Read Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 for Free Online Page B

down and kill me, and there wouldn't be much I could do to stop
you, and I might well deserve it."
    "Then
it's ... it's that bad?" Breaker's visions of a lifetime of glory
shattered. He swallowed.
    "No,
it isn't. Honestly, it isn't. But it's not that wonderful, either. It's a job.
People don't treat you as a hero; you're just someone with a strange
occupation, like a fletcher or a well-digger. You get respect, but no more than
that, and sometimes people forget that you've got just the one promise to keep
and expect you to be a hero in other ways, not just in keeping the Wizard Lord
in line. You get teased for not killing the
Wizard Lord, sometimes by people who've just been talking about w hat a nice master he
is, how safe and calm everything is and how well-behaved the weather is, or
even about how he tracked down some ghastly criminal who had fled the
village—yes, the Wizard Lord himself sent bears to drag that nasty rapist back
before the priest magistrate, and that was wonderful, he's such a great man,
why haven't you killed him?" He shook his head. "People can be so odd
sometimes. And of course, it doesn't pay anything, being one of the Chosen—you
still need to earn your living somehow. I've got an acre and a half of rice
back in Dazet Saltmarsh, and I sometimes work as a courier when I travel, to
pay my way. But there are good points. Sword tricks do impress people, even
when they know it's as much magic as skill, and yes, they impress women at
least as much as men.
    I
don't regret choosing to take the job—I was a few years older than you are, but
only a few, when I started, and I could have been making a stupid choice, but I
don't think I did. I've had a good life. Still, I'm getting old and tired and it's
time to hand it on to someone else. Do you want to be that
someone?"
    "Yes,"
Breaker said. The Swordsman's honesty had decided him, at least for the
moment—but then, he had thought he had decided before, and had kept having
second thoughts.
    For
now, though, he wanted the role. If the older man had claimed it was all fame
and fortune Breaker might have balked, thinking it too good to be true, but the
description was well within believable bounds. It wasn't perfect—but it sounded
like a wo rthy
role, one he thought he could fill, one that would please him more than a
lifetime raising barley and beans.
    And
he wouldn't have to kill anyone, his mother's doubts notwithstanding. The
current Swordsman never had . . . Or at least so he said, and Br eaker believed him.
"Yes, I do," he repeated.
    "Then let's see
if you have what it takes," the Swordsman said, getting to his feet and
brushing the last few bits of raisin from his beard and shirt.
    "I don't
understand," Breaker said, also rising.
    The Swordsman sighed.
"Son, if you're going to be the world's greatest swordsman, then you have
to demonstrate that you're better than the other candidates. You
need to show the ler that you're trying. You need to give the magic something to work
with."
    "I don't think
..."
    "You
need to learn to use a sword, boy. Then you need to beat me
in a duel. Fortunately for both of us, we need only fight to first blood, and I
don't need to try my hardest—but you still have to have some idea what you're
doing."
    "Oh,"
Breaker said.
    He
hadn't expected this; he had been assuming it would all be done instantly, by
magic—that the Swordsman or a wizard would wave a hand or chant an invocation
to the appropriate ler or hand him a talisman, and he would
simply become the world's greates t swordsman, knowing how to use a blade.
    He felt foolish;
that was never how anything worked. The priestess didn't just ask the ler for the crops, and have them magically appear, after all—they still had
to be planted and tended and harvested, and it took months. Why, then,
would this far less common magic be any easier or quicker?
    "That's
why I haven't started my daily hour of practice yet," the Swordsman said,
drawing his sword. "You're going to