Fields of hops, barley and wheat thinned to smaller and smaller patches, the country becoming wilder. We passed meadows empty of livestock and villages empty of people, both man and animal either slaughtered or fled.
In the first empty village we entered, Sapphire had reined in and slid easily off his horse, the wound in his arm not seeming to give him much trouble. I could not see it but guessed he had cleaned and bound it. No blood showed through to his coat, at least, and in any case it was his arm, not mine.
“What?” I asked him.
He pulled down the pack he had tied to his horse and began loosening the ties.
“Time to change,” he said.
I thought about it and nodded. “You speak Gerrian?”
He nodded and began pulling clothes from the pack, the kind of rough spun cloth that they wear in the north, where they cannot afford to trade for our superior materials and colors. Yellows, blues, dark reds, wool and supple leather. I got down and we changed, picking clothes that fit where possible, making do where they did not. I took a slug of whiskey, put the bottle carefully away.
“You don't look like one of us,” he said in the Alendi dialect.
“My mother was a slave but my father was a warrior who stole her from the south.”
“What is your name?”
“Pel Epmeran,” I said without pause.
He snorted. “The son of a slave.”
I smiled back. “The son of a freedman. Stay in character.”
“Tarl Epjarn,” he supplied. “You are giving me lessons now?”
I didn't answer but instead looked around the ruin of a village; seeing what I wanted I went and got two stout sticks the length of swords. “Speaking of lessons, ours should continue.”
“I watched you, you have the way of it.”
“I could be better.”
“We could all be better, there is always someone better. That's never the point. Just be aware, know, think, act, don't pay attention to the skill of the enemy, only know him and kill him and move on.”
“Train me.”
He started repacking and I didn't think he would say more, I thought the answer was no, but it was more complicated than that. “They took me when I was five,” he started his story as he slung the pack up on the horse and tied it there. “I was a gutter rat, a… what do you call it? A beggar. A thief. There were hundreds of us gutter rats preying on each other, starving, killing each other. We were free but no one wanted us. There was famine. I was surviving.” He swung up into the saddle. “Bring the toy swords.”
I blushed. It was the contempt he put into the words 'toy swords.' But I didn't protest. I just did as I was told. He was giving me something and I was determined to accept the gift.
“I'd already killed, twice, by then; older boys who tried to take food I'd suffered to get. I wasn't alone. There was civil war. There was famine. There were thousands of people in Opreth and every one of them was hungry to one extent or another. The enemy had hit us while we fought amongst ourselves and the countryside was ruled by nomads. They didn't want the cities. They were killing everyone outside them so more refugees were arriving every day. Like a thousand rats in a barrel we were turning on ourselves.”
We rode out of the village and I listened, enthralled. I had heard of Opreth. I knew what had happened in the country of Fortherria, far to the north and east, a land once as civilized as ours. Not now. The cities were ruins. The country ruled by nomads who let fertile lands lie fallow and ran cattle on them. The cities were near empty, I had read, thinly populated by wretches who farmed market gardens inside the city walls. In Opreth a population of half a million had reduced itself to less than a handful of thousands. Gang wars, starvation, cannibalism, they had literally consumed themselves while the nomads killed any who fled the nightmare. They were still there, those few thousands in their cities that the barbarians mostly ignored.
“The noble line of the nomads have a few traditions they maintain. Ku Mirt is one of them. They came into the cities and took some of us. They begin training at five, or thereabouts. They are not too fussy about age so long as the boys look five or so.”
For a good while, as we walked the horses, he was silent but I didn't say anything. I sensed he would tell me more as long as I left him to decide what he would tell.
“Food is the reward, and we were all hungry. A thousand of us went into Yurpron Fastness. They trained us hard and some died of the training, but the survivors killed the rest. Over twelve years I killed roughly a hundred of them. Maybe more. I didn't count. The competition to survive was fierce. We were told early that only twenty would leave there alive when we reached seventeen. That we would then serve the royal house as tools well made.” He glanced at me then and just a glimpse of those cold blue eyes told me what he was saying this for.
He had asked me once. 'Are you five?' And when I had said no he had told me, 'We begin training at five. No exceptions.' No exceptions.
“I can't teach you to be what I am,” he put it into words where none were needed. “I killed children when I was a child, boys when I was a boy and youths when I was a youth, and some of the teachers along the way. And every day the training; morning noon and night, training in ways you don't want to imagine and in things you would rather not know about, so no. No, I can't teach you to be me. And would not if I could. But I will teach you a little more of the sword, if you want to learn that.” And then he kicked his horse into a canter and after a long moment I followed.
