Grog II: Book 2 of the Ebon Blades

by RW Krpoun

  “I’m still in the first chapter, but it is much easier to read than my history book,” I admitted. Actually, it was getting rather interesting: the story was told by a young man who, after securing an education, had signed on to serve on a sailing ship as he was having trouble with his eyes, and he hoped that time at sea would cure him.

  “Would you like to mhm borrow a novel, Burk?” Pieter asked, not looking up from drilling a hole in a piece of wood with a brace and bitt.

  “After I finish the manual,” Burk said a bit stiffly after a moment.

  “This novel is much easier to read than the manual,” I noted. “After I finish it, I will start the manual again, and get more out of it because I will be reading better.”

  “That is sensible,” Burk said slowly.

  “Manuals tend to be rather dry.”

  “What do you mean?” Burk asked.

  “Dry as in eating stale bread. You can eat stale bread, mhm of course, but it is dull work.”

  “True.”

  Pieter set aside his brace and bitt to produce a book from his robes. “Here. It is a story about a young man who mhm joins the Legions for adventure, only to find an entirely different mhm sort of life. Written by a retired centurion.”

  “That would seem to be sensible.”

  “What are you making?” I asked.

  “A cradle for Rose. A child her age mhm needs a cradle.”

  I started to reply but caught myself: Pieter had had a family. “What will you use for nails? We only have horseshoe nails.”

  “I dislike nails; far better to cut to mhm fit and use pegs.”

  By noon the next day the trees were just a green wall to the south, and we were marching out across a vast plain covered in knee-high yellow grass. We frequently encountered big herds of cows with long, shaggy hair and horns that stood out sharply from the sides of their heads.

  Hatcher was back on my shoulders and chattering about a cousin’s marriage prospects because Provine Sael was carrying Rose, who seemed to be a bit fretful.

  “I can’t believe we’re heading this deep into the north with an infant,” Hunter observed, dropping back so he could talk to Hatcher.

  “It’s summer,” Hatcher shrugged. “We won’t be up here that long.”

  “We can but hope.”

  “Getting nervous, Hunter?”

  “Concerned is a better word. This is going a bit too well.”

  “Tell that to Rose’s people.”

  “You know what I mean. Normally we couldn’t have cleared the tree line without a full Legion as an escort.”

  “The Imperial Army can’t risk diverting troops for a counter-invasion, and the Dusmen know it. Especially since the Empire doesn’t know what the aura means.”

  “Logic isn’t always the best measure when dealing with the Dusmen, or the arcane, and in this case we have both.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “We have the incursion that reached Merrywine, which in the light of the invasion is completely illogical. Then we have the Dusmen’s all-out invasion being launched later in the campaigning season than would seem sensible.”

  “The Dusmen have a fierce reputation, but not one as being infallible. They may have just made mistakes.”

  “Not impossible, but when these questionable points involve bloodshed and the seasons, I become uneasy.” Hunter took a swig from his flask.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Elder Ones put great stock in blood sacrifices, and in the positions of the stars. It makes me wonder if the time of year was not a Dusman error, but rather part of a larger plan.”

  Hatcher drummed on my head for a moment. “You mean like the summer solstice?”

  “Not that specifically, but in that general direction, yes. The Dusmen know exactly how the Empire will react: trade ground for time to bring up more troops, fight on ground of their own choosing, and bleed the Dusmen at every barrier. Set-piece battles with planned withdrawals will strengthen the Legions by building morale and experience, while the Ukar and Tulg will get frustrated and unhappy.”

  “So you think that the Dusmen are playing the Empire’s game because it is bringing them to a better end?”

  “Something along those lines.”

  “Huh.” She drummed some more. “You think the Imperial command has thought of this?”

  “I’m sure they have, but their options are limited. All they can do is stick with their plan and hope that they throw the Dusmen’s timeline off.”

