Deathknight

by Andrew J Offutt

  In the barn, Falc outlined another idea. He was careful with its presentation, as he had been with the others; more careful than he’d have been with a high-placed Holder. Querry was impressed, yet looked less than delighted. He agreed. Falc and Chalis unhitched Catapin and led him out to hitch him to the other wagon. It was smaller and its repair was not as good. It was also serviceable. Realising the cause of Querry’s uncertainty, Falc paced back to him and spoke quietly.

  “I will take care of him, friend Querry. Consider: they two should not have to handle the job alone, and you had rather Chalis and I went than that you watched me go out of your sight in company with Jinnery, wouldn’t you.” It was not a question.

  Querry met the other man’s dark, dark gaze. “You sure are a strange man, Falc. I think you do read minds.”

  “No. Probably not so strange a man, either. I just don’t fit the concept you have of omos. I will mind the boy, Querry; and the rint.”

  Querry and Jinnery would unload, then, while Falc and Chalis began filling the other wagon. As he and the boy started back to the field, Falc called:

  “Our challenge to you two is that we will be back with this wagon full before you two have that one unloaded.”

  Chalis grinned. Querry grinned. Falc saw Jinnery accept the challenge. He saw a lot of determination in that grim bony face, and realised that there was more to her than most would surmise.

  Thus he persuaded all of them to work the harder, and suddenly the whole job was fun for Chalis. Working with a Deathknight! While they worked, Fate told him an exciting story about a fast ride at night to beat a flooded stream that had to be crossed; he was carrying a message that wanted delivering sooner than soon. He did not ask about Jinnery, and Chalis had no opportunity to ask him about more exciting matters, such as fighting and killing. The other wagon was unloaded by the time they returned, but Chalis’s enthusiasm faded only a little. Alone, with a Deathknight! An exciting tale to recount, a story of far places told only to him!

  “The trouble with this two-wagon system,” Jinnery said as she and Querry prepared to make the trip into the field, “is that it’s even more wearing for Catapin.”

  “Catapin makes no more trips than he would have done,” Falc pointed out. “He just makes them closer together. After all, he has a stake in this race with the rain, too. If you lose the crop, he will eat less well but work harder for less happy masters.”

  “Wak!” Chalis called. “That’s right, isn’t it!”

  Jinnery shot a look at him, and at Falc. Both affected not to notice.

  Rain or no, they all had to take a brief rest after that round of hauling and unloading, and Querry doused Catapin with water. The old darg perked up. The gift-darg still waited, hitched in the barn, and was fretful. Querry sloshed water on him, too. It was a kindness Falc noted and appreciated. As he and Chalis prepared to return to the field, Falc specified that they would walk rather than ride the wagon.

  “One must be considerate even of dargs,” Falc told the boy. “That way they serve better because they are happier. I’m not one of those who believes that dargs do not know what love is.”

  “Harr serves you better because you treat him better?”

  “Yes. And because he knows I merit it and am master. He also — well, I will show you when we have this wagonload ready to return to the barn. Uh!”

  The exclamation and their blinking was occasioned by a brilliant streak of lightning, followed several seconds later by a monumental blast from the direction of the wood.

  “A tall, tall tree has just been lessened,” Falc muttered, and they began to swing their pitchforks. Troublous time and woe... Ashah ride with us!

  When they had loaded and he had again tugged off his gauntlets to liberate sweaty hands, he laid a gentling hand on Catapin, near his halter. He bade Chalis stand near him. “HA-ARRR!” he shouted, and the war-darg came racing, looking ready to fight. Falc spoke calmly to him, before and while he boosted Chalis up.

  “Do nothing, Chalis. Only ride. Harr: come.”

  They returned to the barn, Falc walking beside Catapin, not quite leading. Harr paced close beside. The gift-darg still waited inside, hitched, and was fretful. They found that the others had not quite finished unloading the second wagon. While Chalis hooted about that, Falc stripped the gift-darg of equipage, leaving only the halter and bridle by which he was hitched. Stepping into the smelly stall where he could not be seen, Falc exercised a bit. He swallowed his groans. He also left his gauntlets off for this load; they were almost squishy-wet inside. A few moments later he accepted the offer of dinner and biding: overnight hospitality. Chalis jigged about and made delighted noises.