97
“The point is faster than the edge but don't favor it, just use what's right in the instant. You are not showing off your skill for a crowd of admirers, you are just killing and every time you move someone should feel your blade in them. Groin and inner thigh, belly and neck are the best killing hits but don't pass up an opportunity, any time you cut them it hurts and they react, step back, twitch, wince, something, and then you kill them.” Sapphire kept up a running monologue as we worked. There was something about the way he used the practice sword that told me he had never held one in his hands before today. It was a frightening thought. When he had learned he had taken wounds any time he failed to block or duck a blow. “You use the term swordplay, the first time I heard the phrase I laughed till I cried, later and in private,” he was striking at me relentlessly and I knew why it had seemed to Kerral that he was holding back, it was because he was not actually trying to kill me. Having seen him in action I could see the difference. “There is no sense of play in killing, and if you have a sword in your hand instead of a rock what difference? Bare handed or a knife, a rope, a plate, a bottle, a brick, a scythe or a rake. There is no play in it, just get the sharp bit into their body and kill them.” I was defending desperately. “You focus too much on the sword, the sword is there but it isn't everything, you learned somewhere how to see that an enemy is going to move but you need more, you need to learn to know how and where he is going to move, and then use it to be out of that and have your blade in his body.” He didn't move his feet, sometimes for a minute at a time, then he would step to make sure he was close enough to hit me with the blade, which he did with monotonous regularity. “You were better than this with a real blade and a real enemy, everyone is more focused, if not more skilled when it matters. Usually less skilled but that doesn't matter, what matters is that you are not trying to kill me and if you don't you will learn nothing from this.” He stepped in past my sword as though it wasn't there and punched me in the plexus so hard that I went down hard on my back before I knew I'd been hit. “That's enough for now. Think about trying to kill me.”
I already was.
98
The first scream got our attention. There were others, maybe three voices, a woman and certainly one girl child. I was moving before I thought about it, turning recklessly off the path and kicking the dray into a canter, it couldn't go faster. Some horses cannot gallop and the dray was one of them. The pasture ran slightly uphill for a hundred yards, then fell away. I crest
ed the brow and didn't hesitate even though I should have. At the bottom of the slope the pasture ended in a cottage behind a small plowed field, some parts under cultivation, some bare and ready for planting. There were maybe half a dozen men that I could see or guess at; Alendi by the look of them. One held a struggling girl and was carrying her inside. The other five were busy, one way or another. One had a woman on the ground. At a window one was throwing goods out into the yard for inspection by the others. Another leaned against a wall and cut slices from a ham, stuffing them into his mouth.
A girl's scream came from inside the house. I couldn't move any faster. Anger doesn't describe what I felt, it was a cold and vicious emotion that filled me and overflowed. This was everything I hated about foreign soldiers, they rape and take, ruin and destroy, and have not the wit to build anything stable and good. They deserved to die or be made slaves for the mines, their territories ruled by the city whose laws protected people from violence against their person and theft of their property. At that moment I hated barbarians and their log longhouses and their short brutal pointless lives, and these would have shorter lives than most. Half of them were younger than me I saw as I thundered toward them, the heavy dray giving them plenty of warning of my approach. They were aware of me but not worried, the one with the ham didn't even put it down. The man on the ground on the woman barely looked up and made no attempt to stop what he was doing to her. Two reached for their spears and moved forward. I hit the plowed earth and the hooves of the dray threw up great clods of earth. One of them appeared at the door and another stuck his head out the window and watched. I wasn't stopping and of the two who faced me one shouted a warning, then I had my sword out and was on top of them.
I turned the dray at the last moment, let his spear thrust pass my side and slashed at his head, opening a wound that took his ear away with it. I spun the dray about and saw that Sapphire was there and the other one down. Sapphire was already off his horse, his sword in the man who had been raping the woman, the thrust of the sword almost casual as he passed. The barbarian with the ham had dropped it and snatched up his own spear, stepping forward. I didn't see what happened to him as I kicked myself off the dray and landed with a stumble. The boy with half his face gone was howling but still had his spear in hand; looking at me he launched himself forward and I spitted him, twisted and pulled the blade free, heading for the doorway. Sapphire leaped through the window, leaving no enemy alive outside. I went through the door, dodged at the last moment as a naked girl hurtled out the door, stepped in to the bad light and nearly took a spear in the gut. I twisted desperately and the blade of it scored me in passing, I ignored it then, stepped in and hammered my forehead into the barbarian's nose, feeling his rough beard against my face. He grunted and staggered back and I moved with him, bringing the point of my sword up level with his belly and thrusting hard. Grabbing his arm with my free hand I pushed the blade deeper and twisted it, the deep breath he gasped in would have turned into something if I'd let it. Instead it froze in his lungs when I shoved the edge left and right and I let him fall away from me, tugging my sword free through a wall of blood.
Only Sapphire and I were in the room.
“Better,” he said, calmly. “Just get the blade in them. Hit them with anything anywhere and if you can target a fatal spot so much the better but don't let it take up space in your mind, you need to be aware of everything and reacting to everything but most of all you want them to be reacting to you but not for long…” He kept up the indifferent monologue as he followed me out of the room. The woman was sitting up, her skirts pulled down over her legs, holding her girl children as all three wept, though she was trying to comfort them. “…kill them fast and move to the next,” he finished. “Anything we want here?”
