by Glen Cook
Soldier Of An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat
Glen Cook
Glen Cook Soldier Of An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat
The empire of the title is Shinsan-The Dread Empire. The soldier is Tain, disillusioned with his past life and seeking peace and a new identity. But the difficulties of leaving one's past behind are insurmountable and Tain must finally accept what he is-a soldier of an empire unacquainted with defeat. For those of you who have read and enjoyed Cook's wonderful Dread Empire books, and for those of you who haven't yet, here is another piece of that world.
I
His name was Tain and he was a man to beware. The lacquered armor of the Dread Empire rode in the packs on his mule.
The pass was narrow, treacherous, and, therefore, little used. The crumbled slate lay loose and deep, clacking underfoot with the ivory-on-ivory sound of punji counters in the senyo game. More threatened momentary avalanche off the precarious slopes. A cautious man. Tain walked. He led the roan gelding. His mule's tether he had knotted to the roan's saddle.
An end to the shale walk came. Tain breathed deeply, relieved. His muscles ached with the strain of maintaining his footing.
A flint-tipped arrow shaved the gray over his right ear.
The black longsword leapt into his right hand, the equally dark shortsword into his left. He vanished among the rocks before the bowstring's echoes died.
Silence.
Not a bird chirped. Not one chipmunk scurried across the slope, pursuing the arcane business of that gentle breed. High above, one lone eagle floated majestically against an intense blue backdrop of cloudless sky. Its shadow skittered down the ragged mountainside like some frenetic daytime ghost. The only scent on the breeze was that of old and brittle stone.
A man's scream butchered the stillness.
Tain wiped his shortsword on his victim's greasy furs. The dark blade's polish appeared oily. It glinted sullen indigoes and purples when the sun hit right.
Similar blades had taught half a world the meaning of fear.
A voice called a name. Another responded with an apparent "Shut up!" Tain couldn't be sure. The languages of the mountain tribes were mysteries to him.
He remained kneeling, allowing trained senses to roam. A fly landed on the dead man's face. It made nervous patrols in ever-smaller circles till it started exploring the corpse's mouth.
Tain moved.
The next one died without a sound. The third celebrated his passing by plunging downhill in a clatter of pebbles.
Tain knelt again, waiting. There were two more. One wore an aura of Power. A shaman. He might prove difficult.
Another shadow fluttered across the mountainside. Tain smiled thinly. Death's daughters were clinging to her skirts today.
The vulture circled warily, not dropping lower till a dozen sisters had joined its grim pavane.
Tain took a jar from his travel pouch, spooned part of its contents with two fingers. A cinnamonlike smell sweetened the air briefly, to be pursued by an odor as foul as death. He rubbed his hands till they were thoroughly greased. Then he exchanged the jar for a small silver box containing what appeared to be dried peas. He rolled one pea round his palm, stared at it intently. Then he boxed his hands, concentrated on the shaman, and sighed.
The vultures dropped lower. A dog crept onto the trail below, slunk to the corpse there. It sniffed, barked tentatively, then whined. It was a mangy auburn bitch with teats stretched by the suckling of pups.
Tain breathed gently between his thumbs. A pale cerulean light leaked between his fingers. Its blue quickly grew as intense as that of the topless sky. The glow penetrated his flesh, limning his finger bones.
Tain gasped, opened his hands. A blinding blue ball drifted away.
He wiped his palms on straggles of mountain grass, followed up with a dirt wash. He would need firm grips on his swords.
His gaze never left the bobbing blue ball, nor did his thoughts abandon the shaman.
The ball drifted into a stand of odd, conical rocks. They had a crude, monumental look.
A man started screaming. Tain took up his blades.
The screams were those of a beast in torment. They went on and on and on.
Tain stepped up onto a boulder, looked down. The shaman writhed below him. The blue ball finished consuming his right forearm. It started on the flesh above his elbow. A scabby, wild-haired youth beat the flame with a tattered blanket.
