Empire's Reckoning

by Marian L Thorpe

  “My lord Sorley,” he said gravely, after the kiss. “Do not mislead her, but neither can she be told anything that would endanger her. Take care of my daughter.”

  “With my life,” I promised.

  Chapter 12

  We rode north, not up the winding path that led to the plateau south of the Ti'ach, but along the stream and through the torp’s collection of cottages and byres, calling farewells to the torpari we saw. Our first stop would be at the next torp, about an hour further north, to have our horses' shoes checked at the smithy. My horse had been readied for a long journey, but Druise’s new gelding and Gwenna’s mare had not.

  The horses knew this track, and we rode easily, Gwenna leading for this section, although I guessed Druise would insist she rode between us for safety later. But we were still on the Ti'ach’s lands, somewhere out on the hills was the patrol, and in our thirteen years here nobody had ever threatened us. In earlier days, when Ruar had come to the Ti'ach to learn, and Faolyn too, the guard had had a purpose. But was there really anyone who still held a grudge against Cillian? Or any disaffected Marai who would target Lena?

  Probably not. But neither the Princip of Ésparias nor the Teannasach of Linrathe would allow even that small possibility not to be mitigated, and so we were guarded. Beacon fires were always ready to be lit on the hilltops, and bells hung in the torp and around the Ti'ach to be rung in an emergency. And every torpari over the age of twelve knew how to use a bow or secca or sword. Druisius did his job very, very well.

  At the smithy, we dismounted to allow the smith to check the horses' feet. I strolled around the smithy and its adjoining cottage, noting the neatness of its garden and the repair of the buildings. This was Hagenstorp, and Hagen was a conscientious Eirën, well-liked by his torpari. A man carrying a puppy strode towards the stream from behind another cottage.

  “Shugo,” I called, recognizing him.

  “Lord Sorley,” he said, coming over to me. The puppy squirmed in his grasp.

  “What is that?” I asked. Shugo was one of the shepherds, and his sheepdogs were the best around. We bought young dogs from him, rather than breed our own. But the puppy he was holding was no sheepdog, although its black and white colouring suggested one of its parents was.

  He spat. “Hagen came through with his hound just when Meg was in heat,” he grumbled. “This is the result. I drowned the others at birth — what good would they be? Left her this one to raise so the bitch wouldn't pine, but I need her back with the sheep. So it’s drowning for this one, too.”

  “How old is he?” I could see from how he held the pup it was male.

  “Six weeks.”

  “Don't drown it,” I said. “I'll buy it from you.”

  “Buy it? What do you want it for?”

  “The Comiádh’s son is ten. Just the right age for a puppy. Will you send it? I'll write a note, if you'll wait a few minutes.”

  “Aye,” he said. “It'll make a boy’s dog, I warrant. How is your own son, Lord Sorley?

  “Far away,” I said. Bjørn was in Varsland, as far as I knew.

  I wrote the note and gave him a few coins for the pup and for delivering it. Druise grinned when I told him what I had done.

  “Good thing we're leaving,” he said. “Lena might take her secca to you, otherwise.”

  But, I thought, a puppy will give Colm a companion, and a reason to be out of doors, and if Cillian is right and he leaves for the Ti'ach na Iorlath in two years, then it can be Lena’s justification for her solitary trips up onto the moors. The blacksmith called to me then, telling me no work needed to be done. We remounted and continued north.

  “Why did you buy a puppy?” Gwenna asked, after we had been riding for some time.

  “For Colm,” I told her. “Your mother will worry less about him when he’s off exploring if he has a dog with him.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “There’s always a guard somewhere, though. I hate that, you know.”

  “I know,” I said. “But you also know why it is necessary.”

  She made a face. “Because of what Mathàir did. Because someone tried to kill my father in the past, because of the treaty. Sorley? The other students — some of them — say if he was a traitor to Linrathe, then he shouldn’t have been given so much power in Ésparias. A traitor is always a traitor, they say.”

  “They are still saying that your father gave up too much to Casil, when he was negotiating the treaties?” I asked, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice.

  “Yes. Our instructors say otherwise, but some of the students don't believe it. And I don't know what is true, and what isn't.”

