Still, Othmann scoffed angrily. “The men are like enough to riot if you go this route, Kyler. I do not say it lightly. But you know as well as I that all men have their limits, and they are nearly there.”
“So it is, marshall, so it is. But of what men do you speak? Our soldiers or their betters?”
“Easy, sers,” Pordill cautioned, trying to put himself between the pair. “There is no need to let hot heads—”
Othmann ignored him. “The hands move where the head leads. All are one in this.”
“Are you certain? I have heard the moans of the men, but I have heard none of this rabble-rousing. Though I have heard of certain whispers between our goodly nobles. I hear any number of them have been attending your tent, of late, as point of fact. A more distrusting man might ponder what you were sharing that you did not see fit to tell your commander.”
Othmann tightened at that, while beside him the Black Sheep murmured “Assal be good.” Othmann waved off the accusation with a derogatory puff of air. “Silk and lies. My men come to me with questions as to our next moves. I answer them, and in turn answer to you. Would you have every soul mucking about your flaps in the middle of the night?”
This was getting out of hand. “Should I?” Berric nodded toward the trailing guardsmen, who seemed as yet unperturbed by the display. Given the rumbles among the captains, though, wise men might have begun to fear another Falk. At least none of these were armed.
“Leave it. They’re not such great fools as that.” Even as he said it, Rurik cast another apprehensive glance to the guardsmen all the same. He did not quite believe it himself.
Across the yard, Tessel frowned. “Of course. I meant no insinuation, marshall. Yet for all that, and since you seem so set upon laundering our dirty airs this day, I might also ask as to why so many of these same men are bandying letters through my aide-de-camp’s own brother. It was my understanding all letters were to go through Boderoy, but these always go to your tent before they reach the birds. Might you speak on that? I had no notions the two of you were so close.”
The marshall’s gaze leveled on Rurik, and he swallowed, shrinking before it. Poncy scum, he thought, but as much as he hated Othmann, that was one soul he dared not cross. He was high nobility, and a general at that, and for all the ill will men slung at his character, none besmirched his ferocity with a blade. It was Tajiman steel, they said, and even in the poorest hands it severed heads like a knife to butter. And Othmann’s hand was like a guiding wind. Rurik felt its flutter on his neck contained even within the darkness of the man’s look.
“Ser Ivon was a confidante of His Majesty, and is a confidante of my own, Kyler. His friendships can be helped no more than his unfortunate relations to certain less-than-honored kin.”
“Or their arrogant toadies,” the soldier-priest muttered.
Tessel fixed his steely gaze on the priest, but addressed his words to Othmann. “Of course. Far be it from me to besmirch the man. I had hoped he might join us to speak on the matter himself.” Rurik swallowed as the man’s searching gaze swung his way. “Rurik?” All other eyes quickly followed.
Rurik fidgeted. When he had managed to slip in without a fuss, he had dared to hope he might escape unscathed. He might have known better. The meeting with his brother had, in truth, not gone well. He had met Ivon at his tent, under the scrutiny of a dozen knights and men-at-arms, all spoiling for a fight.
Their words had been mercifully brief. Rurik had delivered the summons and asked, exactly as he had been told to, after the nature of Ivon’s recent whispers.
“Whispers? You make it sound as if I skulk through the streets like a back-alley blade.”
“Nevertheless, I would know what it is the nobles have been sharing, Ivon. We are to be one front. Not many, squabbling.”
Ivon had laughed at that, openly and coldly. “You have no authority to question a nobleman.”
“On Lord Tessel’s authority, I do.”
“A bastard’s authority, executed by an exile. It’s worth less than the dirt I piss on. Get out, and take your summons with you. I think we have played your master’s game long enough. If you must tell him something, tell him thus: the noble lords that constitute this army are in agreement. It is time we headed home. To remain is murder and disobedience.”
