After acquiring his first enemy in so dramatic and public a fashion, Arion—small of stature but vast of indignation—retired from the battlefield of bruised egos with a spirit curiously agitated and a mind sharpened as if by steel. He was not, strictly speaking, offended—for he bore no petty nature—but he was, in his own particular and persistent manner, vexed. And with that peculiar vexation known only to clever children and vengeful old men, he hurled himself headlong into the deep and swirling waters of learning.
For two entire years—years which in the life of a child may well equate to decades in the life of a duller soul—he pursued knowledge with the zeal of a magistrate and the hunger of a wolf. He absorbed all that Lady Ariana, his mother and his occasional tutor, could provide, and when her instruction ceased to challenge him, he invented questions so complex and unnatural as to disquiet the castle's very steward.
This thirst for learning—this unwholesome, relentless, unchildlike thirst—was, to be clear, most certainly not normal. Not for a child of two years, not for a child of ten years, and, truthfully, not for most adults either. Yet Arion pursued his education with the same vigour most boys reserved for pastries or frogs, and he did so without apology or fatigue.
By the time he reached the ripe old age of one and a half years, he was speaking in sentences. Proper sentences. With clauses and qualifiers and, occasionally, wit. Some called this miraculous; others, unimpressive, claiming, with that snobbery peculiar to the peerage, that sons of high houses ought to speak in verse by their first bath. Arion, it should be said, cared not a whit for their opinions. Nor, it must be added, did his parents, who had by now learned to pick their battles and to fortify their wine.
Now, with his third birthday approaching like an eager but ungainly guest, the matter of training was once again on everyone's lips—and, more vexingly, in everyone's ears, thanks to Arion's persistence. Lord Sued, a man of action more than patience, at last relented. Driven less by a sense of readiness and more by the exhaustion of being asked the same question fourteen times before breakfast for the last two years, he granted the boy permission to begin.
For Arion had learned, from both his past life and present observations, that persistence was the chisel by which all things—hearts, doors, fathers—might eventually be opened. In his old life, persistence had been a common proverb, particularly useful when trying to secure the attention of a pretty girl with many suitors. If such doggedness could wear down a maiden's resolve, he reasoned, it could surely pierce the armour of a battle-hardened parent. Even stone, he mused, cracks when kissed by water long enough.
Yet even Arion, for all his precociousness, could not quite articulate why he burned so intensely to train. In his former life, he had not been a paragon of fitness—neither lazy nor laudable. And yet now, in this body of small bones and stubborn mind, he felt an ache not of weakness but of want. It stirred in his blood. It spoke in his dreams.
Indeed, at night, when the fire dimmed and sleep tiptoed in like a thief, he would sometimes hear ancient voices whispering—fragmentary, forgotten things. They urged him to grow stronger. They demanded a sacrifice. What sort of sacrifice, they did not say. Nor did Arion ask. For he had his priorities in order, and learning the history of every noble house from the founding of the kingdom to the present day took precedence over spectral mutterings.
It is worth noting, for posterity and perspective, that noble heirs traditionally began martial training upon their sixth birthday. That was the custom, and customs—like ceilings and boundaries—exist chiefly to be broken. Arion, of course, was not inclined to wait.
Almost daily, he escaped the well-meaning clutches of tutors and maids to loiter around the training yard, where men thrice his size swung swords like they were ladles and shouted commands that could rouse the dead. What began as amusement among the guards—this tiny boy mimicking their stances like a puppet on a string—soon grew into a mild unease. For the child did not merely play at imitation. He studied. He watched. Silent, unmoving, eyes fixed like a hawk over prey.
And, most alarmingly, whenever Commander Marius—the same old knight whose groin had once met Arion's vengeance—appeared, the boy would leap forward, armed with the latest crude approximation of a combat form, and fling himself at the man with all the fury of a poetic metaphor.
The strikes were wild. The footwork, laughable. But in every stumble was persistence; in every squeal, a will to improve.
Commander Marius, at first, refused to indulge what he called "noble nonsense." He swatted the boy away with a practiced hand and a firm scowl. Sometimes he used more force than necessary, as though to discourage further antics. But alas, discouragement had no effect on Arion. Quite the opposite. For each rebuke only served to enrage his spirit further, and like a fly returning to a feast, he came again and again—sturdier, bolder, louder.
Soon, his small frame began to change. He did not grow stronger in the traditional sense—no sudden bulges of muscle or feats of Herculean power—but what he lacked in might, he made up for in sheer endurance. By the end of his second year, he could outlast many a pampered squire and, much to the dismay of those tasked with his care, he could vanish for hours in pursuit of another lesson from watching the drills.
His parents attempted—valiantly, fruitlessly—to curb this behaviour. They forbade him the yard. He slipped through. They chastised him. He smiled. They begged Marius to be stricter. Marius growled and threw him in the mud. Arion laughed and lunged again.
There was, it seemed, no stopping him.
And so, what was called the beginning of his training was, in fact, a formal recognition of what had already begun the day he first toddled across the cobblestones with fire in his belly and vengeance in his eyes.