  “He told you that accepting his father’s acknowledgment of him wasn’t an act of treason,” I reminded her, “but something he was fully entitled to do.”

  “He still deserted his country, though,” she argued.

  “Would you have had him die? Your father has faced death more than once, Gwenna. That he is here with us today is a gift from the gods.”

  “Quiet!” Druise said. His captain’s voice. He stared at the track ahead, his light cloak pushed back for easier access to the short sword on his belt. “Gwenna, behind us,” he ordered.

  She obeyed, his tone bringing immediate compliance. I threw back my own cloak. “What?”

  “Men, approaching,” he said. “I caught a glimpse. Where the track drops into that valley, ahead. They looked like Marai, Sorley.”

  Chapter 13

  14 years earlier

  Ruar had grown at least a handspan, and when he spoke his voice was deeper. “Sorley, welcome,” he said, more formally than he had even at midwinter. To me, he seemed both more assured, and more subdued. Assured in the way he handled himself, but subdued in his great-uncle’s presence. Liam gave me his usual half-grudging greeting.

  “We will talk after I rest,” he said. I’d arrived just before mid-day. “I want your report first, before we begin to discuss this summer’s business.”

  “Certainly.” I gave him the formal letter of greeting from the Governor, and the news of the Southern Empire’s new name. Ruar asked about Cillian then, to Liam’s scowl. I told him, briefly, that all was well, that Cillian was working again, and a father. He had no need to know about the pain Cillian still lived with, or the yearning for poppy he fought.

  “He is not popular, I hear, among the officers and men,” Liam said.

  “Who told you that?” I asked, although even as I said the words I knew. “Randall?”

  “Aye.”

  I weighed my words. “Changes of the sort taking place within the Ésparian army will inevitably cause discord. Cillian is a target for that dissent, being largely unknown. Easier to blame him than the Princip, I suppose.”

  “The Princip did not negotiate the treaty,” Liam said.

  “No. But his brother signed it.”

  “Aye. Unlike ours, not signed by any man with the right to do so. But it is done, and we will abide by it.” The steward knocked, then, to tell us the meal was ready. Ruar glanced my way as we followed Liam from the room. His eyebrows flickered. Perhaps, I thought, what I took for deference is just restraint.

  Bhradaín ate with us, and Ruar’s older cousins, Daoíre and Oisín, whom I had met at mid-winter. We talked of the mild weather, and the hopes for a good crop of lambs this year. The Marai had devastated the flocks to feed their men, but the few ewes left had had an easy winter, and unless the weather turned vicious — as it could — most of the lambs should live.

  “We cannot give fleeces in tribute,” Oisín said, “not this year.”

  “This is not the time to talk of that,” Liam said. The younger men exchanged looks but said nothing.

  “I understand you will be examined by the scáeli’en council in the autumn?” Bhradaín said to me, deftly changing the subject. Scáeli to Dun Ceànnar cannot be an easy job, I reflected.

  “Is that official?” I asked. “I hadn’t heard.”

  “I had a letter from the Lady Dagney
just two days ago,” he said.

  “A scáeli?” Liam said. “You cannot be scáeli and toscaire, Sorley.”

  “I am aware,” I said mildly. “The title can be deferred until I am no longer needed as a toscaire, Raséair.”

  He nodded, a sharp motion of disapproving agreement. “That may be some time. I am going for my sleep now. There will be no discussion of tribute to Casil until I return; Bhradaín, ensure that it is so. We will meet in two hours.”

  “More ale?” Daoíre asked, once Liam had gone. The mood in the room had changed.

  Bhradaín stood. “I will fetch my ladhar,” he said. “I may be a little while. You all heard Liam’s instructions.”

  Daoíre waited until the scáeli had gone, busying himself pouring ale. “Were we still paying tribute to Varsland,” he said, almost idly, “what would we offer this year?”

  “It couldn’t be food,” Ruar said, “or we would force our people to starve. What might be needed, Sorley?”

