by Lee Ramsay
That statement proved prophetic. Another storm blew in and erased all his work while he slept. By dawn the snow was still falling, drifting against the houses until it reached second-floor windows. He groaned as he stumbled into the manor house’s kitchen and found Dougan already dressed for the day, sitting in a chair in front of the hearth and drinking a steaming cup of tea.
The older glanced up and ran a hand over his bald pate. “The wagons won’t be coming back until spring unless there’s a thaw with a good melt. That leaves us a bit short-handed, but it’s nothing we can’t manage.”
Tristan said nothing and slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. Plucking an apple from the bowl in the table’s center, he took a bite with a crisp snap.
“We’re talkative this morning,” Dougan said, sipping his tea. “I know the apple’s good, so why act as though you bit into a rotten one?”
The youth shrugged, aware that the veteran was waiting him out. “What do you want me to say? Jakkan, Beren, Mikken, Rhynna, Lyona, Ryjan – they’re all in Dresden, having a grand time. If you’re right about the weather, they’ll be there until spring. Where am I? Here, working my ass off,” he said, flinging his hand toward where snow pressed against the windows’ glass panes. He tossed the half-eaten apple into a metal pail beneath the table. “Even Rehan and Shala are there. He’s ten, and she’s only eight. I’m almost sixteen.”
Dougan turned back to the fire with a sigh and crossed his booted feet at the ankle. He sipped his tea and wiped away the dampness clinging to his mustached and bearded lips. “I thought that might be bothering you. You aren’t missing much.”
“From everything I’ve been told, the opposite is the truth.”
“The people telling you that are too young and stupid to know better.” The veteran shook his head and set his teacup on the small table beside him. “You’re better off here, with a warm fire, a good bed without bedbugs, and decent food. Even better, you’re not spending good money on lodging when all that keeps you from the two days’ travel home is snow.”
Drumming his fingers on the tabletop, Tristan stared at the back of Dougan’s balding head. “I don’t think you’re listening to me.”
“I heard what you said.”
“Hearing and listening aren’t the same things, or so Anthoun keeps telling me.”
“Boy, I could set what you’re saying to music and call myself a bard. Your complaints would fill a dozen stanzas.”
Tristan said nothing for a moment, chewing the inside of his cheek. “You were a soldier, weren’t you?”
Dougan’s eyes narrowed as he cast Tristan a hooded glance. “For near a dozen years. What of it?”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Like anything else, there was some good and some bad.”
“Yet here you sit, content to never leave – or at least not be gone for more than a few days. Perhaps you weren’t suited for such a life, and the unchanging sameness is more appealing.”
“You think yourself better suited to a soldier’s life than I?” Dougan shook his head with an amused laugh. “Idiot. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Tristan slapped his hand on the table. “If I’m never allowed to leave Dorishad, how in all hells would I? You’re teaching me about farming. Anthoun’s teaching me how to balance accounts, and the theories behind weather patterns, soil drainage, and what fertilizers work best on what crops.”
“All good things to know for when you inherit.”
“Will I? Anthoun keeps promising to adopt me, but hasn’t. There are people here who don’t want some nameless orphan playing lord of the manor when he dies, regardless of whether he adopts me or not.” He leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees as he met Dougan’s eyes. “What if I don’t want to be a farmer, overseeing who works this parcel of land over that one? What if I don’t care about the best way to irrigate a field, or the best ratio of cow shit to kitchen scraps to make the best fertilizer?”
Dougan shifted in his seat and propped his chin in his palm as he rested his elbow on the chair’s arm. “And what would you rather do? Be a sailor, riding the winds around the continent of Celerus and on to the shore countries of Golashtag? You have never seen the sea, much less a river or lake.”
“I don’t know what I’d do!” Tristan cried as he leaped to his feet. The feet of his chair barked across the tiled floor with the violence of his movement. “I’d like to have a voice in what becomes of me, rather than be told what I’ll be doing with my life.”