  “Look, I get what you are saying,” Hatcher said slowly. “But that doesn’t explain the late start; if they invaded as soon as the ground was dry enough that would mean they had more time to reach the right date, right?”

  “It would,” Hunter nodded. “If logic ruled the Arts, which is not always the case. The problem is that the Dusmen have no Arts of their own; instead, their arcane works are conducted by vassals and renegades. Who knows what they found up here in the far north?”

  “Is there anything special about the far north?”

  “Other than that it was where the Dusmen came from, not especially. There are rumors of unthawing rivers of ice, dragons, and dead cities which were abandoned long before Men, Niskers, and Dellians came north.”

  Hatcher snickered. “Traveler’s tales.”

  “Possible,” Hunter nodded. “But many have lost their lives trying to see what lies up there,” he gestured northward.

  “Trying to foray through Dusman territory is not an undertaking of the wise, present circumstances excepted.”

  “True.” Hunter tossed off another pull from his flask. “Just my imagination, most likely.”

  We kept moving north, and eventually the line of the trees that marked the south vanished. It was easy walking, we ate fresh beef steak every night, and there was no forest, so I was reasonably content. There were very few streams or creeks, but every day or two Torl led us to a small lake or big pond, so we had no issues with water. There were big flocks of ducks on the water, and the lakes or ponds were fairly round and surrounded with tufted reeds whose tops reached well above my head.

  “I don’t mind these grasslands,” Burk noted on our third day on the plains. “But it seems like we’re just standing still.”

  “It doesn’t change much,” I agreed. “But I’ll take it over a forest any time.”

  “That’s true. But the one thing a forest has in its favor is wood; I’m still not sure about cooking over a fire made of dried cow poop.”

  “I try not to think too much about that.”

  He nodded. “I’m not sure that cows with long hair are proper. The cows we saw down south were neatly groomed.”

  “They were. And these are ill-behaved: get too close to a bunch and a couple come over and start pawing the ground and waving their horns. The cows down south understand their place.”

  “You know, Provine Sael took me aside a few days ago and talked to me about changing your life, and if killing ever bothered me. If I had to change my duties, I would like to travel around putting things in order.”

  “There certainly would be no shortage of work: untidy trees, cattle with too much hair…the list is endless.”

  “And look at the sort of behavior we saw at the Concourse: clearly there are areas with a serious lack of Standards. The world needs a lot of fixing.”

  “It does. She asked me about the killing, too. What did you tell her?”

  He shrugged. “What can you say? It’s what we do. It’s like…,” he frowned, thinking. “Like asking Hunter if his Arts gave him nightmares.”

  “I think the idea of killing bothers her, and I think she feels sorry for strangers.”

  Burk thought about that. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. To me, killing a stranger is a lot easier than someone you know. Akel still troubles me sometimes, but the brutes I killed that day? Nothing.”

  “Akel needed killing.” He paused, staring into the distance. “Although I’m glad it wasn’t me.�
��

  “He did need killing, but it was knowing him before that feels strange.”

  “You didn’t really know him, you know; all you knew was the lie he showed you.”

  “Huh.” I thought about that. “Yeah, you’re right.” We walked in silence for a while. “Have you tried the novel yet?”

  “I have. It is a lot more interesting than I thought it would be, and it is easier to read.” He scratched his neck. “In this novel a young Man joins the Legions.”

  “That’s got to be interesting.”

  “It is, but the thing is, he spends a lot of time talking about his family, remembering them, writing letters home.”

  “Yeah, the sailor in my book does the same. Of course, we talk about the barracks a lot.”

  “Yeah.” Burk checked to our flanks and rear. “You ever wonder what it would be like to have a family?”

  “Some. I’ve heard about most of Hatcher’s cousins, and she has a lot of them. I don’t understand how she can keep track of all those people.”

  “Makes me wonder, sometimes.”

  “What, family? We’re brutes, we can’t father children.”

  “Well, of course. But…you ever look at Rose?”