  “Needed? Timber,” I said. “Timber, and men to build with it.” Oisín, I noticed, had stayed silent, listening. His wife was Liam’s younger daughter, and he perhaps deferred to Daoíre. I hoped that was the reason, anyhow.

  “Timber we have,” Daoíre said. “Men, less so.”

  “Just south of where the Tabha reaches the sea,” Oisín said, “the headland curves to make a sheltered harbour. Timber could be floated down the river, and loaded onto ships there. Were there a need to do that, of course.”

  “Whose land is that?” Daoíre asked. Ruar told him, without hesitation. “He’s not an unreasonable man,” his cousin said. “He would agree to lease land, if the price was right, I think. Do you agree, Oisín?”

  “Aye, I do.”

  “You must understand, Sorley,” Daoíre said, “that Liam is an old man. He grows forgetful, and more dogged that his designs are right, and cannot be overruled. We handle him carefully, feeding him ideas that he then believes are his own. Try to say as little as possible in our talks over the next days. And do not mention Cillian na Perras, if you can avoid it. Liam hates him, although I do not know why.”

  The feeling might be returned, I thought. “Well,” I said, “that precludes me singing the danta I have recently finished, about our travels to Casil.”

  “Sing it now?” Ruar said. “We have time to hear it, before my great-uncle wakes.”

  “If Bhradaín gives me leave, I would be honoured.” Bhradaín’s approval was a formality, of course: Ruar’s request effectively meant the scáeli could not refuse. I went for my ladhar, thinking about what I had just heard. That Daoíre and Oisín and Ruar felt the need to plan without Liam, or perhaps for him, spoke of strategy, preparations for when the Raséair could no longer guide the boy. The long view, Cillian would have said.

  “May I accompany you?” Bhradaín asked. I played the tune, and the refrain, once alone, once with him. It wasn’t complex, the key and the timing speaking of dark times, of war and death and doom.

  I’d spent countless hours on this danta, both on the ship home from Casil and later, after the Marai were defeated, sometimes even at Cillian’s bedside. With Bhradaín’s ladhar blending with mine, I sang of the Marai invasion, and the early battles, and of how Callan had ordered Turlo east. I sang of our meeting, and of Irmgard and her ship, and the long voyage along an unknown river.

  I changed the key to tell of Cillian and Lena, from their trial and exile and long journey east; of their winter in the Kurzemë camp, and their walk across the plain, and part way through I brought in a theme of growing joy, using the accepted motifs of an offered hand and a bestowed kiss to indicate their changed relationship. A faster beat for our meeting on the river, and a sweeping run of notes as we sailed into Casil. Then a sombre interlude for the negotiations, blending into martial themes as the Casilani ships arrived at the Eastern Fort.

  Bhradaín had kept with me for the entire danta, effortlessly. But now I held up a hand to him. I would part from tradition now, to tell the battle of the Taiva almost completely by voice alone.

  I sang the betrayals, and the impossible acts of archery that had ended the battle, then Callan’s death and Cillian’s terrible injuries, my fingers plucking only a simple melodic line. Notes from An Dithës Braithréan briefly intermixed with mine before the theme rose in thanksgiving for all the battles won, and fell again, into silence.

  Quite a long silence. “Well done,” Bhradaín said, breaking it. “A new danta to be taught, I would say.” High praise; he was nearly as senior a scáeli as Dagney. Heat rose in my face. “Ruar,” Bhradaín went on, “may I take Sorley away? I would like to counsel him about his examination in a few months.”

  “Not yet,” Ruar said. “Sorley, when you pass your examination, will you be an advisor for me?”

  “An advisor?”

  “My great-uncle is old. He won’t be my Raséair much longer: he’ll die, or ill-health will mean he can no longer continue. I will not have another. My cousins, and Bhradaín, will be my advisors instead. I would like you to be one of them, too.”

  I drank some ale, to give me a little time to think. None of the other men spoke. “Why me?”

  “For two reasons,” he said. “A scáeli must tell the truth, and so your voice can be trusted. But more than that, you promised to help me regain Sorham. We need your knowledge of the Härren, and their politics and allegiances.”

  Were these his own thoughts, or those of his advisors? He did not sound fourteen. “Who would replace me as toscaire?”

