by CJ Brightley
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.” Two days after the soldier said he’d seen them last.
“Your daughter died then?”
He merely nodded, looking up at me.
“You should have brought your complaint to Yoshiro Kepa, the commander at Fort Kuzeyler. He is responsible for the discipline of the men.” The words sound harsh, written down, but no one could have heard anything in my voice but sorrow.
“I had no faith in his justice! I don’t know him. Mayhap he’s a good enough man, but the men under him were not. Who would believe me over a soldier?”
“We asked for the king’s help against the Tarvil, not thieving soldiers to rape our daughters!”
“Phraa! What kind of justice would Cyra have then?”
“Better to see them hang than to wait on Stonehaven’s whim.”
The words poured forth from the men in a violent flood. I sat silent, waiting for their anger to subside, and finally they faded into silence, staring at me.
“Perhaps things are different out here. You haven’t seen much good from Stonehaven in quite some time. But you should not doubt the king’s justice.” I hesitated, staring at my hands before looking around the table to meet each gaze. “I understand your anger well enough, and the deed is done now. Normally it would be murder, but I understand you had no expectation of justice. When a soldier dies, the king’s treasury pays one hundred twenty-five golden eagles to his designated heir. The town should pay three hundred seventy-ive golden eagles to the king’s treasury to reimburse it for this cost, one hundred twenty-five for each of the three soldiers.”
Their eyes widened. It was a brutal fine for such a small village so far from the main trade routes. It would be devastating, better perhaps than seeing the girl’s father and others swing, but not by much.
“I will reduce the fine by one half, to one hundred eighty-seven golden eagles and one golden hawk. The men were at fault, and the king’s purse will pay the other half of the fine. Their families will not suffer for their deed.”
It was still quite steep, but no longer impossible, and several men sighed with relief. “I trust that you will bring any further problems to Commander Kepa at Fort Kuzeyler. I understand that the king’s peace has not been observed out here for some time, but violations of it will no longer be overlooked. There will be no need for and no tolerance of such vigilante revenge. Is that clear?”
Silent nods. A few careful, grateful smiles.
“We’ll take the bodies down and burn them. Bring firewood to the square.”
More nods, and I stood. The men filed out behind me into the street and watched as I spoke to the soldiers. “We’re going to burn the bodies. Haru, Eder, and Akio, take them down.”
It was a gruesome task. I replaced Eder after he vomited, and then Haru, and finally did some of the work myself. I could have ordered some of the others to do it, but I’ve always believed that an officer’s dignity should not be an excuse for shirking unpleasant duties. We stacked wood around the bodies and finally set them alight in the middle of the square. It wasn’t ideal, but the bodies were too rotten to move out to a more suitable spot. We stood there for hours. The smoke carried the stench of burning flesh, and as the wind shifted we moved around the square, trying to avoid the worst of it. It was well past dark when we let the fire die. I wanted no remains of the rot to contaminate the square, and the few charred bones could be moved later.
The ride back to Fort Kuzeyler was grim and silent, but we rode through the night. Everyone wanted to pretend the ugly day had never occurred at all.
We rode triumphant into Stonehaven. Thousands of people cheered us. Great crowds threw flowers under the hooves of our prancing horses. They sang songs of war, victory, and pride. The sun was warm on our backs, the air golden. It was spring, and the ride south had been a ride into perfection.
In the courtyard of the palace, all the sounds fell away. Hakan met me, and I dropped to one knee to give him appropriate honor before the men. There was a crowd of palace servants, and as Hakan bid me rise, I saw Riona, her face the one I had looked for above all others. She ran to me and threw her arms around me, her sweet head tight against my chest. I was laughing, my face buried in her hair. She looked up at me, and her eyes were so blue I lost my breath. She smiled and I bent to kiss her.
I woke with tears in my eyes. I was glad that as the ranking officer I had my own room. I wept alone and muffled the sound in my crumpled blanket.
