by Robin Hobb
But that day’s drill was not kicks or leaps. It involved unsaddling and unbridling the tall black horse, then demonstrating that I could still mount and ride him without a scrap of harness on him. He was a tall, lean horse with straight legs like iron bars and a stride that made his gallop feel like we were flying. Despite Sirlofty’s patience and willingness, my boy’s height made it a struggle for me to mount him from the ground, but Duril had insisted I practice it. Over and over and over again. “A horse soldier has got to be able to get on any horse that’s available to him, in any sort of circumstances, or he might as well admit he has the heart of a foot soldier. Do you want to walk down that hill and tell your da that his soldier son is going to enlist as a foot soldier rather than rise up to a commission in the cavalla? Because if you do, I’ll wait up here while you do it. Better that I not witness what he’d do to you.”
It was the usual rough chivying I received from the man, and I flatter myself that I handled it better than most lads of my years would have. He had arrived at my father’s door some three years ago, seeking employment in his declining years, and my father had been only too relieved to hire him on. Duril replaced a succession of unsatisfactory tutors, and we had taken to one another almost immediately. Sergeant Duril had finished out his many long years of honorable military service, and it had seemed only natural to him that when he retired he would come to live on my father’s lands and serve Lord Burvelle as well as he had served Colonel Burvelle. I think he enjoyed taking on the practical training of Nevare Burvelle, Colonel Burvelle’s second son, the soldier son born to follow his father’s example as a military officer.
The sergeant was a shriveled little man, with a face as dark and wrinkled as jerky. His clothing was worn to the point of comfort, holding the shape of a man who was most often in the saddle. Even when they were clean, his garments were always the color of dust. On his head he wore a battered leather hat with a floppy brim and a hatband decorated with Plains beads and animal fangs. His pale eyes always peered watchfully from under the brim of his hat. What hair he had left was a mixture of gray and brown. Half his left ear was missing and he had a nasty scar where it should have been. To make up for that lack, he carried a Kidona ear in a pouch on his belt. I’d only seen it once, but it was unmistakably an ear. “Took his for trying to take mine. It was a barbaric thing to do, but I was young, and I was angry, with blood running down the side of my neck when I did it. Later that evening, when the fighting was over, then I looked at what I’d done, and I was ashamed. Ashamed. But it was too late to put it back with his body and I couldn’t bring myself to just throw it away. I’ve kep’ it ever since to remind me of what war can do to a young man. And that’s why I’m showing it to you now,” he had told me. “Not so you can run tell your little sister and have your lady ma complain to the Colonel that I’m learning you wild ways, but so that you can think on that. Before we could teach the Plainspeople to be civilized, we had to teach them they couldn’t beat us in a fight. And we had to do that without getting down on their level. But when a man is fighting for his life, that’s a hard thing to remember. Especially when you’re a young man and out on your own, ’mong savages. Some of our lads, good honest lads when they left home, well, they wound up little better than the Plainspeople we fought against before we were through. A lot of them never went home. Not jus’ the ones who died, but the ones who couldn’t remember how to be civilized. They stayed out there, took Plains wives, some of ’em, and became part of what we’d gone out there to tame. Remember that, young Nevare. Hold on to who you are, when you’re a man grown and an officer like the Colonel.”
Sometimes he treated me like that, as if I were his own son, telling me stories of his days as a soldier and passing on the homespun wisdom that he hoped would see me through. But most days he treated me as something between a raw recruit and a rather dim hound. Yet I never doubted his fondness for me. He’d had three sons of his own, and raised them and sent them off to enlist years before he’d gotten to me. In the way of common soldiers and their get, he’d all but lost track of his own boys. From year to year, he might receive a single message from one or another of them. It didn’t bother him. It was what he had always expected his boys to do. The sons of common soldiers went for soldiers, just as the Writ tells us they should. “Let each son rise up and follow the way of his father.”