Tain's shadow fell across the shaman. The boy looked up into brown eyes that had never learned pity. Terror drained his face.
A black viper's tongue flicked once, surely.
Tain hesitated before he finished the shaman. The wild wizard wouldn't have shown him the same mercy.
He broke each of the shaman's fetishes. A skull on a lance he saved and planted like a grave marker. The witch-doctor's people couldn't misapprehend that message.
Time had silvered Tain's temples, but he remained a man to beware.
Once he had been an Aspirant. For a decade he had been dedicated to the study of the Power. The Tervola, the sorcerer-lords of his homeland, to whose peerage he had aspired, had proclaimed him a Candidate at three. But he had never shown the cold will necessary, nor had he developed the inalterable discipline needed, to attain Select status. He had recognized, faced, and accepted his shortcomings. Unlike so many others, he had learned to live with the knowledge that he couldn't become one of his motherland's masters.
He had become one of her soldiers instead, and his Aspirant training had served him well.
Thirty years with the legions. And all he had brought away was a superbly trained gelding, a cranky mule, knowledge, and his arms and armor. And his memories. The golden markings on the breastplate in his mule packs declared him a leading centurion of the Demon Guard, and proclaimed the many honors he had won.
But a wild western sorcerer had murdered the Demon Prince. The Guard had no body to protect. Tain had no one to command.... And now the Tervola warred among themselves, with the throne of the Dread Empire as prize.
Never before had legion fought legion.
Tain had departed. He was weary of the soldier's life. He had seen too many wars, too many battles, too many pairs of lifeless eyes staring up with "Why?" reflected in their dead pupils. He had done too many evils without questioning, without receiving justification. His limit had come when Shinsan had turned upon herself like a rabid bitch able to find no other victim.
He couldn't be party to the motherland's self-immolation. He couldn't bear consecrated blades against men with whom he had shared honorable fields.
He had deserted rather than do so.
There were many honors upon his breastplate. In thirty years he had done many dread and dire deeds.
The soldiers of Shinsan were unacquainted with defeat. They were the world's best, invincible, pitiless, and continuously employed. They were feared far beyond the lands where their boots had trod and their drums had beaten their battle signals.
Tain hoped to begin his new life in a land unfamiliar with that fear.
He continued into the mountains.
One by one. Death's daughters descended to the feast.
II
One ivory candle illuminated a featureless cell. A man in black faced it. He sat in the lotus position on a barren granite floor. Behind a panther mask of hammered gold his eyes remained closed.
He wasn't sleeping. He was listening with a hearing familiar only to masters of the Power.
He had been doing this for months, alternating with a fellow Aspirant. He had begun to grow bored.
He was Tervola Candidate Kai Ling. He was pursuing an assign
ment which could hasten his elevation to Select. He had been fighting for the promotion for decades, never swerving in his determination to seize what seemed forever beyond his grasp.
His body jerked, then settled into a tense lean. Little temblors stirred his extremities.
"West," he murmured. "Far, far to the west." The part of him that listened extended itself, analyzed, fixed a location.
An hour passed.
Finally, Kai Ling rose. He donned a black cape which hung beside the nearly invisible door. He smiled thinly behind his mask. Poor Chong. Chong wouldn't know which of them had won till he arrived for his turn on watch.
III
Tain rested, observing.
It seemed a calm and peaceful hamlet in a calm and peaceful land. A dozen rude houses crowded an earthen track which meandered on across green swales toward a distant watchtower. The squat stronghold could be discerned only from the highest hilltops Solitary shepherds' steads lay sprinkled across the countryside, their numbers proclaiming the base for the regional economy.
The mountains Tain had crossed sheltered the land from the east. The ivory teeth of another range glimmered above the haze to the north. Tain grazed his animals and wondered if this might be the land he sought.
