by Chris Bunch
My fellow passengers were mostly of the monied class, and so I kept to myself. A few times men offered to buy me a drink, and I accepted gladly, since I’d made a private arrangement with the barmen that no matter what I ordered I’d be served a glass of recently boiled water, with that wonderful rarity ice, and a twist of lime, which looked for all the world like some lethal concoction of distilled prune pits or some such.
I made no attempt to make friends, since I was more interested in what I was seeing than in conversation, and I generally dined alone and early. I also had a great deal of reading to do, having purchased books before I left on the history of Urey, the Border States, and even one thin volume on the Seventeenth Lancers themselves. It was a task I did not like, but I knew it was less onerous than appearing a complete fool when I arrived in Mehul.
I remember walking along the promenade deck and seeing a magician entertain a family. The sage was one of the entertainers the ship’s owners provided, which included minstrels, players, and mimics. The family was young, and wore their best clothes at all times, clothes that were just a trifle out of the current style. I guessed they’d either saved their money for a holiday, or else this passage had been a present from a richer relative. There were four of them: two boys perhaps three and four, their father, who was about my age, and their visibly pregnant mother.
The magician was quite gifted — a fat, jolly man who prattled on while his hands worked wonders. He took a small toy, a tiger, from one of the children, and turned it sequentially into a cat that meowed, a dog that barked, a zebra that whinnied, and then into a full-size tiger, its mouth wide for a roar. Before either of the children had time to be frightened, the roar became a kitten’s meow, the boys laughed, and the magician handed the toy back. The father turned, saw me, and ducked his head in acknowledgment of my superior class.
Embarrassed, I returned the salute and moved on. As I walked back toward the stern I mused about the sense of remove I’d felt watching these people who were living a life I’d never know, one as strange as if they were from one of the other worlds the Wheel surely must touch.
As we went south, the land grew sparser and drier, the cities fewer, and the farms farther apart and scraggly. The people on the banks or in boats were poorer; their clothes were no longer the rainbow hues of the north.
We stopped for supplies at a port that was little more than a long dock and a scatter of buildings. I went ashore for a walk. At the end of the pier squatted a man, the poorest of the poor by his rags. Beside him sat a girl, perhaps nine or ten. Both of their faces held the patient wisdom that poverty gives: There is nothing more the gods can do to me, and the only blessing I shall find is when the Wheel turns. I dug for a coin in my sabertache, although the man had not yet made a beggar’s plea.
“Kind sir,” he said, as his eyes focused, recognizing that another stood before him. “Would you buy my daughter?”
I don’t know why I was surprised, since I’d seen men and women surreptitiously offering their children in Nicias’s tawdry backstreets. But I was.
“No,” I said. “I’m but a soldier. I’d have no place for her.”
“She would be no trouble,” he said, as if I had not spoken. “She is a good girl. She’s never sick. She has most of her teeth. She doesn’t eat much, either. She knows how to sew, and I’m sure you could find someone to show her how to cook.
“She even can be …” and the man let the pause hang, “… good to you. Better as she gets older.”
He elbowed the girl, and she attempted to put on a smile, such as she’d seen one or another of the whores of this byway paint on. But I saw the fear behind it clearly.
Perhaps I should have struck the man, or something. I did not, but dropped a silver coin in the dust near him and hurried back to the Tauter, reminded that Numantia may be a great country, but it was, and is, carrying a horrid burden of despair and poverty.
I wished then, and wish now, that all of us were rich, or at least lacked for nothing. But I suppose such contentment would bore the gods and make them rouse Umar and start over, to make a more fascinating world for their amusement.
As the second week drew to a close, I was weary of traveling, and my bones needed hard exercise. I thought of running up and down the decks, or climbing the teakwork, but thought I probably already behaved enough like Vachan not to need to act more like a caged monkey.
The Latane was now clear, blue, and the land around it green and rich again. We had entered that most blessed of lands, the state of Urey. The river divided again and again, but each branch remained navigable. From atop the third deck I could see, dim in the distance, the mountains that marked the end of the small state, and the beginnings of the Border States. Here is where I would be blooded, and make my name.
