by Adrian Selby
Mark these words, Teyr Amondsen. This may be your greatest achievement of all.
Aude
476OE
For Aude
It’s done.
There’s a man, Farah, rode out from Hillfast four weeks ago, alone. We put horses all along the way in the stables we built, the outposts. He ran the horses hard and the stables swapped them out. I wanted to see how quick it could be done. He is in his cups in the outpost here at Stockson and there is a celebration about me as I write this.
Why do I feel so sad then, now the road is built and my dream’s come true? I can barely look at them, these beautiful people, those who have toiled for this road, those who have died for this road. It’s cost us all too much, hasn’t it? I have lost crews, and the soldiers with them as they cleared and drained lands, built roads and bridges and put up the posts to mark it all out. Stables have been burned and looted, those in them killed. We have had our revenge on those that attacked us. The attacks have stopped this last year although I have had to fund a small army to do it, both soldiers and letnants, for, as Thornsen has said, the hard work could be said to start now, no matter the coin and cut of tithes we give those who man our posts. We may yet lose much to the corrupt and those whose lives are threatened with it.
You told me all those years ago that I should do this for Mosa. It’s not something I’ve done, it’s something we’ve done. You have done much to ensure peace in the Circle, Aude.
When I saw you last year we were close to the finish, you recall. Only the impending winter had put a stop to the building being done near the Amersen borders. All we seemed to talk about was the children, wasn’t it? The girls have grown, haven’t they? Nietsa’s a worry to her da the way she’s carrying on, and it didn’t appease him much to hear me say that I was like her as a girl. Vuina’s death hit them hard of course.
I’d like you to thank Ruisma. It cannot have been easy for her to see me, for you both perhaps, but I’m glad of it. It helped me a lot to see you together, helped me to see you happy about each other, despite your efforts to spare me!
You said that you both might not try for a child. But you should. She seemed less sure of that than you—perhaps she wants one before it becomes too late for her. You cannot think of being too old to become a da again. I hope you think about it again.
Since I met you and returned along our road it seems that Theik is lining Brek up to become a letnant for him. I’m told he’s getting a reasonable beard now at twenty summers. Theik is pushing him, but I knew he would. Those other clearks who might have thought their family names give them something more than Brek have underestimated him. He is a quick mind and devoted to this company, indeed he has proposed a name for it beyond the Amondsen Guild; he has proposed it be called the Good Company. He sees and believes in the good we have been trying to do, the good you and I spoke of, the good I dreamed of since I paid out as a mercenary. There are years yet before anybody believes that we might become this company as he calls it, but it is a good word, it speaks of solidarity. It’s inspiring. Brek might be a little too earnest in this regard, for a twenty-year-old man. He shuns the cups and is shunned in turn by those who enjoy them or believe merit is only one part of a preference they ought have of Theik’s time. But capability and graft is all. We toil that we may deserve our dreams. And we have toiled.
I wish the same could be said of young Litten in Tapper’s Way. Fitblood despaired of him, and now he is lost to us. He was caught arranging with various merchants and others additional scrolls and small chests that could be fitted outside of our own records and the profits split between vanners and himself. He was confined to his quarters in the outpost and denied drink for he has taken to cups hard and had made a nuisance of himself and has caused his sister and Dottke much hurt. Then it got bad enough with Glyn and Fitblood after a run of his broken promises that they put him on a van going up the Moors. They hoped that a good captain and a bit of hard living would straighten him out of the comforts. Might be, looking back, he needed to stay with Theik and Brek, but I don’t know, Theik wouldn’t have had the time for him. So the van sends a rider back saying that he left their camp one night on the Moors and never came back. They spent a day trying to track after him but there was no sign.
The girls knew before me of course, me being all the way out here. It upset them terrible. Aggie had been trying to help him but he seemed even to turn on her and she’s become the gentlest of spirits, everyone around the outpost loves her. She’s tall now, beautiful too. Glyn says she is a wonder with the horses and she has even had a go at making horseshoes in the smithy, though Dottke it seems is the better one with the hammer. He’s a good smith, Skarrer, for we need quality work, and he won’t have wasters about the smithy. Can’t talk highly enough of those two however. But since Litten’s gone, Dottke’s written to me and asked about going back to their old theit, the Kelssen bloodlands. She said she’d been thinking about what had become of their home, for she remembers it a little, Aggie not at all. She’s been getting her letters with Fitblood and helping him manage things, which has been a blessing for him for he is struggling to get about the outpost as he once did, he said. I gave approval for a van to be put together for this expedition and Leyden would join them, which she’s delighted by and he’s pleased of course. I would have written back to tell her to be careful. I worry about her making this trip, but then it’s Dottke. She won’t be stopped, will she!
Thornsen has been making plans for what would become our largest outpost, one that would house the fifteen clearks now working for him and fortified as well so we might store a great deal more of our cargo and coin there safely. The Kreigh Moors clans welcome this for some of their families are in difficult and remote land and they speak warmly, I’m told, of being able to have somewhere nearer to trade. Thornsen’s own Family is from the Moors and he will move Epny and their children there when the outpost is built.