He sat on a hillside studying it. He was in no hurry to penetrate it. Masterless now, with no fixed destination, he felt no need to rush. Too, he was reluctant. Human contact meant finalization of the decision he had reached months ago, in Shinsan.
Intellectually he knew that it was too late, but his heart kept saying that he could still change his mind. It would take the imminent encounter to sever his heartlines home.
It was ...scary... this being on his own.
As a soldier he had often operated alone. But then he had been ordered to go, to do, and always he had had his legion or the Guard waiting. His legion had been home and family. Though the centurion was the keystone of the army, his father-Tervola chose his companions, and made most of his decisions and did most of his thinking for him.
Tain had wrestled with himself for a year before abandoning the Demon Guard.
A tiny smile tugged his lips. All those thousands who wept on hearing the distant mutter of drumswhat would they think, learning that soldiers of the Dread Empire suffered fears and uncertainties too?
"You may as well come out." he called gently. A boy was watching him from the brushy brookside down to his right. "I'm not going anywhere for hours."
Tain hoped he had chosen the right language. He wasn't sure where he had exited the Dragon's Teeth. The peaks to the north, he reasoned, should be the Kratchnodians. That meant he should be in the part of Shara butting against East Heatherland. The nomadic Sharans didn't build homes and herd sheep, so these people should be immigrants from the west. They should speak Iwa Skolovdan.
It was one of four western tongues he had mastered when the Demon Prince had looked westward, anticipating Shinsan's expansion thither.
"I haven't eaten a shepherd in years." An unattended flock had betrayed the boy.
The lad left cover fearfully, warily, but with a show of bravado. He carried a ready sling in his right hand. He had well-kempt blond hair, pageboy trimmed, and huge blue eyes. He looked about eight.
Tain cautioned himself: the child was no legion entry embarking upon the years of education, training, and discipline which gradually molded a soldier of Shinsan. He was a westerner, a genuine child, as free as a wild dog and probably as unpredictable.
"Hello, shepherd. My name is Tain. What town would that be?"
"Hello." The boy moved several steps closer. He eyed the gelding uncertainly.
"Watch the mule. She's the mean one."
"You talk funny. Where did you come from? Your skin is funny, too."
Tain grinned. He saw things in reverse. But this was a land of round-eyes. He would be the stranger, the guest. He would have to remember, or suffer a cruel passage.
Arrogant basic assumptions were drilled into the soldiers of Shinsan. Remaining humble under stress might be difficult.
"I came from the east."
"Over the mountains?" Disbelief flavored the boy's tone.
"Yes."
"But the hill people....They rob and kill everybody. Papa said." He edged closer, fascinated by Tain's swords.
"Sometimes their luck isn't good. Don't you have a name?"
"Steban." The boy relented reluctantly. "Steban Kleckla. Are those swords? Real swords?"
"Longsword and shortsword. I used to be a soldier." He winced. It hurt to let go of his past.
"My Uncle Mikla has a sword. He was a soldier. He went all the way to Hellin Daimiel. That was in the El Murid Wars. He was a hero."
"Really? I'll have to meet your uncle." "Were you a hero when you were a soldier? Did you see any wars?"
"A few. They weren't much fun, Steban." How could he explain to a boy from this remote land, when all his knowledge was second-hand, through an uncle whose tales had grown with the years?
"But you get to go places and see things." "Places you don't want to go, to see things you don't want to see."
The boy backed a step away. "I'm going to be a soldier," he declared. His lower lip protruded in a stubborn pout.
Wrong tack. Tain thought. Too intense. Too bitter.. "Where's your dog? I thought shepherds always had dogs." "She died."
"I see. I'm sorry. Can you tell me the name of the village? I don't know where I am."
"Wtoctalisz."
"Wtoctalisz." Tain's tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables. He grinned. Steban grinned back. He edged closer, eying Tain's swords. "Can I see?"
"I'm sorry. No. It's an oath. I can't draw them unless I mean to kill." Would the boy understand if he tried to explain consecrated blades? "Oh."
