Under Guard

[Raffe]

Asha'man Araya

The spectacle had drawn a crowd, as such bloody contests were wont to do. Araya knew better than to interfere, though the down turn of his lips and furrow at his brow hid nothing of his disapproval. A lesson was one thing – and Araya realised he had unusual views as to the merit of violence as a tool to see it carried out – but this was entirely another. For one thing, the playing field was severely skewed by the inebriation of one participant; for another, it was so agonisingly unnecessary. Brutality underscored the precision of each attack. Lennox did not make simple mockery of Jai’s pride by throwing him back down in the dirt; he beat him as soundly as soldiers dreamed of slaughtering Dreadlords. A thrust elbow at jaw sprayed blood and snapped bone. When the man was on his hands and knees, unarmed, savage kicks to the stomach plummeted him back to cold earth.

Lennox had worn the pins at his throat all of five minutes, and this was how he treated a brother? By all accounts, the gifts he now possessed were no natural things. A blademaster. A channeler. And it wasn’t just Lennox Orander from whom the price for those talents had been extracted. Acquitted of all crimes by the White Tower; Araya respected that. All men erred. All men had the right to redemption. Yet Lennox chose to abuse those gifts wrought in blood to brutalise a man who could barely hold himself steady on his feet. He could have walked away. He should have walked away.

He watched the retreating black back; the way the other men reflexively slipped back to let him pass. The M’Hael walked a dangerous line with this one. Give too much power to a man who’d not walked shoulder to shoulder with his brothers as they’d forged a path to the pins, and the resentment would fracture down the ranks. A man of Lennox’s previous sensibilities – and Araya had spent enough time within White Tower grounds to remember that honourable man – might not have created such friction. But the man who stalked away from the bloody mess he had made, without so much as a backward glance? Jai was young. He was rash and foolhardy. But he’d earned those pins.

Not that Araya had any intention of getting involved in Black Tower politics. More than twenty years an Asha’man and he’d barely set foot on this blood-soaked soil, not since the days of Shadow al’Mere; the last competent M’Hael the Dragon had managed to choose to do his bidding. Which begged the question – why was he here now? Even Araya wasn’t sure on that mark. Arad Doman had left a knot in his stomach, and the calls of his home in Tar Valon were distant. It wasn’t often duty proved the most potent distraction. But it was better than worrying about Trista.

“Show’s over.” A flick of the Power carried his raspy voice amongst the spectators, who had already begun to disperse now that there was little left to see. Compassion was in short supply, especially for a man so fresh from brutal public penance and Lennox Orander’s ire. As Araya moved forward, a harried Dedicated flagged his steps.

“Sir?” The young man eyed him hesitantly, until he spotted the familiar gleam of pins nestled in the scarlet scarf wound about his neck. A faint frown marred his expression before he ploughed on. “Sir, I was... That is, I am—” The words choked on the sight at both their feet. Hard to tell if those staring eyes saw anything much at all. Jai’s hanging jaw made a black-red chasm of his mouth, and blood matted the erratic grown stubble down his throat. Soaked his uniform.

Araya pushed back the heavy green fabric of his coat, slid his hands into his pockets. And sighed. Depressing how such macabre butchery no longer turned his stomach, like the pinnacle of every moral he had ever been taught as a child had lost its meaning. “You’ll live to see worse, mark me on it. What’s your name?” Words little more than a hoarse whisper, followed by a silence consumed in horror. The Dedicated soon toughened himself, though; steeled his jaw and straightened his back. Like the kid saw such bloody spectacle every day. And apparently he had heard the question, too.

“Gestian. Sir. Jindal Gestian.”

“And you were meant to be watching him, Jindal?”

A swallow, a blink, and his gaze focused on Araya rather than Jai. “Yes. Sir.”

A grim laugh rewarded the self-sacrificing humility; it sounded more like the dying gurgles of a drowning man. No offered Buts, no pleaded Becauses. It was commendable really, not that the Dedicated had much in the way of wrath to fear from this particular Asha’man. “Then it’s your lucky day, Jindal Gestian. You’re relieved of duty." A good-natured grin took the sting out what he presumed the boy might take as a failure. Only a nod answered, though, and maybe a measure of relief as he saluted and left.

Araya’s gaze fell back on the prone Asha’man. The acrid stench of blood mixed with the fumes of stale alcohol as rested on his haunches and leant closer. Araya knew what it was like to find faith in the bottom of a bottle; such was not uncommon a solace for men plucked from their wives and children to walk an Asha’man’s path, and for Araya the contrast between the life he had left and live he lived now was starker than most. “That didn’t go so well, huh. Are you sitting tight? This is probably going to be cold."