How a Magister Fights

Know thyself through strength. Know thy world through intellect. Know thy God through humility.

Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

The eve of unexpected battle. Rain, and rain for days.

The monastery yard was a quag beneath the deluge. Muddy pools alive with drops slurped upon the hooves of twenty horses as their riders dismounted and entered the refectory attached to the church. In the candlelight, four dozen tonsured heads turned to appraise the intruders who shook water from their cloaks and onto the flagstones as if they’d drifted in on the river that spated nearby. A massive iron cauldron of boiling soup sat upon a brick oven.

“Greetings, honored guests,” said an elderly monk, approaching. “I am Prior Eida. Who might you be?”

A young man of good build stepped forward, though his hairless chin betrayed his youth. “Good Prior,” he said, “I am Enkom Tsenaro of Harrigan.”

Every monk recognized the surname of Tsenaro, their duchy’s noble family. “Lord Tsenaro,” said the prior, bowing low, “we are blessed by your presence. Pray, how is the Duke? Has he met Regenhange in battle yet?”

“Not yet,” said Enkom, “though this is why I am here: you are to abandon this place and take refuge with us in the city of Harrigan immediately.”

The prior looked past the men to where sheets of rain attacked the open doorway. He then looked at the young man before him – Duke Tsenaro had several sons, was this one of them, or an extended kin? “Young lord… we heard the summons for refuge days ago–”

“And yet even though you are mere miles from our city, we find you here in defiance of my father’s mandate.”

My father. So a younger son, but of less import. “The rain has not abated since we heard such news. Each day the sky evinces equal fury.”

The youth’s jaw tightened. He spoke more loudly, to the whole room. “Our scouts tell us Regenhange’s army is not far, and preparing to march on Harrigan once the weather relents. Our enemies are Lumineers; they slaughter clergy with zeal.” He stared back at the prior. “And you have orders from your duke, whose messenger I am.”

“We may be citizens of the duchy, but as Clavian monks we are principally citizens of the Creed. We are not ignorant of Regenhange’s atrocities, but nor are we ignorant of our own needs. There are elderly among us, and a community of farmers who depend on our prayers. And the mill.”

“Regenhange’s force is unaccounted for. They might use yonder bridge to reach Harrigan.” The young noble pointed out the door. A wet veil obscured the gentle fields and orchards, but a hundred yards upriver a robust stone bridge reached across the waters. As Enkom spoke a pale finger of lightning splintered the sky, briefly relieving the bridge and some of the world around in stark and sudden shapes.

The prior laughed. “Our bridge? ‘Twould be a most circuitous path to Harrigan!”

The young man’s expression was colder than the rain.

The prior cleared his throat. “If the Duke has deemed it necessary to send his own son to retrieve us, then we shall go. But please, let us wait till the morrow. The almanac predicts clemency, and tomorrow is Rosday. Brother Lebius has prepared such wonderful pottage in anticipation of Commons Prayer tomorrow. We can pray, eat, and retreat!”

Young Enkom tried again to assert himself, but it was too late.

***

The monks had retired to the cloisters. The ducal men had found places to sleep on the cool refectory flagstones. The pottage continued to seethe upon the small brick oven, its aroma mixing unpleasantly with the soldiers’ damp equipment laid out to dry by its heat. Rain danced on the roof. Somewhere outside a bolt pulsed from the sky and drew the white shape of shutters on the opposite wall. Hammerstrike followed.

Enkom rose, lit a candle, and passed through the side entrance into the chapel. To his right, the empty commons met the double doors. To his left, the sanctuary with its opposing rows of stalls to accommodate the monks’ daily prayers.

He went to the rail separating the two halves, and knelt.

“Sovereign of creation, have mercy on us, these sinners.”

Another flash of light. A much longer delay, then rumble.

The prior was right: Enkom’s wasn’t a valuable mission. All the important tasks had been delegated to his older brothers… real preparations for the impending battle. In comparison, Enkom had been assigned to herd geese. Indeed, word had circulated that soon he’d be assigned to monastic life. What else to do with an adjunct son?

