Oliver cut two straight branches, trimmed them clean, and tossed one at Kellan's feet.
“Come on. I'll teach you.”
Kellan rose in a hurry. “I'm sorry, Master Oliver. I wasn't trying to spy. I'll go back to camp.”
“Back to camp? What for?” Oliver turned the other stick in his hand, letting it follow the movement of a sword. “I'm offering to teach you.”
“Me?” Kellan looked at the branch on the sand, then at Oliver. “You'd teach me to fight?”
Oliver nodded and went back down the beach. “Pick it up.”
A few exchanges showed him what the boy knew. His footing and basic movements were sound, and he was reasonably strong for his build. The techniques themselves were rough. He had little experience of making them work against someone who wasn't cooperating.
He was also fourteen. A village knight's second son could hardly be expected to match the combat knowledge Oliver now carried: the accumulated memory of fighting thousands upon thousands of creatures, human-shaped and otherwise. Kellan had made a respectable start with what he'd been given.
Several practice bouts followed. Calling them bouts was generous; Oliver did most of the hitting. Afterward, with Kellan willing to learn, he settled on teaching him to fight with a greatsword.
First, Oliver spent two days arranging the techniques into sets of linked movements. Then he had Kellan repeat them, over and over, until he could remember them without stopping to think. Once they were familiar, Oliver meant to teach him how to break them apart and use what he needed in a fight.
Kellan did not much like this method.
His father had handed him a wooden sword and set him against Lannard. After the brothers had given each other enough bruises, Jonard would explain what they had done wrong. That was how Kellan understood learning to fight. Oliver's sword dance looked impressive, but surely no enemy was going to wait while he performed it.
“I'm the one teaching you,” Oliver told him. “Do it the way I show you.”
Kellan's mouth tightened a little. He said no more and went back to practicing.
After two days, he could manage the simplest sequence. Oliver took up a practice weapon and gave him a chance to try it against someone, carefully guiding the exchanges toward movements the boy knew.
This time, Kellan felt the difference. A movement he had repeated in the sand answered an attack before he had to think it through. Another put him in a better position than one of the little tricks he had worked out for himself. The sequence didn't have to be performed from beginning to end. The pieces were there when he needed them.
After that, Oliver had trouble getting him to stop.
Outside the work they had to do to keep themselves fed, Kellan wanted to practice constantly. He forgot meals, pushed on when he should have rested, and would have trained himself into the ground if Oliver hadn't intervened.
Oliver understood the eagerness better as they talked. Kellan had been brought up to expect to win a place through his sword, without ever being taught much beyond the basics of using it. Without the wreck, he would have followed his uncle into the Free Cities and taken his chances as a sellsword. Perhaps he would have lived through enough fights to learn something, earned money, spent it in taverns and gaming houses, and waited for the next war. Perhaps his first battle would have left him dead, stripped by whichever men reached him first, with nothing left to distinguish him from the other bodies.
Skill wasn't a guarantee against any of that, but Kellan had been offered a way to improve his chances. Oliver could hardly blame him for seizing it.
* * *
While Kellan learned to fight, Oliver learned where he had arrived.
Westeros. The message on his screen had meant what it said.
Most of the continent belonged to the Seven Kingdoms. As Kellan explained it, seven great realms owed allegiance to the king in King's Landing, whose protection bound their rulers to him. Those rulers had their own sworn lords, who in turn had men sworn to them. Oliver followed the chain down until it reached Jonard Turner and his village.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The king was Robert Baratheon. A dozen or so years earlier, he and the Starks of the North had fought to overthrow the previous king. The lords had supported Robert, and Robert now sat on the throne.
The structure was familiar enough: land, service, and protection, each bargain supporting another. Medieval Europe offered plenty of comparisons. Kellan's family occupied the lowest noble rung, though from the boy's account, Jonard had spent so long looking after his village without fighting that Oliver privately thought village headman was the more useful description.
Which made Kellan the headman's earnest, slightly gullible son.
Oliver laughed before he could stop himself.
“Sir?” Kellan paused in his practice. “Have I done something wrong?”
“No, no. Nothing to do with you.” Oliver turned a fish over the fire and tried to look as though that had occupied him all along. “That's right. Keep going.”
