Chapter 38
Grim Report
N ien had no mind to urge his mount as it made its way through the light-splashed fields. The sun was setting quickly, casting a multi-coloured blanket across the valley and mountains. Lost, not in thought but rather a wash of emotion that he could barely fathom, he rode without consideration of time or distance.
He had met with Commander Lant upon entering Rieeve and given his report of all that had happened. Lant had dismissed the rest of the Leaders and spoken with Nien alone —
Nien remembered little of that conversation now.
Habitually quartering his horse in the barn, Nien proceeded on up to the house. He opened the door quietly and was filling his hands with water at the large basin before the family even noticed he was there.
“Nien!” Jake yelped.
Nien splashed his face a few times and, taking back up his gear, moved into the back room. Sitting down on his bed he began to remove his boots.
“Welcome back. How did it go?” Wing said, looking up from where he lay on his own bed, reading.
Nien didn’t reply, not knowing what he might say. He could tell Wing was about to ask again when Reean stepped in. “You all right, son?” she asked.
Nien pulled off his other boot. “We went to Jayak,” he said.
“You said you would be going that way,” Reean replied.
“There was a fight.”
“A fight?” Reean asked.
“Yes, we...uh...went into the fight, me and the other Cant leaders.”
Silent confusion answered him. Into the bedroom doorway, Joash and Jake appeared.
Nien explained: “The Jayakans were engaged in battle when we arrived upon a ridge overlooking the valley.”
“Battling? With whom?” Joash asked.
“Ka’ull,” Nien replied.
Reean said nothing. Nien saw Wing’s eyes flick to Joash and then back to him.
“The Ka’ull were in Jayak?” Joash asked again. s
“Are they coming here?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know,” Nien said.
“The people of Jayak, were they…?” Joash did not finish his sentence.
“We fought alongside the Jayakans before the Ka’ull were driven off. We got back only a few sunsteps ago. I’ve been with Lant since then.”
Reean began to look Nien over. “You’re not hurt — you weren’t wounded in the battle?”
“No, no. I’m fine.”
“And the others?” Wing said.
“Bredo was captured and taken.”
“Taken?” Reean asked. “Taken where?”
Nien’s reply was sharp: “We don’t know, mother. He was just taken.”
A long silence followed. Though annoyed with their questions, Nien felt inexplicably angry that his family had no better queries to make. Didn’t they understand the gravity of the situation? Of what he and the other leaders had been through?
But then, how could they? He had been there, and he did not understand.
Nien got to his feet and, squeezing through the crowded bedroom doorway, returned to the washbasin in the main room. Leaning over it, he began to splash his face repeatedly. He heard the family come back into the main room, could feel them watching his back in silence. Drying his face, he looked over the edge of the towel to see Fey standing in the corner like a doll, her eyes wide and unblinking.
Reean said, “Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?”
“No. I’ve no appetite.”
Incredible, Nien thought. The last meal I ate had been in another valley over a battle debriefing, and I hadn’t wanted that one either.
“Are you sure?” Reean said.
In exasperation, Nien sought the room for a look, a word from one of them that would tell him he was not alone, that one of them at least felt the sadness, the incredulity he was feeling.
“Don’t any of you get it?” he asked, his voice cutting in its desperation.
Again, the house fell silent. Fey let out a faint whimper. Reean walked over and picked her up.
It’s all so unreal, Nien thought. Should I even be here?
He’d hoped that in coming home, he could leave the terror behind. Instead, he’d brought it with him.
Joash reached for a lantern. “We can discuss all this tomorrow. I’ll turn out the lanterns and let you get some rest.”
Nien could not raise his eyes to look at his father. He had wanted them to ask about what he’d been through, yet he did not want to try and explain the unexplainable. He wanted one of them to have the magic words that would cause his pain to go away, all the while having no idea what those words might be. He felt ashamed and lost, and even with his family around him, more alone than he’d ever been.
Without another word, Nien returned to the back room and slumped onto his bed.
The house fell quiet in small increments as Nien lay, wishing he could fall asleep. He heard Wing blow out the final lantern and stretch out on his bed. Nien listened to the dark for a time, knowing Jake had finally gone to sleep when he’d stopped moving about in his bed.
“Wing?”
“Yes?”
“You were asleep?” Nien asked.
“No.”
Nien pushed his covers off and got up.
Wing pulled his legs out from beneath his blankets and scooted so that Nien could sit beside him.
“I killed a man, Wing. More than one.”
Wing was silent, waiting for him to continue.
“I, I swung my sword, like I have a thousand times in training, except this time I felt it hit flesh. I felt its sheer power against muscle and bone. I couldn’t even see their faces. It was like fighting ghosts. There would be nothing but wind on my blade — and then blood.”
Raising his face up at the long wooden beams of their bedroom ceiling, Nien drew a deep breath, forcing back the clear liquid in his nose. “I moved as if only a part of me were real. There was no fear, only motion, disconnected. The real fear came before and then after — after it was all over. We fell as if we were dead upon our bedrolls.” Nien shuddered involuntarily. Tears rose to his eyes. He sniffed them back. “I lost one of us. Bredo is gone.”