Enkom’s fist fell.

“These imbeciles! Fools and ingrates, these clergy! God’s citizens… God’s jesters, methinks! Oh, how we bleed and die for this lot, and what do they give back? Not even the hair from their shaved heads! Simpering weaklings! God preserve us from His own!”

Behind him, the slightest whisper of a page turning over.

He wheeled around. There sat a large monk upon the floor by the corner in meditation, a sandglass at his side.

Enkom’s face flushed. “I… I am sorry!”

“No need,” said the monk, his tone betraying mild amusement. “Please, may I not interrupt.”

Enkom looked closer. The fellow wore a cassock, but of a different hue and weave than the others. His hair grew untonsured. His arms and legs were thick like a knight’s. Neck nearly the same girth as jaw. In the dim light he at first appeared corpulent, but as Enkom looked closer he perceived pure muscle, not paunch. “Are you from the monastery?”

“Nay. Just passing through.”

“Passing through Harrigan duchy… in time of war?”

“Aye. In sooth, I’m being hunted. The general of Regenhange’s army has a special vendetta against me.”

“General Gallake? General Gallake of Regenhange is hunting you?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“But why?”

“Due to my office. My name is Magister Wingolf.”

“A magister,” said Enkom, feeling disappointment. “So still a monk.”

“Aye,” the stranger grinned. “Still a monk.”

Now that made two offenses, Enkom suddenly realized. He bowed. “Please forgive me, Magister Wingolf.”

“‘Your Excellency.’”

“Your Excellency. Please forgive me, Your Excellency. I’ve spoken improperly.”

“You believe the clergy weak.”

Enkom stiffened. He wished to go, but also knew he deserved the approaching chastisement. “No… Your Excellency.”

“That’s not what you said to God a moment ago. Speak freely if you please, young lord.”

He was quiet for a time. “Your Excellency… I’ve heard that magisters can be great warriors, but I have only seen you as advisors and diplomats. I have heard you can… use fire. I’ve never witnessed it. I know you are monks of the Creed, and scholars.”

Magister Wingolf looked up at the ceiling, organizing there his young interlocutor’s statements. Lightning crashed outside, yet he did not move. “By which you mean… you know magisters are reputed to be warriors, but only in spite of their status as monks. Correct?”

Mostly accurate, Enkom admitted.

Wingolf shook his head. “You’re all backwards. Our prowess is by virtue of our faith.”

Enkom didn’t understand.

The magister glanced at his sandglass. “Here, young lord. We’re still an hour from Noctis Prayer. Would you like to know how magic works?”

***

Rosday bloomed. The sun came out and wrung the sky of its remaining water. A glimmering world interrupted only by orchards, groves, and pollarded trees like fat arms with a hundred skinny fingers. Puddles stood everywhere in the path and between tilled rows, a thousand mirrors reflecting the blue.

Enkom looked out the church’s large double-doors where the path ran along the river to the stone bridge a hundred yards off. Turning right to cross that bridge would take a traveler deeper into the country. To the left, the road on the nearside ran to the city of Harrigan, its walls visible on the horizon a little over two miles’ distance. From those city towers, he knew, a keen eye could see the monastery rather well.

Enkom wished to leave that morning. The prior had insisted on waiting until after Commons Prayer and a meal. Enkom had objected, but the prior knew that this lesser son had no real power. Besides, the congregants will be hungry, and Brother Lebius’ pottage…

Enkom ordered his men to have the horses prepared to leave immediately following prayer. He doubted it would happen, but at least his men listened to him.

Thus a small crowd of farming families squashed down the path from the bridge and made a muddy painting of the church’s commons’ floor, their number swelled by Enkom’s own cohort. The monks populated the sanctuary stalls perpendicular to the crowd, facing one another, already taking turns singing their mellifluous Ailinic chants toward the other side. Enkom saw Magister Wingolf sitting among the others, eyes closed and wrapped in piety, his voice strong and beautiful. Enkom thought on their conversation from the previous night.

