rule of a system that can neither give them complete equality or let them go free, while the incorporated and client worlds resent their looting by unscrupulous Daybreakers and the imposition, in places, of governors more interested in promoting themselves (and making a fortune) than developing the planets placed in their care. Along the Rim, the great uncharted gulf of forgotten colony worlds, hidden settlements and industrial nodes, there are rumours of pirates and other interstellar empires and threats that might or might not exist.

Something will break. But who knows when and where?

Snippet – The Blademaster’s Tale

Just a snippet of my story for the upcoming Fantastic Schools Wars. And if you want to contribute a story, please feel free to get in touch. Details here.

Prologue

Freedom is a constant struggle.

It was a truth I had drilled into me from birth, well before Lady Emily put the saying into words and the Levellers spread it from one end of the continent to the other. I was born and raised in the Free Lands, a community surrounded by aristocratic and monarchical territories and the one thing we all knew was that if we gave the aristos an inch they’d take a mile before we realised what had happened, let alone had time to stop it. Our ancestors had purchased the land from the aristos, back when it was scrubby wasteland, and turned it into a going concern … and they’d never forgiven us, not for proving they couldn’t be bothered to develop their own lands or for refusing to let them put the agreement aside and tax us into the ground. They put pressure on us every so often, from blocking the roads and charging access to covertly supporting bandit gangs to make us beg for their protection, and we pushed back as hard as we could. We didn’t always agree with each other – and there were times that the villages and towns disputed so roughly it seemed likely we would go to war – but the one thing we all shared was a common desire to resist aristocratic encroachment. If they ever got a solid foothold in our territory, it wouldn’t remain ours for long.

I was born on a communal farm, the ninth child and the fourth daughter. It wasn’t a bad life, as long as you knuckled under and fitted in, but in truth I wasn’t very good at either. I was too low in the family hierarchy to inherit anything from my parents and too troublesome, the elders said, to make a good match. They might have kicked me out completely, if I hadn’t been pretty damn good with a bow and arrow. I was one of the best hunters in the village and they said I might be the best, if I hadn’t had a habit of picking fights with everyone who even looked at me funny. It wasn’t easy to be a young woman in such a place, no matter how much you knuckled under, and – in truth – I wanted something more. The idea of being a full-time hunter struck me as boring, while being a mercenary or even a soldier would get me disowned … I could have been an adventurer, I supposed, but it wasn’t easy to get any traction. Or so I had been told.

Oh, and my name is Marian. Did I forget to tell you my name?

My life changed when I turned sixteen, an age where most young women would be seeking betrothals with varying levels of urgency. It was not uncommon for a young woman to be mocked for seeking a quick betrothal, and a young man for not being very quick about it, but everyone knew how it worked and as long as the formalities were observed no one would say anything once the happy couple tied the knot. I had had a handful of suitors myself, but in truth I hadn’t been interested in letting myself be tied to the land. I didn’t have to be a farmwife – like I said, I was a good hunter – but I was restless. In truth, the idea of marrying and having children and raising a brood, becoming just another part of the community, didn’t appeal at all. I didn’t like the idea of moving to a nearby village either. It would just be more of the same.

The magicians arrived in spring, the most auspicious time – we were told – for finding newborn magicians in non-magical communities. Those of us who thought we had talent were tested, one by one, with very mixed results. A young and rather silly girl with dreams of magic was told she lacked even a single spark; an older farmhand was offered the chance to study magic, but turned it down after being told he’d have to leave the village and travel far away, perhaps never to return. And I …? I had a little magic. Not enough to make me a magician, but perhaps …

The magician was blunt. “You can become a blademaster,” he said. “You have enough magic for that, if you wish to take the opportunity. But there will be a price.”

He didn’t hide anything from me. I didn’t have anything like enough money to go to Stronghold, but the Kingdom would pay my way in exchange for ten years of service after I graduated. And I better had, or else. I admit that made me hesitate, no matter how much I wanted to jump at the chance to do something with my life. The Free Lands had a very fraught relationship with the monarch – as the joke goes, we’d do anything he asked as long as he didn’t ask us to do anything – and if the relationship turned sour I might find myself on the wrong side of a war. I had had my problems with my parents and wider family – there wasn’t a child who didn’t – but I didn’t want to take up sword against them. And yet, there was no other way to get the training I needed, let alone the magic blade.

In the end, I couldn’t say no.

My departure was hasty, partly because I needed to get there in time for the intake class and partly because they didn’t want to give me time to change my mind. My father formally blessed me as his daughter, with a strange combination of relief and reluctance. My mother kissed me goodbye and promised that, whatever happened, I would always be her daughter. My siblings bid me farewell, in their own way, and wished me luck. I couldn’t help wondering, as I mounted the horse behind Dave the Magician, if I would ever see my village again. It was rare for someone to return, after they left to study magic, and when they did their homecoming was not always happy.

Dave – he did his best to pretend to be an experienced magician, but it hadn’t taken me long to realise he was just an apprentice, from a nearby village – proved to be a surprisingly decent travel companion. He didn’t flirt or try to convince me to do something – anything – I might have found objectionable; he kept his sword between us, when we slept under the stars, and generally treated me like a friend rather than a leman. It helped that we really had come from the same general area, although I would never have known it if we hadn’t shared so much time together. We had quite a bit to talk about, over the week-long trip to Stronghold.

