Our unit would often march or fight in the company of other units of pikemen or archers, and, less frequently, cavalry, depending on the scale and character of the assault, but our role was always the same: occupy such-and-such ground and allow no man, on foot or on horse, to pass. Usually we succeeded; sometimes we failed. Even when we were overrun, our casualties were usually not severe, because the Barbaroki’s intent was not to destroy our forces but simply to get past us. Despite this, over the course of two years we lost nearly a third of our men (though a significant number of deaths were from disease, exposure or exhaustion), who were replaced by new recruits. By luck or nerve, I was spared death and dismemberment. I was friendly with most, but formed no lasting attachments.
As you can imagine, intelligence was vital in the effort to hold the Barbaroki at the passes. We depended heavily on a network of spies and scouts who passed us information regarding the Barbaroki’s movements. Their vaunted speed notwithstanding, moving a force of three hundred or more horsemen requires some preparation, and by watching for certain signs such as the quantity and type of supplies being packed, our spies could predict with some accuracy where the Barbaroki were likely to appear next.
Around the time that I became a pikeman, the Barbaroki were getting wise to this and they had begun to infiltrate our spy network, providing us with bad information that often caused units such as mine to march twenty leagues in the wrong direction before the lie was uncovered. The janissary command’s response was to rely less heavily on individual spies, whose loyalties were often dubious, and to direct resources to specialized scouting units that could move through passes in the mountains that were too narrow or treacherous for horses or large bodies of troops. The commander of my unit was tasked with providing four men for such a unit. I immediately applied for consideration.
Chapter Three
I do not know why someone in the janissary command thought a unit of pikemen could produce men with the skills for a scouting unit, but I was certain that wielding a pike was at best a dead-end position. There just isn’t any way to distinguish yourself with a polearm; you are either competent or you are dead. Knowing as well that gripping a pike and marching were the only skills most of the men in my unit possessed, I judged my odds as a candidate for the Scouting Corps to be good.
Seeking any advantage I could find, I inquired of several officers regarding the qualifications for the position, but no one except for the commander of our unit seemed to know anything, and I was loath to pester him for fear of biasing him against me. I had become reasonably fluent in Keleti over the previous two years and was on good terms with most of the officers, but the commander remained singularly unapproachable.
Still, I could guess at some of the requirements: they would want someone who could climb, and thanks to years of pursuing errant sheep over the rocks of the Sebastis Valley, I was a competent climber. I was a fair hand at tracking, and my knowledge of Keleti and ability to read and write would likely give me an edge. But above all, a Scout would need to be able to survive for weeks in the wilderness, lightly equipped so as to be able to move quickly. That meant being able to hunt, and that meant proficiency with a bow.
As it happened, we were encamped near a unit of some four hundred bowmen. Archers are understandably jealous about their bows; you may as well ask a man if you can sleep with his wife as ask an archer if you can use his bow. But every man has his weakness, and I happened to know that in this unit was a man named Rodric, who was such a prodigy with a bow that his superiors overlooked his fondness for strong drink. The story goes that Rodric’s sergeant, incensed about the bowman’s drunken antics the night before, once roused Rodric at the crack of dawn and ordered him to hit a bullseye at a distance of a hundred paces or face the lash. Rodric crawled from his tent clutching his bow and fired off three arrows in quick succession; the first struck the bullseye, the second split the first arrow, and the third split the second. The sergeant was so astounded that he said nothing while Rodric doubled over, vomited, and crawled back into his tent.
Rodric’s unit had arrived the night before from the plains of Videki, and I wagered that he would not have had a chance to replenish his supply for at least a week. The quartermasters keep a supply of weak beer and watered-down wine, but such fare would hardly whet the appetite of a man like Rodric. I bargained with a captain who I knew usually had a few bottles of Troyan wine, parting with a not-insignificant proportion of my savings for a bottle of middling vintage. Appearing at Rodric’s tent one afternoon with the bottle in my hand, I was welcomed as if I were his best friend in the world, although I’m not sure he even remembered having met me. In honesty, if it weren’t for his famed skill with the bow, I might not have remembered him either. He was of average height and weight, with a thick head of dirty blond hair and small, intense features. There was nothing about his physical appearance that particularly stood out. He was friendly enough, but tended toward melancholy.