Of course, it was different for me. I was the son of a noble. “Of those who bend the knee only to the king, let them have sons in plenitude. The first for an heir, the second to wear the sword, the third to serve as priest, the fourth to labor for beauty’s sake, the fifth to gather knowledge…” and so on. I’d never bothered to memorize the rest of that passage. I had my place and I knew it. I was the second son, born to “wear the sword” and lead men to war.
I’d lost count that day of how many times I’d dismounted and then mounted Sirlofty and ridden him in a circle around Duril, without a scrap of harness to help me. Probably as many times as I’d unsaddled and unbridled the horse and then replaced the tack. My back and shoulders ached from lifting the saddle on and off the gelding’s back, and my fingertips were near numb from making the cavalryman’s “keep fast” charm over the cinch. I was just fastening the cinch yet again when Sergeant Duril suddenly commanded me, “Follow me!” With those words, he gave his mare a sharp nudge with his heels and she leaped forth with a will. I had no breath for cursing him as I finished tightening the strap, hastily did the “keep fast” charm over it, and then flung myself up and into the saddle.
Those who have not ridden the Plains of the Midlands will speak of how flat and featureless they are, how they roll on endlessly forever. Perhaps they appear so to passengers on the riverboats that wend their way down the waterways that both divide and unite the Plains. I had grown up on the Midlands and knew well how deceptive their gentle rises and falls could be. So did Sergeant Duril. Ravines and sudden crevasses smiled with hidden mouths, just waiting to devour the unwary rider. Even the gentle hollows were often deep enough to conceal mounted men or browsing deer. What the unschooled eye might interpret as scrub brush in the distance could prove to be a shoulder-high patch of sickle-berry, almost impenetrable to a man on horseback. Appearances were deceiving, the sergeant always warned me. He had often told me tales of how the Plainspeople could use tricks of perspective in preparing an ambush, how they trained their horses to lie down, and how a howling horde of warriors would suddenly seem to spring up from the earth itself to attack a careless line of cavalrymen. Even from the vantage of tall Sirlofty’s back, Sergeant Duril and his mount had vanished from my view.
The gentle roll of prairie around me appeared deserted. Few real trees grew in Widevale, other than the ones that Father had planted. Those that did manage to sprout on their own were indications of a watercourse, perhaps seasonal, perhaps useful. But most of the flora of our region was sparsely leaved and dusty gray-green, holding its water in tight, leathery leaves or spiny palms. I did not hurry, but allowed myself to scan the full circle of the horizon, seeking any trace of them. I saw none; I had only the dry dents of Chafer’s hoofprints in the hard soil to guide me. I set out after them. I leaned down beside Sirlofty’s neck, tracking them and feeling proud of my ability to do so until I felt the sudden thud of a well-aimed stone hit me squarely in the back. I pulled in Sirlofty and sat up, groaning as I reached back to rub my new bruise. Sergeant Duril rode up from behind me, his slingshot still in his hand.
“And you’re dead. We circled back. You were too busy following our sign, young Nevare, and not wary enough about your surroundings. That pebble could just as easily have been an arrow.”
I nodded wearily to his words. There was no use in denying them. Useless to complain that when I was grown I could expect to have a full troop of horsemen with me, with some men to keep watch while others tracked. No. Better to endure the bruise and nod than to bring an hour of lecture down on myself as well. “Next time, I’ll remember,” I told him.
“G
ood. But only good because this time it was just a little rock and so there will be a next time for you. With an arrow, that would have been your last time to forget. Come on. Pick up your rock before we go.”
He kneed Chafer again and left me. I dismounted and searched the ground around Sirlofty’s feet until I found the stone. Duril had been “killing” me several times a month since I was nine years old. Picking up the stones had been my own idea at first; I think the first few times I was slain, I had taken to heart the concept that had Duril truly been hostile, my life would have ended in that moment. When Duril realized what I was doing, he began to take pains to find interesting stones to use in his sling. This time it was a river-worn piece of crude red jasper half the size of an egg. I slipped it into my pocket to add to my rock collection on the shelf in my schoolroom. Then I mounted and nudged Sirlofty to catch up with Chafer.