  They were on the next to last windrow when the first big splashy patters of rain began to fall. They finished loading in the rain. It had become a downpour by the time they were driving the high-piled wagon to the barn. Falc ordered Harr inside to protect his equipage. Harr obeyed with sour reluctance.

  “The five ricks will turn most of the water,” Querry said, looking out. “We’ll make oil from the rint in that windrow. We have lost nothing.”

  “Thanks to F — Sir Falc!” Chalis said.

  “F — Sir Falc is about twice as weary as you, and trying not to be stiff,” Falc said. With water running off his coif, he was stripping Harr. “All three of these fellows will appreciate being outside. Harr will give Catapin no trouble. I think the other darg is too shy to bother either of them.”

  “Catapin wouldn’t give any trouble to a three-legged barga!” Chalis laughed, and his father grinned.

  Having said nothing, Jinnery had already raced to the house.

  “Querry,” the omo said, “I admit that I am too weary to think of unloading that wagon.”

  “Falc, I admit the same. Think I’ll strip and get me a free bath, then see about finding some beer.”

  Falc nodded, and it was only then that Querry realised he hadn’t seen the man smile. “I must pass the bath, but I wouldn’t object to helping you with the beer.”

  Laughing aloud, Querry stripped off long skirt, front-tied crotcher, and boots. Falc saw that he wore heavy cotton stockings, white or once white, and noted that the man was almost ludicrously paler below the waist. So was Chalis, who stripped and ran out to join his father. The omo stood in the barn’s rear doorway, watching the three delighted dargs positively wallow in sheets of rain so thick it was visibly grey. Meanwhile he unobtrusively murmured most of Canticle Six of the Way.

  2

  The rain brought early, extreme darkness. That fact and the presence of a guest prompted Querry to a bit of extravagance, particularly for this time of year. He lit two of the open lamps filled with rintseed oil. It burned with the faint sweet aroma of pressed jarum blooms. Falc was reminded that not all people possessed the seemingly ubiquitous lichen-light from Drearmist.

  Oddly, not lichen but algae formed a part of the little house’s illumination. Both handsome lamps had been laboriously carved from several-coloured stromatolites, fossils formed by algae. The two men munched a sharp, almost snowy cheese, aged in rintseed oil. The room smelled of food, and warmth, and human habitation. Father and son had changed into bright shirts and Chalis’s house-pants were a grassy jarum blue with a green stripe down the side. Querry wore green-sashed pants of royal blue with black stripes down the outer seams.

  The poor lad had to be told to leave Falc’s “warlike things” alone.

  “This is barley beer,” the man in black observed. His warlike things, sword, helm, and mailcoat, were nearby; but the snug black hood covered his head to mid-brow.

  “Ah, good to meet a man who knows the difference. Yes, I trade rint for barley with a neighbor. He’s not the cheesemaker I am, so as part of the trade he makes beer for us both. It’s many years now we’ve been trading this way.”

  Falc nodded his understanding of simple commerce. “It’s good for men to trade. How do you feel about the Arlord?” he asked, stretching his legs and affecting not to be so att
entively interested in the answer as he was. Carrying messages and advising, passing on information, was the job. So was gathering information, as unobtrusively as possible.

  “He don’t bother us much. He’s all right as lords go, I guess. Want some more, there?”

  They ate. More cheese, warmed so that grease rode it, shining, and another kind as well, coloured reddish just for the variety and fun of it, with dark barley bread and a sweeter bread made of rint and eggs and fruit from the jonetree out back. Falc complimented the sweet-bread repeatedly; Jinnery’s acceptance of the praise was peremptory and short on grace.

  “I know you are accustomed to the fine food served in Holders’ keeps,” she said, in response to the severalth compliment. An apron of multi-coloured print covered her dress of another multi-coloured print.