Rurik had stood there, riveted as much by shock as anger. The wheels turned in his head and he reeled for something, anything to hit back at his brother with, but there was nothing. Traitor, he felt his own mind hiss. He thought of the kindness his brother had shown him since Tessel took him under his wing, and he realized it had all been a farce. Respect? There was none of it there. Not in front of other men. Only anger, though how much of it was for his own foul soul he could not say.
Ivon’s guards had escorted him out, while Ivon remained behind.
Some things were beyond even blood. “The nobles and their houses are restless, ser. They wish to return home,” Rurik spoke quickly to the assembled, leaving out his brother’s colorful additions.
“As is their right, by Assal!” Othmann beamed. It was like watching a ferret gloat over a silver coin.
“Is this true?” Tessel twisted a hard gaze on Pordill.
The baron consented with a heavy sigh. “It is. I could not give names of all that share the opinion, but I would say the majority of us wish for home. Many have been from their lands for more than a year, and when news of your letter went about, the rest—well, in the wake of His Majesty…”
Tessel dismissed him wordlessly, turning back to Rurik. “You will tell your brother, and these dissenters, precisely what I’ve told these men here. This army will march. I appreciate their concerns, but they were beckoned here for a purpose.”
“Who are you to refuse Imperial decree?” Othmann cut in once more.
Tessel grimaced. “Refuse? I follow Imperial decree. From the lips of the Emperor himself. Twenty thousand men, and the lot of you quail at a bit of parchment from a man yet uncrowned?”
“Watch your tongue, ser,” Othmann snarled. “That is the heir you speak of.”
“An heir that has never seen his country. An heir raised in the excesses of—” Tessel bit himself off there, refusing to let Othmann goad him into a fight. All present knew his feelings on the Church, and the Orthodox Visaj. Through gritted teeth, he continued, seething, “When a man speaks with Imperial authority again, I will listen. Not before.” Then he strode forward, toward Rurik and his other gathered captains. “And what of you all? Do you quail as well? Do you lose heart in your emperor’s wishes?”
“Never, ser,” one man answered.
“Matthias!” another shouted.
The rest seemed to share the opinion, nodding and praising and offering assent. One even asked for the courtesy of rooting out the dissenters. Though Tessel shook his head at that, it seemed to strike some spark in his eye all the same, and he twisted sharply back to the nobles. “It seems we reach an impasse, marshall. Some say yes, some say no. And I say yes. Tell your men to prepare for march.” He held the marshall’s gaze a moment longer, then started to turn away.
Othmann wouldn’t let it go. “I warn you, Kyler, as friend and councilor, that these men are your commanders. The heads that guide the limbs. If you isolate them, you set this army in danger of mutiny. You know as I do we follow you for the Emperor’s affections toward you—but I pray you remember he is dead, and without those affections, there is little shielding you.”
A specter of a far greater darkness crossed Tessel’s eyes in that moment. His was not a face accustomed to rage. Rurik cringed. He realized then how thin the ground was that the marshall walked. “Is that right,” Tessel asked, softly. “And have they offered any names?”
“I pray you tread careful, lord,” Vogel rumbled.
Othmann hesitated, seemingly catching a hint of his own peril. “Many. They all have their opinions on whom might best serve.” He looked to Baron Pordill for support, but there was nothing there for him.
&
nbsp; At that, Tessel actually smiled. “I’m sure, marshall.” His eyes turned on Rurik, purposefully softening. But even in the quiet breaths that followed, Rurik felt the lingering touch of the shade, and he could not help but wonder what else might lurk beneath the image of the man. Somewhere in the space between masks, humanity lurked.
“Unfortunately you fail to realize one very important thing. Perilous as you paint the mood here, what do you think happens when the armed masses behold the destruction of their voice?” Tessel shook his head, growing older for the effort. The marshall’s frown thinned into blackness. “A hundred voices rise to take its place, but twenty thousand more would stand to drown them in noise.”