We rode toward the river, stopping on a tall scarp that looked out over the lazily flowing Tefa River. From where we sat our mounts, we could look down at my father’s cotton fields. There were four of them, counting the one that rested fallow this year. It was easy to tell which field was in its third year of cultivation and close to the end of its agricultural usefulness. The plants there were stunted and scrubby. Prairie land seldom bore well for more than three years running. Next year, that field would lie fallow, in hopes of reviving it.
My father’s holdings, Widevale, were a direct grant to him from King Troven. They spanned both sides of the Tefa River and many acres beyond in all directions. The land on the north side of the river was reserved for his immediate family and closest servants. Here he had built his manor house and laid out his orchards and cotton fields and pasturage. Someday the Burvelle estate and manor would be a well-known landmark like the “old Burvelle” holdings near Old Thares. The house and grounds and even the trees were younger than I was.
My father’s ambition extended beyond having a fine manor house and agricultural holdings. On the south side of the river, my father had measured out generous tracts of land for the vassals he recruited from among the soldiers who had once served under his command. The town had become a much-needed retirement haven for foot soldiers and noncommissioned officers when they mustered out of the service. My father had intended that it be so. Without Burvelle Landing, or simply Burvelle as it was most often called, many of the old soldiers would have gone back west to the cities to become charity cases or worse. My father often said it was a shame that no system existed to utilize the skills of soldiers too old or too maimed to soldier on. Born to be a soldier and an officer, my father had assumed the mantle of lord when the king granted it, but he wore it with a military air. He still held himself responsible for the well-being of his men.
The “village” his surveyors had laid out on the south bank of the river had the straight lines and the fortification points of a fortress. The village dock and the small ferry that operated between the north and south banks of the river ran precisely on the hour. Even the six-day market there operated with a military precision, opening at dawn and closing at sundown. The streets had been engineered so that two wagons could pass one another and a horse and team could turn round in any intersection. Straight roads, like the spokes of a wheel, led out of the village to the carefully measured allotments that each vassal earned by toiling four days a week on my father’s land. The village thrived, and threatened soon to become a town, for the folk had the added benefit of the traffic along the river and on the river road that followed the shoreline. His old soldiers had brought their wives and families with them when they came to settle. Their sons would, of course, go off to become soldiers in their days. But the daughters stayed, and my mother was instrumental in bringing to the town young men skilled in needed trades who welcomed the idea of brides who came with small dowries of land. Burvelle Landing prospered.
Traffic between the eastern frontier and old Fort Renalx to the west of us was frequent along the river road. In winters, when the waters of the river ran high and strong, barges laden with immense, sap-heavy spond logs from the wild forests of the east moved west with the current, to return later laden with essential supplies for the forts. Teams of barge mules had worn a dusty trail on the south bank of the river. In summer, when the depleted river did not offer enough water to keep the barges from going aground, mule-drawn wagons replaced them. Our village had a reputation for honest taverns and good beer; the teamsters always stopped there for the night.
But today, the seasonal traffic that crawled along the road was not so convivial. The slow parade of men and wagons stretched out for half a mile. Dust hung in the wake of their passage. Armed men rode up and down the lines. Their distant shouts and the occasional crack of a whip were carried to us on the light wind from the river.
Three or four times each summer, the coffle trains would pass along the river road. They were not welcome to stop in the village. Not even the guards who moved the coffle along could take the ferry across to my father’s well-run town. Hours down the road, out of view of both my home and the village, there were six open-sided sheds, a fire pit, and watering troughs set up for the coffle trains. My father was not without mercy, but he distributed it on his own terms.