“You should be aware that you are swearing yourself to the monarchy,” Dave said, on what he thought would be our last night before we reached the school. “You might be able to earn your freedom, or pay for it, but the monarch will be under no obligation to accept it. If this is really what you want to do …”

I looked back at him, a young man wrapped in a glamour that was almost painfully obvious. It couldn’t have been easy for him either, growing up in a village like mine … no wonder, I suspected, that he pretended to be older and wiser than he actually was. Or that he hid his origins. I wondered if he’d gone home, then decided I didn’t want to know. How different would I be, when I emerged from Stronghold? Would I truly be the same person?

“I know the price,” I said. It was a risk, but it wasn’t as if I spoke for anyone save myself. It would be a different story if the elders swore to the monarch. “Do you regret it, sometimes?”

Dave said nothing for a long moment. “It has its ups and downs,” he said, thoughtfully. “I have power” – I knew that; I’d seen him turn a gang of bandits into toads – “but it can also be hard to find a place, particularly without decent connections. You’ll have something to offer, if you graduate, but you won’t find it easy to make use of it.”

He paused. “And spending ten years working for the monarch will not endear you to others.”

I nodded. It was a risk. But it was one I was prepared to take.

“There are other places you can go,” Dave offered. He jabbed a finger in a random direction. “There’s a town down there, if you want to go there instead. I can always tell my master you ran off …”

I laughed, then shook my head. “No, thank you,” I said. I’d heard all about towns deeper into the kingdom, or free cities that were only as free as the local monarch allowed them to be. They were dens of iniquity, strewn with pitfalls just waiting for a young man – or woman – to come along and fall in, and populated by confidence tricksters, loan sharks, pimps, whores and taxmen. “I want to make something of my life.”

Dave grinned. “Good luck,” he said. “And I’ll be around if you need me.”

The following day, we arrived at Stronghold.

Chapter One

Stronghold was huge.

I stared at the great brooding hulk of a castle, looming over the swampy badlands surrounding the school, and felt very intimidated indeed. It was so large it was difficult, if not impossible, to get a clear idea of its layout, or just how many smaller castles could fit within its looming bulk. The air around the castle was hazy, making it hard to see anything beyond a certain point and creating the impression that Dave and I were standing on a very thin ledge, one we could easily fall off at any moment. I looked up at the doors and felt my heart fall through my boots. They were so big that the idea of opening them for anything less than a small army of horsemen seemed absurd. It was hard, so very hard, to convince myself I needed to knock.

“I’ll be around for a few days,” Dave said, after checking I had my papers. “If you ask for me at the nearest town, you’ll probably find me.”

I blinked, torn between the urge to ask why he wasn’t entering the school with me and a certain degree of relief he wasn’t. It was never easy to admit to fear, not in the Free Lands, and doing it in front of a young man could be disastrous. I clutched my papers tightly in one hand, stepped up to the door and knocked, sharply. There was a long pause, just long enough to make me wonder if something had gone horrifically wrong, before a tiny door opened inside the larger door. I almost laughed – I should have expected it – and stepped through into an enclosed gatehouse. A man stood facing me, wearing a simple suit of chainmail. He looked me up and down, his face unmoving and yet managing to convey the impression he’d seen more impressive specimens in alehouses, eating the sawdust. I forced myself to look back at him. It wasn’t easy.

“Papers?”

His voice made me jump. I held out the two pieces of parchment Dave had given me, my signed contract with the monarchy – and not with any specific monarch – and the proof the kingdom was willing and able to pay my fees. The greeter studied them coldly, his eyes running down lines I couldn’t read and narrowing in places, before he nodded to the inner door. I felt relieved, even though logically I knew there was nothing wrong with the papers. It was a great deal of effort for a practical joke.

“Go through,” he grunted. “Take a seat. Wait to be called.”

I nodded, unsure if I should drop him a curtsey or salute or something – anything – else, then stepped through the door into a wider chamber. It looked like the schoolhouse back home – rows of wooden chairs, a single wooden table at the front – but the walls were stone and the chairs were clearly designed for adults, rather than children. I saw a handful of young men, roughly the same age as myself, wearing outfits that resembled suits of armour while allowing them to move freely, shiny metal decorated with etchings of gold and silver. The swords at their belts looked disturbingly long. They looked at me narrowly, then made a show of ignoring me. I groaned inwardly. They looked like the noblemen I’d seen, more than once, demanding right of way through the Free Lands, although I had to admit they looked a little less combat-ready. The nobles I’d seen earlier might have worn fancy outfits, and carried fancy swords, but there’d always been an edge around them that suggested they’d been in real fights. These nobles looked much less experienced.

Which doesn’t mean they don’t know how to use those swords, I reminded myself. It wasn’t uncommon for Freelanders to carry swords, but we preferred bows and arrows. They should be very ashamed of themselves if they’re not better than you with a blade.

I sat and forced myself to relax, as time ticked on. The nobles kept chatting amongst themselves, their accents high and snooty and their attitudes weirdly familiar … it hit me, suddenly, that for all their wealth and training they really weren’t any different from the young bloods back home, preparing to prove they could be trusted as adults and yet fearful they’d make a terrible mistake and have to leave the community, rather than try again the following year. The nobles were here to prove themselves too …

A nobleman looked at me, his face cold. “What are you smiling at?”