We docked, and I saddled my horses and set out through the city on the road that would take me to the Seventeenth Lancers’ home in the garrison city of Mehul.
I’d expected to find a beautiful city, but instead I found a magical place. It was very old, and it had been a summering place for the kings of Numantia once.
Elsewhere in Numantia was heat; here it was cool, a pleasant breeze blowing down from the mountains and stirring the trees of the many parks in the city. The trees themselves were of a type I’d never seen, sixty feet in circumference, with multicolored leaves big enough to use for umbrellas in the gentle rains that fell occasionally.
In the center of the city, rather than a palace or a grim fortress, was a garden, where fountains rose and sang among pillars of black marble, worked with gold, and the water ran laughing down cascades into small pools.
Canals stretched through the city, connecting the district’s many lakes. Huge multistoried buildings, old beyond age, stretched up, their balconies and lattices arabesques of beauty, and flowers growing on their roofs.
There were sidewalk cafés, and I smelled roast duck, spiced fish, chile-drenched corn, and other delights.
The people seemed uniformly cheerful and friendly. While of course there were beggars, they looked as if they’d bathed and been fed within the week, and even pled their cases as if they were respectable men and women working a trade, asking no more than their due.
On the lakes I saw drifting islands of flowers, black-faced swans, and moored houseboats, each with wonderfully carved decorations in many kinds of wood stained in rainbow hues. Behind each of these houseboats, which were almost 100 feet long, was a smaller, canopied craft fitted with cushions, perfect for a lazy idyll on a warm day like this. This, I thought a bit wistfully, would be a perfect place for a lover and a long holiday.
I rode on into the countryside. The land was very green, rolling farmland, broken by forests and lakes, each inviting the fisherman, boatman, or swimmer.
It was said that all men have two homes — their own and Urey — and I knew it was true. What that province is now is yet another example of the doom the Emperor Tenedos — and, I must admit, myself — brought to our country. Mourn, Numantians, the glory that was Urey and is no more.
But that day I swear even the dust Lucan’s heels kicked up smelled sweeter than any other.
I understood why Urey, although under the protectorate of Numantia, was also claimed by the neighboring province of Kallio and even, along with the Border States farther south, by Maisir, although at the time no one thought they meant their assertion to be taken seriously.
I rode on, toward Mehul. If Renan is one point of an equalsided triangle and Sulem Pass is another, then the third point, to the west, is Mehul. It guards not only Sulem Pass, but another fearsome area, the Urshi Highlands, as well. They’re also part of the Border States, but the legend says the men who live there are those who are too fierce for their brothers in the rest of Kait, who keep the same customs and speak much the same language, to tolerate. Certainly they’ve caused the army and the people of Urey as much grief over the years as any raiders who boil out of Sulem Pass. This I would learn well within a few weeks.
I
camped that night beside a stream, and stretched out my bedroll under the stars, listening to, far in the distance, the belling of a maned deer as I drifted away.
The next day, I rode into Mehul. The town is a fairly typical border settlement, with perhaps three or four thousand people, most of them working directly or indirectly to support the Lancers.
Their camp is five minutes’ walk beyond the town. It’s been there for generations, time enough for the saplings planted in the dim hope the regiment might be there long enough to cut them for kindling to grow into great plane trees that give welcome shade during the Time of Heat. The barracks are of stone, with wooden interiors and tile roofs that shed heat and let the water run off freely during the Time of Rains.
The grounds are perfectly kept, from green lawns to seasonal flowers, which might be expected when you realize there are several hundred men who are only a lance-major’s frown away from being ordered to trim the grass with nail-clippers.
There are, or were anyway, around 700 lances in the regiment, assigned to six troops and headquarters. The troops were Sambar, which is for scouting; Lion; Leopard; Cheetah; Tiger; and Sun Bear, which rides in support of the four combat troops. Each troop contains four columns of twenty-five, which are numbered and always referred to by the ordinal or it’s time to buy the mess a round.