My father had strictly forbidden my sisters to witness the passing of the penal trains, for the prisoners included rapists and perverts as well as debtors, pickpockets, whores, and petty thieves. There was no sense in exposing my sisters to such rabble, but on that day Sergeant Duril and I sat our horses for the better part of an hour, watching them wend their dusty way along the river road. He did not say that my father had wished me to witness that forced emigration to the east, but I suspected it was so. Soon enough, as a cavalry trooper, I’d have to deal with those whom King Troven had sentenced to be settlers on the lands around his eastern outposts. My father would not send me to that duty ignorant.
Two supply wagons led the penal coffle making its centipedian way toward us. Mounted men patrolled the length of the winding column of shackled prisoners. At the very end, choking their way through the hanging dust, teams of mules pulled three more wagons laden with the women and children who belonged to the convicts trudging their way toward a new life. When a trick of the wind carried the sounds of the prisoners to us, they sounded more animal than human. I knew that the men would be chained day and night until they reached one of the king’s far outposts on the frontier. They’d be fed bread and water, and know a respite from their journey only on the Sixday of the good god.
“I feel sorry for them,” I said softly. The heat of the day, the chafing shackles, the hanging dust; sometimes it seemed a miracle to me that any of the criminal conscripts survived their long march to the borderlands.
“Do you?” Sergeant Duril was disdainful of my soft sentiment. “I feel sorrier for the ones left behind in the city, to continue being scum the rest of their lives. Look at them, Nevare. The good god decrees for every man what he is to do. But those down there, they scoffed at their duty, and ignored the skills of their fathers. Now the king offers them a second chance. When they left Old Thares, they were prisoners and criminals. If they weren’t caught and hanged, they’d probably be killed by their fellows, or live out their lives like rats in a wall. But King Troven has sent them away from all that. They’ll walk a long hard way, to be sure, but it’s a new life that awaits them in the east. By the time they get there, they’ll have built some muscle and endurance. They’ll work on the King’s road for a year or so, pushing it across the Plains, and then they’ll have earned the right to their freedom and two acres of land. Not bad wages for a couple of years of toiling. King Troven’s given them all a new chance to be better than they were, to own land of their own and to live a clean life, to follow in their fathers’ trades as they should have, with their old crimes forgotten. You feel sorry for them? What about the ones who refuse the king’s mercy, and end up with the chopping block taking their thieving hands off, or living in debtors’ prison with their wives and little ones alongsid
e them? Those are the ones I pity, the ones too stupid to see the opportunity our king offers them. No. I don’t pity those men down there. They walk a hard road, and no mistake, but it’s a better road than the one they originally chose for themselves.”
I looked down at the ragged line of chained men and wondered how many truly felt it had been their decision to choose this course. And what of the women and children in the wagons? Had they had a choice at all? I might have pondered longer if Duril had not distracted me with the terse word “Messenger!”
I lifted my eyes and looked toward the east. The river snaked off into the distance, and the river road followed its winding course beside it. Passenger coaches, freight wagons, and the post traveled that road. Ordinary mail traveled in wagons for the most part; letters to soldiers from their families and sweethearts in the west and their replies made up the most of it. But King Troven’s couriers traveled that road as well, bearing important dispatches between the far outposts and the king’s capital in Old Thares to the west. Part of my father’s duty to his king as a landed noble was to maintain a relay station and the change of horses for the messengers. Often the dispatch riders were invited up to my father’s manor for the evening after they had passed on their messages, for my father enjoyed being kept up to date on events at the frontier, and the messengers were glad of his generous hospitality in the harsh land. I hoped we would have company for the evening meal; it always enlivened the conversation.
Along the river road, a man and horse were coming at a gallop. A thin line of dust hung in the still air behind them, and the horse was running heavily in a way that spoke more of spurs and quirt than willing effort. Even at our distance, I could see the billowing of the rider’s short yellow cape that marked him as the king’s courier and notified every citizen of the duty to speed him on his way.