I looked back at him, meeting his eyes. Freelanders did not bend the knee to noblemen – to anyone – who hadn’t proved themselves. The young man in front of me – he was strikingly handsome, with blond hair and bright blue eyes, in a manner that suggested he wasn’t used to any sort of physical work – had not, certainly not as far as I knew. I had heard all the stories from serfs who’d fled neighbouring lands, horror stories of living under the rule of aristos who thought serfs were nothing more than animals, and forced myself to keep holding his eyes. If I showed him the slightest hint of vulnerability, it would come back to haunt me.

“I am … I am Lord Nicolas,” the aristo growled. “Who are you?”

The door opened. A man – short, barrel-chested, incredibly muscular – stepped into the room, saving me from having to answer. ‘Lord’ Nicolas – there had been an odd little hesitation in his words – hurried back to his peers, who were hastily turning their attention to the newcomer. His eyes flickered across the chairs, somehow managing to convey the impression that he was even less impressed with us than the gatekeeper.

His voice was flat, cold. “And why are you” – his eyes narrowed at the aristos – “wearing livery and light amour here?”

Nicolas hesitated, then spoke. “We have a right to wear it …”

“Not here you don’t,” the man growled. “You wear our tunics until you prove yourselves.”

Nicolas flushed. I felt a rush of amusement, which I carefully hid behind a blank expression.

“I am Master-at-Arms Wentworth,” the man said. “My job is to turn you into blademasters, or weaponmasters, or see you gone before you manage to get yourself hurt – or killed. I am not here to be your friend” – his eyes pinned Nicolas mercilessly – “and I am not here to be your servant, lying to you about your skills and your chances if you go out into the real world and face someone who actually knows how to fight. If you refuse to listen to me, you will be lucky if you are merely kicked out of the castle and left to find your own way through the swamp. I have known too many young men who thought they were the ace, because their trainers went easy on them, only to have their asses thrashed when they faced someone who didn’t hold back. There are no second chances in combat.”

Wentworth paused. “If you want to leave at any moment, the door is over there. We won’t try to stop you.”

I shivered. There was no way in hell I was going to leave.

“There are hundreds of myths, most nonsensical, surrounding blademasters and weaponmasters,” Wentworth continued. “The truth is that you are all here because you have a little spark of magic, not enough to be worth fanning into a blaze, but enough to allow you to bond with a magical sword. That blade, once the process is completed, will effectively be part of you, tied to your magic and soul. The advantage of having such a sword is that it will turn you into a master swordsman without years of practice, and the blade – because it is partly magic – will give you both the ability to cut through certain types of spells and a limited degree of immunity to offensive magic. In short, once you master your blade, you will become a very valuable asset on the battlefield indeed.

“And with that in mind, why are there so few blademasters?”

An aristo I didn’t know leaned forward. “Because the training course is hard?”

“No,” Wentworth said. “The disadvantage of being a blademaster is two-fold. First, if your blade is shattered, you will be shattered too. It is rare, vanishingly rare, for a blademaster to recover after losing their blade. You’ll meet a couple of former blademasters during your training, both trapped so deeply within their minds that they cannot hope to recover or even beg to be killed. Second, if you are parted from your blade, you will weaken, lose the skills it granted you, and – if your blade falls into enemy hands – become terrifyingly vulnerable. It is quite easy for a sorcerer to take your blade and control you from a distance or worse. Much worse. Your blade is tied to your very soul.”

He paused. No one spoke. “If you master the blade, you will become a terror on the battlefield, an asset to your kingdom. If you lose your blade, however, the consequences will be disastrous. That is why there are relatively few blademasters. It requires someone with the right level of magic, and the willingness to risk their lives and their souls during their quest to become one, and afterwards.”

I found myself suddenly unsure if I wanted to proceed. The reward was immense, but the risk … I gritted my teeth. There was no way in hell I was backing out now. I wasn’t going to give the aristocrats the satisfaction of watching me flee with my tail between my legs. Not now and not ever.

“There’s a second point that should be discussed,” Wentworth continued. “Some of you are here because your fees were paid by others, with something expected in return. If you complete this course, if you are bonded to a blade, you will be expected to repay that debt. The consequences of refusing will also be severe.”

“I knew that,” I muttered.

Wentworth fixed me with a look. “Yes,” he said, sharply. “But not everyone is smart enough to realise all debts need to be repaid.”

Nicolas tittered. Wentworth shot him a sharp look.

“If any of you want to leave now, the door is over there,” Wentworth said. “There’s no shame in admitting you can’t handle the risk, or repaying debts you have yet to assume. I won’t judge you poorly, if you want to leave now. There are other places you can go, other trainers you can find. But once you commit yourself, you will be committed.”

I shivered, again. The risk was immense, but … I had nowhere else to go. I had promised myself I would return with a blade, or not at all, and … I doubted I could do anything else with my life. I was a good shot with a bow and arrow, but that wouldn’t be enough to get a job that would actually interest me …

An aristo stood and left. His friends pretended he’d never been there. I felt a stab of pity, despite myself. He had wealth and power, or at least his family had wealth and power, and now … he was going to be a laughing stock. I wondered what he’d do with his life, then shrugged. I had to worry about myself right now.