Sleep would not come to Rurik that night. When he closed his eyes, the screams followed, and all was noise and blood. Men died in the gloom between—shapeless masses, armed and armored, falling by the thousands through a ring of opaque twilight. The noise of which Tessel spoke rang in his ears and drowned the voice of all.
They fell on one another in the darkness. He feared it in waking, and it would brook him no rest.
Outside, stars rained through the night sky. He drew aside the canvas flap of the window for a better look. They blazed, a dozen, two dozen, three dozen tiny fires blurring the luminescent figure of Havreth, one of the twin moons. None fell. They merely streamed across the sky and disappeared beyond the walls. Other men would wish on them, as was the custom. The star rains were a sporadic thing, as old as time itself, lighting a night here and there every few years. The last time Rurik had seen them he was on the road, huddled beneath the celestial flames and the dewy grass, with a woman coiled beside him and friends all around him and a fire burning itself to embers at their feet. There were no screams, then. Merely the endless journey.
There is no one. No one but you, and them, and all the other corpses in the field. You are alone. No one watches. No one waits. He rubbed his eyes and tipped his head against a knee. He does not see you. He is dead and gone and you are alone. Yet he could not convince himself, so he surrendered to this as well.
Bundling some of the hay beneath him into a ball, he pressed it up against the wall and scrunched tighter into the corner. Around him, four other men slept in the blissful throes of dreamlessness. One murmured, smiled, and rolled away with a grunt. Or the dreams of the lucky.
He folded, grinding his nails against his skull and praying for the dawn. After hours lost to tossing and twisting off the itchy woolen sheet, Rurik surrendered to his insomnia. Prayers came and went from mind without ever being uttered. He looked at the ceiling of the old hut, ignoring the nasally rasps of snores around him, and tried to form a picture of Assal in his mind. All he ever saw were boards. There was no face in them. Not even the shape of one. A curse sputtered from his lips and he tried to brace the impending emptiness with a renewed dedication to the atheistic. A dull coin taunted him with the ache and he could feel it weighing him down.
He let the flap fall flat again and repeated the ritual of these long nights. They had been happy. All of them but he. So he, in his childishness, had naturally seen it stricken away, his own foolish sense of what happiness needed to be drifting further all the while.
He drew the coin from the pocket of his tunic. It was a rusted thing, completely unremarkable in every way. That did not keep him from cupping it in his hand and whispering his heart into its depths.
Why? A soothing sort of cave whisper. He knew no one could hear him. A woman had promised him different, but the memory of her had grown as dim as the visage of the coin itself. If she even lived, what could remain?
Even in the midst of war, they draw rank and draw steel, thinking only of the blood and the name and the glitter of it all. Pointless. Don’t they see? They would kill us all. Ivon and all the rest like him. Arrogant. Thoughtless hate.
It was something to vent his frustration on. A focus. And Usuri knew the pain. She knew horror. If only he could have helped her, too, but—as in all things, he was ever too late.
Yet I’m no better than the mud on their boots. They look at me and through me and they just laugh. They look at Tessel, but all they see is danger. Blood. They don’t care what his blood says. They’ll stab him down in the street and let it run, and they’ll stab me down too just for standing at his side. Blood is all that ever matters. Not words. Not intent.
But the chaos of his thoughts coalesced upon a single note. Why did he have to hide that letter? It had gnawed at him all day and still he had no answer. Such things would always out.
He folded his legs inward, cradling against them the way he used to as a child. There were no worries then—not like now, anyways. As long as he listened to his tutors and he listened to his father and he kept all his nonsense quiet, he could run where he would and play as he would. He could wander the streets of Verdan, tall and proud and unafraid, and call to Essa through the trees. Children would flock and play between the shadows of the setting sun.
And they would laugh. He and Essa and all the rest. They would eventually go away. But her image remained. It still remained, even if she didn’t want it.
How? How can I make her see?