“Bredo was a member of the Cant as well, and a Leader,” Wing reminded him quietly.
“Nevertheless, I was the leader of this expedition and he was in my charge. I left him. What if it had been me? Wouldn’t I have wanted to know that my friends were looking for me? That they were coming after me? Trying to save me?” Nien’s voice faltered.
“He must have known, Nien, that you and the other Leaders were looking for him…”
Nien shook his head. “It’s worse than that, Wing. So much worse. Lant said that they probably took Bredo alive — to question him before they killed him.” An anguished silence followed. “I…I thought I would be protecting Rieeve. I thought that if I could help the Jayakans stop the Ka’ull in Jayak then they’d never come here. Everyone could stop worrying. Everyone would…”
“Ease up on me?” Wing asked quietly.
Yes, Nien thought, but did not say. “But my action only served to hasten it. I placed all the information the Ka’ull needed right into their hands.”
“You don’t know, Nien, what it will mean...”
“Lant said the exact same thing. He said not to second-guess myself, but I can’t help it…” A shiver ran over his body. “I hate myself, Wing. I hate what I saw, I hate what I did, I…I hate that terrible, awkward bit of metal.” He threw his eyes at his Cant sword, lying on the floor near his bed. “I wish I’d never seen it.”
Nien bent his head as sobs began to fill his chest.
Leaning a little, Wing let him press against his side, supporting him as he wept, crying silently into the night. And elsewhere in that night, outside a bivouacked tent, lay a body still draped with the leather shoulder mantle of the Cant, while inside the tent two voices conversed…
“Rieeve would make the perfect staging ground.”
> “Yes. That’s why it must be taken. And now we know how and when.”
“And the people?”
“Inconsequential — obstacles to the goal. What we need is the land.”
Chapter 39
Fallen on Deaf Ears
“N ien, I’m glad to see you. The Council has called an emergency meeting I have to get to, but we need to talk first.”
Nien followed Lant into his hut and took a seat opposite the Commander in a small chair.
Kojko Festival had officially been over the day before. But it had really been over before it started. Lant had imagined how it could have been a festival unlike any other where individual campsites were abandoned in favour of one massive gathering beneath Castle Viyer, a single large fire blazing at the center, everyone brought together in a way they never could have been before. But the division between Cant member families and unaffiliated villagers had proved insurmountable, polarized over the loss of Bredo, first hand accounts of battle, those that said Wing was their salvation, others arguing that the Cant was the only real solution.
What might have unified them, served only to widen the divide.
Nien had been punished by the Council: not permitted to come to the festival. They’d tried to banish him from the Cant as well, forcing Lant into the position of declaring the Cant a separate entity and not under the jurisdiction of the Council. It was a decision Lant had been loath to make and it was still far from decided in the minds of the Council.
“I’m not waiting any longer,” Lant said to Nien, quickly getting to it before he had to go. “Within the next three turns I will be sending out messengers. Premier Messenger Pree K will go to SiQQiy, Empress of Quieness. S’o will go to Impreo Takayo of Jayak. And Jhock I will send to Master Monteray in Legran. I’ll be spending the next couple turns with them exclusively. They will deliver my proposal — an introduction and outline of the plan that I have been preparing.
“What I need you to do is begin training sessions with the Cant in earnest. The Cant needs to be ready, physically and mentally. Run drills every other day and hold skill practices and maneuvers on the rest. Give them one day to rest. Carly and the others wait for you on the training field. Since Pree K is preparing to leave for Quieness, you and the other leaders will need to notify the body of the Cant.”
Lant stood to leave, but Nien didn’t move. “Nien?”
“I can’t train the Cant,” he said.
Though he was feeling pressed, Lant forced himself to stop. “Why?”
Nien struggled to say, “Trust.”
“You don’t know that they have lost any in you,” Lant said.
But Nien’s eyes had gone blank and Lant knew instantly where his First had gone for Lant had been to the edge of the same dark place. He knew how ghastly it was but also how compelling, for it offered release, a demonesque vow of liberation from the pain. It was what insanity felt like.
Lant reached across his desk and took Nien’s face in his strong, calloused hands. “Nien.”
Nien twitched, startled by something only he could see.
Again, Lant said, “Nien.”
Nien blinked and his bloodshot eyes focused on Lant’s face.
“Better,” Lant said.
He hadn’t liked the look in Nien’s eyes — a look he’d seen before though never in Rieeve.
Nien tried to speak but his tongue cleaved to his palate and Lant reached behind him for water. He pressed a cup into Nien’s hand. Nien held the cup a moment as if perplexed by it and then, finally, took a drink.
“You and the other leaders acted like warriors,” Lant said as Nien set the cup on the desk. “I would have expected nothing less of you. Perhaps that will be the event that opens the door between Rieeve and Jayak.”
He could see that Nien was not convinced.
“Look at me.”
It seemed painful for Nien to focus his eyes.
“No one of our race,” Lant said, “for generations, has faced what you faced, has made the kinds of decisions you had to make. It would be unhelpful and uninformed to blame yourself.”
“So, it’s that easy,” Nien said softly. “No responsibility, no blame.”