19
Riona
Saraid and I attended Sayen at her birthing. It wasn’t easy, but she came through it well with a beautiful boy. When I held him, I nearly lost my breath from envy. Eko, her husband, was beside himself with pride. After he kissed Sayen and held the child for a moment, he and all the other men who could get away went to the servants’ kitchen for a long night of celebration, pushing the tables to the side for the rophira, the men’s dance of triumph and joy, and all the drinking and raucous singing that would accompany it. The king gave them a handsome gift, a beautiful blanket and some gold, as well as a little time off from her work. Her health was fine, but she enjoyed the time with her new son.
Lani said she wanted to be a healer. Saraid said she didn’t have the stomach for it, she was too sympathetic and it would upset her too much. But she insisted, and with her father’s bemused consent, Saraid began letting her follow along when she saw patients.
Lani confided to me that maybe, if she had a skill like healing, her father wouldn’t be in such a hurry to marry her. She liked the idea of helping people. She was softhearted and the thought of helping people in pain pleased her. But when one of the youngest stableboys was kicked by one of the king’s new hunters, she had an ugly introduction to what healing is really like.
The boy was her own age, fourteen. He was hysterical with pain, one arm destroyed, the bones crushed and mangled. My job was to comfort him as best I could while the grooms held him down and Saraid worked. His mother was in the city, and someone went to fetch her, but the treatment could not wait.
He lost his arm. Saraid sent Lani out while she cut it, and I held his head with my face turned away and my eyes closed. It was the first time I’d helped with a serious case, and it made me sick. There was so much blood, and it was all I could do to keep from vomiting. Once he was unconscious, it was easier to distance myself from it, see it as a task rather than a little boy.
Saraid called Lani in to help her bandage the stump, and they attended him for days. Lani was teary-eyed and emotional, but Saraid said she did well, and kept her emotions in check when it mattered most. I was proud of her, but I didn’t know whether it would keep Joka from wanting her betrothed.
20
Kemen
Work finished on the road and we began preparing for the push north. I left Kepa as commander of Fort Kuzeyler and took command of the advance myself. I sent messages back to Hakan detailing our progress. I requisitioned food from Ironcrest, weapons from Rivensworth, and winter gear from Highden. For the bitterly cold winter, the men would need fur-lined boots, thick woolen clothes, thicker cloaks, and gloves. Woolen blankets, and lots of them. Horse blankets; horses suffer terribly in such weather. Saw blades and axes to cut firewood; we’d be needing much more of it.
With Hakan’s approval, we began our northern advance. There is a reason kings go to war in spring. It is easier. Supplies are easier to come by. Spirits are high. Men sing in the sunshine as they march to battle. Everything seems glorious, and everything seems possible. Nonetheless, we began our push north just as the first storms of winter hit. Victory is a matter of discipline and organization as well as luck, and we had the first two at least.
We had great success. Most skirmishes were solid victories, though the Tarvil do not stand and fight to the last man. They knew the land up there better, the dangers of the woods, what kind of weather a keening wind foretells, but our Erdemen solders were larger, stronger, better fed, much better trained, and excellently discipl
ined.
The first real setback came as a message from the main fort. Kepa requested my help urgently, though he specifically stated that they were not under attack. I was forty leagues northeast, camped with some two hundred soldiers after another victory. It had been a brilliant triumph, the Tarvil pincered between the rock of Erdemen kedani and the sweeping speed of our suvari.
I took some twenty men with me and we rode back hotfoot. I didn’t want to take many and weaken our attacking force, but I wouldn’t be so foolish as to ride alone. I would take my chances in battle and fight face to face with no hesitation, but I wouldn’t give the Tarvil an opportunity to remove me by ambush.
