I had no choice but to enter, though I declined the chair he offered me. He went over to stand behind the desk. The law book that Carle had been showing me was now replaced by another, slimmer volume.
"I have been thinking about the sad story you told me the other evening," Verne said, "and have been growing more concerned, the more I think about it. It seems to me, young man, that by leaving your family as you did, you have placed yourself in grave danger. Why, only this afternoon, as I was looking around this chamber, I came across a volume written by an early Emorian visitor to Koretia. He describes in it how men who have broken their blood vows are executed." Picking up the volume so that it hid his face, Verne began to recite: "'The man they consider to be cursed by their gods is brought to the village square, bound both in body and, as the Koretians consider it, in spirit. Before his coming, wood has been placed in the center of the square. Now the man who is doomed is placed in irons and laid across the wood. The fire is lit—'"
I had been trying since the beginning of the narrative to break in. Now I said rapidly, "Sir, I know what is done to the god-cursed—"
I stopped. Verne had lowered the book so that I could see his smile. He continued to smile at me for a long moment; then he continued: "'The fire is lit. The wood is wetted beforehand, though, so that the man's agony may last all the longer . . .'"
And so he went on, recounting all the details of the fire-execution, while I stood there wishing I was wearing Carle's waterproof tunic, for the sweat was causing my uniform to stick to my body.
When he had finished, Verne lowered the book and said softly, "It occurred to me when reading this that even coming to this land may not have saved you from such a terrible end. Suppose, for example, that someone you had harmed decided to send word to your family that you were a patrol guard. It would be easy, would it not, for one of your blood kin to locate you in the mountains and bring you back to your village for execution? I really do think, young man, that you must be careful not to make any enemies in this land." And his smile was so dark that it seemed to swallow the light from the hearth.
I stood where I was, barely breathing, feeling moisture trickle down my face. Verne said softly, "Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir," I whispered.
"Good," he said gently. "I wanted to be sure that you were aware of your danger."
o—o—o
Carle found me half of an hour later in the stables. I was trying to smother my sobs against the flank of my horse. He had the story out of me within two minutes. Then he sighed and handed me his face-cloth, saying, "My father always turns my own mind into the consistency of Koretian mud, so I don't blame you for missing the flaws in his tale."
"What flaws?" I gulped down a hard sob. "Carle, he will tell my family—"
"No, he won't, and for three excellent reasons. The first is that my father doesn't have any contacts in Koretia. He hates Koretians with a passion, and he wouldn't have the slightest notion of how to go about sending a message to your family. The second reason is that if he did such a thing, he knows that I'd be in the village court within the day, requesting his summons on a charge of murder." Carle guided me away from the horse, which was shifting uneasily, and placed his arm around my shoulders. "The third reason . . . Let me see if I can recite my father's tale correctly. According to him, a member of your family is supposed to enter the patrol grounds, sneak up behind you and me, render me unconscious – for I suppose my father wouldn't go so far as to arrange the death of his own heir – and then disarm you, bind you, and gag you, before dragging you back over the border." Carle raised his eyebrows at me. "How likely do you think it is that this kidnapping will take place without the lieutenant hearing?"
I thought about that for a brief moment before bursting into laughter. Carle grinned and said, "Come, let's to bed. We've had a hard day."
"But Erlina—"
"Is hiding in Alaric's chamber. Oh, Alaric claims he hasn't seen her, but barbarians, I am happy to say, are poor liars." Carle sighed as we reached the door of the stable; he swept the sweat off his brow. "A fine sort of brother I am, permitting my unmarried sister to spend the night with a man who is courting her. Well, if Erlina loses her maidenhead by morning, it will be a lesser loss than what she would lose if she left that room." And I saw once more the look of patience that both Carle and Fenton forged out of their years of pain under Verne's care.
o—o—o
The seventh day of January in the 941st year a.g.l.
I awoke this morning to the sound of shouts.
They came from the study chamber but were so loud that they reverberated throughout the house. As I walked down the corridors, hastily tugging on my uniform, I could see slaves cringing in the corners. I thought I caught a fleeting glimpse of Carle's mother, cringing with them.
By the time I'd reached the corridor outside the study chamber, I had identified the voices. I hesitated before slipping up to the entrance.
Both voices were quiet now, one so soft that my hair stood sentrywise against my skin. The other voice belonged to Carle. As I pressed myself against the wall, he said in a cold voice, "Sir, the decision is yours. I have given you the conditions under which I will conduct the hunt. It is for you to say whether those conditions are acceptable."
I did not hear the reply, but I heard the smile in the voice that replied; sweat began to trickle down my back. There was a long pause, and then Carle said, so softly that I had to strain to hear him, "Very well, sir, we will settle this matter through the court. And when you provide your witness for the charge, I will provide my own about a certain lengthy trip our baron took to the Central Provinces twenty years ago, and about how you occupied your time while he was on that trip."