Time passed. The prior read from the Sacred Text. The congregation bowed their heads at the end and mouthed along. Enkom felt a hand on his shoulder and heard his sentry whisper: “Lord…”

He turned and followed his subordinate’s gaze out to the bridge behind. His heart leaped into a gallop.

Riders on the bridge, headed toward Harrigan, cuirasses gleaming, buffed leather tack shining. Like cavalry.

He looked harder. Their costumes – not his father’s livery.

The riders briefly regarded the monastery, then walked on. More followed. Then more. Then more.

Enkom had not yet been in battle, but he’d seen Regenhange’s army from afar months ago, like a leviathan snaking along the road to a neighboring city of Banvira… a city now fallen. A city now in ruin. He prayed these were only scouts, but his wits already knew: those visible horsemen were the van, Regenhange’s army would come next.

A few congregants saw the riders and fretted, but the prayers marched on, as did the enemy army. Now came unkitted footmen – and even a few women – leading beast-drawn wagons laden with spears, guns, tools, victual, hay. All manner of baggage. Rolling on and on, already a half-mile long. And for every wagon, dozens of soldiers. Many paused as they crossed the bridge to look down the swollen river at the monastery, then turn to their friends and say something.

They were a parade of foxes. The church was a henhouse.

The prayers continued. Enkom and his man quietly closed the double doors. The magister was still praying.

***

In his lecture on magic from the night before, the magister began as all good scholars would by defending his source, Hall’d Stratom of Khofre. He described the time period in which Hall’d Stratom wrote. His education and milieu. Influences. Biases. Exceptions.

Enkom looked longingly toward the exit.

“Be not impatient, young lord, we are heading somewhere! Now, Stratom wished to distinguish Credic magic from the magic of idolaters, so he began with their paradigms. Idolaters hold that all is interconnected, that the world we call Dhaeghom is naught but a web of causality. To the idolater, it therefore follows that all is dictated by fate, and choice is illusory.

“Stratom is quick to point out the self-referential contradiction, for reason itself is only credible if it is not a product of causality. If choice is illusory, he says, then so must be deduction. But deduction is what got us here, so the premise must be false.

“But the reciprocal likewise holds: if human reason is exempt from causality, then it must be external.

“To Stratom, this yields a principle of reason: it is transcendent.

“Stratom likens reason to a player’s hand in a board game. The board’s pieces may slide and carom in predictable ways, but the player’s hand has its own agency independent of pieces and board. The hand is part of the game, but not of it.

“Just so with magic. In fact, Credic tradition maintains that reason is the most basic form of magic, of which we are all capable.”

***

Now a half-dozen Regenmen stood outside the church doors with spears. More were separating from the army, jogging eagerly toward the monastery to join the fun. Inside, Enkom and his officer had lowered the crossbar which rattled and knocked against hasp and old wood whenever the Regenmen essayed the doors. Congregants squirmed. One woman screamed each time the door rasped.

The monks were doing their damnedest to ignore it all. The prayers progressed as if nothing happened, but the prior was sweating.

Enkom had twenty men. If they fortified, they’d be overrun. Harrigan lay miles away across mostly empty ground, with Regenhange’s mounted vanguard between them. What could Enkom do? What would his father have done? His brothers?

More Regenmen came. Three-dozen now, at least. One rapped on the door. “Hallo!” he shouted in broken Luraldish. “We come for Creed prayer! Hast prayers for us?”

Any time and one of them would circle around and enter through the refectory. Or an open window. Or find the horses in back. Or simply set fire to the roof.

Enkom pushed past the congregants and to the sanctuary’s edge. “Prior, enough! Look what’s happening!”

The prior wouldn’t.

Enkom looked at the Wingolf, eyes closed and hands folded. “Your Excellency, do something for God’s sake!”