Silence answered, cold and uninvited. He rubbed his thumb against the faded profile of the coin and thought of another girl, another pain, another fire in the gut. Iñigo, the old pagan, stood framed against a stake, eyes closed to the light. It burned and burned and stole them both away. Rurik shook his head. He still couldn’t believe the old man was dead. In his mind he formed the looks the old man shared with his daughter. He focused on the smile, on the laughter of a joke beside the fireplace, and the faces slowly came into focus.
She disappeared into the darkness of his wake. Then the world went to hell. All Rurik had left to remember her by was the coin.
Usuri? he asked the cold, ignoring the snort of a sleeping soldier’s answer. Where did you go? It’s all gone wrong. So very wrong. The coin thrummed against his fingers. A chill blossomed through him with the whistle of the wind. She had said she would answer, but the coin never answered. It was only his voice. His fears.
In the darkness of the night, it was not enough.
* *
Though the night had been lit with the falling fires, dawn was a gray affair. Sky was nothing more than a notion between clouds, their dark canopy rolling taut above the sodden earth. It was the sort of morning that soaked the clothes without ever spilling a drop. It sank through the sink and settled deep in the bones. Even the plains felt small, boxed in by boundless walls.
For hours of the aurora light, Roswitte hunched against the damp and waited. Nothing stirred. No game. No scouts. Even the traps lay bare. All that walked the brush was a hunter and her unused bow. She returned empty-handed, as frustrated with herself as with the wildlife.
There was nothing like a good hunt to bring the self together again. Likewise, there was nothing so infuriating as the waste of that precious time.
The camp was just beginning its rounds when she strode behind the cordon. She ignored the polite nods of the guardsmen, eyes glued to the road ahead.
A well sat at the outskirts of the town. Studni, the townsfolk called it. Or stuzni. Something like that. While Roswitte was aware their language shared many similarities with the Corva tongue that was the standard of the Empire, the intricacies of the Effisian language were lost on her, and what’s more, they infuriated her. Its thick, guttural nature wrapped around the tongue and left it hissing in displeasure, and she had long since given up trying. The well was what she sought, whatever the name.
A handful of other men clustered around the hole in the earth, but they paid her no heed. One pulled a drink with an exaggerated gasp, then grunted off a bucket to her as she held a hand for the pleasure. She let it fall back into the deep with little care, then pulled the full bucket up into the light again. She tipped her head back to savor the taste of the cool water on her dry throat. Then she plunged face and hands alike into the chill and savored the tiny bites it scattered across he
r skin.
When she pulled back into the world, she nearly started at the sight of the knight staring down at her. Mere paces separated them, the man’s fingers at easy rest on the hilt of a sheathed sword. The eyes were warm, even if the rest bespoke of violence. He smiled at her. She ignored him in turn.
Drawing back her hair with one hand, Roswitte lowered the bucket again with the other, pulling water for her return to Ivon. Still, the knight waited patiently, making a seat of the well’s stones.
On the day Roswitte rode into the war, she had thought herself removed from Ser Ensil the dust knight and the rest of his sellswords. In the days since, however, the man had made a habit of his presence. He and his company had been staked beside this well, and he always came out to greet her as a consequence. Always he smiled, and whispered good tidings, possessed of a grin that had little reason to be. He ate as poorly as the rest of them, now. The difference was: he seemed impervious to the infection of defeatism that seemed to accompany it in everyone else.
“Good morn, ranger,” the man eventually called. The jovial lilt to his voice set her hairs on edge, involuntary though she knew it was.
“Good morn,” she called in turn.
Would that she could leave it at that. He asked after the woods, oblivious to her torment. A man should have the sense to know an empty haul when he sees one. She looked at him crossly and continued to raise the pail. When it was safe in hand, she began to unwind the rope that bound it to the well. Ensil leaned forward, heedless. “Do your charges keep the peace so well?”
She hefted the pail onto her hip and started off. Ensil rose to follow her. “They sleep,” she answered at length, anxious to be rid of him. “As most should ‘bout these early hours.” She kept her eyes to the path ahead.
At Faith's End Page 12