by Robin Hobb
“The second-born son of every noble man shall be his father’s soldier son, born to serve. Into his hand he will take the sword, and with it he shall defend the people of his father. He shall be held accountable for his actions, for it is by his sword and his pen that his family may have glory or dwell in shame. In his youth let him serve the rightful king, and in his old age let him return home, to defend the home of his father.”
As my brother spoke those words, I held up my father’s gifts to me for my family to see. In one hand I gripped my new cavalla sword, sheathed in gleaming black leather. In the other I held aloft a leather-bound journal. One was my weapon, the other my accounting for my deeds. This second gift marked a significant moment for my entire family. It was not just that I had reached an age when I was expected to behave as a man; it also marked the passing of a family torch to me. My father was a new noble, and the first to bear the title of Lord Burvelle of the east. That made me the first soldier son of this new line of nobility. For the first time in my life, the place of honor at the head of the table was mine. The book I held had come all the way from Old Thares, and my father’s crest had been imprinted on the cover by the king’s official press.
In that moment of silence, I looked down the long table at my family and considered my place in it. To my right was my father, and sitting just beyond him, my mother. To my left was my elder brother Rosse, the heir who would inherit my father’s house and lands. Just beyond him stood my younger brother Vanze, home to read the Holy Writ in my honor. Next to Vanze on one side of the table and next to my mother on the other side were my two sisters, elegant Elisi and kittenish Yaril. They would marry well, carrying off family wealth in the form of dowries but enriching the family with the social alliances they would bring. My father had done well for himself in the begetting of his children. He had fathered all the family any man might hope for, and an extra daughter besides.
And I, Nevare, was the second son, the soldier son of the family. Today it became real to me. Always it had been so down the years of my bloodlines: the eldest son to inherit, the third son a gift to the good god, and the second son a soldier, to bring honor and fame to our family name. And to every nobly born soldier son on his eighteenth birthday was given such a journal as I now held in my hands, bound in good calfskin, the pages stitched firmly in place, the creamy sheets heavy and durable. My own words would hold me “accountable” as the Writ said. This book and the serviceable pen kit that buckled inside it would travel everywhere I did, as surely as my sword did. The journal was made to open and lie flat so that I could write easily in it whether at a desk or camped by a fireside. The pen kit held not only two sturdy pens and an ink supply and tips but also pencils with various weights and colors of lead for sketching terrain and flora and fauna. When this volume was filled, it would return to Widevale, to be placed on a shelf in the library as part of my family’s permanent record, alongside the journals that told of our crops and cattle and recorded births, marriages, and deaths. The journal I held in my hands now would become the first volume in the first record of the first soldier son to wear my father’s crest. When this book was filled and sent home, I would immediately begin my new entries in the next volume. I would be expected to record every significant event in my duty to king, country, and family.
In my Uncle Sefert’s mansion in Old Thares, an entire wall of his grand library was given over to tall shelves that held rank upon rank of such journals. Sefert Burvelle was my father’s elder brother, the eldest son who inherited the family home, title, and lands. To him came the duty of preserving the family history. My own father, Keft Burvelle, had been the second son, the soldier son of his generation. Forty-two years before my eighteenth birthday, my father had mounted his cavalla horse and set out with his regiment for the frontier. He had never returned to live at Stonecreek Mansion, his ancestral home, but all of his military journals had. His writing occupied a substantial two shelves of his brother’s library, and was rife with the telling of our military’s final battles with the Plainspeople as King Troven had expanded his holdings into the wilds.
In time, when my father had gained rank and been offered private quarters at the fort, he had sent word home that he was ready for his bride to join him. Selethe Rode, then twenty but promised to him since she was only sixteen, had traveled to him by coach, wagon, and horseback, to be wed to him in the regiment chapel at Fort Renalx. She had been a good cavalry wife, bearing child after child to the lieutenant who became a captain and eventually retired as a colonel. In their youth, they had believed that all their sons would go for soldiers, for such was the destiny of the sons of a soldier son.
The Battle of Bitter Creek changed all that. My father so distinguished himself in the final two charges that when King Troven heard tell of it, he granted him a holding of four hundred acres of the land so painstakingly and bloodily won from the Plainspeople. With the land grant went a title and a crest of his own, making him one of the first elevated into the new nobility. The king’s new lords would settle in the east and bring civilization and tradition with them.
It was my father’s crest, not his older brother’s, sharply stamped into the fragrant leather of my new book, which I held up for my brothers and sisters to see. Our crest was a spond tree resplendent with fruit beside a creek. This journal would return here, to Widevale Mansion, rather than being posted to our ancestral home at Stonecreek in Old Thares. This book would be the first volume on the first shelf set aside for the soldier sons of my father’s line. We were founding a dynasty here on the former edge of the wilds, and we knew it.
The silence had grown long as I held the journal aloft and savored my new position. My father finally broke it.
“So. There it is. Your future, Nevare. It awaits only you, to live it and to write it.” My father spoke so solemnly that I could not find words to reply.