We drank together, and I feigned ignorance of the principles of archery. He led me happily to the practice field, where I confirmed that the story I had heard about him was at least within the realm of possibility, if not true. As he demonstrated his skill, I shook my head, claiming that I could never master such a weapon because he possessed a natural aptitude that I did not. I had learned that nothing irritates a prodigy like the insinuation that his ability is inborn and not earned, and Rodric took it upon himself to demonstrate to me that anyone could learn how to shoot a bow as well as he if only they applied the requisite effort.
Once he’d gotten comfortable with the idea of me shooting his bow, I affected a newfound confidence, claiming that now that I grasped the basic principles of the art, I could see how any fool could wield a bow as easily as a pike. This incensed him, and he demanded his bow back. But now I had him right where I wanted him. I told him that he was being a bad sport, and that anyone could see that he only wanted his bow back because he feared that through continued practice I would be proven correct.
He protested that he couldn’t very well be expected to part with his bow indefinitely, as it was after all the tool of his trade and, despite the current lull in hostilities, there was a war on. I acknowledged his point but assured him that I would only need an hour to become fully competent with the weapon. At this, he laughed so hard that I feared for a moment he had been overcome by some sort of seizure. I pretended to be offended, and proposed the sort of bargain fools tend to make in that state: if, at the end of an hour’s practice, I could outshoot him in three tries, he would acknowledge me as the superior bowman and let me keep his bow. If he were victorious, I would admit my error and provide him with ten more bottles of the same vintage. Rodric agreed.
I took the man’s bow and quiver, and spent the next hour familiarizing myself with the weapon. As I’ve said, I am no slouch with a bow, and the principle of a bow like that used by the janissary archers is the same as that employed by my own hunting bow, which I still kept, to the occasional jeers of my fellow pikemen. Truth be told, I had grown taller and stronger since my days of scaring wolves away from my sheep, and the janissary bow fit my arm much better than my own. After a few shots, I felt comfortable with the bow. After an hour, I thought myself to be the match of any archer in the Eastern Provinces.
I roused Rodric from his tent and we headed back to the practice fields. I felt a little bad for the man; it wasn’t really fair to use his weakness against him, and he’d undoubtedly be harshly disciplined for losing his bow. So confident was I with the bow that it never occurred to me I might lose. The officer from whom I’d bought the wine had at most three more bottles at his disposal; I didn’t have the money for ten even if he’d possessed them.
As the challenger, I fired first. It was an impressive effort: the first arrow hit the edge of the bullseye and the second two were solidly in the gold. Rodric’s mouth fell open. Not one in a hundred archers can make three successive shots like that; for a novice to do it is unheard of. The truth is th
at stories like that one I’d heard about Rodric are invariably exaggerations; almost no one can reliably hit a bullseye at fifty paces, and splitting an arrow with another arrow is well-nigh impossible.
These were the thoughts that occupied me as Rodric fired an arrow into the bullseye, split that arrow with his second, and then split the second with his third.
There are events in one’s life that are so unfathomable as to be indistinguishable from an experience of the supernatural. We expect the world to adhere to certain basic principles, and when it does not, we are forced to acknowledge that what we’ve taken to be immutable laws are in fact only descriptions of our own limited experience. What Rodric had done was, by any meaningful definition of the term, impossible. And yet I had witnessed it with my own eyes.
So shaken was I by his feat that it took me a moment to realize that I was ruined. The only thing saving me from dishonor was a technicality: Rodric and I hadn’t put a time limit on the delivery of his prize. For the past two years I had saved every erme I’d earned, and I’d spent nearly a quarter of that amount on a single bottle of wine. Simple arithmetic told me that it would take me another year and a half at my current salary to pay my debt to Rodric.