A blacksmith, two of his apprentices, and a shopkeeper and his son, were sitting grim and scowling by the fire in Kepa’s office. They had caught a soldier forcing himself on a girl behind the forge. They were not from Ilato, but I had sent messages to all the nearby towns about the incident and the reminder, or rather proclamation, that the king’s peace still held even out at the border. I had promised that the king’s peace would be upheld, and that the army would enforce discipline on its men.
They had been inclined to kill him, and they had bloodied him thoroughly before they brought him to the fort. Now they demanded justice.
The girl had lived. That would have changed things, had it been a civilian trial. But a soldier is subject to the military code. The procedure for trial is set in the military regulations. Trial is by a jury of six soldiers chosen by lot, and the seventh is the highest-ranking military officer assigned to that post.
The penalty for rape is death. If the accused is judged guilty, he may choose to hang or to stand before a squad of archers. There are processes for appeal, of course, which would then go up through the ranks to the Minister of Military Affairs.
It sounds harsh because it is. The military punishes rape by death because it tarnishes not only the individual but the military’s reputation, and by extension, the honor of the king.
I recused myself from sitting on his jury. If he wished to appeal, he should have the option. Kepa sat in my place.
The evidence was incontrovertible. He was guilty. The verdict was unanimous, though reluctant.
He appealed, as anyone would have, I suppose. I heard the evidence. I had already made my decision when I spoke to him. His name was Yasu. The name means Peaceful. He was nineteen years old. He was a volunteer and had finished training in Hekku some seven months before. He had been on post for four months. He had a younger brother, but no sisters, and he was from a small village outside Darsten.
“Did you do it?” I could nearly smell his fear, see it in his eyes. Blue, like most Tuyets’ eyes. The same blue as Hakan’s, a little lighter than Riona’s.
He met my eyes and swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.” He regretted it. Saying the words was a kind of penance.
For that at least, I respected him. Not for the deed, but for the courage to admit it later, when he was sober and fully aware of the horror. “The verdict stands.”
He looked at the floor. “Yes, sir.”
He chose to hang. The one to kick to the stool from beneath his feet was chosen by lot from those who had served on the jury. Everyone watched in formation. The five men who had brought him stood close by. Four of them looked grimly satisfied, but one, the storekeeper’s son, was very pale and looked like he might be sick.
Yasu was a boy. Nineteen is painfully young. At nineteen, I didn’t think it was, but from thirty four it appeared barely out of childhood. But he committed a man’s sin and he would pay the price for it. He stood silently while the branch was selected and tested, the rope tied securely to it. He stood on the stool while the noose was tied, the rope with a bit of slack to give him a drop.
“Do you have any last words?”
He licked his lips, staring at the ground for several minutes. He looked to the blacksmith. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
The blacksmith nodded wordlessly.
Then he met my eyes. “I’m sorry, sir. Would you tell my father that, too?”
“I will.”
He paused then, and finally nodded. He kept his eyes on mine one more moment, long enough to see me nod, and then looked up at the sky before Taiki kicked the stool from beneath his feet.
He fell, and at the sudden jerk at the end I think we all felt a little sick. But the drop was not nearly long enough. He hung for one long moment before his legs kicked erratically, his face purple.
It was three steps to him, and he kneed me in the stomach as I wrapped my arms about his waist and dropped down with all my weight. I felt the bones in his neck snap. I stepped back, and we watched him twist, a few twitches of his hands bound behind him finally fading.
I had them cut him down just before sunset, and we burned the body that night.
I could not leave the field, so I sent a courier to the boy’s father. I did not say what he had done, though perhaps his father could have guessed. There are only so many crimes punishable by death. But I did say that Yasu had faced his execution with regret for his deed and with courage.
I dreamed about him. The feeling of the bones in his neck disconnecting. The look in his eyes when he told me he was sorry. Regret. Shame. I woke and could not sleep again. I walked through the camp, spoke to the sentries, and returned to sit on the floor of my tent staring at the map. We were forty leagues north of Fort Kuzeyler, and if we wanted we could hold the ground we had taken. Trees were scarce, but there was a copse not far away that would provide enough wood for a small sturdy fort. The rock would also be a good building material, but we would have to bring masons to oversee the work.