  “Not if I can avoid it. Why?”

  He shrugged, uncomfortable. “Well, someday she is going to be a person.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So, I was just thinking about what it would be like.”

  “To be a baby?”

  “To watch someone grow from a baby to a person. You know, to raise them.”

  I looked at him, but he was keeping his eyes moving, looking for trouble as was his duty. “Are you crazy? You better get your head right.”

  “I was just wondering,” he snapped.

  “We are brutes,” I jabbed a finger at him. “Tuskers. We have to prove our worth every single day. Families and kids and all that aren’t for us, that is the rule.”

  “I know that.”

  I shook my head. “If Master Horne heard you going on about that sort of thing, he would go spare.”

  “Look, I just asked if you ever thought about it. We can think about things,” he snapped. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I thought you had Standards. What sort of Red Guardsman thinks like that?”

  He snarled and shook his head. “Look, we can think about things, all right? I’m reading this novel, and I wonder what it would be like to get a letter from a home, that’s all. To really have a home. Master Horne always hammered about knowing things until they are bone-deep, after all. I was just thinking that it would be nice to do things like we did in Merrywine, you know, like City Watch, and then go home and…well, just go home. To a home.”

  “I’m going to take both novels and use them to beat the scars off Pieter.” I kicked a rock and sent it skittering through the grass. “This reading business is making you soft.”

  “It is not!” he shoved me. “I’m still an Ebon Blade and a High Rate! But I’m free to think about what I want to think about!”

  “You haven’t even finished the book!” I shoved him back. “One more and you’ll be planning what to grow in strips of dirt!”

  Burk dove into me, slamming a shoulder into my midriff; I dropped the javelin I had made a habit of carrying and grabbed him in a headlock in an effort to keep my feet, but we over-balanced and crashed into the grass. In our frequent fights over the years Burk has stuck with the tactic of hitting fast from surprise and trying to get me off my feet, where my height and pugilist training would count for less.

  We rolled through the tall grass, cursing, kicking, and grappling; I tried to unscrew his head from his shoulders while he rained blows on the unarmored portions of my anatomy. Fighting on the ground and not actually trying to kill each other, we were fairly evenly matched, and such struggles usually dragged on until we were both exhausted and battered, but on this occasion someone started hammering at us indiscriminately before we were too far into it.

  I took a good crack across my bare scalp, but I was getting the upper hand because my back baldric made it extremely difficult for Burk to roll me. It wasn’t until a small, soft body crashed on top of us that it sank in that there was a third party intervening in this fight.

  Still gripping Burk’s head, I realized that in our thrashing we had knocked Provine Sael’s legs out from under her, dumping her atop our fray. I immediately let go of Burk and tried to shove him away, but he had a death grip on a buckle of my breast-and back, and belted me a good one above my right eye, only to half-squash the Dellian between us.

  Belatedly realizing what was going on, Burk shoved me and rolled away, scrambling to his feet as I struggled to disentangle myself from Provine Sael, who was likewise, and unhelpfully, trying to regain her feet, at one point planting her hand on my face.

  When I finally got back on my feet I saw Hatcher literally rolling in the grass as she howled with laughter. Hunter stood nearby, grinning, and Pieter, holding Rose, might have been smiling, but his scars made it impossible to be sure.

  Provine Sael snatched up her staff from the grass and pulled her clothing into order, knocking off dirt and stalks of grass. “Hatcher, if you do not stop this instant...” she snapped in a voice like ice sliding across a hot skillet.

  Panting and red-faced, Hatcher came to rest on her belly, her kerchief askew. “Oh, man,” she wheezed. “When you started beating them with your staff…and then fell…” she dissolved into helpless giggles.

  Provine Sael gave her a glare that was worthy of Master Horne’s best, and then turned that glare onto me and Burk. “What in blazes possessed you two?”

  I shrugged as I struggled to get my baldric back into position, and Burk muttered that he didn’t know.

