Elaire had seen castles before, his father and mother had taken him to the Royal palace once, trussed into his best clothes and wriggling in boredom as a member of the Grand Order droned on about the greatness of the King's heart. But the King's Palace was a brightly lit maze of statues and tapestries and clean polished marble and soldiers with breastplates you could see your face in. This Royal palace doesn't smell of piss and smoke and has a hundred shadowed doorways, all no doubt harbouring dark secrets a boy shouldn't know.
"Tell me what you know of this Order, Elaire," the master instructed, leading him on towards the main keep.
Elaire then recited what he remembered from the lessons his mother gave him:
"The Warrior's Order wields the sword of justice and smites the enemies of the Faith and the Realm. Carrying the ideals of our the Warrior God."
"Very good." The master praised in surprise. "You are well taught. But what is it that we do that the other Orders do not?"
Elaire struggled for an answer until they passed into the keep and saw two boys, both about twelve, fighting with wooden swords, ash cracking together in a rapid exchange of thrust, parry and slash. They fought within a circle of white chalk, every time their struggle brought them close to the edge of the circle the instructor, a bald man, would lash them with a cane.
They barely flinched from the blows, intent on their contest. One boy overextended a lunge and took a blow to the head. He reeled back, blood streaming from the wound, falling heavily across the circle to draw another blow from the instructor's cane.
"Warriors fight," Elaire told the instructor, the violence and the blood making his heart hammer in his chest.
"Yes." The master halted and looked down at him. "We fight. We kill. We storm castle walls braving arrows and fire. We stand against the charge of horse and lance. We cut our way through the hedge of pike and spear to claim the standard of our enemy. The Warrior's Order fights, but what does it fight for?"
"For the kingdom."
The master crouched down until their faces were level. "Yes, the Kingdom, but what is more than the kingdom?"
"The Faith?"
"You sound uncertain, little Raven. Perhaps you are not as well taught as I believed."
Behind him, another instructor dragged the fallen boy to his feet amidst a shower of abuse. "Clumsy, slack-witted, donkey! Get back in there. Fall again and I'll bear yer legs."
"'The Faith is the sum of our history and our spirit," Elaire recited. "When we pass into the Beyond our essence joins with the souls of the Departed and our gods to lend us their guidance in this life. In return, we give them honour and faith."
The master raised an eyebrow. "You know the catechism well."
"Yes sir. My mother tutored me often." The master's face clouded. "Your mother…"
He stopped, his expression switching back to the same emotionless mask. "Your mother should not be mentioned again. Nor your father, or any other member of your family. You have no family now save the Order. You belong to the Order. You understand?"
The boy with the cut on his head had fallen again and was being beaten by the instructor, the cane rising and falling in regular even strokes, the instructor's bald face betraying scant emotion. Elaire had seen the same expression on his father's face when he took the strap to one of his hounds.
'You belong to the Order.'
To his surprise, his heart had slowed, and he felt no quaver in his voice when he answered the master, "I understand."
"Good, I'll be leaving you to Instructor Jarem now, " saying this the master got up and walked away replaced by another man, the instructor. The man looked down at Elaire with a cold gaze.
The instructor's name was Jarem. He had lean, weathered features and the eyes of a goat: grey, cold and staring. He took one look at Elaire and asked, "Do you know what carrion is?"
"No sir."
Instructor Jarem stepped closer, looming over him. Elaire's heart still refused to beat any faster. The image of the bald skull-faced master swinging his cane at the boy on the floor of the keep had replaced his fear with a wave of simmering anger. "It's dead meat boy," Instructor Jarem told him. "It's the flesh left on the battlefield to be eaten by crows and gnawed by rats. That's what awaits you, boy. Dead flesh."
Elaire said nothing. Jarem's round eyes tried to bore into him but he knew they saw no fear. The master made him angry, not afraid. There were ten other boys allocated to the same room, an attic in the North Tower. They were all his age or close to it, some sniffling in loneliness and abandonment, others smiling continually with the novelty of parental separation. Jarem made them line up, lashing his cane at a bulky boy who was too slow.
"Move smartly, use your head, you piece of shit." He eyed them individually, stepping closer to insult a few.
"Name?" he asked a tall, blond-haired boy. "Nolan Sehdal, sir."
"It's instructor not sir, shit-wit." He moved down the line. "Name?"
