Scumbase

With all the talk of Musketeers in the entertainment pages of my local newspaper, I thought I'd turn to one of my favorite genres for this week's column. 

I have to tell you, I'm excited about the movie for a couple of reasons.  First, swashbucklers at sea, swashbucklers in space or swashbucklers with swords .. I love 'em.  Can't get enough.  And secondly, Orlando Bloom in an evil role.  Let's see if he has more acting chops than an archly raised eyebrow.  I know, I know, I'm not being fair.  I love the dude and I just wish he could delight me as thoroughly in this role as Alan Rickman has in all his evil incarnations.

However, moving back to the written word from celluloid entertainment ... this week, I get to gleefully go back to my childhood where I waved my plastic sword at my brothers and chased them around the house with a towel tied around my neck for a cape.  Until we broke something.  Something always got broke. 

The Age of Chivalry comes to life under the deft hand of Dave Duncan.  In The Gilded Chain, we meet the residents of Ironhall, a bit of a ramshackle, sprawling castle and grounds that houses every level of swordsman imaginable.  From the rawest recruit to the most shining example, every level of learning comes with its own set of responsibilities and ways for wayward apprentices to mess up on the way to earning their sword.  

At the end of the training, The King's Visit is a time of special celebration as he binds his newest Blades to his service through a magical rite, changing their life immeasurably.  However, things can go wrong ... a hesitation in the rite may cost a life or students may find their new master intolerable. 

Or they may find that the king will bind them to another favorite courtier, a fate that relegates the swordsman to glory much less exalted or heralded in pubs by troubadours than being in the king's service.  Repute as a fine swordsman goes a long way to securing employment once released from the king's service, which will hopefully be decades in their future.

In terms of benefits, the binding is a pretty much a one-way street of bittersweet.  Sleep is no longer needed, but if the King dies, a  Blade will likely go insane and kill himself - if he doesn't actually kill others around them in his frenzy.  A King who declares war is likely going to live a shorter lifespan, a bit of a worrisome thing.  And King Ambrose is not a well liked man.
 

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From The Gilded Chain

Roland considered drawing his sword and sliding it into Kromman until the blade would go no farther, then taking it out again--by another route, for variety. That would be an act of public service he should have performed a lifetime ago, but it would create a serious scandal. Word would flash across all Eurania that the King of Chivial‘s private secretary had been murdered by his lord chancellor, sending courtiers of a dozen capitals into fits of hysterical giggles. Lord Roland must behave himself. It was a pleasing fantasy, though.

Meanwhile, the winter night was falling. He still had work piled up like snowdrifts, a dozen petitioners waiting to see him, and no time to waste on this black-robed human fungus.

Patience! "As you well know, Master Secretary, such rumors go around every couple of years--rumors about me, about you, about many of the King‘s ministers." Ambrose probably started most of the stories himself, but if his chancellor said so to Kromman, Kromman would tattle back to him. "His Majesty has more sense than to listen to slander. Now, have you brought some business for me?"

"No, Lord Chancellor. No more business for you." Kromman was not hiding his enjoyment; he was up to something. Even in his youth, as a Dark Chamber inquisitor, he had been repugnant--spying and snooping, prying and plotting, maligning anyone he could not destroy. Now, with age-yellowed eyes and hair trailing like cobwebs out from under his black biretta, he had all the appeal of a corpse washed up on a beach. Even the King, who had few scruples, referred to him in private as rat poison. Some days he looked even worse, though. What secret joy was he savoring at the moment?
  

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From Lord of the Firelands

Dealings were less civilized when youngsters were present. Adolescents and older children were ordered outside and herded down to the harbor for future consideration. In much less than an hour, Ambleport was stripped bare of valuables and its young people stood in a terrified huddle on the quay. There had been almost no resistance.

Almost none. Gerard had been fast asleep in the Green Man, blissfully dreaming of Charlotte. He was wakened by someone kicking in the door of the room next to his, and had just enough time to leap out of bed and snatch up his rapier. When his own door was smashed open by a red-bearded raider, he attacked.

He had never been in a fight in his life and had never expected to be. But he was a gentleman, and gentlemen sported either rapier or short sword. To gird on a weapon one could not use was folly, so he had taken lessons at a very respected school in Grandon--not many lessons, for his means were limited, but he was nimble and accurate. Alas, in this instance, also rash. The only crazy naked berserker in Ambleport that morning was Gerard of Waygarth. His victim looked more surprised than hurt when the steel point went through his beard and up into his brain, but he folded down to his knees and collapsed on his shield and ax in a entirely appropriate manner.

Another Bael filled the doorway behind him--younger, shorter, and broader. With a blood-chilling scream he leaped over his fallen comrade. His shield brushed Gerard‘s rapier aside like a twig and slammed its owner back into the wall hard enough to stun. The fight was over even before the raider brought up his knee. This technique was not taught in the gentlemen‘s fencing schools.

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From Sky of Swords

Strategy . . . she must think strategy. She must still have supporters plotting on her behalf, although of course they dare do little while she was a prisoner. As long as she lived, rightful Queen of Chivial, the Usurper could not rest easy on his ill-gotten throne. Assassination was what she had expected; for half a year she had waited for poison or poniard or the silken noose. Every new dawn had been a surprise. Public execution was not a possibility she had seriously considered until the warrant of this inquiry was thrust in her hand the previous day. A public trial she had never even dreamed of. Perhaps Lord Chancellor Whatever-his-name-was-now did not have Parliament quite s tame s he would like, if the Usurper had been forced to stage this farce.

Dare she consider the faint possibility that she might not be going to die of it? Alas, when hope flickered, the rage that had sustained her waned and give way to fear, so that the skin on her arms puckered in gooseflesh and her fingers began to shake. She was on trial for her life and the deck stacked against her.

The clerk had stopped.

One of the peers jumped in with a question . . . " . . . that you conspired to effect the murder of your father, His Late Majesty Ambrose IV--"

"No!" she snapped. "I deny that charge utterly."

"How would you describe your relations with your father? Warm? Loyal? Dutiful?"

"It was no secret," Malinda said deliberately. "As a child I was taught to hate him, fear him, and despise him. When I was old enough to make up my own mind, I found no reason to those opinions." After all, he had driven his first two wives insane and murdered the third; his fourth was to be a girl of seventeen, a month younger than his daughter. "I sincerely believe that he was a strong and effective king of Chivial and the realm has suffered greatly from his untimely death. In his private life he was a tyrant, and I never loved him, but his death was not something I planned or desired."

She had never intended to kill him. That had been an oversight.

~~~ ◄•► ~~~

Dave Duncan is easily one of my favorite authors and not just because we shared a hometown until fairly recently.   He has an uncomplicated writing style, character motives are understandable and he draws a comprehensive picture of the period, the era in which the courtiers, swordsmen and nobility of Chivial live.


Each one of the King's Blades books stand alone, and indeed, there are more than the three I've covered here.  I believe you can get some of them in omnibus versions.  There are also collections of short stories to more fully round out the tales.


Click on the Dave Duncan masthead near the top to to go his website.