  “That will have to be considered carefully.”

  “Not Randall,” I said, and a realization struck. “Ruar, I can’t be your advisor.”

  “Why not?” Now I did hear a frustrated boy, and I had unthinkingly put myself in an awkward place. “Why not, Sorley?” Ruar said again.

  “May I speak to the Teannasach alone?” I asked, looking at his cousins.

  “Daoíre, Oisín, leave us, please,” Ruar said immediately. “And you, Bhradaín.”

  “As you wish,” Daoíre said. “But the scáeli stays.”

  Ruar glanced at me. I nodded. Bhradaín’s presence would be a buffer, and what I had to tell Ruar I was sure he already knew.

  “Well?” Ruar demanded, when his advisors had gone.

  “I might be used to discredit you.”

  He frowned. “How?”

  “You’re old enough to understand. The truth about me will be widely known, soon if not now. Randall will ensure that. I won’t be acceptable in the eyes of many Eirënnen whose support you must have.” I took a breath. I’d never spoken these words to anyone, never made the overt admission. “I am channàdarra, Ruar.”

  His eyes widened fractionally. “Are you?”

  I laughed, drily. “Would I claim it, were I not?”

  “No,” he said, dropping his eyes. “I suppose not. But I need you, Sorley. Who else can tell us so much about Sorham? You promised me you would help.”

  “I will,” I said. “But not as an advisor.”

  “Then how?”

  “Ruar,” Bhradaín said, “do not demand an answer just now. We will think about it, all of us. Sorley and I are going to discuss music for a while.” His voice changed, becoming conversational, casual. “You might think about what you say to your cousins, Ruar. Especially Oisín. The Teannasach is not required to share everything he knows about the men he leads.”

  I followed Bhradaín to his music room, ladhar in one hand and ale in the other.

  “You are how old, Sorley?” the scáeli asked once we were alone.

  “Twenty-five.”

  “And your years with Dagney did not begin until you were eighteen?” I nodded. “Remarkable. Who taught you, at Gundarstorp?”

  “My mother,” I said. “Until I was fourteen, when she died. After that, no one, really, although visiting scáeli’en gave me lessons occasionally.”

  “You must sing that danta at your exam, and exactly as you did now, regardless of tradition,” Bhradaín s
aid. “Your singing voice is only adequate, as I am sure you know, but your skill in composition and verse more than makes up for it. In my opinion, at least.”

  His opinion was worth a great deal. “Will you be an examiner?”

  “If the Lady Dagney so decides,” he said. A neutral answer. I shouldn’t have asked, and he was gently reminding me of it. “You’re right, I am afraid: you cannot be Ruar’s advisor, not officially.”

  “I would be a flint against which the spark of rebellion could be struck.”

  “Poetically put.” Bhradaín folded his arms, sitting back. “But Ruar is right too: we need your links to Sorham. An unofficial advisor, then?”

  “If he still wants me.”

  “I doubt he will care whom you choose to bed.”

  “Liam does,” I said bluntly. “Do his nephews share his revulsion?”

  “Daoíre judges the deeds, not the man. Oisín? He is Ti’ach educated; he’ll have been given a wider view. But I am unsure of his personal beliefs.”

  I drained my ale. “I would have to visit often. Toscaire would be a good cover for that.”

  Bhradaín raised both eyebrows. “You would defer your scáeli’s oath?”

  “Perhaps. Are Ruar and his advisors planning ways to retake Sorham without war?”

  “They are,” he said evenly.

  “For that, I will defer joining the scáeli’en.” I had promised Ruar. He was my Teannasach, if not yet in full.

  “You want your lands back.”

  “No. I’ll never have an heir of my body to leave them to. My brother’s son or daughter will inherit, assuming he is still alive, or those of the half-brother I have never met. But I would like the freedom to visit, and to talk to my brothers, and to know the child who will become Gundarstorp’s Harr or Härra.” Homesickness swept through me, a wave of longing: cianalas, in my tongue. I concentrated on the man in front of me. “It will always be my home, even if I never live there again.”

  “A compromise,” he said. “Some might say a half-measure.”