Oathbreaker: The Knight's Tale

by Colin McComb

  Somehow I held onto the staff long enough for Toren to grab hold of Crosh—who had run to his side—regain his balance, and pull himself back from the precipice. He rushed to me, and pulled me up from the ground. I blanked momentarily as my bones ground against each other, and came to with my arm around his shoulder, being dragged down the mountain. “Come on, Crosh, lead us home,” he was urging the dog, and Crosh led us unerringly down the hillside. We fought the wind and snow the whole way down, trusting in our faithful guide to bring us to safety and warmth—two old men, one lame, herded by a sheepdog through a howling storm.

  By all rights, we should have been dead, and I fell in and out of wakefulness. I had no choice. I pressed a stud on my crook, and its head blazed into fire. Toren recoiled from me, and I'd have fallen if not for the staff.

  “There’s a cave near here,” I croaked, gesturing. “We need to get there. Can't… can't make it in this snow. Crosh, avantis.” My faithful dog altered his course, and Toren made up his mind. He caught my arm, draped it over my shoulder, and carried the blazing staff before us to my hidden shelter.

  The last thing I remember of that night is Crosh’s whine, his teeth on my sleeve as he pulled on me, the snow driving into my face, hissing in the staff's blaze, and the realization that we were going to die on the mountainside. And then a black well opened under me, and I fell into it.

  When I came to in the morning, I discovered a well-made splint on my ankle, logs on the fire, and the smell of porridge cooking. I sat up and fire shot up my leg, and I groaned. Toren turned from the fire, his red-rimmed eyes telling me that he hadn’t slept all night. But something was wrong, and with a sudden shock, I remembered that we were in my cave.

  None of the workbenches had been disturbed, but he had opened my caches in search of something. I could explain this, I thought… and then I remembered that I had set my crook aflame, and there was no denying what I was.

  He saw me stir, and said, “Good thing you had some sturdy wood here, so that I could make the splint. It was a clean break, so if you keep off it, you should be healed by the time the snows melt.”

  “By the time the snows melt? That’ll be weeks.”

  “You are lucky to be alive,” he said, with steel in his voice, “so were I in your position, I would not complain about a little enforced inactivity.”

  “Were I in your position,” I replied, “I wouldn’t have tried to play goddamned hero. I wouldn’t have gone out into the storm after those sheep in the first place!”

  “They were my responsibility to keep, and I let them go. I failed, and I tried to repair my mistake,” he said, color rising to his cheeks.

  “Toren, they were just sheep! They’ll be a hard loss, sure, but they were lost when you left the mountain. No getting them back. You understand? Sometimes you have to let go.” He opened his mouth to reply, and I cut him off. “What’s more, in addition to the hardship of losing those animals, in addition to my dead sheep, Inger’s dead, too, my ankle’s bust, and you don’t have nearly the skill to handle the whole flock, not with a single dog, not with a pack of dogs, because you’re too goddamned proud to give up a sheep. I’d think that a military man,” and I said these words with my temper rising behind the pain in my ankle, the uneducated cadences of the life I’d chosen slipping away in my natural voice, “a military man would know when a battle’s not worth fighting, but apparently you think that because you’ve seen war and maybe commanded a few men that shepherding is an all-or-nothing job. Well, guess what, Toren? It’s not! Sometimes we have to make sacrifices, too, and if you can’t remember that, then you’re doomed in any job you take. If we’re going to bring this flock through the winter, we’re going to need help. More to the point, you’re going to need help. I know you’re worried about your secrecy—”

  “My secrecy? My secrecy? Says the shepherd who turns out to be a magus! It's a fine wizard's tower you've got here, though perhaps I'd be better served by calling it a burrow!”

  I retorted, “Perhaps it's because the people you hide from would crush me just as readily! Have you ever considered that you're not the only person who has enemies would see them dead?”

  He leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “Oh, and now we get to it. What's your allegiance? Do you pledge fealty to any of the High Houses, or the Lesser?”