"Deren Izak, instructor," the large boy he had caned replied. "I see they still breed carthorses in Zijel." And so on until he had insulted them all. Finally, he stepped back to make a short speech: "No doubt your families sent you here for their own reasons," Jarem told them. "They wanted you to be heroes, they wanted you to honour their name, they wanted to boast about you between swilling ale or whoring about town, or maybe they just wanted to be rid of a squalling brat. Well, forget them. If they wanted you, you wouldn't be here. You're ours now, you belong to the Order. You will learn to fight, you will kill the enemies of the Realm and the Faith until the day you die. Nothing else matters. Nothing else concerns you. You have no family, you have no dreams, you have no ambitions beyond that of the Order."
He made them take the rough cotton sacks from their beds and run down the tower's numerous steps and across the courtyard to the stable where they filled them with straw amidst a flurry of cane strokes. Elaire was sure the cane fell on his back more than the others and suspected the instructor was forcing him towards the older, damper patches of straw. When the sacks were full he whipped them back up to the tower where they placed them on the wooden frames which would serve as their beds. Then it was another run down to the vaults beneath the keep. He made them line up, breath steaming in the chill air, gasps echoing loudly. The vaults seemed vast, brick archways disappearing into the darkness on every side.
Elaire's fear began to rekindle as he stared into the shadows, bottomless and pregnant with menace. "Eyes forward!" Jarem's cane left a welt on his arm and he choked down a pain-filled sob.
"New seeds, Instructor?" a cheerful voice enquired. A very large man had appeared from the darkness, oil lamp flickering in his ham sized fist. He was the first man Elaire had seen who seemed broader than he was long. His girth was confined within a voluminous cloak, dark blue like the other masters, but with a single red rose embroidered on the breast. Jarem's cloak was bare of any decoration.
"Another sweeping of shit, Master Jovar," he told the large man with an air of resignation. Jovar's fleshy face formed a brief smile.
"How fortunate they are to have your guidance."
There was a moment's silence and Elaire sensed the tension between the two men, finding it noteworthy that Jarem spoke first. "They need gear." "Of course." Jovar moved closer to inspect them, he seemed strangely light of foot for such an enormous man, appearing to glide across the flagstones.
"Little warriors must be armed for the battles to come." He still smiled but Elaire noticed his eyes showed no mirth as he scanned them. Once again he thought of his father, of the way he looked when they visited the horse traders' fair and one of the breeders tried to interest him in a charger. His father would walk around the animal, telling Elaire how to spot the signs of a good warhorse, the thickness of muscle that indicated whether it would be strong in the melee but too slow in the charge, how the best mounts needed some spirit left after breaking.
"The eyes, Elaire," he told him. "Look for a horse with a spark of fire in its eyes." Was that what Master Jovar was looking, for now, fire in their eyes? Something to gauge who would last, how they would do in the charge or the melee. Jovar paused next to a slightly built boy named Benjen who had endured some of Jarem's worst insults.
Jovar looked down at him intently, the boy shifting uncomfortably under the scrutiny. "What's your name, little warrior?"
The boy had to swallow before he could answer. "Benjen Nehekara, instructor."
"Nehekara."
The instructor looked thoughtful. "A noble family of some wealth, if memory serves. Lands in the south, allied by marriage to the House of Arryn. You are a long way from home."
"Yes, instructor."
"Well, fret not. You have a new home in the Order." He patted Benjen on the shoulder three times, making the boy flinch a little. The cane had no doubt left him fearing even the gentlest touch. Jovar moved along the line, asking various questions of the boys, offering reassurances, all the while Master Jarem beat his cane against his booted calf, the tack, tack, tack of stick-on leather echoing through the vaults.
"I think I know your name already, little warrior."
The instructor's bulk towered over Elaire. "Dí Sálem. Your father and I fought together in the Pirate war. A great man. You have his look."
Elaire saw the trap and didn't hesitate. "I have no family, Master. Only the Order."
'No, you are not.'
"Ah, but the Order is a family, little warrior." Jovar gave a short chuckle as he moved away. "And Instructor Jarem and I are your uncles." This made him laugh even more. Elaire glanced at Jarem, now glaring at Jovar with undisguised hatred.
'No, you are not. You all are not family, this isn't my house, the Order isn't home.'