“I assume you have all chosen to remain,” Wentworth said, after a moment. He pointed a finger at a young man sitting next to Nicolas. “Your name?”

“Lord Louis of Alluvia,” the man said. “I am a …”

“I didn’t ask for your life story,” Wentworth said. “A word of advice. The only titles that mean something here are titles you earn. I don’t care if you spent your days learning how to be a lord or cleaning out the pigsty. If you try standing on your outside titles here, you’ll be knocked down very quickly.”

He looked at the next youth. “Your name?”

I gave mine, when asked, and kept my mouth firmly shut afterwards, all the while carefully linking names to faces as best I could. Nicolas, I noted, had stopped claiming to be a lord. I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not, although I was fairly sure he was an aristo of some kind. Perhaps he’d been born on the wrong side of the blankets, raised amongst his legitimate peers and yet never quite one of them; perhaps he was a fake, citing titles from so far across the world they might as well have come from some half-mythical land. I didn’t think Wentworth would be fooled – someone had to be paying Nicolas’s fees, after all – but who knew? Dave had shown me just how little I knew of the lands beyond the border.

Wentworth motioned for us to stand, then led us into the next chamber. It was cold and grey and almost empty, save for a small pile of wooden boxes and a rack of clothing, all bright blue. Loose tunics, trousers designed to allow the wearer to move freely … they might look bland and boring, to the aristos, but they were finer than anything I’d been able to wear back home. I didn’t mind the patches. It was vanishingly rare for anyone to get anything completely new.

“Undress completely, then change into a tunic,” Wentworth ordered. “Put your previous clothes and anything you might be carrying, including your swords, in the boxes, then shut the lids and write your names on the top. If you don’t know how to write, ask your neighbour.”

Hamish spluttered. “But my sword is a family sword …”

“Put it in the box,” Wentworth said. “It will be returned to you when you leave. Until then, it will be kept safe.”

I heard some of the aristos muttering under their breaths as they carefully unhooked their scabbards and put them in the boxes. Wentworth pretended not to hear them, although I was sure he was compiling a list of grumblers and mentally planning to do something about it later. I didn’t have a sword myself, of course. I put my daggers in the box, then found a tunic and then stripped off. It didn’t bother me. I’d grown up on a farm. Privacy was rare, almost unknown. A couple of aristos seemed to have it worse than me, hesitating to undress until Wentworth snapped at them. I felt Nicolas watching me as I donned my tunic and gritted my teeth. He really was going to be a problem, wasn’t he?

“Your outfits mark you as first-grade blademaster trainees,” Wentworth said. “Should you move up in rank, you’ll be given a gold band to wear around your right arm. Until then, understand this; you cannot learn to lead unless you first learn to serve. Right now, you are at the bottom of the hierarchy. I expect you all to climb to the top.”

He led us outside, into a courtyard that was so large I felt a little exposed – and uneasy. There were groups of young men everywhere, running from place to place or being put through their paces by unsmiling sergeants and supervisors. Some were trading blows, others practicing with swords … one man was standing very still, unnaturally still, as his peers tickled him with long feathers. There weren’t many women, I noticed, and none of the ones I saw paid any attention to me. It wasn’t the first time I’d been surrounded by men – most hunters were men – but here I was alone, without the protection of being part of a larger community.

“Listen carefully,” Wentworth said, as we jogged around a pair of martial artists. “There will be a test later.”

I forced myself to listen as he rattled out details, from rules that could be circumvented to rules that would get any offender whipped … or kicked out, as well as dozens of other details I didn’t pretend to understand. It was hard, so hard, to commit them all to memory. The rules were simple, but the codes were complex … some officers could give us orders in certain situations; others had to be obeyed at all times, even if it meant disobeying other officers. It was tiring as we kept moving, Wentworth showing us the armoury, the swimming pool, the library … I found my eyes aching, as we went on and on, and I was sure I wasn’t the only one who was feeling a little overwhelmed.

“These are your barracks,” Wentworth finished, leading us into a simple room that managed to be bigger than any bedroom I’d seen back home. The walls were lined with bunks, each one disturbingly small and yet better than the bedroom back home. The washroom might have seemed primitive to my classmates, from their groans, but I had never seen hot or cold running water before. “You are responsible for keeping them in order, clean and tidy at all times. If you fail inspection – and inspections occur randomly – you will be forced to clean the entire chamber from top to bottom. I suggest you put your heads together and figure out a way to organise yourselves, or I’ll do it for you. You won’t enjoy that at all.”

I swallowed. I feared he was right.

“You are kept separate from the other trainees for a reason,” Wentworth continued, after assigning bunks seemingly randomly. “Their training program would be worse than useless for you. Do not think that makes you better than them, or they will put you in your place. Hard.”

I swallowed, again, and tried to repress a yawn.

Wentworth gave us all a toothy smile. “You can eat, then sleep,” he said. “If you choose to stay up all night, believe me you’ll regret it tomorrow morning. You won’t be allowed to stay in bed, no matter how shitty you feel.”

His smile grew wider, yet colder. “And remember, the only easy day was yesterday.”

Chapter Two

I had thought I was used to getting up early.