But there was nothing to protect. No Erdemen live on the high plateau. The Tarvil tribes have no true settlements. They camp, sometimes for weeks in one place, but it is always a camp. They move on. The soil can’t support farming, and I couldn’t imagine Erdemen citizens would want to settle there anyway. If anything, it was less protected than the northern frontier we already held. Fewer trees, brutally windy, with no natural barriers to slow Tarvil raiders in the future. Dry, with few streams and hardly any rivers, all of which were frozen nine months of the year anyway. Rare brief squalls in the short summer and blizzards throughout the long winter.
We needed a treaty. Of course we would man the border posts more strongly in the future, but there was no good end to this outside a treaty.
The best way to get a favorable agreement is to make the other side want it. They had Erdemen women who would want to return to their families. The Tarvil would be desperate soon. The most recent skirmishes had shown the colored sashes of five tribes, two of which were from so far north I’d never seen them before. We took a few prisoners, those who were not mortally wounded. I gave the mercy stroke to others, a quick slash across the throat. It is kindness sometimes, but it always makes me sick inside.
I questioned the prisoners who could speak Common. What did they eat? What did they drink? How many children did they have? How many lived to adulthood? What sort of training did they have? It took some effort, but I managed to gain an understanding of their world. I did not yet understand their culture, but I was beginning to. I matched the sashes to the tribes they represented, learned the names of their leaders.
I lost a few men, but not many considering the conditions. I sent many home for rest and got new companies to replace them. We moved our camp close to the trees and began work on the little outpost, which I named Izotz, which means ice. Perhaps it would have been more inspiring for the men if I had named it Fort Courage or something similarly optimistic, but I was in a grim mood and didn’t think of changing it later.
We would push the Tarvil, drive them north, until they pled for a settlement. We would be generous, and in return for land we did not want, we would get peace.
Though I’d campaigned in the northeast before, I’d never been far onto the high tundra. It astonished me how the winter wind would whip away a man’s breath and leave him shuddering with chill, an assault as violent
as that of any battle. The campaign slowed with the first blizzard, and both we and Tarvil had to steel ourselves for the winter. Rations were short, since the food shipments had difficulty getting over the snowy roads and in any case winter is always a hard time in the mountains and on the tundra. I didn’t want to waste the men’s strength on patrol, since the Tarvil were hardly on the offensive. Instead we dug in and hurried our work on Izotz, the smaller, sturdy little post north of Fort Kuzeyler, well onto the plateau that sweeps north to the edge of the world.
In truth, it is a wonder the Tarvil survive there at all. It’s a harsh land, rocky, with sharp-edged hills that grow little food for their flocks. They guard their few horses well, better than their children, because they’re valuable but ill-suited to the harsh terrain. The horses spend the nights in their tents wearing rich blankets to keep them warm and healthy. There are some small animals that the Tarvil can hunt, little rock achas like short-eared rabbits with strange little paws, and birds that seem to live on air and snow, for I have no idea what they eat. There are carabaa, diminutive, heavily furred deer that travel in small herds, but the Tarvil cannot rely on them for food since they range far across the plateau in search of scarce feed. There are wolves, great wolves of the tundra, larger by far than the wolves I’ve seen and even hunted in the farthest edges of Erdem’s mountains. Heavier in the shoulders, longer in the snout, with lean flanks and hungry eyes, for even they have no easy time of it on the Tarvil plateau.
I dreamed of Riona in the deep quiet nights when snow fell thick and in the screaming wind of winter storms. Nothing important, just simple pleasures. At first, I’d been bitterly hurt, hearing her words as an unfair accusation. I could not give her what she wanted, and she could not ask for it more kindly. But that passed as I rode north, even before I reached Fort Kuzeyler and took over from Kepa.