Free Venture Unleashed (The Venture Books) by R.H. Russell Page B

painful memory. He’d been here to see that incident end with a young fighter’s death.
      Dasher nodded thoughtfully. “We’re going to have to get you a sword, Champ, and work on your swordsmanship, too.”
    Earnest laughed humorlessly. “He’s a bonded servant, Dash. He could be thrown into the stinking lockup for carrying a sword.”
    “Sorry, Champ. I wasn’t thinking.” Dasher frowned and rubbed at his ever-swelling ear. “Your master knew you were learning to use a sword when you were training to be a guard before, didn’t he?”
    “Yeah, but they were only wood. I wasn’t training long enough to get to the real thing. I probably wouldn’t have been able to use real blades until I was free, but not because Grant Fieldstone would’ve objected.”
    “Well then, he probably wouldn’t object to you learning to use one so you can survive in a different career, would he? You may not be able to carry a weapon now, but we can find a way for you to practice, privately, so you’ll be prepared once you can.”
    Earnest nodded. “He’s got to practice. Someone’s always begging for a beating, and sometimes it’s a good spanking with a blade they need, though it’s always more fun to bury a boot in the rear, if you ask me.”
    Earnest didn’t want to say it, Venture could tell, but Dasher was constantly being challenged, occasionally by armed men, drunk or foolish, wanting to prove themselves. How much worse would it be for Venture Delving, a bondsman, once he had the chance to prove himself in competition?
    His friends wanted him to learn to use a sword so he’d be ready to defend himself once he was nineteen and free, but trouble with armed men was almost certain to come to him before that, just for being the training partner of the reigning champion, if for nothing else.
    “I’ll need to learn to fight armed men without a sword, too,” he said.
    Dasher’s expression darkened. “Cursed law! Someone ought to change it!”
    “Dasher Starson,” Earnest said, “I didn’t know you were such a revolutionary.”
    “Our Champ here makes me see things I didn’t notice before.”
    “I’m only thinking of how I’m going to make it to where I want to be, alive.”
    “We’ll get you there in one piece,” Earnest said, “One way or another.”

    Venture twisted in his blanket that night, thinking about what he’d done. His straw mattress rustled and the sturdy pine boards of his dormitory bunk creaked as he tossed and turned.
    At first Earnest grumbled curses at him and he apologized, but finally Earnest burst out, “What the blazes are you doing, Vent?”  
    Dasher wadded his down pillow into a heavy ball and walloped Venture in the head with it from his bunk, set in an L shape end-to-side with his. Venture grinned, plumped it up, and placed it under his head. “Thanks, Dash.”
    Dasher leaped on him, straddled him with his knees tight against his ribs, pulled the pillow out from underneath him, and stuffed it over Venture’s face.
    “You want my pillow, you got it!”
    Venture fought him, trying to get his legs past Dasher’s knees, and punching him lightly. Laughing, Venture tapped Dasher on the shoulder. “All right, I give,” he said into the smothering softness of the pillow.
    Dasher gave him another good whack with it, then settled back in his own bunk.
    “Both of you are going to get it tomorrow,” Earnest said. “I’m going to run you into the ground. If you’re not tired enough at the end of the day, I must not be doing my job.”
    Venture gave up trying to sleep and just lay still, but his mind wouldn’t be still. He’d done things today he hadn’t thought he could do. He held his hands up in front of his face in the darkness—bigger and stronger than he remembered. It wouldn’t be long before he was grown, before he was a man. Before that stage of wondering what he would be like came to a close.  
    What had his parents thought he would be, before? Before their deaths