Dougan stroked his gray-shot brown beard as the young man spent several moments pacing. “Son, we’ve talked about this before. You’re an orphan, and that puts you at a disadvantage. No one will stand you surety without a family name to back you. Say you wanted to become a merchant; who would finance you? You have no name save the one Anthoun gave you, and that name says nothing of what skills you were trained in from childhood. Who would go to a smith or tailor who lacked a proper name?”
“I’d make a name for myself.”
The veteran guffawed. “As a soldier? Boy, you can’t even take down Jakkan and that gaggle of goose shit that follows him around.”
The coppery stubble shadowing the line of his jaw Tristan’s jaw darkened against his flushed cheeks. “Surely there’s a lord who would take me into his service and train me. That is how you became a soldier, isn’t it?”
Dougan blinked and scrubbed his face with his hands. His voice emerged muffled from behind his palms. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re right – I don’t! Every time I ask, Anthoun clucks his tongue and changes the subject, and you follow his lead!”
The older man’s face darkened as he surged to his feet – and froze when faced by the expression of a young man demanding to be treated as such. The youth stood a full head taller than he, his slim frame filling out with adult muscle. He lifted a hand with his palm turned out and drew a slow breath to calm himself. “You made your point. We’ll talk with Anthoun when he returns.”
“Anthoun is gone?” Tristan’s face grew blotchy as blood drained from his cheeks, his green eyes glittering and brittle with anger. “He refuses to let me leave, but does so whenever it suits him?”
“He’s a sage and Dorishad’s master, and doesn’t answer to you. “If he doesn’t want to be stuck here over the winter—” The veteran winced and cut himself off as the youth’s mouth hardened into a furious, thin line. “Let me rephrase that.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve got work to do,” the youth said in a clipped tone as he brushed past Dougan and made for the door leading deeper into the manor house.
“Tristan,” Dougan barked. The whiplike crack had the desired effect; the young man stopped and half-turned to face him. He gentled his voice with an effort. “You’re thinking about doing something stupid. Don’t let it progress beyond a thought, hmm? I understand your frustration, but there’s not much I can do about it. I can teach you the basics of soldiering, but don’t think I’ll go easy because I wiped your ass and cuddled you as a babe.”
Silence hung between them for a long moment. The muscles in Tristan’s jaw danced as he clenched his teeth. He gave a curt nod before stepping into the hallway leading deeper into the house.
The veteran sighed and sank back into his chair. He took a sip of his tea, but threw the rest into the fire crackling on the hearth when it sat on his sour tongue. “I wonder which of the girls got his cock hard enough to deprive his brain of blood.”
Chapter 4
Winter, 1413
Tristan knew Dougan owned a sword, a broad-bladed thing with a battered steel hilt wrapped in sweat-stained leather. He could almost feel the weapon in his hands and imagined hacking his way through the hordes of enemies his mind was already creating. His opponents sprang from the pages of adventures books the veteran kept in his room, though he would be damned if he admitted to such a childish fantasy.
He supposed Dougan would teach him how to fight with a
sword or move through a forest on silent feet, and looked forward to stories about great battles, strategies, and why the winners won and the losers lost. Battlefields, he assumed, were simply more complicated chessboards, with elaborate battle plans created by brilliant generals.
He was sorely mistaken – with sore dominating most of what he learned.
Training began in the cold, predawn darkness. His bedchamber door room crashed open with a thunderous kick, accompanied by Dougan shouting a stream of obscenities. Gone was the gruff, balding, middle-aged man who had raised him, replaced by a foul-mouthed, foul-breathed, violent soldier who flipped Tristan’s bed with one hand while he was still in it.
Scurrying to don his clothing as his wits unscrambled themselves – and putting most of it on wrong – he hopped through the manor’s hallways while trying to cram his right boot on his left foot. The veteran shouted and smacked him with a stout wooden club as an indelicate incitement to hustle. Through the kitchen and out into the darkness they went, snow melting through his woolen stockings while he shivered in his untucked shirt, half-laced britches, and unbuttoned leather jerkin.