I had grown up on a farm, after all. There’s a never-ending list of chores for farmers, farmwives and their children, all needing to be completed before the sun rose too high in the sky. I had always been awakened by my sisters, or my mother, when force of habit hadn’t driven me from my bed, but this …

“GET UP!” The voice was so thunderous that I thought, for a horrible moment, I was having a bad dream. “GET UP! GET WASHED! GET DRESSED! GET OUT!”

I threw the covers aside and practically rolled out of bed, my hazy mind slowly realising that Wentworth was standing by the door, yelling at us to move. I stumbled towards the washroom, followed by three of the other recruits; we crashed into each other like children still learning to walk, knocking ourselves over before we struggled back to our feet and washed ourselves as quickly as possible. It wasn’t easy, and we looked a right mess as we dressed and hurried outside, into the bright sunlight. Nicolas crashed into me as we passed through the door, darting away so quickly I couldn’t tell if it had been deliberate or not. I suspected the worst.

Wentworth looked us up and down, his eyes narrowing in disdain. “That took far too long,” he said, coldly. I was sure it hadn’t taken us that long to get ready, but I kept my opinion to myself. “How many of you thought to prepare, the night before, for the following morning?”

There was no answer.

“None, I see,” Wentworth said. “You’re going to have to do better.”

He pointed at a tree, on the other side of the giant courtyard. “I want you all to run to that tree and back,” he said. “Slap your hand against the tree when you reach it, then head back. The last one to return will be cleaning the table, after breakfast. Go now.”

We turned and ran. Wentworth brought up the rear, shouting advice and criticism and bawling out Hamish for giving another aristocrat a shove. I was starting to like the master-at-arms, even though he was clearly not inclined to give anyone any slack. I slapped my hand against the tree and forced myself to keep running back, my heart pounding in my chest as I kept moving. My skin was damp with sweat as I reached the barracks, silently thanking all the gods that I wasn’t the last one back. Jon – he’d come in last, barely behind Hamish – was mocked and jeered by everyone else. Including me.

“Silence,” Wentworth said. He spoke to us all. “It could be you next time.”

I nodded, feeling a little guilty as he led us into the mess hall. I had never exactly starved in the Free Lands, although some harvests had been worse than others, but there was enough food in the hall to feed my entire village for years. Wentworth kept barking orders, telling us to fill our plates, return to our tables, and wait for his permission to start eating before we attacked our food. It wasn’t as tasty as I’d expected, for a school that catered to so many aristos, but there was plenty of it. Wentworth kept talking, telling us to make sure we ate as much as possible. We were going to need it.

There was no let up as he led us back outside, directing us through a series of exercises that left me stiff and sore, then marching us back and forth, snapping orders with every breath that we had to follow, or else. We got confused and crashed into each other … I expected he would lose his cool and explode, but instead he patiently corrected our errors and started again. I lost track of time as we went on and on, him shifting effortlessly between instructions and words of wisdom, some apparently nonsensical. It was quite some time before I realised they were actually very useful, once we had the context to understand.

The other students – the older ones – pointed and laughed at us as they marched past, moving with an easy grace and competence that made me feel clumsy and stupid. I did my best to ignore them – Nicolas made rude gestures in return, which got him a lecture from Wentworth – as we carried on, trying hard to master the skills we needed … Wentworth, never one to let us get too full of ourselves, told us we were mastering the skills we needed to master the skills. It took me quite some time to realise he was right.

After lunch, we marched to a very different part of the giant complex. Another training master was waiting for us there, leaning against the wall with a faint smile on his face. I disliked him on sight.

“The lines on the ground mark the training circle,” Wentworth told us, curtly. “If you are on the inside, crossing the lines means forfeiting the bout. If you are on the outside, crossing the line and entering the circle without my permission, or that of the supervisor, will get you fatigues.”

I winced. Wentworth had assured us, with mock concern, that of course Stronghold wasn’t so barbaric as to actually beat its students. Instead, they were given fatigues – press-ups, pull-ups, other exercises intended to strengthen the muscles and build endurance – and expected to carry them out. Wentworth hadn’t said what happened to a recruit who falsely claimed to have completed his fatigues without actually doing it, but I doubted it was anything pleasant.

He turned to look at us. “How many of you have used a sword before?”

Nicolas stuck up his hand. “I have,” he said. “I reached the fifth level …”

“That’s unfortunate,” Wentworth said. “You have so much to unlearn.”

Nicolas spluttered. Wentworth ignored him. “Anyone else?”

I tried not to show my dismay. I was the only one who had never used a sword, let alone had any formal training. It wasn’t good news …

“Here.” Wentworth passed Nicolas and Hamish a pair of training blades. “You can both enter the circle. On my mark, fight. First to disarm wins.”

Nicolas was still fuming as he stepped inside. I felt a twinge of sympathy for Hamish. The training blades might be wooden, but I was entirely sure being struck with one would hurt and Nicolas was in a foul mood, ready to take it out on someone – anyone – other than the person responsible for it. I leaned forward, gritting my teeth as Wentworth put his fingers in his lips and whistled, loudly. Nicolas darted forward, raising his blade and lashing out … and Hamish blocked it.

My heart sank further as they traded blows, moving so rapidly I could barely see the blades anything but a blur. I couldn’t follow the movements, but it was clear they were more evenly matched than I’d thought … and that I had a very long way to go. The two noblemen thrust and stabbed at each other, Wentworth watching coolly, until Nicolas managed to smack Hamish’s arm with his sword. Hamish’s blade went flying. Wentworth whistled again as Hamish stumbled backwards, ending the bout.

