The Dragon's Prophecy Page 11

  "I’m used to seeing great men lord it over the rest. No knight or priest of the east would ever dream of washing their own dishes, let alone someone else’s."

  "It is very different from everywhere else in the west as well," chipped in the priest soberly. "Most of the great nobles and bishops of the west would agree with those in the east. They hold the Centurions at arm’s length and grant us land and titles along the edges of their kingdoms. They respect the military power of the Centurions and like to use us as a layer of protection from barbarians and aggressive neighbors, but they don't really want us living too close to them. Our dangerous ideas of leaders who serve and equality with peasants make them nervous.”

  As they got out into the countryside Sir Gerard reined his horse to a halt and turned to Brendan, "Enough about politics and history, it is time for your first lesson as my squire. How much experience do you have riding horses?"

  Horses were for knights and nobles, or the occasional rich merchant, they were not for gutter snipes or back alley thieves. And yet he had ridden a horse once, if only to try and steal it. Neither the attempted theft nor the attempted escape afterward had gone well. He had avoided the hangman's noose because of his youth and the mercy of the knight whose horse he had tried to steal.

  "Very little, my lord. I have ridden a horse only once and the memory is not a good one," he finally said.

  Father Cardic laughed, "I’ll not embarrass you by asking you why a former thief such as yourself would be riding a horse. I also have a few embarrassing stories from my youth that I try to avoid discussing."

  "Only because we’ve heard them so many times that we’ve threatened you with violence if you repeat them again," interrupted the knight with a snort.

  He spoke again to Brendan, "Remember, you are no longer a thief, you are now a Centurion squire. You must learn how to ride and handle a warhorse." Sir Gerard swung down from the saddle and gestured for Brendan to mount up.

  "Is it safe?" the young squire found himself asking even though he knew it was a stupid question.

  "Safe?" Asked the knight in surprise. "I should hope not! He is a warhorse after all; a 'safe' warhorse wouldn't do you much good in battle. His name is Ballista."

  "You named your warhorse after a piece of siege equipment?" Asked Brendan with a look of puzzlement upon his face.

  "Like all good warhorses he is a knight's most powerful weapon. He is very dangerous, but you don't need to worry, he has excellent self-control. Now mount up."

  "He's very dangerous and self-controlled, that's something at least, very dangerous and out of control would be so much worse," Brendan muttered under his breath. He looked up and realized that the saddle was at eye level. There was no turning back now. He took hold of the pommel and put his left foot in the stirrup as he had watched Sir Gerard do before. With difficulty he managed to swing his right leg awkwardly over the horse and pull himself upright in the saddle. Brendan felt a little flush of pride at his success.

  "Not bad for a first time!" Exclaimed the priest. "You do realize that to become a knight you have to be able to leap from the ground into the saddle while wearing full armor and without putting your foot in the stirrup."

  Brendan suddenly had a vision of himself leaping up and slamming into the side of the horse while trying to throw his right leg over the animal, followed by a slow slide down the side of the horse, and a landing in a pile of manure. Not a pleasant thought.

  He shook it off and forced himself to think about something else. His height above the ground was almost doubled and he was surprised at how much further he could see. "The view is excellent up here," Brendan said with a laugh. "It must be hard to sneak up on a knight."

  "It is a bit more difficult, that’s true, but it is still possible," cautioned Sir Gerard. "It is also very difficult for you to sneak up on anyone."

  "Aye," enjoined Father Cardic. "Everyone for miles around can see a knight coming."

  "Which is why you must keep your eyes and ears open for a knight's greatest enemy," continued Sir Gerard.

  "Another knight?" Ventured Brendan.

  "That’s what many knights will tell you, but the truth is that a knight is more likely to be killed by an archer or a crossbowman than another knight. Sitting tall and proud on the back of a warhorse makes us excellent targets for a well-aimed arrow. I think we will let you ride for a while; you might as well get used to being a target.”

  Father Cardic cackled as the three continued walking down the road.