At the same time, I was forced to confront the possibility that I was not as exceptional a bowman as I’d thought. I had believed three successive bullseyes to be an impressive enough feat to earn me entrance into the Scouting Corps, but if there were half a dozen men in my unit with even a hint of Rodric’s talent, then perhaps my chances were not so good after all. Certainly I was not the only pikeman who had chased off a few wolves in his youth.
In a few seconds I had gone from certainty in the advancement of my military career to being resigned to be a pikeman forever, saving every erme—after my debt was paid—in a vain hope to amass a fortune sufficient to win the hand of my beloved Beata. But even if I had ten thousand ermes, Beata’s father would never deign to allow her to marry a pikeman. I’d be better off deserting to become one of those benighted treasure hunters who roams the barrows of Delvidek. Most likely I would be torn apart by the dire beasts said to inhabit those lands, but perhaps I would survive to unearth the hoard of one of those ancient kings. With enough gold I could purchase a title for myself and return for Beata as a newly minted count or marquis. You can see from my train of thought that the sight of Rodric’s feat had driven me quite out of my senses.
What happened next was in some ways no less surprising. Rodric turned to me, an unmistakable look of terror on his face, and said, “Konrad, you must promise never to fulfill your side of the bargain. If you have the ten bottles, spread them around your unit or dash them against the rocks, but do not give them to me.”
“I shall have no great trouble complying with the spirit of your request,” I said, “but you mustn’t demur on my account. You have won the contest fair and square. I was a fool to challenge you.”
“On the contrary,” Rodric said, “you are a worthy competitor, and on any ordinary day you might well have bested me. But it appears that this is no ordinary day.”
“You are not, then, in the habit of making three bullseyes within a quarter inch of each other?”
“On my honor, it has never happened before.”
“But the story—”
“You are too canny a man to put stock in stories. It is true that my skill with the bow has prompted the officers to suffer from me what they would not from an archer of typical proficiency, and in fact it is only my vice that prevents me from attaining a more exalted position among the janissaries, but never have I witnessed anything like this.” He spoke as if the triple gold was an event that had happened to him, rather than an action he had brought about.
“But is not such a feat to be celebrated?”
He shook his head. “It cannot be but an ill omen. For now, whenever I shoot, I shall think of the time I achieved three perfect bullseyes in a row, and I shall lose my nerve and fire to the left or the right. You see even now how my hands shake.”
“Perhaps if I could acquire another bottle of wine….”
“No. No! Don’t you see? This event has ruined me, and it is only the utter lack of strong spirits in this camp that prevent me from diving headlong into a bottle. I must never have so much as a swallow of wine again, or I shall be destroyed. I would at this moment suffer the cruelest debasements to dim my awareness of this event even a little. I would sell my shirt, my shoes, even my bow.”
“Surely you put the wrong face on this event. It may be that you will never again attain this precise achievement, but you are still a reasonably young man, and you are of course aware that this contest has no great significance. Devote yourself to your military career rather than fixate on childish games. A single Barbarok skewered in the throat is worth a thousand bullseyes.”
Rodric shook his head again. “I appreciate your efforts to cheer me, friend, but you know as well as I do that the value of a thing is in the thing itself. Ten thousand skewered Barbaroki will not suffice to surpass this achievement. You witnessed my zenith. It is all downhill from here.”
“I will not argue the matter further for fear of increasing your agitation, but you must allow me to make good on our bargain in some way. If I were to give you the ermes directly rather than purchase the wine….”
“You do not, then, have the wine?”
“No. If I am honest, I do not even have the ermes. I entered the contest dishonorably.”
“I thought not,” said Rodric. “It is just as well. If you had the money, I would only beg you for it in order to spend it on wine.”
“But you must allow me to pay my debt. It may take some time, but I will make good on my pledge.”