  “Did you not hear me shouting at you to stop?”

  “No, mistress,” I muttered, and Burk shook his head, knocking dust and grass from his legs.

  “What is wrong with you two?”

  “Nothing, mistress,” I muttered and Burk nodded.

  “Why were you two fighting?”

  I shrugged. “We fight sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  “Dunno.”

  “There must be a reason.”

  “We just fight,” Burk found his morning star and stuck it into his belt, which made me realize I had lost my axe.

  “We’ve been doing it for years,” I added, trying to see where my axe had ended up. We had been fighting longer than I had initially realized: we were a good twenty yards from the path the cart’s wheels had made through the grass.

  Hatcher managed to climb to her feet, wiping away tears. “We were just walking along watching the grass…and then we look back and you two start shoving…and then trying to kill each other.” She pulled her kerchief free and swabbed her face. “And Provine Sael runs back and starts yelling at you…and you guys keep fighting.” She sucked in a deep breath and re-tied her kerchief. “And then she lost her temper and starts beating you two…” she dissolved into giggles.

  “Thank you,” Provine Sael snapped. “For that timely recap.”

  “Let them be,” Hunter chuckled and shook his head. “Brothers fight from time to time. It’s natural.”

  Provine Sael glared at him for a long moment, then snorted in an unladylike fashion and stomped off. “Pieter, get the cart moving.”

  We walked in silence for about an hour before Burk spoke. “Maybe we are like brothers.”

  “In the novel I’m reading, reference is made to such things,” I nodded. “We grew up together, after all. Our age block was sort of like a family.”

  “And now they’re all dead,” Burk agreed. “Except for us, the best of the best.”

  “We have proven ourselves,” I shrugged. “Master Horne is pleased with our performance.”

  “Does that make him sort of our father?”

  I considered that. “It could be,” I said slowly, thinking hard. “He yelled a lot, and I think that is a thing good fathers do. It certa
inly is good leadership, and I expect that a father has to be a good leader to do his job right.”

  “It makes sense: if you didn’t yell, how would a child know what is proper?” He rubbed his chin. “But what would a mother do?”

  “Criticize your marriage prospects and choices of clothing and occupation,” I explained. “I got that from listening to Hatcher. Of course, that would be in the later years. I’m not sure what they do in the early years. Feed and bathe, probably. That’s what Hatcher and Provine Sael do with Rose.”

  “And talk to her like she’s an idiot,” Burk shook his head. “That’s just slackness. You should start on vital topics on day one, if you ask me. The kid has nothing else to do but lay around and listen, so you should begin briefing immediately.”

  “That makes sense,” I nodded. “There ought to be some sort of exercise to speed up the use of their limbs, too. You can’t just wait for a baby to figure it out on its own; that’s not parenting at all, if you ask me.”

  “I wonder if, when all this is over, we could go back home and serve as trainers for Master Horne; we’ve certainly got a lot of varied experience to bring to bear, besides being High Rates,” Burk mused.

  “I would like that,” I said after thinking on it. “It would be good to share what we have learned with a new generation.”

  Two days later we were trudging north across the endless plain when Torl appeared out of the grass a hundred paces ahead of us.

  “That gets very old,” Hatcher noted; she was riding on my shoulders while Provine Sael carried Rose, who had made no progress towards independence in our days of travel. “Him popping out of the scenery.”

  “He’s further away than he was in the forest,” I noted.

  “What’s that?” Pieter hurried up to us.

  “What?”

  The scarred man, his eyelids now pink, smooth, and free of the scar tissue, pointed ahead and to our right. “There.”

  “Looks like…I dunno, it’s a long way away.” Hatcher said.

  “I think it is moving. A man-sized mhm creature.” Pieter had stopped to point a fist at the dot, his thumb held upright.

  “Pieter! Come take Rose,” Provine Sael called, and Hatcher neatly flipped to the ground and trotted to the Dellian’s side.