We rode through the afternoon, watering the horses frequently. The sky soared above us, the blue unbroken save for a few small clouds in the west. We scared up grouse and hare, and once, cresting a small rise, we saw a herd of deer far in the distance. Garth sat his horse easily, relaxed and confident. He turned to say something and caught my eyes on him. He smiled.
“Camp tonight or the inn?”
I smiled back. “Camp.”
We reached the campsite an hour before sunset. A stream ran beside a stand of trees under a rocky outcropping, providing a windbreak. We unsaddled and groomed the horses thoroughly, washing the dust from their eyes and nostrils. The western sky glowed red and orange and pink by the time we finished. I ran a hand through my hair. “I need a wash,” I said. The shallow stream did not allow for swimming, but I stripped to wade in. Cold water came up to my knees. I dug my toes into the sandy bottom. Kneeling, I used my hands to cup water up and over my head, washing the dust from my hair and body. I felt Garth behind me. He poured water from his hands along my back. I gasped at the cold. As his hands left my back, the gasp became a moan. I turned to him. We kissed with increasing need until Garth broke away, taking my hand.
“I built a fire and spread the blankets. Let’s get warm.” He led me to the fire, and we made love with urgency and passion under the cobalt sky.
Later we ate more cheese and dried fruits and bread. The horses rested at the edge of the trees, standing head to tail and slouching on three legs. Stars fogged the sky. I lay back, looking for the constellations I knew. I found the hunter with his dogs, and the bears, and from there the north star. I could follow it home to Tirvan, I thought, if Tirvan is still home.
I propped myself up on one elbow. “Did Casyn say anything more to you about what will happen now?”
“I know my orders. Casyn is going to rejoin the Emperor in a little while, and there will a meeting of the senior officers. Why?” He reached forward to add a log to the fire. “Did he say something to you?”
“In a way. Garth, what if there were another, honourable, thing for you to do, other than the army? What if you could build roads or buildings, or trade, not as part of the army but as a free man, sanctioned by the Empire. Would you do it?”
He considered. “Not now,” he answered finally. “I think I see a place for me, a way I can serve that I can live with, perhaps even be proud of. But if another way had been possible, and had been offered, yes, I’d have taken it. What are you thinking of?”
I hesitated. If Casyn had not told him of my task, to incite the women of the Empire to demand a new assembly, should I? “If Maya and her group can become a new guild, petition for a new village, with different rules from the rest of Tirvan, then why can’t there be an equivalent guild of men, bound by different rules but still legitimate under the Empire? At twelve, you choose—land or sea. Why isn’t there a choice to leave honourably and openly, to serve the Empire in a different way? You ran, Garth. You risked your life rather than submit to that choice. Others submit to worse.”
He looked away. “I didn’t know you knew about that,” he said eventually. “But that is the law. The Empire won’t change it because they need to breed men who will fight.”
I shook my head impatiently. “This Emperor has already changed the rules. You are proof of that. We aren’t horses, bred for the cart or the saddle, for strength or speed. We are human and capable of thought and choice and change. The rules of Partition, determining the fate of deserters, or at least some deserters, have been overturned. Surely this is the time to change other rules, too?” I took a breath. “What choices do you want for your son?”
The firelight shadowed his eyes. “More than I had,” he said quietly. “I never planned to father sons for the Empire’s army. I was to marry a trader’s daughter, on Leste, and father sons for the boats and the trade.”
“Maya swore she would give no sons to the regiments, either. But Valle is alive, and he’s nearly three. Today you ride to claim him. In four years, you will ride to Karst again to take him to his place as a cadet.”
He made an impatient gesture with his hand. “That’s the way of our world.” He stood, looking down at me. “Would you bear my child, knowing, if it were a son, that his future was pre-ordained?”
I had thought about this, riding the southward road. I shook my head. “Not if there are no choices for the child beyond what is circumscribed.” In the flicker of the firelight, he smiled bitterly. He touched my hair.
“I need to think. I’ll be by the stream.” I watched him walk into the darkness, toward the sound of the running water. An owl called. In the clear, cold sky above me, the hunter followed his course, fixed, unchanging, with his dogs at heel.