  Falc nodded. “That is true. It’s also true that I often go without eating at all, for I ride much. What I am accustomed to, Jinnery, is whatever I can get! You can believe that any Holder’s cook I know of would trade his mother for the recipe for this jonecake.”

  “Just bread,” she said low-voiced, directing her almond-eyed gaze into her beer. Both she and Chalis drank beer with the meal, while the barrels outside collected water. The sounds of the rain continued as background for the meal, and made the small house seem that much cozier.

  “Do Holders’ cooks trade their mothers?”

  Querry laughed; Falc shook his head solemnly. “Absolutely not, Chalis. That was what is called a figure of speech. Holders’ cooks just aren’t usually as good as your cousin Jinnery. Holders, by the way, are often fine men. I would not make Contract with a man I did not respect.”

  “So it is with Deathknights?” Jinnery said, looking into her brown-and-red mug.

  Falc had not fathomed her antipathy, but knew that she persisted in calling him that because he had twice corrected the others and twice corrected her, and had explained to Chalis. He had already pointed out to himself that it meant nothing and did not lessen him, so that it ran off him as water poured off the roof over their heads.

  “So it is with us, yes. Ever too proud and never as humble as we wish to be... should be.”

  She raised her head to give him a look, but it was Chalis who spoke:

  “Falc — I mean, Sir Falc, do you always keep that little cap on?”

  His father gave him a look, but Falc replied equably: “Yes. It’s called a coif, Chalis, and all of us of the Order wear one, always.”

  “Oh. The Order... S’r Falc? How did the Order get started?”

  “Chalis, we... Querry? Jinnery? I’d like to tell him the two-melt story.”

  Querry looked blank, though Falc noted that Jinnery did not. “Another figure of speech,” the omo said. “It means the whole story; the longer version.”

  “Please do,” Querry said. “I’ve not heard it.”

  Falc swallowed his surprise. Of course not. Most likely none of these three had any schooling, or could write, or had ever stayed past sunset in Morazain, if until. He nodded, solemnly rose and walked into the other room to break wind, and returned to fill his mug again. Hospitality from fine people others call simple, O Ashah, he reminded himself mentally. One cannot refuse, in honour. He regarded the wall, looking at the handsome hanging of blue, white, and green braidwork, and decided against commenting on it. If it were Jinnery’s work, she would not accept a compliment with grace. If it were the work of Querry’s dead wife, he might not care to talk of it.

  Turning back to the others, he told Chalis the two-coin story of the Founding:

  The death of the First Civilization left a vacuum, into which chaos moved. The great conqueror Sar Sarlis created order from that chaos. Yet what he created became in passing decades more and more despotic, a searing of the souls of men and shrivelling of their wills. (Chalis’s jarum-blossom eyes were bright and his father nodded at the phrasing, wearing a pleasant expression. He crossed his royal-blued legs.)

  This culminated in him who called himself Emperor of All Men: Sai MaSarlis. In those days no free man existed on all the continent and perhaps not in all the world. No one dared disagree with the supreme ruler. Those who even hinted at it were beheaded or ordered to sever the veins in their wrists and thus drain out their own lives. The emperor’s many, many officials and even distant representatives had nearly as much power; far too much power. Men, women, even cities were bought and sold. They were even given out to MaSarlis’s favorites and the families of his wives and even unto the families of his concubines. Vacuum had led to conquest and conquest had led to tyranny.

  Then came Sath Firedrake, third son of a minor farming lordlet of Gunnda, which was to become that strange city ruled by a group of men, a “republic”.

  Sath came, and rose, and people followed him, and more, and Sath rose the more. His acts were just and fair and often heroic. He took as his emblem a simple two-tailed banner of plain yellow, saying that it was not plain at all but the colour of the sun, and what could be more brilliant? That was the year and the month of the Shearing of the Tax Collectors.

  Emperor MaSarlis sent out men to arrest Sath Firedrake, and they failed. They returned in disgrace and MaSarlis had them publicly slain, in the way of the Empire: their heads were struck with a mighty hammer wielded by a mighty man, so that their skulls were shattered. The emperor sent orders to

  Sath to present himself in the capital, alone and without followers above an escort of no more than six men.