Wingolf was, though Enkom couldn’t see.

***

“Now,” Wingolf continued, “because magic, like reason, is transcendent – I prefer the older translation of intrusive; Stratom uses the Ailinic word embainesi — then a magister must acknowledge reality’s base, which is, of course, God. A magister is a figure of prayer, always conscious of the natural order. Meditation is his daily repast.”

***

The doors shook. The crowd backed away. Someone screamed.

Wingolf finally stood. With small pardons he squeezed past his fellow monks and out of the stalls.

He turned not for the assailed doors, but the refectory.

“Forgive me Brother Lebius,” he shouted over his shoulder, “but I’ve need of your pottage.”

He approached the massive cauldron. Still boiling, heat detectable from several feet away.

The magister pushed his sleeves back, and put his bare hands its iron sides.

The boiling slowed, then stopped.

***

“Here, Stratom again distinguishes between idolatrous and Credic thought.

“When the idolater speaks of the soul, he posits a truly separable self – a ghost within a puppet. Stratom disputes this. We are not essentially spirits. Even if the Creator has invested us with transcendent faculties like reason, we nonetheless have bodies. Thus, a magister masters both body and mind. Although our magic transcends material reality, we are nonetheless material ourselves, as is the stuff we ply.

“Do not mark us helpless, young lord. Credic magic may require docility, but it is facilitated by strength. Immense strength.”

***

“Stand aside!” Wingolf ordered. He reentered the church, making for the commons.

The congregation parted. The magister’s whole body tightened. Skin ruddy. Shoulders loaded. Limbs and neck thick as boles. A great and unseen weight bore upon him.

“Move away! Back, prithee!”

Reaching the doors, he put his palms against the wood, lowered his head, and cocked one leg back as though to push, then exhaled.

***

“This physical foundation appertains to both the magister and the wielded matter. Stratom therefore defines a third magisterial principle. He is monk, he is warrior, but he is also scholar. Through natural philosophy, he learns more of God and magic alike. In Stratom’s words, ‘Magic buildeth upon nature.’

“Take fire: many assume Credic magisters can only wield fire. While untrue, it is the first magical ability we are taught, for it is one of the simplest. While we magisters must the learn the natural properties of many things, fire tends to be intuitive to us, and so it is useful to teach. At its base, fire is merely the insertion of heat into some flammable vessel.

“Often, wood.”

***

Immediately outside, the Regenmen sensed a change within and quizzed the notably wooden doors. The least fortunate of them leaned forward to peek through the crack.

The doors exploded.

Mayhem and fury. Noise enough to stop the whole army. The explosion’s echo rolled across field and orchard. Audible for miles. Audible from Harrigan. Puddles rippled. Birds everywhere screamed and took wing. Dogs three miles off lost their wits. All the hitched beasts in Regenhange’s train kicked and panicked and ran amok so that carts and wagons crashed and the bridge and road became instantly impassable. Bright bits of door fell out of the blue sky and hissed and left their black and sizzling impressions in the green grass where they landed.

The congregation shuddered and pressed to the sides, but standing at the broken entrance Magister Wingolf breathed deeply and studied the scene. The monastery yard was littered with bodies and parts thereof. On the road, Regenhange’s army was bedlam. A mile toward Harrigan, the vanguard was turning their horses to see back toward the monastery.

Something metallic rang off the bridge parapet and plunked into the river. The church door’s hasp, fired the hundred-some yards.

“Young lord,” said Wingolf, still looking out.

Enkom was still crumpled from the explosion. “Aye, Your Excellency!”

“If we remain, we’ll be besieged, and lose.”

“Aye… Your Excellency.”

“But we cannot ride off and abandon these others to butchery.”

“No, Your Excellency.”

“But if we all make for Harrigan on foot their cavalry will intercept us.”

“Aye, Your Excellency.”

“Then the choice is made: we sally forth. Are you and your command with me, young lord Tsenaro?”