There was a silence at the other end of the room. Carle did not wait long, but said in the same soft voice, "Do not hurry yourself, sir. I can find my own way to Gervais's house." And in the next moment, he walked out the door.
He saw me at once. For a moment, the dark, sickening smile on his face lingered; then it dropped away, like a weapon hastily discarded. For a moment I saw Carle as he must have looked as a child – naked and vulnerable – and then he nodded at me as though I had spoken and re-entered the room.
In a voice that was quiet but was no longer silky, Carle said, "Sir, I ask that you forgive me. I should not have spoken as I did before."
The soft voice spoke. I peered round the doorway in time to see Carle stiffen in his place. His face, always pale, was drained of the last remnants of color. "Sir," he said in a level voice, "I would ask that you reconsider. I will apologize again—"
"Out!" the voice at the other end of the chamber suddenly roared. "Get out! And take your brown-skinned friend with you!"
I found myself cringing against the doorpost as the slaves had done. For a moment, Carle said nothing. Then he whispered, "Yes, sir," and left the chamber swiftly.
He took hold of my arm lightly and steered me toward the entrance of the slave-quarters. "Carle, what has happened?" I asked in a low voice.
Carle waited until we were beyond the knot of slaves clogging the slave-quarters entrance before he said, "Erlina has run away with Alaric."
I looked over at Carle, but I could not see his expression in the dark corridor we were traversing. "Are you sure?"
Carle nodded. "Alaric left a note for me – for me, not my father, which made him furious. My father found the note first, but I made him all the more furious by refusing to translate the note, and by burning it after I'd read it."
"Translate it?" I said. "You mean that it was written in a mainland language?"
"No, it was written in Emorian – you taught Alaric his letters, remember? His spelling is so dreadful, though, that my father assumed that the note was in a foreign tongue."
"What did Alaric say?" I asked as Carle picked up a lamp in the corridor and led the way to his extra chamber.
"He said that he had asked my mother for permission to marry Erlina, and that she had voic
ed no objection; from my mother, that's the closest one can get to a blessing. He said that it grieved him greatly that he could not likewise ask my father for his permission, but that he had dreamt during the night that a snow leopard had mauled Erlina while he stood by watching. He took this as a sign that his gods wanted him to protect Erlina against her father. He swore to me that his intentions toward Erlina were entirely honorable. And he ended the letter with a one-sentence apology to me that covered three pages. Among other things, he apologized to my future wives." As we ducked through the doorway to the chamber, Carle handed me the lamp, then went over to the other end of the room and pulled open his back-sling.
Watching as he tossed his clothing in it, I said, "It might be true. Perhaps he really does want to marry her."
"Oh, I've no doubt he intends to grant Erlina honor – whatever honor may mean on the mainland. But the idea of Erlina living the life of a barbarian . . . The only fate worse would be living with a man my father had chosen." Carle knotted the tie of the back-sling, saying, "I told my father that I would find Erlina and fetch her back only if he permitted her final say over which man she married. —No, leave that," he added as I tried to hand him the blood-stained tunic. "I won't be needing that again."
"What was his reply?" I asked as we moved back into the corridor, squeezing past curious slaves. "You said something about the court . . ."
Carle nodded as he laid his hand briefly on the arm of a slave he was passing. "Helping a woman to elope is a crime in Emor. My father threatened to request a charge against me that I'd assisted Alaric. —No, I am sorry," he said in response to a question by one of the slaves. He gave her hand a squeeze before passing on.
"I feel as though I'm leaving them to their doom," he said as we raced our way up the stairs. "There's nothing I can do for them, though, or for my mother. My presence wouldn't help them in any way."
"Carle, you said something in reply to your father's threat, something about a trip Gervais took—"
"My father's had better slaves than he deserves," said Carle as though I hadn't spoken. "Not just Fenton, who never spoke an unkind word against my father in all the time he lived here. Most of the slaves we've owned have tried to serve my father well. I remember an older slave who was my father's body-servant when I was quite young. He would take pains to provide my father with comfort only minutes after my father had smashed him to the ground." Carle swung open the door to his main bed-chamber, waited until I was inside, and barred the door.
I was already on the other side of the chamber, packing my back-sling, but I looked up as Carle, with a voice suddenly low, said, "So loyal was this slave that when my father decided, twenty years ago, to seduce the Baron of Peaktop's wife, the slave assisted in the arrangements for the seduction."
My hands stilled on the sling; I was calculating ages in my mind. Breathlessly I said, "Do you mean Myles . . . ?"
Carle nodded as he reached my side and began handing me clothing. "Gervais knows, I believe; there's no other way to account for the depth of his hatred for my father. His honor is shown by the fact that he has never spoken publicly on this matter. Nor has he taken his anger out on his wife and her son."
"Your threat was just a feint, wasn't it?" I asked anxiously.
