“I haven’t finished the stretching exercises,” Sophos protested.
“Oh, forget them,” said Ambiades. “You’ll warm up as we go.”
So Sophos put his sword into guard position, and they began circling each other. I watched them from where I lay with my head propped against a saddle. Ambiades struck over the top of Sophos’s guard, but Sophos remembered his lesson and stepped to one side to block. He forgot, however, to follow through with a thrust after his block, and by the time he remembered, the opening in Ambiades’s guard was closed.
“Good block,” said Ambiades, trying to hide his surprise, and swung again. Sophos blocked, but he underestimated the force of the blow and had to back up to regain his balance. While he retreated, Ambiades pushed in and whacked him on the ribs. Sophos brought an elbow down to cover too late, as if an arm would have stopped anything but a wooden sword. Ambiades managed to whack it as he pulled his sword back. Sophos yelped, but Ambiades pretended not to hear, looking superior.
He rushed Sophos again and in the guise of fencing practice began to give him a series of bruises he wouldn’t forget for a month. I was reduced to calling advice.
“Look,” I said as they disengaged, “every time he tries to ride over the top of your guard, he leaves his right side open. Step left to block his attack and then counter immediately to his rib cage.” I wasn’t as patient as Pol. I couldn’t wait for him to figure this out on his own.
“I’m sorry,” said Sophos humbly. He was standing with his shoulders slumped, rubbing a sore elbow. He’d dropped his sword onto the dirt. “I’m just not fast enough. You’re a better swordsman, Ambiades.”
Ambiades shrugged as if to say, “Of course,” and Sophos blushed. I snorted.
“All it shows,” I said, “is that Ambiades is six inches taller than you and has a longer sword, as well as a longer sword arm.”
The smug look gone, Ambiades turned on me. “What do you know about sword fighting, Gen?”
“I know your guard is terrible. I know that any opponent your size would cut you to pieces.”
“Do you mean yourself?”
“I’m not your size.”
“Coward.”
“Not at all. If I got up and beat on you, Pol would come back and beat on me. I have work to do, and I don’t like to work with bruises.”
“Pol wouldn’t know.”
“Of course not.”
Ambiades came to stand over me. “You’re just a coward making excuses.”
He kicked me in the side. It wasn’t a heavy kick. But it was hard enough to leave a bruise in muscles that I might be needing at any moment.
“Ambiades, you can’t.” Sophos looked horrified.
“Do that again and I tell the magus,” I said.
He leaned over me, his face ugly in contempt. “Gutter scum can’t fight its own battles,” he said.
“No,” I said. “Gutter scum gets drafted into the infantry and fights for a worthless king, and hangers-on like you watch.”
“Gen,” Sophos protested, “that’s treasonous.”
“Do I care?” I said.
“Surprised, Sophos?” Ambiades’s contempt made Sophos writhe. “His kind only ever serve themselves.”
“Oh? And who else are you serving?” I asked him.
It had been a casual dig, but it hit a target. Ambiades’s face twisted, and he swung his foot back, and that time he would have broken my ribs if I hadn’t rolled away. When he lifted his foot to kick me again, I grabbed him by the heel and pulled him off-balance, then twisted in the dust to hook one foot behind his locked knee. He went down. I was almost to my feet and crouched to jump when the magus and Pol reappeared.
The magus raised his eyebrows. We separated. Ambiades got up and began brushing the dust off his sword. I lay back down with my head on the saddle.
“No unpleasantness, I trust?” said the magus. No one answered him.
After a very quiet discussion between the magus and Pol, we left the horses with Ambiades. The magus had wanted to leave Sophos with the horses, but Pol wouldn’t let him stay by himself and he wouldn’t leave him with Ambiades either. It was clear that things had gone from bad to worse between Sophos and his idol.
So the magus, Pol, Sophos, and I headed into the dystopia on foot. I was more than glad to leave Ambiades behind. We walked all day, following the magus, who followed the directions of his compass. There was no trail at all, and we picked our way between and over the rumpled slabs of porous black rock. We carried our own water. There was none flowing in the dystopia, but there must have been some in the ground because grasses grew in clumps and bushes in larger clusters. Everything had dried to sticks and prickles that caught on our clothes as we passed. The rocks’ rough surface tore cloth and rubbed raw skin that slid across it.
The magus explained to Sophos that more water moving across the lava could break it down into rich soil, but that this area was higher than the Sea of Olives and only had one river, the Aracthus.
“The Aracthus has carved itself a canyon and doesn’t cause much erosion outside it. Later it reaches the plains below this and dumps what minerals it has collected there. That land is some of the best farming property in all Attolia.”
“What about the Sea of Olives?” Sophos asked.
“It’s a watershed for the winter rains that fall on the dystopia. Once the rains stop, most of the creeks empty and the land won’t support crops. That’s why it was all planted to olives before it was abandoned.”
Crossing the dystopia, I again felt like a bug caught out in the open. My upbringing was making itself felt, and I longed to have more of the sky shut out. The mountains did rise in sheer cliffs on my left, but their steepness shut me out instead of enclosing me. I’d been more comfortable in the Sea of Olives.
In the evening we reached the Aracthus and turned upriver, toward the mountains. I tried to ignore the world stretching out forever behind my back. A few trees grew near the river, as well as bushes, and the lava flow didn’t seem to be so much of a wasteland as it had. The river was narrow but deep in most places and had cut a channel as it twisted and banged against the rocky sides of its bed. Every once in a while it jumped over a shallow waterfall. Sometimes we walked along the edge of a chasm in which the water flowed; sometimes the chasm grew wider and shallower and we walked on the sand beside the river itself.
As the sun was setting, we hiked around a curve and came to a larger falls, maybe two or three times my height. The river was closed in on the side opposite us by bluffs. We could see the striations in the soil, all of them red or black. On our side the riverbank was almost flat, the lava had been ground into a beach, and behind us rose a more gradual hill that cut off the view of the dystopia between us and the Olive Sea.
The magus stopped. “This is it,” he said.
“This is what?” I asked.
“This is where you earn your reputation.”
I looked around at the empty rock and river and the sandy soil under my feet. As far as I could see, there was nothing to steal, nothing at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“WE’LL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL nearly midnight,” said the magus. “We might as well get something to eat.”