I rode in, reported to the regimental adjutant, and was assigned to Three Column, Cheetah Troop.
The next few days blurred past in a haze of happiness, as I was given necessary weapons, uniforms, the Spell of Understanding for the local languages, equipment, and met my fellow officers, and most important of all, the men of my column. I can still name them all, even the ones who did not choose to follow me later as members of my household guard when I rode with the emperor.
They also brought the only fear I had: fear that I’d somehow fail them and myself, and bring needless deaths. Fortunately, my father had told me every one of the stages I’d go through in my first command, and had warned me to leave well enough alone, admonishing, “Do not start fiddling with your column like a spinster who constantly arranges her sitting room and is never satisfied,” and instructing me, “At the beginning, be no more than a presence to your men, and a pupil to your warrants.” I tried to obey him.
I also knew full well that I was the youngest, newest member of the mess, and so kept well into the shadows, staying silent unless spoken to, and then making my answers as brief as possible.
Some of the other junior legates chaffed me, trying to find a weakness. I responded in kind, but stayed a bit remote, practicing another of my father’s preachings, the one that said the cheery man who first befriends you in a new post will borrow money, steal your gear, and finally abandon you in battle. Friendship isn’t a spring flower, he went on, but grows like an oak. He warned me there were of course exceptions, just as there are, he added, in love.
Two months passed, and I swear I grew happier with each day. Then came the pinnacle: I was ordered to take my column out to a village not far distant that had been hit by raiders from the Highlands and, in Domina Herstal’s words, “put whatever’s right back in its slot, and deal with whatever’s wrong as you see fit.”
Some might gasp at a man in his fifties being stupid enough to assign the task of warden, judge, and possible executioner to a boy just short of his twentieth birthday, but Herstal was a long spear-cast from being a fool. He’d told off Cheetah Troop’s troop guide, a bearded man named Bikaner who’d been with the regiment for twenty years, and, I found later, a warrant who’d broken in more than a dozen fresh legates, to accompany me. My lance-majors had nearly as much experience, and the column was liberally salted with long-service lances. There were, in fact, only two recruits holding the rank of horseman. With twenty-five men such as these, I would have had to be a complete moron to fail.
I was also given, since the raiders came from across the border, a renegade tribesman named Ysaye we used for a scout. I thought him a complete scoundrel, and Troop Guide Bikaner cheerfully assured me I was correct, but he was inexorably loyal to the regiment, if for no other reason than that he’d been named outlaw in his native Highlands and had also committed murder here in Urey. We were his last and only safety, the troop guide said, “ ‘less he c’n figger somethin’ else, an’ then he’ll turn on us like he did ever’one else.”
We rode to the village, and set up a tribunal in the square. The situation was simple — or so it appeared at first.
The raider was an Urshi chieftain and reputed sorcerer who called himself the Wolf of Ghazi. He’d hit the village near dawn, killed two herdsmen, gravely wounded another, and stolen seven bullocks. But this was not the main plaint of the villagers. He had also broken down the doors of a local merchant, beaten and robbed him, and stolen his only daughter.
Through the weepings and wailings of his family, I asked for what purpose. The babble became worse — the Wolf would either take her to wife, make her a common whore for his men, or, and this was the consensus by volume, sacrifice her in some terrible ceremony, for, as the merchant said, “she was a virgin, blessed by the gods, the favorite of us all.” I asked how this bandit had known which house to break into, and was informed no doubt he’d seen this beautiful flower of Urey, this peerless wonder of young womanhood, this pearl of beauty, when he’d traded in the village.
I was about to ask why the villagers were so foolish as to let a bandit window-shop for what he needs, especially when trade with the Border States was illegal save on certain days clearly specified by the government. But Troop Guide Bikaner shook his head slightly, and I said nothing. Later he told me all of the border towns trade regularly with their enemies, and not infrequently intermarry, which, he said, “makes enforcin’ th’ law interestin’ at times, not knowin’ whether you’re steppin’ into th’ middle of a feud or not.”