  Chapter 12

  “It is well said by the Lord that we should remove the plank from our own eye before we try to remove the speck from our neighbor’s eye, but we must first recognize that we even HAVE a plank in our own eye before we can remove it. Pride feeds our self-deception while humility opens our eyes to the truth.”

  The Centurion Guide to Practical Advice – Chapter 1: Proverb 14

  Portia lay on a bed in the infirmary. It was small but most castles didn’t have one at all, so it was luxurious compared to its competition. Its very existence was a testament to Centurion principles of health, hygiene, and medicine. Portia was looking down at her arms when Doctor Zhen came in to check on her.

  “How is Aurora doing?”

  “She is doing well, resting in her old bed upstairs,” answered the Doctor. “Feeling and mobility are slowly returning to her arm and leg. How about you, how are you feeling?”

  Portia shrugged, “Getting better I guess.”

  Doctor Zhen took hold of Portia’s left wrist, pulled her arm out straight and began checking the muscles in her arm, “Give me the other arm please.” She repeated the check on Portia’s right arm. “It’s a good thing that your limbs are so muscular, the muscle helped protect the nerves in your arms from being permanently damaged by the cold, Aurora’s recovery is going to take a bit more time.”

  Portia sighed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Saved by my big, thick muscles. Again.”

  The Doctor rolled her eyes, “I am tired of your whining and complaining. Your muscles are still not as big as most of the squires, they are just bigger than any of the other women.” Zhen paused for a moment, came to a decision, then spoke abruptly, “You remember the catalog of women’s health that I am writing, yes?”

  “How could I forget? You talked most of the women in the castle into posing naked for your anatomical sketches.”

  “And many of the men. I am writing a supplement to Dr. Gesicht’s comprehensive work on human anatomy. His work is amazing but even he admits its limitations regarding women’s health conditions and their battle injuries so he asked me to produce a catalog of treatment that would fill that gap. We are also working together to develop anatomical nomenclature for all of the structures in the human body…” Portia’s eyes started to glaze over so the doctor moved on quickly, “Let’s look at a few of those pictures. First, who do you think has the most balanced, feminine figure among any of the handmaidens?”

  “Priscilla.”

  “Okay,” The Doctor pulled a large drawing out of a leather folio. “Now, who do you think comes closest to the ideal handmaiden’s figure? Someone who is strong but still feminine?”

  “Aurora.” The Doctor pulled another large drawing out of the leather folio.

  “Let’s look at these two first and then we will look at yours next.”

  Portia gingerly climbed out of the bed and walked over to the table where Doctor Zhen had laid out the drawings.

  “They don’t have faces?” She asked in surprise.

  The Doctor gave her a strange look, “Of course not. Woodworkers will be making cuttings of these to be used in making prints for copies of the catalog. Other Centurion doctors and their assistants will be seeing these pictures. I need them to be able to see accurate representations of human anatomy, not be able to identify which of our handmaidens they have seen naked in a print.”

  “Right, sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Now back t
o the task at hand. Compare the pictures of Priscilla and Aurora, what do you see?”

  Portia looked at the highly detailed, anatomical drawings of each girl in various poses, flexing muscles and stretching limbs to show the female body from different angles and positions. Measurements and suggested names for the different anatomic structures were written in the margins of each picture. She remembered the painstaking care Doctor Zhen had used in making her measurements and sketching her drawings to produce images that were as realistic as possible. She looked in awe at the beauty and detail of each sketch. There was a reason why Centurions were renowned across the world for their medical expertise.

  “Hello?” The Doctor asked, “Are you in there?”

  “Sorry, I was just remembering how much work you put into making these. Okay, what do I see…Priscilla has the narrow waist and broad hips that everyone thinks is so beautiful, all of her proportions are perfectly balanced, from her shoulders to her bust, to her waist, to her hips. She has more muscle than I gave her credit for, but she clearly has an ideal shape for a woman.”

  “Good, now what do you see in the other drawings?”