“Let me check that arm,” Wentworth said. “If it’s broken, you’ll have to visit the healer.”

Nicolas smirked. I felt a surge of pure hatred. Broken arms were nothing to laugh at, even if you were wealthy enough to be able to visit a magical healer, rather than a chirurgeon. I knew people back home who had been injured as children, and would carry the scars for the rest of their lives. Nicolas met my eyes and raised his sword in mocking salute, a grim reminder of the gulf between us. I shuddered. It was going to take years to catch up, if I ever did.

“Unbroken, but sore,” Wentworth said. He picked up the blade. “Master Yu” – he nodded to the other master – “will supervise this boat.”

He smiled at Nicolas. “You and me, boy. You ready?”

Nicolas smiled. “Yes.”

Wentworth smiled back. “Don’t hold back, boy,” he said. “Let’s see how good your fancy tutoring really was.”

Master Yu whistled. Nicolas darted forward … Wentworth blocked him, effortlessly. He barely seemed to move. I stared in awe as the second and third strikes were blocked, Nicolas’s face going red with shock a moment before Wentworth glided forward with an easy and yet terrifying grace. Nicolas struck out at him … Wentworth sidestepped the blow, somehow, and lightly tapped his blade against Nicolas’s upper arm.

“One,” he said.

Nicolas purpled – I had the impression he would have preferred to be really hurt, rather than lightly tapped – and drove forward. Wentwoth stepped aside and stuck out a foot. Nicolas fell, landing roughly. Wentworth tapped his back with his blade.

“Two.”

“You …” Nicolas scrambled to his feet and came at Wentworth, temper overcoming common sense.  “You …”

Wentworth darted forward, dodging all of Nicolas’s blows while tapping him time and time again, calling out the number each time. Nicolas grew more and more frantic, lashing out as hard as he could … the final time, Wentworth inclined his blade away from Nicolas, giving him an opening … and then produced a wooden dagger from his sleeve, mock-stabbing Nicolas in the chest. Nicolas grunted in pain and dropped his sword. Wentworth took a step backwards, his face perfectly calm. It struck me, suddenly, that the fight hadn’t been any sort of challenge at all. Not for him.

“So,” Wentworth said, as Nicolas got himself under control. “What did you do wrong?”

Everything, I thought.

Nicolas stared at him. “I … I took you too lightly.”

“That’s part of it, yes,” Wentworth said. He sounded as if he were ordering dinner, not discussing swordplay with a student he’d just thrashed. “That wasn’t your real mistake, however. What was it?”

“I …” Nicolas swallowed, hard. “I don’t know.”

“Your tutors taught you by the book,” Wentworth said. “Your patterns are predictable, even when you’re too angry to think straight. You have coped their techniques rather than developing your own style, and you are ill-prepared to deal with a swordsman who knows how to read the patterns and counter them. Nor can you deal with someone who was taught how to fight in a very different style, someone you cannot predict.”

He paused. “Worse, you have little experience of a real fight. Your opponents were never really your enemies. None ever set out to really hurt, let alone kill, you. You would be a severe disadvantage against a professional duellist, let alone someone who cares nothing for any sort of rules. The dagger in the slave? Dishonourable, at best, but victory cares nothing for such conceits.”

Nicolas made a choking sound. “You have a virgin blade!”

Wentworth showed his teeth. “If that had been a real blade, boy, that would have been the end of you. Now, curb your mocking tongue and pay attention. There is much more for you to unlearn.”

He turned to face us. “Now, before we continue, are there any other questions?”

Louis cleared his throat. “I thought a blademaster didn’t need to be trained in swordplay to use his blade,” he said. “Why are we …?”

“First, learning how to use weapons confers discipline and allows us to gauge your character,” Wentworth said, simply. “And second, there will be times when you will not want to use your blade. You will find it better to use a dagger, perhaps, or a bow and arrow. Or something more subtle than either.”

He paused. “Anyone else?”

No one spoke. I was almost relieved, even as Master Yu handed out training blades and started showing us how to use them. It wasn’t easy. I might have had less to unlearn, as Wentworth had said, but I still had an awful lot to learn. My arms ached after a long session of pretending to hack and slash at targets, the trainers patiently correcting my form time and time again and – sometimes – pointing out mistakes that could easily get me killed. It was humbling to realise that Wentworth had been toying with Nicolas, that he could have ended his life at any moment. The older man might not look as impressive as the young fop, but he was a hell of a lot more dangerous.

“Don’t extend your blade so far,” Wentworth corrected, mildly. There was no anger in his tone, no hint of impatience. I suspected I was very far from being the first complete novice he’d had to teach. Perhaps it was almost a relief. Nicolas and his peers thought they knew everything, and it would be a long time before they realised just how wrong they were. “You’re exposing yourself to a counterstroke.”

I nodded, trying to keep my face under tight control as – one by one – we were allowed into the ring and put through our paces. The blademaster might have been supposed to have an instinctive talent for swordplay, or so we’d been told, but every blow told me how much I had to learn. The idea I could master the blade in a single day was absurd … I knew the trainers were holding back, I knew they were offering me gaps in their defences, and yet it was hard to so much as score a single hit. The only consolation was that few of the others were doing much better.