“Give them some scrip.”
He looked at me, looked at them and frowned slightly, then nodded. As he went for that I brushed aside the woman's near hysterical thanks and overrode her words with mine. “There will be more. Head south, and east. This scrip is worth coin, enough to start again. Get closer to the city, it's safer. This sort of thing doesn't happen there.” She was nodding but I don't know how much she was taking in or what she would do. “Go now,” I told her and headed for my horse, who was standing nearby, stamping his feet and snorting anxiously.
“Wait!” She called out, scrambling to her feet. “Can we go with you? Please please please…”
“We are going north. Go south and east, as I said.” I looked them over, wondered at their fate for just a moment, but you can't save them all and you can't protect them all, who knew how many horror stories there would be told after this war was done. What I could do I would, but I couldn't do more and still do what I needed to. “I'm sorry.”
I turned away from the pain and despair, the red face and the tears, away from the children, one of whom was not a child any more. There must be hundreds like this.
The dogs barked frantically in my head, suddenly wild with excitement. I cocked my head to one side and she thought I was considering, maybe changing my mind. I hushed her as she began to beg again to go with us. Sapphire pressed a scrip into her hand and she closed it into a fist. “If there is money on these men, take it. Do as he says, south and east. Go.”
I was watching, standing near the dray, I hadn't even made it to her head. I was listening, frozen. Then the baying began and I knew they were loose and coming after me.
“Sapphire, we have to run.”
He looked at me, saw the fear on my face, yet still asked me calmly why we had to run.
“The dogs. They are loose and they know where I am,” I touched the stone embedded in my forehead.
He nodded. “For now we run.”
So we mounted up and ran.
99
“You think you are never going to have to kill when you are tired and drunk? Think again.”
I think he was angry. He'd thrown the practice sword at me and I'd dropped it. I could barely stand up. I was pretty wasted. The light of dusk was all we had and I could hardly see. I'd nearly fallen off the dray for the tenth time and the sun was setting. He'd dragged the packs to the ground, thrown me a bottle and walked the horses till they cooled down, then let them drink, gave them some oats and let them crop at the grass when he came back to where I lay, calling curtly for me that I get to my feet.
Now I stooped, swaying, and got a grip on the practice blade. I was down before I knew he wasn't going to wait for me.
“Get up.”
I did, slowly, watching him carefully.
It went on for a while and it wasn't pretty. The beating – who can call it anything else? – went on long after I couldn't see for lack of light and only ended when he couldn't see. I was a mess of bruises when he finally stopped. He was angry okay, but it wasn't my fault as such. Drunk worked, that's all.
I'd half noticed it before but thought nothing of it. The idea occurred to me and I thought it was worth a try. I'd been struggling to drink as little as possible, fighting the addiction as long as I could and ruthlessly putting the bottle away each time I took a pull. It was hard, especially that part. I wanted to keep drinking till the bottle was empty and then open another. This time I had.
I thought it was worth a try. When I had had a drink before, still in the prison of my room when I had caved to the demands and taken that first drink after days of deprivation, the sound of the dogs had faded a little. It happened again, the next time. And each time. I thought it was worth a try. Each sip, each addition to the alcohol in my belly and the sound of the dogs faded, they seemed more confused, whimpering, the baying gone and replaced with whining and snuffling. When I was drunk they lost the smell of me, they couldn't find me while I was drunk.
Well, so much for my good intentions.
“How many are there?”
He had asked the question before and I had given him the same answer before. “I don't know. Larner showed me the two, but they were the first two. I can hear a pack, eight or ten o
r twelve, I don't know. Not many more than that, I think.” I spoke very slowly. He grew visibly stern when I slurred. I didn't want him to be more angry than he was. It hurt.
We sat in the dark, not wanting to attract attention with a fire, and ate cold meat. The nights were cool but not seriously cold. I didn't mind that. Wrapped in my cloak I was warm enough, covered in dew at dawn but soon dried by the sun and breeze as we moved. I didn't want the meat but forced it down.
“How much do you know about the Eyrie? Tell me everything.”
I did. Slowly. The Eyrie was a fortress atop a flat topped hill that might have been natural or not. The walls were twenty five feet and it was the stronghold of the Alendi tribe, big enough for all of them in times of severe threat. The people and livestock both. It was as big as a city but usually nearly empty, the province of the Erdrun clan, the clan with the distinction of having the most kings in Alendi history. A king was a temporary thing, a warlord under whom the tribe united for war and then he stepped down when the war was done. Less than a thousand men, women and children made the Eyrie their permanent home, maintaining it in case of need, making weapons and missiles and stockpiling them there. A great pasture spread from the walls to the center of the Eyrie, and there there was a keep inside a moat. That is where our man would be, if he was anywhere. It had, after all, been some time since I had word he was there.
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