  “Aurora looks amazing. She definitely has more muscle, but she still has a real waist that actually narrows, at least a little bit, instead of going straight up and down like mine. Her hips are a bit narrower than Priscilla’s and her shoulders are a bit broader, but she still has a beautiful shape. She is clearly a woman. She’s not as curvy as Priscilla, but she still has just enough curves in all the right places. I mean, look at her! She is a beautiful woman who is also in excellent condition. Why can’t I be like her? Why can’t I have a body like hers instead of a body like mine that is one big rectangle like the men?”

  “Are you ready to look at your picture now?”

  “No, they don’t call me The Squire for nothing. Who wants to look at a teenage boy who is missing a few parts? Even my voice sounds like one of the squires.”

  “First, it is true that you have a very low voice for a teenage girl, closer to the range of the boys than the girls, but your voice is still not as low as most of the boys.”

  “Most of the boys, thanks, you know that at least Johann and Micha would trade voices with me in a heartbeat.”

  “Stop talking, I’m not finished. The second thing is that I lied. The second picture is you.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “You heard me, that is not Aurora’s picture, it is yours. You are the one with ‘a real waist’ and ‘a beautiful shape’, you are the one with ‘just enough curves in all the right places’, you are the ‘beautiful woman who is also in excellent condition’. In fact, I lied twice, the first picture isn’t Priscilla’s. I laid your picture out next to someone else’s picture who has much more balanced proportions than Priscilla. And no, I am not going to tell you who it is, you don’t need to know.”

  Portia looked back down at the picture of her own body. Now she could see it when she looked closer, the shoulders that were too wide, the hips that were too narrow, a waist that went straight up and down like a block of wood, the muscles that were excessive…

  “Stop it!” Doctor Zhen snapped. Portia jumped. “I can see what you are doing, all of those features that you thought were ideal when you believed they belonged to Aurora you are now judging to be ugly because they belong to you. You are barely 16, your body is still growing. What you see when you look at yourself is not the truth, it is a lie that Satan has whispered into your ear through the jealous words of others and through your own self-doubts. You must learn to see yourself as God sees you, not how you think other people see you. This body that you hate, this is the body that God gave to you, the body that God used to defeat three winter wolves and save everyone in this castle. You did things yesterday in defending the castle that no one else could have done. Be proud of the blessing that God has given you with this body and use it to His glory. If He had given you Priscilla’s body, or even Aurora’s body, we would probably all be dead or captured as slaves. You are a strong, capable, beautiful, young woman no matter what anyone else says.”

  A knock came at the door.

  “Who is it?” Doctor Zhen asked as she shooed Portia back to the bed and put the pictures back in the folio.

  “It’s Priscilla, may I enter?”

  Portia made a face and shook her head ‘no’.

  “Of course! Please come in. What can we do for you?”

  Priscilla stepped through the doorway and stood there awkwardly. Portia and the Doctor waited expectantly, not helping her out.

  “I was talking with my mother about the battle and she told me that most of what I was saying to her I should really be saying to you.” Priscilla took a deep breath and stared at the floor for a long moment before continuing, “Thank you for all of the additional training that you and Aurora gave us. I didn’t kill any of the Hungarians who reached the top of the wall, but your training kept me alive. Thanks to you, I was able to stay alive long enough for Aurora to knock one of my attackers off the wall and for Julia to shoot the other with a crossbow.” Priscilla shook her head in disbelief, “Those two were a force to be reckoned with when a few of the raiders made it to the top. I see the value of all the training now. So, thank you.”

  “Aurora told me that you actually came around from the east wall and launched an attack of your own. I misjudged you too, I didn’t think you had the guts to take the initiative.”

  Priscilla smiled awkwardly at Portia, “Can we call a truce and at least leave each other alone?”

  “Truce,” Portia agreed, nodding her head. A sudden flash of understanding hit Portia and her gaze snapped to the doctor, “The other picture was Julia, wasn’t it?”