"Naturally." Carle took from my hand the flask that I was about to pack and sipped from it briefly. "I'd cut my throat before saying anything that might reveal to Myles who his true father is. I must confess, though, that as a child I found comfort in knowing that I had a half-brother, and that he was safe from my father."
"Carle, how do you know all this? You weren't even born yet—"
"I know because my father promised to reward his body-servant's loyalty by freeing him. Several years after the affair, the slave was foolish enough to remind my father, in a tentative manner, of this promise. My father responded by selling him to the mines."
I felt my heart beat at my throat. "The mines . . ."
Carle nodded and handed me the flask. "That's where Fenton would have died if I hadn't been able to persuade him to flee Emor. In some households, loyal slave-servants are rewarded with money or freedom; my father has his own custom. The body-servant was to be taken swiftly from our house before he could talk, but he managed to slip away for a few minutes. He came to me and told me the story. He said that I might need it some day as a defense against my father." Carle watched as I drank from the flask; then he said, "I was six at the time, too young to understand fully what the slave was telling me. Only later did I realize that the body-servant could have used those few minutes to go to Gervais with his story. As I said, my father has owned servants more loyal than he deserves." He turned away and unbarred the door as I rushed to catch up with him.
"Carle," I said, "what did your father say at the end? Before he shouted?"
For a minute, I thought that Carle would not reply. Finally, he turned his gaze toward me and said, "We are bonded by more than wine now."
It took me a moment to determine what he meant. Then my breath drew swiftly in, like a spear meeting its mark.
Carle nodded. "He has disowned me," he said quietly. "Come, let's fetch our horses. We can do nothing more here."
o—o—o
The eighth day of January in the 941st year a.g.l.
We stopped at the inn on the way home, and once again Carle arranged for us to have separate sleeping chambers. This time, when I awoke to hear Carle crying out in pain, I did not even have to listen to know the name of his torturer.
He had locked the door again. I thought for a while, and then, returning to my own chamber, I checked the window. Its sill jutted out perhaps a finger's length, as did Carle's sill, which was half a spear-length from mine. His shutters, I was grateful to see, were open, and so mild was the weather so far this winter that the landlord had not yet tacked on any waxed paper, so the windows proved no barrier.
Our chambers were on the second storey, and going from his sill to mine was tricky, because the only hand-holds were the frames of the window. I expect that any border mountain patrol guard could have done it in his sleep. After half a minute, I dropped down into Carle's chamber. I had been as silent as I could, but of course he was now awake, his thigh-dagger glinting in the moonlight.
He slipped his dagger back into his thigh-pocket when he saw who his intruder was, but said nothing as I came forward. He turned his back as I reached the broad bed he slept in. I slipped under the covers, laying my hands lightly upon his scarred back. Within minutes, I had fallen asleep.
He did not cry out again during the night.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The fourth day of August in the 941st year a.g.l.
It's a beautiful summer day, with a glowing sun and with air just the right temperature – or so it seems to me. Everyone else in the patrol is praying for the autumn cool to arrive. Levander says that if I make one more remark about how much hotter it is in Koretia at this time of year, I may find myself being accidentally thrown off a cliff.
Levander is my new patrolling partner, and he comes eagerly to me for advice. It feels odd to be an old-timer now. But of course there are very few of us old-timers left, even fewer than there were at the beginning of our leave last winter.
Hoel is retired from army service; he gave a plausible reason for his departure, but we all know that he left because of Chatwin. Teague and Sewell were placed on trial in the court of the subcommander of the Emorian army; they faced the possibility of Dismissal with High Dishonor from the Chara's armies. Teague received a lesser sentence of Dismissal with Dishonor, and Sewell was found innocent since we all testified – those of us who were left – that he was in too much pain from his broken leg to realize that Wystan's letter about the approaching snow had gone undelivered. Sewell, though, requested a transfer since he couldn't face the thought of going back to the unit where four men died because of his injury. He is serving now as Wystan's orderly.
That leaves Quentin, Carle, Devin, Payne, and me to train the new m
en – plus Fowler, Carle's old partner, who has returned to duty. I was initially nervous at dealing with him; I not only stabbed him, but I took away his partner. Carle hasn't been my partner, though, since we returned to the mountains in April. Quentin split up all the old partnerships so that we could be paired with the new soldiers. In the day patrol are me and Levander, Carle and Manasseh, and Payne and Nahum, while in the night patrol are Quentin and Oro, Devin and Whittlsey, and Fowler and Sacheverell. Levander holds a double title: he is also a royal messenger, and he keeps his horse here to ride to the army headquarters, should there be any need for sending an immediate message – such as that supplies are low.
All of this has delayed the training I would normally have received by now in night patrolling, so Quentin has decided to transfer me into his half of the patrol next week. I'll be paired with Fowler. That will be the true test of whether Fowler has forgiven me.
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