Chapter Seventeen
Clouds had blown in overnight. They were not yet threatening rain, but by evening I guessed we would be glad of an inn’s roof above us. Garth looked tired. I wondered when he had returned to the fire to sleep. We ate without referring to last night’s conversation. I doused the fire and rolled up the bedding while Garth tacked up the horses. When our eyes met, he did not look away, but he did not smile.
We rode at a walk, letting the horses warm their muscles. The grasslands stretched ahead of us, undulating in broad swells of land bisected occasionally by small streams. Grouse foraged at the side of the road, sometimes taking to wing at our approach but more often scuttling into the longer grasses, which moved constantly, a soft background rustle.
“I thought about what you said, last night,” Garth said, after we had ridden for half an hour. “Maybe I should leave Valle where he is. Perhaps the life of slave is better. He would be safe and fed, and if he’s capable, he could rise high. Why should I give him to the Empire?”
“Leave him in slavery?” I said, shocked. “That gives him no choice at all.”
“He has none now! Neither of us do. I go to Karst and say, ‘This is my son. I acknowledge him. In four years, I will come back to take him away to learn to be a soldier.’ Why isn’t that slavery, too?”
I recalled Kolmas’s words in response to Casyn’s offer: This is only another sort of slavery.
“It would disrupt nothing to leave him alone. No one has prepared him for me. His life will just go on as it is now.”
“He will be named fatherless, unwanted. You can’t do that to him, Garth. Like it or not, he is your responsibility. Or are you running away again?”
Garth’s face blanched, and I wished the words unsaid. He reined his horse in. I swung Clio around to look at him.
“Go away,” he said, his jaw clenched. A chasm opened inside me.
“Garth—”
“Go!”
I closed my eyes for a moment then turned Clio south. I dared not look back, but after a few minutes, I could hear Tasque’s hooves on the road behind us. How could I have said that? Garth had no inkling that the Emperor might change the laws. I had to tell him. He had risked his life for the Empire, in secrecy and silence, these last years. Gradually, I slowed Clio. When I could hear Tasque close behind me, I stopped.
“Garth,” I said quietly. “I was wrong to say what I did. I have something to tell you. Will you listen?”
He looked grim, but he nodded.
“I have a task on this road, beyond seeking Maya. Casyn charged me with speaking privately to the girls and women of the inns to plant the thought of a new assembly, one at which a new set of laws, for all the Empire’s men and women, would be written.”
His eyes narrowed. “The Emperor wants this?” he demanded. “Casyn told you this?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted. Clio shifted under me, feeling my tension and wanting to move. “But he did say the Emperor wants a new assembly, to make a new agreement between women and men. I have been instructed to plant the idea at each inn we pass, so that it arises from the villages and the inns, and not from Callan.” A corn bunting called, clear and sharp, from atop a swaying stem. Tasque snorted.
Garth stared at the horizon. “He
must have his own agenda. Did Casyn say what it is?”
I hesitated. “He alluded to it,” I said finally. “But he made me swear I would tell no one.” I met his eyes. The anger had vanished, but wariness lingered. “I will tell you, if you want.” I felt my heart beat.
“No,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Keep your word, Lena. I have trusted this Emperor, or his proxies, for some years now. I’ll trust you, too.”
“I don’t know the Emperor, but I trust Casyn.”
“As do I,” Garth said. He half-smiled. “They say that the Emperor can hold a battlefield in his mind, each dip of land, each outcrop, each copse, and see how the battle will go, before it is fought. He chooses his strategy and deployment based on this picture in his mind, a picture that changes with season and weather, or time of day, and yet he always knows what will happen.”
“I would like to meet him, some day.”
“Perhaps you will,” Garth said, glancing at the sun. “We should ride. Karst is still some days ahead.”
We rode on. Garth’s reaction, his instant suspicion of the Emperor’s motives, surprised me. His years of keeping secrets, of twisting the truth, had influenced how he saw the world. Something about our conversation niggled at me, a vague disquiet.
