Read Online The Seer King: Book One of the Seer King Trilogy by Chris Bunch - Free Book Online
Authors: Chris Bunch
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now manages the family estates. All have been blessed with children. I shall say no more about them, for their lives have been fortunate by not being touched by history. The gods let me send gold when I was rich and powerful, and granted them safe and comfortable obscurity when Emperor Tenedos and I met our downfall.
I am told most boys go through a time when they want to be this, be that, be the other thing, from wizard to elephant leader to goldsmith to who knows what. My mind never spun such skeins for me. All that I ever wanted to be was as my father had dreamed: a soldier.
On my name day, I was taken to a sorcerer my father particularly respected, who was asked to cast the bones for my future. The sorcerer cast once, cast thrice, and then told my parents my fate was cloudy. He could see I would be a fighter, a mighty fighter, and I would see lands and do deeds unimagined in our sleeping district That was enough for my father, and enough for me when I was told later.
Just before her death a few years ago my mother said the wizard had finished his predictions with a quiet warning. She remembered clearly what he said: “The boy will ride the tiger for a time, and then the tiger will turn on him and savage him. I see great pain, great sorrow, but I also see the thread of his life goes on. But for how much farther, I cannot tell, since mists drop around my mind when it reaches beyond that moment.”
That worried my mother, but not my father. “Soldiers serve, soldiers die,” he said with a shrug. “If that is my son’s lot, so be it It is unchangeable, and one might as well sacrifice to Umar the Creator and convince him to return to this world, take Irisu and Saionji to hand, and concern himself with our sorrows.” That was great wisdom, she knew, and so put the matter aside.
Somehow I knew as a boy what skills I must learn, and what talents would be meaningless. I learned to fight, to challenge boys from the village older and stronger than I, because that was how a reputation was made. I was always the first to climb to the highest branch or leap from the tallest ledge into a pool or run the closest past a gaur as he snorted in his pen.
I listened hard when the hunters taught me archery, when my father gave me lessons of the sword, when stablemen taught me how to ride and care for a horse.
One of the most important things I learned from my father, although he never advised me of this directly, was that the best weapon for a soldier was the simplest and the most universal. He taught me to avoid such spectacular devices as the morningstar or battle-ax for a plain sword, its hilt of the hardest wood without device, faced with soft, dull-colored metal that might serve to hold an enemy’s edge for a vital instant, its grip of roughened leather, preferably sharkskin, and its pommel equally simple. Its blade should be straight, edged on both sides. It should be made of the finest steel I could afford, even if it meant borrowing a sum from the regimental lender. The blade should not be forged with sillinesses like blood runnels, since those do not work and only weaken a weapon’s strength, nor should it be elaborately engraved or set with gold. My father said he knew of men who’d been slain just for the beauty of their sword — an entirely ridiculous reason to die.
It should be neither too long nor short; since I became taller than most men when fully grown, I prefer a blade length of three inches short of a yard, and the weapon to weigh a bit over two pounds.
He added that if I were to become a cavalryman, I’d likely be given a saber. Most likely I’d have to carry it until I achieved some rank or battle experience, but then to consider well before I kept the weapon. It was his experience that a saber was very well and good for wild swinging in a melee, or for cutting down fleeing soldiery, but afoot or in a man-to-man contest, he’d rather have a bow and fifty feet between him and his opponent than the most
I am told most boys go through a time when they want to be this, be that, be the other thing, from wizard to elephant leader to goldsmith to who knows what. My mind never spun such skeins for me. All that I ever wanted to be was as my father had dreamed: a soldier.
On my name day, I was taken to a sorcerer my father particularly respected, who was asked to cast the bones for my future. The sorcerer cast once, cast thrice, and then told my parents my fate was cloudy. He could see I would be a fighter, a mighty fighter, and I would see lands and do deeds unimagined in our sleeping district That was enough for my father, and enough for me when I was told later.
Just before her death a few years ago my mother said the wizard had finished his predictions with a quiet warning. She remembered clearly what he said: “The boy will ride the tiger for a time, and then the tiger will turn on him and savage him. I see great pain, great sorrow, but I also see the thread of his life goes on. But for how much farther, I cannot tell, since mists drop around my mind when it reaches beyond that moment.”
That worried my mother, but not my father. “Soldiers serve, soldiers die,” he said with a shrug. “If that is my son’s lot, so be it It is unchangeable, and one might as well sacrifice to Umar the Creator and convince him to return to this world, take Irisu and Saionji to hand, and concern himself with our sorrows.” That was great wisdom, she knew, and so put the matter aside.
Somehow I knew as a boy what skills I must learn, and what talents would be meaningless. I learned to fight, to challenge boys from the village older and stronger than I, because that was how a reputation was made. I was always the first to climb to the highest branch or leap from the tallest ledge into a pool or run the closest past a gaur as he snorted in his pen.
I listened hard when the hunters taught me archery, when my father gave me lessons of the sword, when stablemen taught me how to ride and care for a horse.
One of the most important things I learned from my father, although he never advised me of this directly, was that the best weapon for a soldier was the simplest and the most universal. He taught me to avoid such spectacular devices as the morningstar or battle-ax for a plain sword, its hilt of the hardest wood without device, faced with soft, dull-colored metal that might serve to hold an enemy’s edge for a vital instant, its grip of roughened leather, preferably sharkskin, and its pommel equally simple. Its blade should be straight, edged on both sides. It should be made of the finest steel I could afford, even if it meant borrowing a sum from the regimental lender. The blade should not be forged with sillinesses like blood runnels, since those do not work and only weaken a weapon’s strength, nor should it be elaborately engraved or set with gold. My father said he knew of men who’d been slain just for the beauty of their sword — an entirely ridiculous reason to die.
It should be neither too long nor short; since I became taller than most men when fully grown, I prefer a blade length of three inches short of a yard, and the weapon to weigh a bit over two pounds.
He added that if I were to become a cavalryman, I’d likely be given a saber. Most likely I’d have to carry it until I achieved some rank or battle experience, but then to consider well before I kept the weapon. It was his experience that a saber was very well and good for wild swinging in a melee, or for cutting down fleeing soldiery, but afoot or in a man-to-man contest, he’d rather have a bow and fifty feet between him and his opponent than the most
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