"Are there fish in the creek?" "What? Sure. Trout."
Tain rose. "Let's see if we can catch lunch." Steban's eyes grew larger. "Gosh! You're as big as Grimnir." Tain chuckled. He had been the runt of the Demon Guard. "Who's Grimnir?"
The boy's face darkened. "A man. From the Tower. What about your horse?" "He'll stay."
The roan would do what was expected of him amidst sorcerer's conflicts that made spring storms seem as inconsequential as a child's temper tantrum. And the mule wouldn't stray from the gelding.
Steban was speechless after Tain took the three-pounder with a casual hand-flick, bear fashion.
The old soldier was fast.
"You make a fire. I'll clean him." Tain glowed at Steban's response. It took mighty deeds to win notice in the Dread Empire. He fought a temptation to show off.
In that there were perils. He might build a falsely founded, over-optimistic self-appraisal. And a potential enemy might get the measure of his abilities.
So he cooked trout, seasoning it with a pinch of spice from the trade goods in his mule packs.
"Gosh, this's good." As Steban relaxed he became ever more the chatterbox. He had asked a hundred questions already and seldom had he given Tain a chance to answer. "Better than Ma or Shirl ever made."
Tain glowed again. His field cooking was a point of pride. "Who's Shirl?"
"She was my sister." "Was?"
"She's gone now." There was a hard finality to Steban's response. It implied death, not absence.
IV
Steban herded the sheep homeward. Tain followed, stepping carefully. The roan paced him, occasionally cropping grass, keeping an eye on the mule. For the first time Tain felt at ease with his decision to leave home.
It was unlikely that this country would become his new home, but he liked its people already, as he saw them reflected in Steban Kleckla. He and the boy were friends already.
Steban jerked to a stop. His staff fell as he flung a hand to his mouth. The color drained from his face.
That Aspirant's sense-feel for danger tingled Tain's scalp. In thirty years it had never been wrong. With the care of a man avoiding a cobra, he turned to follow Steban's gaze.
A horse and rider stood si
lhouetted atop a nearby hill, looking like a black paper cutout. Tain could discern little in the dying light. The rider seemed to have horns.
Tain hissed. The roan trotted to his side. He leaned against his saddle, where his weapons hung.
The rider moved out, descending the hill's far side. Steban started the sheep moving at a faster pace. He remained silent till the Kleckla stead came into view.
"Who was that?" Tain hazarded a second time, when he reckoned the proximity of lights and parents would rejuvenate the boy's nerve. "Who?"
"That rider. On the hill. You seemed frightened." "Ain't scared of nothing. I killed a wolf last week." He was evading. This was a tale twice told already, and growing fast. First time Steban had bragged about having driven the predator away. Then he had claimed to have broken the beast's shoulder with a stone from his sling.
"I misunderstood. I'm sorry. Still, there was a rider. And you seemed to know him."
The lights of Steban's home drew nearer. Boy and sheep increased their pace again. They were late.
Steban had been too busy wheedling stories from his new friend to watch the time closely.
"Steban? That you, boy?" A lantern bobbed toward them. The man carrying it obviously was Steban's father. Same eyes. Same hair. But worry had etched his forehead with deep lines. In his left hand he bore a wicked oaken quarterstaff.
An equally concerned woman walked beside him. Once. Tain suspected, she had been beautiful. In a round-eye sort of way. Doubtlessly, life here quickly made crones of girls. "Ma. Papa. This's my new friend. His name is Tain. He used to be a soldier. Like Uncle Mikla. He came across the mountains. He caught a fish with his hands and his horse can do tricks, but his mule will bite you if you get too close to her. I told him he should come for supper."
Tain inclined his head. "Freeman Kleckla. Freelady. The grace of heaven descend." He didn't know an appropriately formal Iwa Skolovdan greeting. His effort sounded decidedly odd in translation.