“You’re sixteen, you dumb bastard!” the veteran bellowed, breath reeking of onions and ale as the young man’s shaking fingers fumbled his laces. The wooden club caught the youth a glancing blow on the shoulder. “What do you want me to do, dress you like I did when you were a baby? How the fuck have you not learned how by now? I’d call you a shitwit, but that would be a fucking improvement! Where in all hells are your cloak and mittens?”
“In my room.”
“Best hope you don’t freeze your cock and fingers off before we’re halfway home,” Dougan shouted, poking his club in Tristan’s chest hard enough to spin him. A boot caught him in the rump and knocked him to the ground, snow chewing at his palms. “What the fuck are you doing, taking a nap? Get your scrawny ass running before I beat it uglier than it already is!”
The tree-lined lane leading to the road had never seemed as long as it did that morning, his boots’ smooth soles crunching through snow or slipping on patches of ice as he ran. Dougan kept pace, spewing a steady stream of increasingly vile insults about his probable ancestry and general intellect. The club’s blunt end dug into his back whenever he slowed, prompting him to pick up his pace. If he slipped and fell, the club smacked his shoulders and hips until he regained his feet. When that happened, the abuse pouring from Dougan’s lips somehow grew louder and fouler.
Slowing as they neared the end of the dirt track, Tristan’s breath rasped as steam rose from his shoulders and scalp. Sweat poured down his face and made his linen shirt stick to his torso. A cramp stabbed his side as he slowed his stride.
“Pathetic! You aren’t done yet, you worthless puke. You want to learn soldiery? You will run until I am fucking tired.” The club smacked him across the shoulder an instant before the veteran grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him north. “Move!”
“Across snowy fields?”
Dougan smacked him across the back of the head. “Don’t ask questions. Do as you are told!”
Run he did, stumbling across the uneven ground. The veteran ordered him to vault or crawl under the railing of any fences they encountered between the fields. They turned east when they reached Dorishad’s northern wall, pausing long enough for him to lean against the stones and vomit. They ran through the orchards to the eastern wall, then turned south and jogged through the maple groves toward the thicket of oaks growing along the hamlet’s southern border.
More than twice his age, Dougan seemed tireless. He was also never too short of breath to shout in his ear. Unaccustomed to such pacing and distance, his clothing soaked through with sweat, Tristan collapsed often. Whenever he did, Dougan dropped a full leather water skin on his chest with instructions to sip. Once he no longer risked vomiting or fainting, he hauled himself to his feet and resumed running.
The sun was well into the sky by the time they returned to the commons. His feet throbbed from running over miles of uneven, slippery terrain as he made his way to the privy house for the few minutes he was given to rest. Geren – one of the older men who had chosen not to travel to the Harvest Festival – waited for him when he emerged. A lopsided smirk twisted the man’s lips as he pushed a steaming wooden bowl of mashed and watery oats into the youth’s hands. “Eat quickly.”
Too tired to say anything, Tristan spooned hot gruel past his lips. He winced as it burned his tongue, but the heat spared him the food’s flavorlessness.
Dougan rounded the side of one of the houses and looked as though he were swelling in size while his expression darkened with fury. He smacked the young man across the shoulder with his stick and started bellowing, and nearly knocked the bowl to the ground. “What are you doing, you lazy prick? There are animals to be fed and chores to be done, and you’re standing here stroking yourself like you have all the fucking time in the world!”
Geren grinned and snatched the bowl as the young man spluttered a protest. “Maybe next time you’ll faster, eh?”
DOUGAN ESTABLISHED a pattern of training and work, and Tristan followed it no matter how cold or snowy it was. Every morning they ran Dorishad’s perimeter, and gradually it became easier and less exhausting to complete the circuit. He learned to swallow his food without tasting it; when he did not finish fast enough, he went hungry. His belly rumbled and squealed as he tended his chores with the veteran bellowing in his ear. After the midday meal he was allowed a brief period of rest, during which he fell asleep wherever he managed to sit or lay down. Another run and the evening feeding of the animals in the barns and pens finished out the day, and he was at last allowed to enjoy a decent, unhurried meal.