Enkom rose. His limbs shook and fear assailed his heart but he made his voice into steel. “Men of Harrigan, to me!”

***

“But fire itself is only a tool. A potent one, but it wants for application. That is where a military record enters. Magister as warrior and soldier. I myself served in four battles before I donned the frock, and three since! I foresee there will be more.”

***

Regenhange’s army was still reeling. Those Regenmen on the bridge’s far side opposing the monastery and city were retreating in all directions. Those on the near had wholly lost control of the wagons. The mounted vanguard, assuming they were being cut off, was thundering back toward the bridge.

Into this havoc advanced Magister Wingolf, Enkom Tsenaro, and the twenty Harrigan soldiers against perhaps a hundred times that many. Their organized force covered ground quickly and punched into the wagon train.

Fivescore Regenmen clustered at the broken wagons, shouting futilely to the comrades to come assist. Enkom hesitated, but Wingolf’s leadership forced the engagement and the lines met.

Enkom thrust and drew blood and heard himself crying valliance as one man died upon his bloody spearpoint and then another. The Regenmen stumbled back not in retreat but flight and one was stabbed and another slashed and the animals screamed and kicked in their harnesses. Down the line a shaking Regenman emerged and began assembling an arquebus, but in his panic his gun swung on its prop and discharged a bullet up through the side of his jaw. Not yet dead, he abandoned his tools and shambled off the field with only half a face like a humiliated surveyor.

Harrigan suddenly stood alone among corpses: Regenmen and a few fallen animals upon the road.

They’d won through organization and audacity.

“We’ve done it!” laughed one of them.

“We have not,” said Wingolf. “Look yonder.”

They did, and the sight made mouths dry and loaded throats with screams.

The vanguard cavalry, over a hundred of them, a quarter mile off and closing. Thundering hoofstrikes carried through the ground.

The magister tightened a leather pouch at his wrist. “Young lord, we are about to engage mounted troops. They will seek to disperse us, but you must not flee. Flee, and they will run you down and slay you. We will move into their midst and keep our formation, for if we break then we die.” He looked into Enkom’s eyes, and the young man saw the Credic warrior therein, the wedding of violent and monastic. “You are the noble. I depend on you to maintain your men’s discipline.”

“Aye, Your Excellency.”

Wingolf opened and closed his hands, and from the wrist pouches emerged a brief spout of flame along with a sweetly pungent odor, like tar and sap. “Then may God preserve us. Let’s begin.”

***

“Finally, Stratom emphasizes Credic magic’s most vital ingredient: humility.

“Intellectual understanding and meditation are catalysts, but humility is the magister’s cardinal virtue. For, as Stratom says, to be humble is to see through the eyes of God, which is to see reality as it truly is, no more and no less. There is value in any study of truth, but Stratom is adamant that humility is the context upon which understanding is contingent. A magister might become stupid and addled, but so long as he has humility, then reason and magic may still be his.”

Here Wingolf leaned forward.

“Do not be tricked by the shadows of vanity, young lord. Your gifts may be impressive and draw admiration, but they are still only gifts. As reason and magic came from outside of Dhaeghom, so too did your gifts come from outside of you. You may build with them, fashion them into something greater, but their foundation belongs to another.

“Know thyself through strength. Know thy world through intellect. Know thy God through humility. This is how a magister uses magic. This is how a magister fights.”

***

Their spear formation marched forward shoulder-to-shoulder on the muddy roadside. Wingolf stood in the center, breathing steady, hands opening and closing. His eyes fixed on the mass of approaching riders. “Speak, young lord. Speak to your command.”

“Steady!” screamed Enkom from the front. “Steady! Stay with me!”

The horses crashed toward them. The riders’ swords hissed free of scabbards. Loam flew.

Enkom set his feet. The palms of his leather gloves were dark and odorous with perspiration. Fear simmered on his tongue as he screamed again: “Steady! Steady, men! For Tsenaro! For Harrigan! For God!”