  “Don't be ridiculous,” I snapped. “My allegiance is to those poor farmers out there, the shepherds and the merchants. I saw what the Houses do when Amchester exploded. I see it every day when Farthington's men come and press another soul or two into service. I saw it in the service of the old Archmagus, and in that of her disciple, and on the battlefields from which they took their corpses for research. Don't talk to me about the Houses.” If he was an Imperial agent, I reflected, I was dead anyway. Might as well get my real feelings out. I spat for good measure, and it was if the intervening years had vanished—my mind was with me, and I was the equal of any man in this province.

  His eyes pinned mine, like he wanted to search my soul with them. I held his gaze steady. I'd held far worse. Obviously, he was deciding how far he could trust me.

  “Don't be a fool,” I said. “Do you really think your enemies put me out here in the off chance that you might happen by? Do you really think that my burrow is a spy's hideout? If I were in the employ of Terona, you can bet that I'd be living a damn sight more comfortably than this. And I'd have a farspeaker here, too. But I see that you've searched the place and haven't found anything, so…” I trailed off, losing my fire, “…so there's that.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Fine.” A formal tone crept into his voice. “First, I must express my gratitude for your hospitality, and then I must apologize for telling you the truth now. When they come after me, you must answer them as honestly as possible so that they do not put you too harshly to the question. I am Tomas Glasyin, formerly commander of the Imperial armed forces, duke of someplace I am no longer welcome, and so forth. I am in hiding from Terona, where my friend the king is about to die, and I can do nothing to save him. Now… who are you?”

  I looked around my cave, and said, “I was found, amnesiac, in the ruins of Amchester. They sent me to Askelath to recover, in care of Westkitt Abbey. They taught me the scriptures and trained me in the ways of the hawk and dove, and at night they strapped me to a chair and ran lightning across my skull. To restore my memory, they said, but they kept to it even as my memories returned, and I could hear their disappointment that whatever they were doing wasn't working. I clamped down on some of my memories, never let them out.” I chose these next words carefully, chewed them out one at a time, knowing the effect they'd have on this soldier. “I never told them that my parents had been agents of the Cronen, and that they died as they laid the explosives that took the Empire to war with the Siullan Republic.”

  He surged to his feet, horrified and ready to strike at something, anything, and I could not keep my scorn from my voice. “Really? Did you really think the Siullans did that? Did you honestly never think of the benefits that accrued to the High Houses and the Empire because of that incident? The Empire gained all of the Siullan Republic. Their men garrison our southern and northern borders now. Their trade flows into our coffers. And their magic!”

  He sat back, suddenly a-tremble, and I continued, stabbing my finger to accentuate my point. “Oh, yes. After the Westkitts decided I was useless to them but still showed remarkable mental prowess, they sent me off to the Council of Magi for training, and I learned well. I had access to the council's researches. The Siullans had advanced considerably in certain avenues: explosives, for instance. If an impartial and knowledgeable observer had actually looked at the Amchester blast, they'd have recognized it as far too primitive for the Siullans' work.”

  Numbly, he said, “So you're the son of traitors and destroyers.”

  “No,” I replied. “I'm the son of patriots. They thought they were doing a service to their masters, but they also thought they would be able retire from the money they
'd be paid. They were fooled, and they were certainly paid for their trouble. Think about it, Toren… I'm sorry, Tomas: Have the High Houses ever hesitated at anything to grasp more power for themselves? How many battles have they fought with each other? How much common blood have they spilled so that their sons and daughters remain fat and happy? How much blood have you spilled in their names, upholding their laws? Look at the villages around here. Would you say they've been well served by the Empire?”

  “They receive protection… from the reavers, from the warlords, from…” He cradled his head in his hands. “From us. They pay us so we don't hurt them. And then we hurt them anyway.”