A luxury Tristan came to enjoy was one of Anthoun’s more expensive follies – the bathhouse. The stone and wood building housed a complex system of cisterns and deep tubs, piping, and stoves to heat water. Built long before Tristan came to Dorishad, the bathhouse provided the sage a warm, comfortable place to soak his arthritic joints. The baths were available to anyone willing to haul the wood necessary to fire the stoves, provided the old man was not using it at the time.
Slumped in the steaming water, his hair floating around his head as the heat eased stiff muscles and stung the blisters and scrapes on his hands and feet, Tristan came to understand what the word decadent meant.
He had yet to touch a sword – or any other weapon, for that matter – and conversations between him and Dougan consisted of short yes-or-no answers on his part. He was growing less rattled by the confusion and jangled nerves resulting from the veteran barking contradictory commands at him. He responded to changing situations without overthinking, and he learned when and how to catch a moment’s rest.
Tristan wrapped himself in a soft towel as he rose the tub and studied himself in the polished brass mirror mounted on the wall. If he was honest, his vanity was satisfied with the changes hard work wrought on his body. He had grown over the autumn and early winter, which accounted for some of the aches in his joints. His clothing was becoming uncomfortable, and not only because he had added two inches of height; the last of youthful fat was gone, leaving lean muscles refined by his assigned chores’ heavy lifting. His face, too, had changed, losing childish roundness in favor of sharper angles and a short, coppery beard.
He turned sidelong and flexed his muscles, admiring the way they shifted under his pale skin in the bathhouse’s candlelit gloom. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“You’re gorgeous.” The drawling sarcasm and suddenness of Dougan’s voice startled Tristan into a yelp. The veteran rolled his eyes as he undid his leather jerkin’s togs and shrugged out of the garment. “Five more minutes, and you’d have been trying to suck yourself. Now, leave so I can soak in peace. I’m tired of looking at your ugly face.”
IT WAS ONE OF THE SNOWIER and colder winters Tristan could remember. Storms wrapped the hamlet in white blankets, followed by a day or two of sharp, clear air and watery sunlight in which he moved mountains
of snow and hauled wood. Though most of Dorishad’s population was absent, the bitter cold increased firewood consumption as those who remained tried to stay warm.
The youth followed the older man to one of the patches of wild woods permitted to grow within the hamlet. The veteran had donned a tan woolen coat, his bald head covered by a knitted wool cap, and carried a hatchet in his gloved hand. The sharpened bit gleamed in the weak daylight.
“A good thing we need firewood,” Dougan said over his shoulder as they walked. “Now that we’ve got your muscles built up and you’ve got some stamina, it’s time you learn to wield an axe.”
Tristan shoved his gloved hands into the armpits of his thigh-length wool coat to keep them warm. “I have been splitting logs since I was six. We have pulled and cut up stumps pulled from the orchards every year.”
“That’s cutting wood, not people. Two entirely different ways to use an axe.”
“I’d rather learn how to use a sword.”
“In time. Maybe.”
“Soldiers use swords.”
“You have been reading too many of my adventure books,” Dougan said, his breath fogging the air as he chuckled. “Don’t get me wrong; they are exciting stories – written by people who’ve never left comfortable chairs in warm houses and know fuck all about a real battle. Do you know how much a sword costs?”
Tristan opened his mouth to reply, then closed it with a click of his teeth.
Dougan grunted. “They aren’t cheap. It takes time and skill to forge one, and that costs money. You can buy a good blade for, oh, an Arch,” he said, using the abbreviated name for a gold coin called a Monarch – one of which was more than most people earned in a month. “You can get a decent one for a Half-Arch. So, if a sword is expensive, what’s a miserly noble going to arm his people with?”