Closer. Closer they came.

Fifty feet. Thirty. Ten.

Humility.

Liquid heat passed above Enkom’s head. From the pouches at his wrist Wingolf released a spout of flame that splashed over the charging horses. The beasts screamed and tore aside and their legs broke on the ground. Their riders flew ejected or tangled in their stirrups and were crushed screaming beneath their animals. Those behind swerved and encircled at other angles of attack. Enkom’s voice was raw from screaming and the cavalry rode in to dislodge them but met Harrigan steel. Enkom’s men pressed together and pivoted to meet the next assault and a horse took a spear and screamed and his blood painted the Harrigans. The magister at the center of the knot swung about and threw fire into the cavalry’s faces and sent them skirling. In that terrible nidus of steel and flame and blood and beast the young lord felt the queer tranquility of war settle upon him and take command of his shouts, his thrusts, his fury.

Beneath the noise like a gentle song he could hear Wingolf whispering prayers and keeping himself fixed: “Sovereign of creation, have mercy on us, these sinners. Sovereign of creation, have mercy on us, these sinners…”

The vanguard cavalry began to pull away. Perhaps thirty lay crumpled on the ground. In the fields behind, a lone horse with the wax and tallow of its saddle afire and issuing blackest smoke bolted away like a banished spirit. The remaining horsemen circled at a distance like a mob, the radius between them and the Harrigans a no-man’s-land. Dead soldiers. Dead horses. Scorched grass.

Wingolf’s breath came out his nose, heavy but controlled. The cavalry still outnumbered them five to one yet Enkom listened as this monk behind him called to those enemies in their Himlish tongue, inviting them to surrender. They didn’t.

Enkom looked toward Harrigan, and saw something on the road there. More riders. “It’s my father!” he cried. “The Duke is sallying to meet us!”

Indeed, Harrigan’s duke had heard the explosion, and seeing the approaching army and sudden disruption had summoned his closest retinue to exploit the disorder.

The remaining vanguard saw it too. One of them cursed and turned his horse to flee downriver. The others shortly followed.

Enkom’s arms and hands burned. He looked at the bloody tip of his spear, then at the destruction around him. The bridge some hundred feet away was wholly blocked. Many of the pack animals were dead or maimed from the press of wagons and wains. A few had toppled over the parapet and were clogging the river. In the distance, the burning horse was a bright yellow pin trailing black.

***

“You said magic can do more than merely produce fire,” said Enkom. “What else can it do?”

“All manner of things!’ said Wingolf. “But if you mean, in what other ways are magisters trained to use magic, well, the second most common usage is simple strength. The same energy used to generate fire can be used to enhance the flesh. It’s a delicate balancing act – too much can tear tissue and break one’s own bones – but when used properly, it’s quite potent.”

***

“Magister!” came an outraged cry from the opposite bank in Himlish. The whole army was confused, but beside the bridge an urbanely dressed fellow sat on horseback, flanked by his entourage.

Although Wingolf still panted, he turned and gave a blithe reply: “Ah, General Gallake! I wondered if I might meet you here! I don’t suppose you’re ready to surrender and confess to your offenses?”

Even from the nearly seventy yards’ distance, Enkom could see the rage warping the Regenhange general’s face. “What have you done to my armament?!”

“I have faith you’ll reach your own conclusion! But t’wasn’t solely I. We’ve a Tsenaro in our company!”

“God… Goddamn you! Damn you to Hel with your trickery and flames! Damn your frocks and vaunted prayers! Damn your benighted ways and hubristic…”

The magister sighed and trudged over to the ruined caravan where lay a dead donkey attached to a small, two-wheeled wain which the poor beast had busted apart. Wingolf removed the harnesses and grasped the broken pieces of wain – several hundred pounds at least.

Quieting his mind, he lifted.