  “I know this is a shock,” I said. “But out here, where the Houses rule mostly in name, we see things much differently than they do in Terona. We see the effects of their policies, and we suffer accordingly. When I finished my apprenticeship in the magi, they sent me against a tower in the south to claim it for myself against the other candidates. I refused to fight, and they stripped me of my staff. They declared my life forfeit, and they prepared an execution for me. But I still had friends, and my friends helped me burn a hole in my cell, and I fled here. Now you know why I hide. Now you know why I hate.”

  He looked up at last. “I have spent my life supporting Terona’s order. I have crushed rebellions. I have used the armies of the Empire to enforce peace within and without its borders. I have killed our citizens in the name of the king. You must hate everything I stand for.”

  “Stood for,” I corrected. “Are you not an outcast? You haven't done any more than anyone else has done. You did what my parents did. You had no reason to question your life. It had meaning, purpose, and comfort, so why should you have cared?”

  “I never thought…” He did not finish his sentence. “I should go. I have been a poor friend and a poor citizen.” He stood.

  As he staggered toward the cave mouth, I thought about the sheep he’d cost me, and about the broken bone that would likely not heal right for however many years I had left. I thought about these things, and then I set them aside. I said, “No. Don’t go. It’d be a shame to throw away the one good friend I’ve had in these past twenty years just so I could get back to being lonely for the few years left before I die. At least now we can be honest with each other, eh?”

  He came back and knelt before me, clasped my hand with both of his. “I need to evaluate my life. Everything you say… I could ignore it, but these last few months have turned all I know around. What are the chances that the two of us would meet here, this far from Terona?”

  “Why,” I said, “it's not so difficult to believe. This is at the far reaches of the Empire, on the edges of the Sickened Lands. This is almost a logical place for outcasts, exiles, and rebels.”

  He said, “I’ll run the sheep myself until you've healed.”

  “And lose still more?”

  “I won’t lose more.”

  “Yes, you will. You can’t handle the whole flock, Toren… Tomas! No, I'll just keep calling you Toren. It's easier. Now look: I’ve watched you with ’em. Listen to me. You need help. Further, I need the town’s doctor, because you might be able to battle-dress a broken bone, but I’ll be damned if I’ll trust this without a second pair of eyes on it. We'll get back to the cottage, and from there, you'll need to go to the town pub, and they’ll tell you where to find her. If Paul Busmith's there—a youngish man, strong looking, brown hair—see if he’s free to help you ’til my ankle’s healed. He’s a good lad. Hard worker.” I struggled to my feet, and he stepped forward to help me rise.

  We stepped out into the fresh snow. I heard him call Crosh to him, and we struggled back, saving our breath for the walk through the snow. It must have dropped at least two feet overnight, and when we made it to the cottage, I collapsed onto my bunk and woke only when Toren came back with Synor Vedru, a learned woman from the high alpine deserts of southern Haramai. What brought her to Dunlop I couldn’t say, but she was quiet, and though we’d spoken a number of times, we weren’t close friends. I don’t know anyone who knew her well, but the woman was the best doctor we’d had in these parts for all the time I’d been here. She had a sharp eye and a sharp mind, and I was always sure to keep my little projects hidden away when I knew she’d be coming to call.

  Vedru came in, skipped the small talk, and got straight to examining my ankle. After a few minutes of examination, she placed my staff in my hand, slipped a leather strip through my jaws, and said, “Hold him.” Toren put one hand on my chest, the other on my leg, and leaned down on me. I bit hard on the leather strap, clutched the staff harder, and the doctor did something that made the day go away for a little while.

  When I opened my eyes, she was done, and she was giving Toren instructions on my care. She looked over, saw me awake, and said, “I am leaving you a small bottle of syrup. You may take two drops from it every four hours, if the pain is bad. More than that will give you dreams, and the dreams will make you desire more until you can think of nothing else, and your life will be ruined. More than that will kill you. Two drops, four hours. No more.”

  She nodded her head to both of us and was off into the day, the sun streaming in bright off the fallen snow outside. When the door closed behind her, I said, “Was Paul there?”

