Free Magician by Raymond Feist

allowed to spend the afternoon as they saw
fit. The boys, apprentice age and younger, were a loud and boisterous
lot. The girls worked in the service of the ladies of the castle,
cleaning and sewing, as well as helping in the kitchen. They all gave
a full week’s work, dawn to dusk and more, each day, but—on
the sixth day of the week they gathered in the courtyard of the
castle, near the Princess’s garden. Most of the boys played a
rough game of tag, involving the capture of a ball of leather,
stuffed hard with rags, by one side, amid shoves and shouts, kicks
and occasional fistfights. All wore their oldest clothes, for rips,
bloodstains, and mud-stains were common.
    The girls would sit along the low wall
by the Princess’s garden, occupying themselves with gossip
about the ladies of the Duke’s court. They nearly always put on
their best skirts and blouses, and their hair shone from washing and
brushing. Both groups made a great display of ignoring each other,
and both were equally unconvincing.
    Pug ran to where the game was in
progress. As was usual, Tomas was in the thick of the fray, sandy
hair flying like a banner, shouting and laughing above the noise.
Amid elbows and kicks he sounded savagely joyous, as if the
incidental pain made the contest all the more worthwhile. He ran
through the pack, kicking the ball high in the air, trying to avoid
the feet of those who sought to trip him. No one was quite sure how
the game had come into existence, or exactly what the rules were, but
the boys played with battlefield intensity, as their fathers had
years before.
    Pug ran onto the field and placed a
foot before Rulf just as he was about to hit Tomas from behind. Rulf
went down in a tangle of bodies, and Tomas broke free. He ran toward
the goal and, dropping the ball in front of himself, kicked it into a
large overturned barrel, scoring for his side While other boys yelled
in celebration, Rulf leaped to his feet and pushed aside another boy
to place himself directly in front of Pug Glaring out from under
thick brows, he spat at Pug, “Try that again and I’ll
break your legs, sand squint!” The sand squint was a bird of
notoriously foul habits—not the least of which was leaving eggs
in other birds’ nests so that its offspring were raised by
other birds. Pug was not about to let any insult of Rulf’s pass
unchallenged. With the frustrations of the last few months only a
little below the surface, Pug was feeling particularly thin-skinned
this day.
    With a leap he flew at Rulf’s
head, throwing his left arm around the stockier boy’s neck. He
drove his right fist into Rulf’s face and could feel Rulf’s
nose squash under the first blow. Quickly both boys were rolling on
the ground. Rulf’s greater weight began to tell, and soon he
sat astride Pug’s chest, driving his fat fists into the smaller
boy’s face.
    Tomas stood by helpless, for as much as
he wanted to aid his friend, the boys’ code of honor was as
strict and inviolate as any noble’s. Should he intervene on his
friend’s behalf, Pug would never live down the shame. Tomas
jumped up and down, urging Pug on, grimacing each time Pug was
struck, as if he felt the blows himself.
    Pug tried to squirm out from under the
larger boy, causing many of his blows to slip by, striking dirt
instead of Pug’s face. Enough of them were hitting the mark,
however, so that Pug soon began to feel a queer detachment from the
whole procedure. He thought it strange that everybody sounded so far
away, and that Rulf’s blows seemed not to hurt. His vision was
beginning to fill with red and yellow colors, when he felt the weight
lifted from his chest.
    After a brief moment things came into
focus, and Pug saw Prince Arutha standing over him, his hand firmly
grasping Rulf’s collar. While not as powerful a figure as his
brother or father, the Prince was still able to hold Rulf high enough
so that the stableboy’s toes barely touched the ground. The
Prince smiled, but