by Robin Hobb
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 got 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 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 labour 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 of 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, “Follow me!” With those words, he gave his mare a sharp nudge with his heels and she leapt 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, 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 which 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 grey-green, holding its water in tight, leathery leaves or spiny palms. I did not hurry, but allowed myself to scan the full circle of 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 leant 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. There was no use in denying his words. 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.
“Good. 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 a 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 the schoolroom. Then I mounted and nudged Sirlofty to catch up with Chafer.
We rode on, 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 its end of 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 the hope 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. Some day, 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 amongst the soldiers who had once served under his command. The town had become a much-needed retirement haven for foot soldiers and non-commissioned officers when they mustered out of the service. My father had intended that it be so. Without Burvelle’s 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 that 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 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 winter, 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 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 that 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 posts 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 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 Kings 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 toil. 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 done, 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 alongside 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 own decision to choose this course. And what of the women and children in the wagons? Had they had any 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 travelled that road. Ordinary mail travelled in wagons for the most part; letters to soldiers from their families and sweethearts in the west and their replies. But King Troven’s couriers travelled that road as well, bearing important dispatches between the far outposts and the capital in Old Thares. 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.
The watcher at the relay station below us had spotted the incoming rider. I heard the clanging of the bell and in the next moment the inhabitants of the station sprang into action. One ran into the stable, to emerge almost immediately leading a long-legged horse wearing a tiny courier’s saddle. He held the fresh mount at the ready, while another man dashed out from the station bearing a waterskin and a packet of food for the rider. A fresh rider emerged, his face already swathed against the dust, his short bright yellow cape flapping in the river wind. He stood by his mount and waited for the message to be passed to him.
We watched as the messenger approached the station and then saw a frightening thing. The messenger only pulled in when his horse was abreast of the fresh mount. His feet never touched the ground as he lunged from one saddle to the next. He shouted something to the waiting men, leaned down to snatch up the packet of provisions and waterskin, and then set spurs to the new horse. In an instant he was gone, galloping down the centre of the road and through the penal coffle. Shackled men and mounted guards surged out of his way as he passed. There were angry shouts and cries as a section of the chained men were trampled by one of the mounted guards when they did not get out of the way quickly enough to avoid the horse. Heedless of the milling chaos in his wake, the courier was already dwindling to a tiny figure on the ribbon of road leading west. I stared after him for a moment, and then glanced back down at the relay station. A stableman was trying to lead the messenger’s horse, but the animal went suddenly down on his front knees, and then rolled onto his side in the dust. He lay there, kicking vaguely at the air.
“His wind’s broke,” Duril said sagely. “He’ll never carry a courier again. Poor beast will be lucky if he lives.”
“I wonder what desperate message he bore, that he rode his horse to death and could not pass it on to a fresh rider.” My mind was already fu
ll of possibilities. I visualized night attacks by the Specks on the Wildlands border towns, or fresh uprising amongst the Kidona.
“King’s business,” Sergeant Duril said tersely.
As we watched, we saw one of the men break free of the group, running toward the manor with something in his hand. A separate message for my father? He knew most of the commanders of the forts on the eastern boundary, and he was kept almost as well appraised of conditions on the frontier as the King himself. I saw curiosity light in the old sergeant’s eyes. Duril glanced at the sun and announced abruptly, “Time for you to go in to your books. We don’t want Master Quills-and-Ink to be looking at me nasty again, do we?”
And with that, he turned his horse’s head away from the river, the road, and the relay station and led me at an easy lope back to the trail that led down to my father’s manor house.
My boyhood home was set on a gentle rise of land that overlooked the river. In an indulgence of my mother, my father had planted scattered trees for two acres around it, poplar and oak and birch and alder. Water hauled up from the river irrigated the trees that both shaded the house and grounds and provided a windbreak from the constant wind. It was a little island of trees in the vast expanse of prairie all around us, green and shady and inviting. Sometimes I thought it looked small and isolated. At other times, it seemed like a green fortress of welcome in the windswept, arid lands. We rode toward it, the horses eager now for cool water and a good roll in the paddock.
As Sergeant Duril had predicted, my tutor was standing outside the manor awaiting us. Master Rissle’s arms were crossed on his narrow chest and he was trying to look forbidding. “Hope he don’t wallop ye too hard for being late, young Nevare. Looks like he could be cruel harsh, him so big and all,” Duril said in quiet derision before we were in earshot of the man. I kept my face straight at his gentle gibe. He knew he should not mock my tutor, an earnest but scrawny young scholar come all the way from Old Thares to teach me penmanship and history and figuring and astronomy. Although Duril would not curb his own disrespectful tongue, he would freely cuff me for daring to smile at it. So I held my amusement inside as I dismounted. I called a farewell to Sergeant Duril as he led our mounts away, and he answered with a vague wave of his hand.