  Sath Firedrake wisely and rightfully refused, and more people came to follow him as leader. And more came flocking, and he rose the more.

  At last Emperor MaSarlis sent forth an army to destroy him, for now the Firedrake had become a threat and a challenge.

  Forth marched that army, all tramping men in brightly painted war-masks and their officers in gleaming blue armour under banners of blue marked with the imperial device, and gold and crimson and green and more blue. The sun flashed off helms and upraised spearheads and the bosses of shields. Like a magnificent river they flowed up into Zain to crush one more upstart and challenger, and with them were mighty lords and well-seasoned generals and two sons of the very emperor.

  Along the River Nuar, Sath and his followers defeated that imperial army in all its splendour. And more hurried to the plain sun-hued banners of Sath, in number as the chaff that blows like rust in the steady wind of autumn. A son of Emperor MaSarlis died in that battle, and another fled back to the capital with news of the impossible: defeat!

  The commander of the imperial army fled to the provincial governor’s river-island keep, which rose tall and mighty. All knew that it was surely invincible and well-nigh unassailable. Nor could Sath Firedrake’s men gain the isle, for arrows fell upon their boats like hail and sent many good men to lie forever at the bottom of the Nuar.

  This is why the waters of the River Nuar run dark, even now.

  At last Sath Firedrake divided his force, and sent some of them out onto the river in bobbing boats containing false men, helmeted and war-dressed images stuffed with straw and wet leaves. Above them fluttered two-tailed pennons of sun-yellow. It was they who drew the arrows that day. Sath and the main portion of his force rested, and secretly prepared more boats. They roofed them over and silenced their oars with rags. Well after dark, while those in the well-provisioned keep on the isle were boisterously celebrating another day of lofting arrows at waterbugs (as they in their callous arrogance and contempt called the attackers), Sath prepared his force to move out and invade the island.

  Then one of his men, a young and valiant captain named Jalan, noticed something. He called it to Sath’s attention: because of the roofing bulwarks over the boats, he pointed out, it would be almost impossible to reverse oars.

  “That is a matter less consequential than dust motes or flunderpuffs,” Sath Firedrake told him, “for I have no intention of retreating.” And he gave the order to embark.

  The young man Jalan was sorry that he had spoken, and much chagrined. He was in the fo
refront of those who charged ashore onto the island, and one of the first into the keep of that great lord, who was brother to Emperor MaSarlis’s favorite wife. That Jalan was a brave man, but to this day all boys are urged and reminded to beware Jalan’s Utterance, meaning to speak without knowledge and thus to earn embarrassment and loss of face.

  By mid-afternoon that great lord of the empire had broken his own war-mask and taken his own life, and soon twintailed yellow banners fluttered from his keep. And more still came to join Sath Firedrake.

  Now people elsewhere revolted against tyrannical lords and tax-gatherers and assessors — who are always the worse. Then the lords of Juliara and Zain marched against Sath, because the emperor bade them, and Sath did defeat on them. And more still joined him and his cause (which was the cause of Sij!), or proclaimed their allegiance to him, even from afar. In Morazain which was then Jezaina he said that all the land south would honour the Emperor MaSarlis, and even send tribute to the capital (which was then where Skeltree lies now, on lower Lake Salam); but that all men would be free. This Sath Firedrake proclaimed in Jezaina where bits of yellow cloth fluttered from every window so that the whole large town was like a field of yellow blossoms: and no imperial soldiery or lord or tax-gatherers would thereafter go to that place.

  Thus Jezaina, named after a daughter of Sar Sarlis long before, came to be known as Morazain, which means “field of yellow”.

  Many prisoners were given the choice of servitude. Many chose it in preference to death or fleeing penniless to the capital — which is not to say that many did not choose death. Even then it is true: thousands of those Sath Firedrake spared, though he was no weak man. It was he who proved that mercy is not weakness. Some of his men and backers became holders of many slaves, which was wealth. Nor would Sath move on then, against the emperor as so many expected, and urged. Nor would he call himself emperor as so many wanted him to do.