“How long would it have taken you to save the ermes to buy the wine you owe me?”
“If I saved every erme I could, it would take me a year and a half.”
Rodric nodded. “I will allow you to make it up to me in this way: for the next eighteen months, you must not allow me to have a drop of wine or any strong spirit.”
“I would gladly comply,” I said, “as I am by trade a shepherd and accustomed to preventing stupid animals from eating or drinking what they should not, so it would be no great challenge for me, but for one thing: tomorrow one of our units might well depart from this place and we will never see each other again. I could not agree to your terms without risking desertion.”
“Are you not, then, intending to apply for a position in the Scouts?”
“How did you know?”
“Why else would you orchestrate this contest to acquire my bow?” I flushed with the realization that Rodric had been on to me from the beginning. “No matter,” he said. “I played you as well, seeing an opportunity to get some wine in return for something I’d have given for free. But sticking to the subject: I was volunteered as a Scout by my commander, who was no doubt looking for an opportunity to be rid of me. I declined the opportunity, for until now I’ve had no ambition but to perfect my bowmanship. Now that my career as an archer has peaked, however, I shall, as you suggest, dedicate myself to being of use in this war. It will probably do me no good, but I see no alternative. I shall inform the officer in charge that I have thought better of my refusal, and make my acceptance contingent upon your inclusion in my unit.”
“Do you think the officer will agree to your terms?”
“I have no doubt. Not that you need my recommendation to get into the corps; any fool can see you’re wasted as a pikeman. The trick is to get them to assign us to the same unit, and given the enthusiastic endorsement I’m certain to get from my commander, that should be no trouble.”
“In that case, I agree to your terms. As long as we are assigned to the same unit, I will do whatever I can to prevent you from drinking. I have only one condition: I should like to borrow your bow for a few more hours, in case they make me demonstrate my competence.”
“You’re already more than competent, but you are welcome to it. I’ll need it back before we’r
e reassigned, but no one is going to ask me to prove myself with a bow.”
“But if you’re assigned to the Scouts, you’ll be expected to use it…?”
“Oh, I haven’t forgotten how to string an arrow. Even without my nerve, I’ll have enough skill to skewer a Barbarok at fifty yards. I doubt more will be required of me. If a Scout is engaged in combat, things have already gone very wrong, and I can’t be held accountable for that.”
Rodric’s reasoning seemed shaky to me, but I was glad to be assured of acceptance into the Scouts and even gladder to be released from my debt. It was true that I had merely exchanged one debt for another, but I suspected Rodric was not as weak-willed as he made himself out to be. Sometimes all it takes for a man to bear a burden is the knowledge that someone will pick it up for him if he falls.
Chapter Four
That, then, is how I joined the Scouting Corps and became friends with Rodric the Archer. Three weeks later, we were sent, along with five other recruits (three from my unit and two from Rodric’s) to a training camp that had been set up a few leagues east of Delivaros. Our training as Scouts was, unbelievably, even less well orchestrated than that which I’d been through as a novice pikeman. I learned later that the officer who had developed the idea for the Corps had been reassigned to the southern frontier, and another officer, who was nearing retirement and had no interest in the program, had been assigned to run it until a better choice could be found. The result was that we showed up at the training camp along with some two hundred other recruits only to find that we were essentially on our own. A mess tent and some basic training facilities had been set up, and there were a dozen or so men assigned to preparing food and maintaining the camp, but no training program had been established.
This was, in a way, the best thing that could have happened. With no way of knowing how long we would be at the camp or whether we would ever receive any officially sanctioned training, we made the best of the situation. We started by comparing what we had been told about the responsibilities of the Corps and the qualifications for candidates. From this basis we identified several key areas of competency, and then went on to identify the two or three most qualified candidates in each area. I ended up being the third best archer in the group; Rodric made no attempt to distinguish himself in this (or any other) area.
The Brand of the Warlock Page 3