We must ride out immediately to save this merchant’s daughter, whose name was Tigrinya, before she was sacrificed to some dark demon, and bring the Wolf to bay, not forgetting, the village chief reminded us, payment not only for the bullocks, which we should also return if possible, but for the deaths and sore injury of his man.
So I rode across a border on my first military campaign — twenty-seven men after a ragamuffin bandit and the peasant girl he’d kidnapped.
Ysaye knew where the Wolf’s lair would be: no more than three leagues from the border, just north of the village he came from and claimed lordship over.
We followed a track into the hills, and twice saw cattle droppings not two days old — we were on the right path. I felt very confident, very sure that we would destroy this man and I’d win great honor.
The lance riding point shouted a warning, and I saw three men ahead, just where the truck entered a narrow defile. They screamed defiance, and lobbed arrows at us that fell well short.
Now we had them! I was about to call for the charge, and Troop Guide Bikaner said, “Sir!” There was something imperative in his tone, and so I held back, although anger touched me — battle is no time for a conference.
“Beggin’ th’ legate’s pardon, but it’s not strange for th’ tribesmen t’ suck so’jers in, sendin’ a few out t’challenge, with th’ main body lyin’ in ambush.”
As he spoke, my confidence, my bravado, vanished, and I cursed, knowing Bikaner was right, and that in addition the Wolf had sent a spell out, seeking a fool who’d allow it a home in his mind and make him bloodthirsty and foolhardy.
“Column … halt!” I snapped. “Dismount! Troop Guide Bikaner, I want four men on foot to go forward as flankers atop those rocks. Five archers halfway to that pass to support them. Make sure they aren’t waiting for us on the other side.”
As my scouts went out, moving like cautious lizards from shelter to shelter, I heard the clatter of horses’ hooves from beyond.
“We’ve sprung it,” Bikaner announced. “There’ll be no one waitin’ now.”
But I’d learned my lesson. There could be a double bluff being played
, and so had the men proceed. There was a small pocket beyond the narrow canyon, perfect to tether horses in while their riders waited for twenty-five or so idiots to stumble into the trap, a pocket with fresh, steaming horseapples on the ground. But the Wolf’s riders had broken off.
“That’s th’ way a th’ Men a th’ Hills,” Lance-Major Wace said. “They’ll on’y fight y’ t’yer back, ne’er t’yer face.”
I guessed he thought there was something dishonorable about a handful of poorly trained men not willing to stand up to twenty-seven regulars. I thought anyone who’d fight as he wanted was not only foolish, but destined for a short life as well.
We went on, farther into the mountains, but encountered no other trap.
We rounded a bend, where the track ran halfway up a low hill, with tall, barren mountains on either side, and saw the stronghold of the Wolf of Ghazi.
It was a round tower, perhaps fifty feet high and a bit more in diameter, that’d been laboriously built with flat stones piled atop each other, and crudely mortared with clay from the near-by stream. There were firing slits in the walls, and I counted three floors, and a deck with raised stonework for archers to fight from. The upper floor’s slits were wider, almost windows.
It wasn’t much of a castle — but then, it didn’t need to be to stop us.
There were men atop the tower, and suddenly arrows rained out. They fell well short, but I prudently ordered my men to withdraw, leave their horses with handlers, and come forward prepared for battle.
Before they could, a tall, bearded man stood up on top of the tower. He wore boots, bright red robes, had a belt around his waist with several weapons stuck in it and a blue cloth wrapped neatly around his head. This could only be the Wolf of Ghazi.
“You are dead men!” he screeched, and his voice was sorcerously magnified. “Flee, or face my wrath!”
I called for my two best archers, and rode forward. Perhaps I should’ve dismounted, since a horse under fire can be skittish, but I needed all of the presence I could manage. I stopped at what I estimated was extreme arrow range.