I set my gifts down carefully on the red cushion on which they had been presented to me. As a servant bore them away from the table, I took my seat. My father lifted his wineglass. At a sign from him, one of the servingmen replenished all our glasses. “Let us toast our son and brother, wishing Nevare many brave exploits and opportunity for glory!” he suggested to his family. They lifted their glasses to me, and I raised mine in turn, and then we all drank.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, but my father was not finished. Again, he lifted his glass. “And.” He spoke, and then waited until my eyes met his. I had no idea what might come next but I desperately hoped it would be a cavalla horse of my own choosing. Sirlofty was a wonderful mount, but I dreamed of a more fiery horse. I held my breath. My father smiled, not at me, but the satisfied smile of a man who had done well for himself and his family as his gaze traveled the full table. “And let us toast to a future that bodes well for all of us. The negotiations have been long and very delicate, my boy, but it is done at last. Show Lord Grenalter three years of honorable service on the frontier, earning a captain’s stars on your collar, and he will bestow on you the hand of his younger daughter, Carsina.”
Before I could say a word, Yaril clasped her hands together in delight and cried out, “Oh, Nevare, you will make Carsina and me sisters! How wonderful! And in years to come, our children will be both playmates and cousins!”
“Yaril. Please contain yourself. This is your brother’s moment.” My mother’s rebuke to my lively younger sister was soft-spoken, but I heard it. Despite her words, my mother’s eyes shone with pleasure. I knew that she was as fond of young Carsina as my sister was. Carsina was a lively, pleasant girl, flaxen-haired and round-faced. She and Yaril were the best of friends. Carsina and her elder sister and mother often came of a Sixday to join the women of our house in meditation, needlework, and gossip. Lord Grenalter had served alongside my father, and indeed won his lands and family crest in the same engagements that had led to my father’s elevation. Lady Grenalter and my mother had attended the same finishing school and had been cavalla wives together. As the daughter of a new noble, Car
sina would be well schooled in all that was expected of a soldier’s wife, unlike the old nobility wives I’d heard of in tales, who were near suicidal with despair when they discovered they were expected to cope with a home on the border and Plainspeople on their doorstep. Carsina Grenalter was a good match for me. I did not resent that whatever dower of land she might bring would enrich my brother’s estate rather than come to Carsina and me. That was how it had always been done, and I rejoiced for how it would expand my family’s holdings. In the dim future, when I retired from the cavalla, I knew we would be welcomed home to Widevale, to finish raising our children here. My sons would be soldiers after me, and my brother Rosse would see that my daughters married well.
“Nevare?” my father prompted me sternly, and I suddenly realized that my musing had kept me from replying to his news.
“I am speechless with joy at what you have won for me, Father. I will try to be worthy of the lady, and show Lord Grenalter the full nobility of my bloodlines.”
“Very good. I am glad you are conscious of the honor he does us in trusting one of his daughters to our household. To your future bride, then!”
And again we all lifted our glasses and drank.
That was my last night as a boy in my father’s house. With my eighteenth birthday, I left behind all childish pursuits. The next morning, I began a man’s schedule, rising with the dawn to join my father and brother at their austere breakfast and then ride out with them. Each day we rode to a different part of my father’s holdings to take reports from the supervisors. Most of them were men my father had known in his cavalry days, glad to find useful work now that they were too old to soldier. He housed them well, and allotted each a garden patch, pasturage for a cow or two milk goats, and half a dozen chickens. He had aided many of them in acquiring wives from the western cities, for well my father knew that although the sons of such men must go for soldiers, their daughters might very well attract cobblers or merchants or farmers as husbands. Our little river town needed such an influx of tradesmen if it was to grow.
I had known my father’s men all my life, but in the days that followed, I grew to know them even better. Although they were but common misters now, having given up their ranks with their uniforms, my father still referred to them as “Corporal” or “Sergeant,” and I think they enjoyed that acknowledgment of their past deeds.
Sergeant Jeffrey oversaw the care of our sheep in their rolling riverside pasture. That spring we had had a bumper crop of lambs, with many ewes dropping twins. Not all of the ewes had the milk or patience to care for two lambs, and so Jeffrey had had his hands full, recruiting Plainspeople nippers from the tamed Ternu villagers to help with the bottle feedings. The youngsters came to their tasks with enthusiasm, happy to work for a penny a day and a stick of sugar candy. My father took pride in how he had tamed the Ternu, and was now training their offspring in useful endeavors. It was, he maintained, the duty of the Gernian new nobles to bring such benefits to the formerly uncivilized folk of the Plains and plateaus. When he and my mother hosted dinner parties and gatherings, he often deliberately steered the talk to the necessity of such charity work, and encouraged other new noble families to follow his example.
Corporal Curf lacked part of his right foot, but it did not slow him much. He oversaw our hay and grain fields, from plowing to planting to harvest. He had much enthusiasm for irrigation, and often he and my father discussed the feasibility of such an engineering project. He had seen Plainspeople employ such tactics to bring water to their seasonal fields in the east, and was eager to attempt an experiment to duplicate their success. My father’s stance was to grow what the land would naturally support, in accordance with the good god’s will, but Curf burned to bring water to the upper fields. I doubted the question would be resolved in my lifetime. Curf worked tirelessly for my father, trying all sorts of tactics to try to restore the fertility of the land after its third year of use.