Well, I’ve just read through all this, and so much of the world about us is changing and we have been significant in that.
The vanners that use the road we built across the Circle call it Mosa’s Road.
It is.
Teyr
481OE
For Aude
Nothing prepares you for the Old Kingdoms.
I write from Credezka, the great port of Mount Hope. It is a magnificent sight, all marble and white stone in the heights, worn iron and stone buildings crowding the wharfs and quays away down the hill from the rooms I’ve taken here. If you have written to me it’s possible, with the travelling I’ve done, that your letters keep missing me. But if you haven’t, I hope you’ll indulge me the odd letter to you for I think of you often. Please give my love to Ruisma. I hope you are keeping well and keeping those girls in order. Perhaps there’s one of your own you might tell me about!
The reason I’m here is clear of course. It’s the Old Kingdoms. These networks of trade cannot be undone easily and they are bound together by centuries. They have, as Thornsen puts it, tenure. He is here with me for I am heartbroken to tell you, having to write this even after all this time, that his wife Epny died suddenly not six months into their own stewardship of our great outpost, which the crews and clearks all now call Outpost Epny to honour her—and him of course.
His children are grown up now—they all are, aren’t they—and while one of his girls trains to be a drudha no less, another has made a letnant there her keep and they are due to have a dut soon, I understand. Thornsen will go back for that, much as he insists otherwise.
With regard to that subject of tenure, there is a poisonous and annoying history to everything here that you are made to feel you are intruding upon. I’ve been called a flatback. I had no idea what that was, but it means I’ve become rich suddenly, not inherited it from someone else, not “old money.” So I’m here to prove myself from the beginning, to make our case with Thornsen, to sit and wait in the halls of lords and the even more grand halls of the merchants despite being richer
than all of them, made to pay with my time and coin for every inch I gain, mocked too for that inch behind their fans and lace handcloths they have the habit of here. They all appear to wear silks and so I have tried to do so, not least because woollens are too warm here, and they make their decisions as much based on how you appear to them as they do the merit of your proposals. It’s fucked, and my appearance does little to help me as you can imagine.
But I struggle here for many reasons. As my interests have grown, corruption has crept in where my eyes have been the least. Our reputation is hurt, the name the Good Company is mocked roundly in certain towns and theits about Hillfast and Forontir especially. I seem to pay far more than other merchants for the diligence of those that run my company yet receive only a little more in return, it seems.
Brek had been thinking over these years the same things of course, for he sees the backhanders and bribes and filching for himself at Faldon, I’m sure, and hunts it down there and elsewhere.
He has sent me letters with ideas for this company. He thinks we need a sort of emblem, not just one that identifies that boxes and barrels are ours, but one that performs as do clan colours, something to rally around, something that helps give those that work for our coin common purpose, something perhaps to stand as a symbol to others. He thinks the colour red should do it, the red of farlswood. All the outposts and stables have, as the main gates to their enclosures, huge doors made of farlswood and iron, as I have been rigorous in specifying. All remark upon them who see them, and he has reminded me of this quite obvious fact. How then, he argues, might it be used if we had cloaks and flags and banners that themselves were of the same red, that a van to look on be decked in red where it can be, red for the covers on the wagons? Thornsen widened his eyes as he read this letter, for red as you know is not an easy dye to make, though I reminded him what he told me I was worth. He did think that it might be a potent symbol for this reason, the red. A bright rich colour that all of our men and women could rally to, might fight harder for, would also be happy to wear, for it isn’t a colour you see much outside those with coin to spare.
At a time when the flaunting of wealth was accepted around me only because it had come from the toils of forefathers and the accident of nature in respect of their fertile lands and mountains, I had more desire then to flaunt what I was building. Thornsen to this day I don’t think believes it a wise thing, that it might cause more problems than it solves, but I am willing to give Brek his lead and see if his judgement is correct because Sillindar knows I second- and third-guess my own when trying to order some food these days.
For now then I am here, and I am listening with interest to the reports from the Roan Province of unrest there in the court. Part of me is sorry to hear it for I have good memories of the place. Thornsen sails there in two days. I don’t feel well enough to make the journey. These last few weeks I have had strange dreams and they have woken me. Sometimes my black eye will see movement that I cannot track with the other, though I notice my old eye is weakening. The plant that the Oskoro put in me grows. I hadn’t thought much about it over the years, but it makes sense that it has. Some days I feel it move, others a leaf-like smell I give off gets remarked on and I have to bathe before any important meet that I have.
Nonetheless the black eye sees through most bluffs and bluster that I’m faced with in negotiations. It gives me a great sense of things not feeling quite right when someone speaks, the way they speak. To these wealthy people I’m a distinct curiosity, or I was. Now I’m just a flatback that won’t go away and commands too much of a fleet and bargains too well to ignore.