  “Yes, he was. He’ll be by later today to help. He seems a bright enough lad, and not nearly as inquisitive as some of the townsfolk.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve faced lighter questioning from guards on a picket line,” he said. “Who am I, where’d I come from, how’d you hire me on, and how’d you happen to break your ankle. I told them as little as I could, but these farmers are tenacious.”

  “Yep. How’re the sheep?”

  “I’ve fed them twice today at the troughs, but they won’t go out into the snow.”

  “No, I suppose they wouldn’t for you. Here’s what you do…” and we fell into a discussion of the care of sheep in winter, interrupted by the arrival of Paul an hour or so later.

  The lad nodded to us quietly, came over, and knelt by my bedside. “Paul, Toren here has been to the cave. He knows. I trust him, and you can, too. Do what you can to hide the evidence of our work there until I'm able to get back. There's no point in continuing unless I'm there to supervise.”

  When I finished, Paul told me he understood, and gestured Toren to the door.

  Toren said, “If you need anything, call out, all right?”

  “You won’t hear me, Toren. You’re going too far for that. I’ll be fine.”

  They left, and I stared at the ceiling for some time before heaving myself from bed with the aid of my staff. I sat dozing by the fire, waiting for evening to come, and let my mind wander through the various plans I’d laid, and at some point I fell asleep.

  After the two came back that night and Paul returned to his cottage, Toren sat with me for a bit quietly, both of us in chairs in front of the fire. After a few minutes, he spoke.

  “I've had time to think,” he said. “And I'm going to stay. I've no purpose now, but if you'll have me, I'll stay. I don't know what you're making there or what you're doing in your cave, and I don't want to know. Not right now. But in time, I might want to help. Will you have me?”

  “Better with us than against us, sir.”

  He grinned with relief and leaned back into his chair. The firelight danced on his face.

  After that day, we established a new routine: Paul arrived in the morning, he and Toren fed the sheep and cleaned the barn so the sheep runoff didn’t turn noxious, and as the snow melted, started taking them out to the pastures. Paul went up to the eastern hills, leaving Toren with the usual western spots. Toren knew to fetch the boy if anything went amiss. And me, I stayed indoors with the fire and let my mind wander. It stayed this way until the snows melted in two months, and I was able to hobble out to the barn with the aid of my staff.

  At last, as spring was in full flower, Vedru came by and told me that I was allowed to do work in t
he immediate area, but to leave the long walks for the other men for at least another month or two. But Paul told me that Toren was likely able to handle the flock by himself, and so I let the boy get back to his pursuits. Once he'd finished stowing the gear, there was nothing I really needed to look after in my caves right now.

  That same day, as I stood winded atop the small hill near my cottage, my leg afire from my exertions and sweat running into my eyes, I looked down on the main road and saw a pair of riders on gray horses galloping at top speed toward Dunlop. I caught my breath and limped carefully down the hill to my cottage. I was there for perhaps thirty minutes when Paul came tearing to my door. I rose from my sturdy old chair to greet him, but he waved me down, caught his breath, and gasped. When at last he could breathe, he said, “The king's been attacked!”

  “What happened? Do you know?” I had expected this day since Glasyin had revealed himself.

  “Two post riders came to town on horses near dead, told the mayor the news, and tore south on fresh horses from the post.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Mayor says that it was one of the King’s Chosen who did it.” His voice was awed and quiet.

  “Did they catch the one responsible?”

  “No. They say he slaughtered the king’s kids, escaped, and set Terona on fire before he left. The knighthood is looking for him, and they say that the magi are, too, and they'll be combing the country to find him. The queen fled the city, they say, and they don’t know where she is either.”

  “Did they tell the mayor who’s going to rule now?”

  “I heard that it was a duke. I don’t remember his name. They said it was just until the king got better or they figured out the succession.”

  “Thank you, Paul.”

  He left, and I sat and massaged my leg and stared into the fire and thought dark thoughts about the projects I had brewing in my sheds and how that work looked like it had all gone to waste now.