“You don’t have to hold back, sir,” Maxus said. He didn’t seem to like Nicolas very much, although I had no idea why. They were very much alike. “I can take it …”

Master Yu slapped the training blade out of Maxus’s hand with a blow. “Any more stupid remarks?”

Maxus went red. Nicolas smirked. I gritted my teeth. Master Yu had moved slowly when he was facing me, giving me plenty of time to see his blade coming before it struck, but I hadn’t even seen his blade in the air when he’d struck Maxus. Maxus seemed equally shocked. He might have realised the older man was holding back, but he hadn’t realise just how much.

It felt like hours before Wentworth finally called a halt. My body was aching, my arms and legs on the verge of giving up the ghost. The aristos seemed much more accustomed to the motions, although several were clearly nursing nasty bruises. The trainers had taken care to check each one, showing a degree of consideration I hadn’t expected, but they seemed reluctant to do anything about injuries that weren’t life threatening. Pain, it seemed, was a teacher in its own right. I wiped sweat from my brow, mentally kicking myself for not exercising more before I’d left the village. And to think I’d thought I was young and healthy …

Wentworth surveyed us for a long moment, then spoke. “Many years ago, when I was on campaign in the Blighted Lands, I had a comrade called Brutus. He was everything I had been raised to despise. He thought himself the greatest swordsman in all the lands, the most handsome young blade you ever did see, the gift of the gods to women. He bragged that he had that indefinable charm that made women want him and men wish they were women.”

I made a face. I knew the type.

“To be fair, Brutus really was almost as good as he thought he was. He was a master swordsman, with enough experience to develop his own style and avoid the mistakes many of you made, earlier today. He might have been incredibly conceited, and he was, but he was also brave and heroic, and – I’ll grant – had a genuine streak of decency. A little girl got stuck up a tree, once, and Brutus climbed up to get her down, asking for no reward afterwards. He could be difficult to like, but easy to follow.”

He paused. “And do you know what happened to him?

“There was a battle, one that we were on the verge of losing. Brutus ran out, sword in hand, and cut his way through a gaggle of enemy troops with ease, threatening to turn the battle in our favour single-handedly. There was a moment of hope, true hope, and then the enemy archers opened fire. Brutus was hit so many times he looked like a pincushion, when he was done, and there was nothing anyone could do to save his life. He died on a battlefield none of you, I am sure, have ever heard of.”

He let the words hang in the air for a long moment. “Brutus made a very simple mistake, you see. He assumed he was invincible. He thought his genuine skill and talent would be enough to protect him against anything. And then he was killed … he died bravely, yes, but he died for nothing. It could happen to you.”

His eyes seemed to meet mine, just for a second.

“There are two things you should always bear in mind,” he said. “First, there is always someone better, or smarter, or simply luckier, then you. Second, you might be a master of your chosen weapon – or a blademaster – but your enemy doesn’t need to fight you on your chosen ground. You might face a sorcerer who’ll turn you into a toad, instead of fighting fairly, or a common-born rebel” – his eyes lingered on Louis – “who will not meet you in honourable combat, but attack you from the shadows, using techniques that will seem dishonourable and yet effective. A blade in your hand does not make you invincible, and years of lessons in swordplay are no guarantee of victory when all hell breaks loose.”

Nicolas flushed. “It won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t,” Wentworth said, sternly. I had no idea if he was needling Nicolas or making a play on words. “Next time, you could face someone a great deal more inclined to hurt you. Or worse.”

I swallowed. He was right.

Idle Thoughts On The Upcoming Election

Idle Thoughts On The Upcoming Election

Edmund Blackadder: (to George, indicating Baldrick) Meet the new member of Parliament for Dunny-on-the-Wold.

Prince George: But he’s an absolute arsehead!

Edmund Blackadder: Precisely, sir. Our slogan shall be: “A rotten candidate for a rotten borough.” Baldrick, I want you to go back to your kitchen sink, you see, and prepare for government.

– Blackadder III, Episode 1 – Dish and Dishonesty.

The above was funny once, really.

I wish I felt more optimistic about the forthcoming election in Britain. But I’m not.

I remember Tony Blair taking office in 1997. He seemed to be a breath of fresh air, the person who would reshape Labour for the new millennium and be a better more principled politician than John Major, who was a very grey character, and Margaret Thatcher, who was hideously controversial and widely disliked. I wish I could say that I saw trouble brewing when I watched him on television, and studied pictures of an always-smiling Blair in the newspapers, but I had hopes for the future at the time too.

Blair’s fundamental failing, as I see it, was that he liked to be liked. He wanted the pomp and circumstance of being Prime Minister, a towering figure on the world stage, without being willing to do the hard work to make it possible. Many of his decisions were made because they looked good, or they promised to make him look significant, rather than any sensible assessment of what Britain needed and how Blair (and by extension Labour) could provide it. The idea of joining the invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, was not inherently wrong, but Blair was unwilling to acknowledge that this required a far greater military commitment than he was willing to provide, and wound up leading to a deeply embarrassing military catastrophe, as well as undermining Britain’s position elsewhere.