The sun rose higher, a pale disc behind the clouds bright and warm enough to burn the mist away from stream valleys and bring the first of the hawks up into the sky, hunting effortlessly over the plain. The clop of our horses’ hooves accompanied the ripple of the wind and the faint, high scream of the hawk. At mid-morning, I heard the clink of metal and the murmur of women’s voices from the inn.
Unlike the others we had passed, this inn was a wooden structure, long and low, with outbuildings roofed with turf. Stone formed the foundation, but above that, broad wooden planks, overlapping, comprised the unpainted and weathered walls. Behind the inn and its outbuildings, the post horses and some smaller horses, like my Clio, grazed, sharing the grass with a herd of goats.
One of the inn’s horses caught our scent and whinnied a greeting or a challenge, wheeling to crowd against the fence closest to the road. Tasque returned the call. A woman stepped from an outbuilding, raising a hand in greeting. We rode into the yard. Chickens pecked in the dust. “Welcome,” she said.
We dismounted. “Lena of Tirvan,’ I said. Her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.
“Garth, Watch-Commander of Skua.”
The woman was in early middle age and stocky, with short hair and fine wrinkles around her eyes. She nodded. “I’m Zilde, the inn-keeper. There’s feed and water in the stables for your horses, or a spare paddock if you want to turn them out. I’m afraid there’s no one to take them for you. My girls have gone, leaving only myself, my mother, and my aunt, and they are too old to handle horses. Are you staying?”
I shook my head. “No. But the horses could use grain, if you have it, and if you have bread to spare, I’ll buy some.”
“There’s bread,” she said, “fresh-baked, and grain in the bin. Come in when you’re ready.” With a lift of her chin, she indicated the door into the common room of the inn. We led the horses over the yard and into the dim, cool stable where we stripped off their harnesses and found grain and water. As we worked, I considered Zilde’s reaction when I mentioned Tirvan.
“I wonder if her girls chose exile.” I said, half to myself.
“We can’t exactly ask,” Garth answered. “Will you do what Casyn asked of you?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
When we had seen to the horses, we crossed the yard to the common room door. We took seats at a table, and Zilde brought a jug of steaming liquid and mugs on a tray. She put the tray down on the table, pouring a dark, malty drink into the mugs. An older woman carried in a plate of bread rolls with hands twisted and swollen with the joint-ill. No wonder we had to see to our horses ourselves, I thought. A second woman came out with butter and a fruit preserve. “My mother, and my aunt,” Zilde said. We introduced ourselves. Again, I saw a fleeting reaction to the mention of Tirvan.
We ate. The bread was still slightly warm, melting the butter and softening the tangy fruit preserve. Quince, I thought. The drink had a grain base, and Zilde, pouring herself a mug too, added a chunk of butter to it. “Where are you headed?” she asked.
“Karst,” I said. “Garth goes to see his son before rejoining his regiment, and I have news to bear to the village.” Zilde visibly relaxed at my answer.
“I thought, as you are from Tirvan, you might be going to join that Maya,” she said. “She a friend of yours?”
“Yes,” I said neutrally. “But I haven’t heard much of her since she left, just some stories at other inns about a group of exiles.”
Zilde snorted. “Stories is right. Stories about petitioning the Emperor for a new village for those what didn’t fight. Or who wouldn’t have if they’d been old enough to choose. My own daughters have gone off to find her, to join this group. They slipped off one night with their ponies, and me with no one to send after them. As if a bunch of stripling girls can build a new village, supposing the Emperor was foolish enough to grant the petition.”
“Do you think he might?” Garth asked.
“How should I know?” Zilde retorted. “What do I know of the Emperor? You’d know more than me.” She eyed him. “Well?”
Garth shook his head. “I’ve been on frontier duty for many years.”
Zilde sipped her drink. “An Emperor who would ask women to fight could do anything,” she stated finally. The two older women nodded in agreement.
“Maybe Maya’s right to ask for change. Maybe we all should. The old rules have been broken. Maybe it’s time to make new ones.” I tried to keep my voice level, almost disinterested, a tired traveller just passing the time in an inn. Zilde shook her head.