“No — with trust.”
“Trust?”
“In yourself,” Lant replied. “In me. In nature.”
“Nature? What?”
“The nature of the world, of life, of who you are. Timing and people and place are not random. Each greets the other with no more happenstance than the raising of a great building.”
Nien growled out his incomprehension.
Though Lant did not show it, he welcomed Nien’s frustration. Anger was useful at the moment. Anger would keep Nien from resignation, from returning to the edge.
“Why are the Ka’ull doing this?” Nien asked. “It’s not as if they’re after human labour or resources. Do they want only blood?”
“Slavery is of ancillary benefit to them, but no, that is not the reason. Resources on the other hand…” Lant paused. “The Ka’ull home land is a desolate place. They have very few natural resources. What is of value is difficult to locate and expensive to extract.”
“Then why don’t they ask? Why can they not work out trade agreements with other valleys?”
“As they have with us?” Lant said. He shook his head. “All is not as it seems. Though the other valleys are not closed as Rieeve is, they are closed still — they have not traded nor worked with the Ka’ull any more than we have.”
“Then we’re the bad guys?” Nien asked, his tone dripping venom and exhaustion.
“No. I’m only saying that it’s fear for their survival as a race that has driven the Ka’ull to where they are now.” Lant’s steady features grew heavy. “Their fear is what they want to kill.”
“Their fear?” Nien said.
Lant understood Nien’s dismay. “Most people,” Lant said, “are decent at best, indurative at worst. But in the mix are those few who rise above or sink below. The current leader of the Ka’ull is such a person. To him have come the disconsolate, the hardened, the wounded. He gives them a purpose and a means to justify their hate and their hurt, using it to feed the greed for its satisfaction until the path taken is too long and too hot and turning back seems impossible.” For effect, Lant paused. It worked, Nien’s eyes focused on his face. “I need you to hear me. The leader of the Ka’ull is a bitter, angry man. His people die in large numbers even as other valleys with rich resources are unwilling to negotiate trade, possibly because the Ka’ull have very little worth trading, but more so, I think, because they are seen in a desolate light. Desperation has become a way of life for the Ka’ull. Though it may not seem like it, the leader of the Ka’ull sees these attacks on our valleys as the only way to preserve his people.”
“He sees attacking and murdering a way to preserve his people? Such an idea makes no — ”
“Sense?” Lant said. “It doesn’t have to make sense to us, but it will help if we understand that it makes sense to him.”
Clearly, Nien had no idea how to respond. He said instead, “How do you know so much about them?”
Lant felt a wave of nausea at the question, the hinting towards the secrets he’d long kept hidden. “That is a long story.”
Nien waited.
“I have been in their land,” Lant said. “I have known” — he shrugged — “a few.”
Another long silence passed, before Lant added, “I have not spoken of it since returning to Rieeve.”
“Does anyone…?”
“No one knows. At least not in Rieeve.”
Lant had always thought that, someday, he’d tell Nien about what happened to him all those revolutions ago when he’d left Rieeve. As close as he felt to Nien and his family, it struck him to realize that he still had not said anything about it.
“What was it like?” Nien asked.
“The land of the Ka’ull?”
Nien nodded.
“It was a barren place — even then.
”
Again, Nien waited. Lant was grateful to see that Nien’s curiosity had not been quelled by the experience in Jayak, nevertheless, now was not the time for stories. Leaning forward over his desk, he looked deeply into Nien’s honey-flecked eyes. “I will tell you someday, but right now, I need you and I need you whole. Will you continue as you have, in training the Cant?”
Nien took a breath that seemed to stabilize him. It took all of the will Lant knew Nien had in him to say: “We should have known the Ka’ull were on the move. We should have known they were in Jayak.”
Lant nodded, grateful that Nien’s getting-down-to-business was his answer. “I agree. Sending out the messages to the other valleys will be a start.”
“Proof of their support might help us with the people, and with the Council.”
“Yes, but we don’t have the luxury to wait. It’s time we tell them,” Lant replied.
The two men gazed at each other.
“Will you do it today?” Nien said.
“No. In three turns.”
“Ah,” Nien replied, clearly understanding that Lant intended to wait to tell the Council until after he’d already sent the messengers.
“So, it is,” Nien said and got up to leave.
Lant stood as well. “You will get through this, Nien. The shock will dissipate with time.”
Nien did not look back as he stepped to the hut door.
“I hope you’re right.”
With the eager faces of his three young Cant Messengers still vivid in his mind, Lant headed for the Council chamber. The three turns since his talk with Nien had already passed. He’d said goodbye to his son, Pree K, last night, to the Cant’s two other young messengers, Jhock and S’o, the day before.
In his life, Lant had faced many fears in strange, far away valleys as well as here, in his home valley. He’d faced not only personal terror, but also the fear of others in the midst of facing their own. At the moment, however, he was surprised to feel none. Where fear should have been was a hollow. Not a hopeless, vacant hollow, but rather a trusted space. What filled it now, whether change or ruin was beyond his control, for without the Council’s knowledge or blessing, he’d acted. And now there was only to face it, holding nothing for his defense but the conviction that he’d chosen as best he could.
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