Sergeant Refdom was our orchard man. This was a new area of endeavor for us. My father saw no reason why fruit trees should not flourish on the hillsides above the grain fields. Neither did I, but flourish they did not. Leaf curl blight had all but killed every one of the plum trees. Some sort of burrowing worm attacked the tiny apples as soon as they formed. But Sergeant Refdom was determined, and this year he had brought in a new variety of cherry that seemed to be establishing well.
Each day we returned to the house by midmorning. We shared tea and meat rolls and then my father dismissed me to my classes and exercises. He deemed it wise that I learn the basics of husbanding our holdings, for when my soldiering days were over, I would be expected to come home and serve my brother as his overseer in his declining years. Should any untimely illness or mishap befall Rosse before then, he could by law ask the king that his soldier brother be returned to him for the “defense of his father’s lands.” It was a fate that I nightly prayed to be spared, and not just out of fondness for my solid older brother. I knew that I had been born for the cavalla. The good god himself had made me a second son, and I do believe that he grants to all such the fiber of character and adventurous spirit that a soldier must possess. I knew that eventually, when my days of riding to battle were done, I must return to our holdings and probably take up the duties of Corporal Curf or Sergeant Refdom. All my sons would be soldiers, and to me would fall the training of my elder brother’s soldier son, but all my daughters would take whatever dower they carried from our family holdings. It behooved me to know the operation of them so that when my time came to contribute directly to their upkeep, I’d be a useful man.
But my heart was full of dreams of battle and patrol and exploration as our forces pushed ever deeper into the wild lands, winning territory, riches, and resources for good King Troven. In the border lands to the east, our troops still skirmished with the former inhabitants of the lands there, trying to make them settle and see that the greater good of all demanded that they accept our civilization. My greatest fear was that we would be able to subdue them before I reached my soldiering age, and that instead of battle, I would spend my years of duty in administrative tasks. I dreamed that I would be there on the day when his King’s Road finally pushed through the Barrier Mountains to the shores of the Far Sea. I wanted to be one of the first to ride triumphantly the length of that long road, and gallop my horse through the surf of an alien ocean on a foreign beach.
The rest of the mornings of my last year at home were spent at book lessons. The afternoons were completely weapons practice now. The two hours that once had been mine for leisure reading or boyish amusements vanished. My childhood fascination with naming and classifying the stones that had “killed” me now had to be set aside for a man’s pursuits. Spending an hour listening to Elisi practice her music or helping Yaril gather the flowers for the vases in the parlor and dining room were no longer worthy of my time. I missed my sisters, but knew it was time I focused my attention on the world of men.
Some of the lessons were tedious, but I kept a good discipline, aware that both my father and my tutors judged me not only on how well I could repeat my lessons but also on the attitude I displayed. A man who wishes to rise to command must first learn to accept commands. And no matter how high I rose in the ranks, there would always be someone above me to whom I must bow my head and whose authority I must accept. It behooved me to display that I could accept the harness of discipline and wear it willingly. In those days, the sole ambition I possessed was the one that had been with me since birth: I would make my family proud of me. I would force my father to hold me in high esteem.
In the evenings, after dinner, I now joined my father and Rosse in the study for adult conversation about our holdings and politics and the current news of the realm. As I would not be allowed to either smoke or drink during my Academy years, my father advised me not to cultivate an indulgence for tobacco and to limit my liquor to the wine always served with our meals and a single brandy after dinner. I accepted that as a sensible restriction.
Duril had been a drill sergeant for new recruits at his last outpost and knew his business well. He worked with me on precision drill until I swore I could feel every set of muscles in Sirlofty’s body and knew exactly how to match my body to my horse’s as he moved. We did battle leaps, kicks and spins, high-stepping parade prances, and the demanding cadence gaits.
We rode out often over the wide prairie wastelands. Now that I had a man’s years, Duril spoke to me more as an equal. He taught me the plants and creatures of that region as he and my father’s troops had utilized them, for survival sustenance, and gradually reduced my packed supply of water and food until I had learned to go for several days with only what we could scavenge from the land itself. He was a demanding taskmaster, harsher in some ways than Dewara had been, but Duril set the example himself and never let his strictness pass the line into abuse. I knew he carried emergency supplies in his saddlebags, yet he limited himself just as he did me, and proved by example how little a man could survive on if he employed his own resourcefulness. If he required me to learn how to find cactus-borers, he demonstrated looking for their holes in the spiny palms of the flathand cacti, and showed me, also, how to cut my way to the heart of the colony where the fat yellow grubs could provide a nourishing if squirmy meal for a desperate soldier. He was a natural storyteller and the veteran of many campaigns. He illustrated his lessons with stories from his own experience. I often wished that my history books were more like his anecdotes, for he made the Plains campaigns the history of his life. He never expected me to do anything he had not proven that he could do also, and for that my respect for my gruff teacher was boundless.