The title had crept into their conversations without his asking for it. To Kellan, a strong, well-spoken man with weapons like these, fine equipment, and such skill could scarcely be anything but a knight from some wealthy southern family. Oliver knew better. Explaining where he really came from would be difficult, and he let the assumption stand.
Kellan resumed the sequence.
“More behind that stroke,” Oliver called. “You're barely committing to it.”
“Yes, sir.”
More than half a month of work gave the boy a basic command of the forms. Turning each movement into something he could choose and use under pressure would take much longer. Oliver's language learning had reached a similar point. Ordinary conversation now came readily. More complicated ideas would need time, practice, and people whose vocabulary extended beyond what he had learned from Kellan beside a cooking fire.
They were ready to leave.
On the seventeenth morning after Kellan had woken, Oliver brought his Lightbringer armor out beside the camp. The boy stared at the pieces.
“Have you helped your father put his armor on?” Oliver asked.
“Yes, sir.” Twice, though Kellan seemed to decide that the number needn't be mentioned.
“Good. Give me a hand with this lot.”
Oliver had worn the armor for practice on the beach, and sometimes pulled pieces on loosely when he wanted their weight for work. Traveling in it meant getting the fit right. He guided Kellan through the straps until the back of the breastplate was properly secured.
“Master Oliver, are you one of His Grace's guards?”
“What makes you ask?”
“I've never seen armor like it. So beautiful, and so strong.” Kellan looked from one fitted plate to the next.
“Have you seen much armor?”
“I went to Coldwater Burn with Father when our lord's son was knighted. None of the knights there had anything as fine.”
Oliver could believe that. Plenty of paladins, warriors, and death knights had spent long nights chasing this appearance, and Alliance paladins and Horde Sunwalkers alike wore it with pride. He still hadn't managed to get the shoulders, the most spectacular part of the whole thing. Even here, that omission rankled.
“I'm not a royal guard,” he said. “Just a fighter. I used to command a battle group, though.”
“In the Free Cities?”
“Farther away. So far I don't know how to get home.” He adjusted the armor and let that answer settle before changing the subject. “Do you know where we are?”
“Not exactly. I think this must be the eastern coast of the North. If we follow it south, we should reach White Harbor. That's where Uncle and I boarded.”
“South, then. Everything packed?”
“Five bags of water. Three of dried fish. All ready.”
“We'll go after breakfast.”
They ate their last seafood soup at the little hearth. Afterward, Oliver stood on the riverbank in his armor, looking at the shelter across the water. He had lived in that hole for nearly a month.
“Sir? What is it?”
“Nothing.” He turned away. “Let's go.”
Oliver carried his sword on his back. Kellan pushed the barrow of supplies. Oliver had built it from remembered images, binding a thick layer of grass rope around the wooden wheel to soften the jolting. The bags were Kellan's work: broad pieces of fish skin sewn together with narrow leather strips, their seams sealed with glue boiled from fish bladders. They would hold water, provided it wasn't hot.
That water needed drinking first and replacing whenever they found a suitable source. Leave it too long, and the bags could become a fine way to make themselves ill. Even so, having food and water with them gave them choices they hadn't had before.
Following the coast was straightforward advice. It was less straightforward underfoot.
By halfway through the first day, the white beaches had given way to mudflats. Beyond those lay cliffs. Getting around the cliffs meant climbing the hills behind them, only to come down among dark reefs and more difficult ground. They pushed through forest, worked around obstacles, and returned to the water's edge whenever they could. Whatever the detour, they refused to lose the coast entirely.
On the afternoon of the sixth day, Oliver saw a dozen or so weather-beaten wooden houses ahead.
He laughed aloud. After weeks of trees, water, and rock, even those poor buildings looked wonderful.
“People, Kellan! At last. Think they'll be pleased to see us?”
“Of course. A knight visiting a village like that is an honor. And there's guest right. Once they've given us bread and salt, we can't harm one another.” Kellan sounded as happy as he did. “We've brought our own food. We won't be a burden.”
“You really trust people to keep to that?”
“Don't they where you come from?”
Oliver could have offered a discouraging list of feasts that had ended in murder, guests betrayed, and armed men waiting outside while their hosts smiled. He decided to leave the boy's faith alone for the moment and walked on.
Near the village, he stopped.
“Kellan,” he said quietly. “I don't think anyone's going to welcome us today.”
The boy looked past him. A man in ragged clothes lay at the entrance to the village. Blood had dried beneath the body.