“I always heard those long winters bred strange talk in the north,” she said. She looked at me appraisingly. Suddenly her face softened slightly. “Did you fight?” I nodded. “Kill anyone?” I nodded again. She held my gaze. “Then I shouldn’t be judging.” She stood up. “I’ll get that bread for you.”
One of the older women bent to pick up the tray. “I liked the old rules,” she said.
They left us to finish the meal. Garth looked at me quizzically. I shrugged. I had done what Casyn had asked.
We let the horses rest for another half hour while we drank second mugs of the grain drink. Garth wandered around the common room. I sat, watching him. His hair had grown out a bit, and he needed a shave. I no longer saw Maya as easily in his features. Finally, he swallowed the last of his drink. “Ready?” In answer, I put my own mug down, and we went back out into the day.
As we saddled the horses in the yard, Zilde came out, blinking in the light. “Will you take a message for me to the inns and villages? Tell them I’ve a place for an apprentice or two.”
“Of course,” I said, paying her for my meal.
She nodded her thanks. “Good luck on the road.” She lifted a hand in farewell as we swung into the saddles and turned the horses. We scattered chickens and dust as we trotted through the gates and onto the road. The horses, rested and grain fed, wanted to run, but I held Clio back.
“Garth,” I said, as soon as we had ridden out of earshot of the inn, “do you think Maya encouraged her girls to leave?”
He reined Tasque in to walk beside me. “No,” he said, after some consideration. “She wouldn’t. The girls were too young.”
We rode on in silence, but the thought nagged at me. Garth had told me what he thought I needed to hear. He didn’t know Maya. But did I?
The road ran straight south. From the tops of the undulating rises in the land, we could see it gleaming in the winter sun. The days grew steadily shorter until we had a brief eight hours of light in which to ride each day. We stopped at the inns to buy bread or cheese or just to pass on Zilde’s request. This made it easier to bring the talk around to Maya and her dreams, and from there to the suggestion of change
for us all, since someone always asked what had happened to Zilde’s daughters. On the road, and sometimes in the middle of the night, my thoughts returned to the question I had asked Garth. Had Maya encouraged the girls to leave?
Late on the afternoon of the sixth day, the clouds that had been building all day released a cold, slicing rain with ice in it. From the last small rise in the land, we saw the smoke of an inn, two miles or so distant. We reined the horses off the icy stones of the road into the grass, riding into the teeth of the wind. By the time we reached the inn, ice coated the horses’ manes and our hats, and our bodies shook with cold.
In the yard, I slid off Clio, leading her, on numb feet, through the wide door into the barn, not waiting for the innkeeper or the ostler. Garth followed behind me. I stripped off my sodden gloves and stuffed them into the pockets of my coat, and with stiff fingers worked at the girth. The leather had tightened with the damp, and my fingers stung. I felt helpless, frustrated, and suddenly tired of the road and strange inns and strange people. I missed Casyn. I felt the hot sting of tears behind my eyes. I took a deep breath, leaning my head against Clio’s warm neck, ignoring the wet, rubbing my hands together.
“I’ll take her,” a voice said behind me, “and the gelding. You two get into the inn.” I turned to face a woman of about my age. “Go,” she said. “I’ll take good care of them,”
I handed her the reins. “Thanks,” I tried to say, but it came out as a croak. “She’s Clio,” I managed. The woman nodded.
“Tasque,” I heard Garth say behind me. I saw surprise cross her face, and she looked at the grey more closely in the dim light.
“So he is,” she said softly. She looked at Garth. “And why you have Captain Dern’s horse is a story for the hearthside, when you’re warm and have food and drink inside you. Go. I want to hear this story sooner rather than later!”
We stepped out of the doorway into a covered walk. The stable block attached at right angles to another block, which in turn ran at a right angle into the inn itself, creating a three-sided structure surrounding the yard. The covered walk ran along the fronts of all three buildings, the angled roof attached directly to the structure and supported by beams every eight feet or so. I walked gratefully along the dry cobbles, sheltered from the wind.
Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy Page 26