Blair was merely the first in a series of Prime Ministers who managed to be promising candidates but failures when they got into office. Gordon Brown appeared more sober than Tony, yet he was unable to reshape British politics in a more rational direction, a task made much harder by the expenses scandal. David Cameron, on the other hand, did very well during the expenses scandal, and made himself look like a prospective Prime Minister in waiting. However, he severely misjudged the mood of the country in the run-up to the BREXIT referendum, failed to convince Europe that if they did not make concessions there was a very good chance Leave would win the day, and – at base – could not balance the competing demands of the Europhile and Euroskeptic sides of the Tory party. Theresa May had the same problem, as – in a very different sense – did Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

And – let’s be honest here – Rishi Sunak is starting to look an awful lot like John Major.

The difference, however, is striking. The last few days, ever since the announcement of the general election, have been full of gloating about the disintegration of the Tory Party, which came into office with David Cameron into 2010 and managed to accomplish very little until (supposedly) being booted out of office after the coming election. However, in 1997, John Major faced Tony Blair, who was astonishingly popular and had the personal prestige to convince doubters that New Labour would not have the weaknesses of Old Labour. By contrast, there appears to be very little enthusiasm for Keir Starmer and it appears that his victory will not come through his own efforts, and his ability to present a message to the public, but through his enemy’s weakness. He may sweep up a vast number of votes from people who are not so much pro-Labour as they are anti-Tory.

It is clear to see the problems threatening to destroy the Tory Party. Labour should be careful before it engages in too much schadenfreude, however, because they have the same problem. The core of the party has become hideously – hilariously – disconnected from both the party membership and its historical voter base. The collapse of the Red Wall in 2019, where a number of consistencies that were historically solidly Labour chose to vote Tory instead, did not come out of nowhere. The Labour party’s leadership could be said to be Europhile; the rank-and-file could equally be said to be Euroskeptic, if not downright Europhobic. Labour does not appear to have realised that it needs to win those voters back, by proposing a series of realistic policies and preparing to implement them on the day it takes office. Instead, Labour has been caught up in the culture war – another issue when the leadership is often out of touch with the party base – and is currently dealing with the fallout from the conflict in Gaza, a problem that cannot be handled without severely displeasing at least a third to a half of Labour’s current voting base.

Put bluntly, Labour appears to have learnt nothing from Tony Blair. It is putting forward ideas and concepts that look good, at least on paper, but have severe problems when it comes implement them in the real world. Blair’s failure to deliver fatally undermined his position and, by extension, the party’s position too. If the Tories were remotely capable of putting their own house in order, Starmer would be heading for another defeat. Instead, he might well win, despite the lack of enthusiasm for a Labour government, because voters are sick of the Tories.

In a sense, Britain has the same problem as everywhere else these days. The politicians have lost touch with their voters, to the point that they literally cannot comprehend the problems facing the people they are supposed to represent or understand that their inability to tackle the problems is opening the way to political parties and personalities who are far more hostile to democracy than anyone currently in power, and that their future success owes much to the failures of present-day politicians. In turn, the people have become increasingly convinced that the politicians are insane and are looking – desperately – for another option, all the while doing their best to ignore the politicians who have long since thrown away their final shred of credibility.

Perhaps I’m just depressed, in this wet and miserable weather, but I fear for the future of British politics.

Glasgow WorldCon Update

Hi, everyone.

As I may have mentioned earlier, I will be attending the Glasgow WorldCon 2024 as a seller (I’m not sure if I will be on any panels yet, but you never know.) I intend to bring along a reasonable selection of my books, mainly starter books as they tend to sell better than volume 25 of a twenty-five book series , and I’m checking to see if anyone wants to order anything specific in advance.

Ideally, my books will be priced at £10 per novel; I may be able to work something out if someone wants to buy several books at once (hey, I can dream).

If you want me to bring along and reserve something for you, please could you let me know via email as soon as possible. I will try to meet all requests, but the sooner they are made easy it will be to purchase the books and pack them for the drive to Glasgow.

And if you are going to be there, please feel free to drop by my table and say hello.

Chris

OUT NOW – The Flight of Werner von Braun

A Twilight of the Gods prequal.

The year is 1949.

Nazi Germany rules from the western coastline of France to the Urals in Russia. Darkness has descended over the continent, with uncounted millions marched into extermination camps or forced to labour for the greater good of Nazi Germany, while Hitler and his followers reshape Europe to suit themselves. Old towns and cities are demolished so they can be rebuilt in the Nazi style, vast numbers of people are relocated to create room for German settlers, and freedom is a fading dream. There are eyes and ears everywhere, and none dare speak for fear of being disappeared …

The Reich appears invincible. The German Army has bested all its foes, the German Air Force is deploying newer and better jet aircraft, the German Navy is launching ships that will challenge British dominance of the North Sea and the Germans are experimenting with rockets that could hit London – or New York. For SOE, working desperately to keep the flame of European resistance alight, it appears they are fighting a hopeless battle … until they get a message, an offer they can’t refuse.

Werner Von Braun, the founding father of the Nazi rocket programme, wants to defect …

Read a FREE SAMPLE, then download from Amazon US, UK, CAN, AUS, Books2Read (link leads to other sellers). All reviews welcome!

Also, check out The Burning World (A Learning Experience 8) and The Apprentice Mistress (Schooled in Magic 25). And please join my mailing list if you haven’t already.