The Harrigans gasped and some moved to assist but Wingolf ordered them back. Alone he dragged the broken part into an open space beside the road. There he switched his hands to grasp the axle, then after a few deep breaths began to slowly spin with it with the wheel perpendicularly on the end to facilitate rotation. Faster and faster he turned, and now from the craft’s momentum rendered it completely off the ground and its axis tilted away from the river like an enormous slingshot.

The General on the other side continued his oblivious tirade. “How much does the Vicar pay you? Bitch of Grova Marna! Bastard child of desert urchins! I…”

When Wingolf let go, even General Gallake lost his words and watched the tangle of wood arcing toward him through the sky. His attendants screamed in panic and the General muttered something nonsensical and instinctively buried his heels in his steed’s flanks but was too late. The wain struck the ground thirty feet before him and one broken point caught and it tumbled and smote the General’s horse. The animal screamed and Gallake flew and landed in a welter.

White sparks surrounded his vision. He tried to stand. His shank wouldn’t allow. A sharp yellow point of bone protruded beneath his hose. Unspeakable pain.

Attendants ran to help, but from the ground he continued:

“You’ve missed, magister, and left only a dint! Now hear my riposte: you shall never be safe from me! Every meal you eat shall have poison and every shadow shall harbor assassins! I shall empty my accounts in pursuit of your head! Every mercenary plying death shall seek your blood! My life’s object shall be…”

He stopped, for another object was hurtling toward him, and this one would not miss.

It was the donkey.

***

In conclusion, I am fain to report that the outcome of this surprise engagement was most happy, for General Gallake never recollected his army, and he himself would perish and be righteously crushed beneath an ass.

Wingolf’s quill stopped. He reread his last clause, then burst into merry laughter. “Oh ho ho! An ass… forgive me!” he apologized to nobody save God perhaps.

Wiping the tears from his eyes, he took a hunk of coarse bread, sopped up the ink, and chose more appropriate words to write to his Vicar.

A knock at the door.

“Enter.”

The guest did. Wingolf turned. “Ah, young lord!”

“Your Excellency,” Enkom bowed.

“Please. Sit.”

Enkom remained standing at attention. “Your Excellency, I have a request.”

“Ask, then.”

“Your Excellency. I humbly request you commend me to the magisterial school in Grova Marna.”

“You… wish to become a magister?”

“I do. Your Excellency.”

Wingolf stood slowly – the chair beneath him audibly sighing from the relief of its burden – and walked to the young man to meet him eye-to-eye. “You have much changed, young lord. This is a different tune than the one I heard in the monastery scarcely a week gone.”

“Aye, Your Excellency.”

“Alas, I must decline.”

Enkom’s posture fell. “Decline? Why?!”

“Grova Marna’s schools are not for the uninitiated. There are intervening steps. First you must become a knight, then a monk, and then a scholar.”

“Aye, I already am! My father has promised me a knighthood–”

“... And should you become any of those, you may still never become a magister.”

He was silent a moment. “I would accept that.”

“Most candidates are rejected. You’d be satisfied even should you only become a monk?”

“Aye, Your Excellency!”

“Tell me why.”

Enkom fell silent for a spell, then answered: “To continue at prayer when Lumineers are smashing away at the church door… it takes…”

“Courage?”

“Aye, that. But… humility.”

“Well then, if that’s your bearing, then I would commend you to the university at Ocather. A prerequisite to magisterial work.”

“You will write me a recommendation?”

“Nay! I won’t waste the effort; t’wouldn’t do to write it twice!” He gestured to the letter on the table behind.

Enkom couldn’t fight the smile. “Thank you! Thank you, Your Excellency!”

Magister Wingolf extended his hand. “‘Tis my pleasure, young lord.”

Thanks for reading! This story functions as something of a prequel to another story of mine which occurs at the end of the same war, called Of Teeth and Heart:

Of Teeth and Heart

If you liked this story, you might enjoy this one of mine:

The Myr Has a Thousand Eyes

Subscribe for more fantasy tales warriors and cowards, magic and monsters, and perhaps some light philosophy mixed into the mortar.