  Doctor Zhen continued to look at Priscilla, “I’m sure that I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  Portia nodded her head appreciatively. Julia could really bring it in training and was one of their best handmaidens both in her skill set and in her conditioning. So, Zhen thought that Julia had the best shape among the girls and not Priscilla? Portia could live with that. It also made her feel a little better about herself, her own shape wasn’t that far out of whack compared to Julia’s.

  “Stop making comparisons in your head,” Doctor Zhen growled. Portia’s eyes bugged out in shock; it was like the woman could read her mind! How did Aurora get away with anything?

  “Is anyone going to explain any of this to me?” Priscilla asked, Portia and the Doctor shook their heads in unison. Priscilla shook her head in exasperation and stalked out.

  “Maybe now she will stop calling you The Squire,” Doctor Zhen chuckled.

  “No, she’ll still call me The Squire, but now she’ll act like it’s a compliment,” Portia laughed, “But I think I can live with that.”

  Chapter 13

  “Plans made in darkness end in darkness.”

  The Centurion Guide to Practical Advice – Chapter 6: Proverb 7

  The Black went to sleep, slipped into her dream state, and flew to the castle of her enemies. She moved carefully through their dreams looking for useful hopes and fears that she could exploit. Lady Evelyn saw herself as a statue of gray stone on the outside and a woman of passion and fear on the inside. She showed nothing but strength and courage to others, but she burned with fire for her husband and daughters. She loved them more than life itself but there was also a lump of icy fear deep down inside, fear that she would lose one of them, fear that she would die of grief if she did. The Black turned this little knot of fear over and examined it but decided that she couldn't do very much with it yet. As strong as it was, Lady Evelyn was stronger still and she would not give in to her fears. Perhaps it could be put to use after she actually lost her daughters.

  Next, she made her way to the bedroom of Marcia, Portia's little sister, and gently entered her dreams. She began to look around and was mystified at what she was looking at. What was this? Most young girls dreamed of adventure, or unicorns, or parties, or boys, but not this one.

&n
bsp; Marcia was dreaming about translating a Chinese scroll, it was very challenging and she kept checking her words against a Chinese-Greek dictionary and looking at jars of strange ingredients with Latin labels. How intriguing! Was the girl dreaming of performing some magic or alchemy?

  The Black dug deeper. The girl apparently saw herself as some great academic explorer, making discoveries every day. Unfortunately, search as she might, the Black could find no fears that she could manipulate. Marcia was a brilliant young girl of confidence. Perhaps too much confidence. She had never really been challenged or tested in her life, never faced any real adversity. The Black smiled to herself, perhaps she could put that excessive confidence to use and draw the girl out of the castle on some fool’s errand chasing her deepest dream. She would have to push the girl into revealing the deepest wishes of her heart but that could be done at another time.

  Lastly, the Black searched until she found the dreams of Portia down in the handmaiden barracks. She had been through the girl's dreams before observing and planning but now she would begin to act, the others deserved to die, and the Black would enjoy killing them, but this was the one that had to die to stop the prophecy. She paused for a moment, Portia’s dreams normally consisted of her being laughed at for outrageously big muscles or trying desperately to save her brother from a burning stable or being all alone in a desolated castle. Tonight was different though, tonight she was training others and watching them get better and better. Something had changed.

  The Black mulled this over. The attack of the winter wolves seemed to have made Portia stronger and more confident instead of more fearful about life on the frontier. The Black knew that she needed to push Portia’s dreams in a darker direction, she couldn’t let this newfound peace stand. She focused on Portia's fear of letting others down. Portia's biggest fear was, fear itself. The girl was fearless to the point of recklessness when the only thing on the line was her own neck but when others were depending upon her, that was when she became afraid. She was afraid that at a key moment fear would take control and cause her to hesitate, or miss a shot, or run away and cause someone else to be killed. It was, in some ways, a rather silly fear considering how brave she was in other situations, but it was a fear that the Black could most definitely work with.