As for the children, Dottke, with Brek’s help, has arranged for an outpost to be set up on her bloodlands. Can you believe she’s now twenty-two summers! All those duts are grown up now, and I mean Litten too for I feel that he still lives somewhere. She has moved to the Almet outpost as her interest and travel to her homeland has grown. She will settle there, if she hasn’t already while I’ve been away, but Brek wishes to stay at Faldon. I hope Aggie might join Dottke down in their old theit. At the least, Dottke will set the place right, and it’s a strong spot on which we might manage trade along those rivers south to Port Carl. Write soon, for I would love to hear from you.
Teyr
482OE
For Teyr
I have not long received your last letter, from Credezka. It has the look of having travelled halfway around the world, which isn’t far from true, is it, and I can almost smell the salt and spices on the parch.
We’ve been kept busy by life here, as you have there and everywhere you go. We did try for a child but we were not able to have one. You guessed rightly that it would hurt Ruisma more than she had first let on in our talk of us trying. Now it seems we are drawn more and more to caring for Lina and Nuitsa, for Jelmer is ill and I do not have much hope for him getting past it.
It may be with all your travels you do not know that Drun has become chief of the Amondsen Family properly now, as he’s old enough and ready. He does Skershe great credit and she has done a fine job there. He has Skershe’s and your ability to inspire those around you. His position is bolstered by the road. He has agreed as well to a Walk, where the Auksen boy hasn’t, and I think this has helped him to be taken seriously by the likes of the Eeghersens, Amersens and Jamessens. A meet is planned with the Oskoro to discuss the way such an undertaking might be planned.
I’m sorry to say that such a Walk is more important now than ever. A band of Oskoro were killed by men from a family of the Triggsens. Ruisma and I went there with Chief Jamessen himself to see the Triggsen chief, and it soon came out that they had blamed this band for blighting their crops in what was a hard year and for the death of a boy, though he’d been playing near a river that had swollen with the rains of the last spring. I’ve therefore done some travelling myself, to bring these families to meet the Oskoro. You would be glad to see how many Oskoro now come to the Almet outpost, meriting little more than a glance from those travelling through. They are careful with their recipes, which is a shame for the rest of us, but they have saved lives and eased the pain and other ailments of almost anyone that leaves an offering at the stone. You should see now the gifts there, and none plunder any more. The old ways have returned.
Teyr, I understand why yours have been so few, and hope you understand why my own letters are so rare in return, but I love to receive them still. You may think the talk of your Good Company is just ships and profits and contracts, but you mustn’t forget that our ability to talk as we do, however rare, is entirely due to the dream you had all those years ago. Part of me wishes, when I read your letters, that you’d slow down more, for you have an itinerary would kill even young men stone dead. I expect you travel in more comfort these days, but still I expect you creak worse than I do, and I do creak. Ruisma had one of the soldiers that came by a few months ago show us some of your basic Forms, for it is her belief that the exertion will help us keep some strength into our old age, should we get there. It’s not this that I worry about as much as that I am forgetting things. I have hunted the house down many times now in search of Mosa’s Catch, and it is somewhere obvious but unremembered. The same goes for so many things, but this, of them all, breaks my heart.
Though the years may go by before next we write, we continue to work here to secure the peace that you hoped the road would bring. The road, oh Teyr, you should see it. As you had thought, the justices and others travel along it and save weeks. The rulings of our laws are spread, and fewer soldiers can cover more ground to meet and deal with those who wander into these lands through hunger or to hurt us.
Maybe you will come back along Mosa’s Road again, soon. We will have a feast in your honour.
Aude
486OE
For Aude
More than three years have passed. The days go by like blinks of an eye and there’s so little time for reflection, and I’m sorry for that.
With no thanks to Thornsen I sit once more
at the end of a birthday celebration and a night’s feasting and drinking, though I’ve little stomach for either with all this plant in me. He wanted me to celebrate that I was sixty-two summers. “Winters,” I told him. “Summers is said for a happy remembrance,” though be assured I said this to him in private. Who wants a miserable old woman at her own party!
It was a surprise to see Theik here at Credezka, for that is where I still am. He has left Faldon finally at Thornsen’s request and will stay here to command my berths on the wharf and my sheds, for he is incorruptible. Brek has been a marvel, and he is taking over as castellan of Post House Epny. I should explain that he has been a fountain of initiatives since he oversaw our company adopt the red. Wherever my vans and crews go now they are called the Reds, it seems. He has also, without my knowledge, worked with Thornsen to establish at Epny an academy that must be the finest in the citadels, for the training of soldiers, drudhas, smiths and others that the company always needs. It is his hope that if a man or woman chooses to be a Red, to join the company, they will receive training, food and shelter, and his hope is that this promotes loyalty, and where it does not, it at least eliminates antipathy to us. He has also been working with the clearks to name our outposts post houses. Omar has a post house named after him, though Faldon keeps its name, and Ruifsen does. I expect our old friend Fitblood will have Tapper’s named after him, however, for he is now sick and being cared for.