His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1)

by Amanda McCrina

They split the troop, six men between them, and Verio led his six down the ridge and into the broad valley, towards the cliff, at a hard run. Tyren sent two of his own men down to the open place. He himself sat on Risun on the ridge while they cut Rian down from the horse and laid him out on the gravel. He watched Verio’s troop through the trees. Too simple, he thought, much too simple. No, most likely the rebels had managed to get word ahead by now. They’d spring their trap after Verio had gotten himself pinned against the cliff. Better to wait back here and spring his own trap.

  One of the men he’d sent down to Rian came back up to him. “He’s still alive, sir,” he said.

  Tyren said, without taking his eyes away from Verio’s troop, “Wounded?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How badly?”

  “Not too badly, sir. The wound is fresh; he hasn’t bled much yet. But he won’t be able to ride, sir.”

  “See if we can make up a litter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  By now Verio had nearly overtaken the four rebels before the cliff. One of them was falling behind, was perhaps riding with a wound—it would explain why they’d only gotten this far in better than half a day’s time. Another dropped back to stay alongside him. The other two came to the cliff face and dismounted and stood to face the troop with bows drawn back in their hands. Tyren lost sight of the two stragglers in the trees. He saw Verio go riding for the bowmen, sword in hand—too close for arrows to do much good. Verio cut one of them down before he’d the chance to loose. The other let fly a wild shot and turned to run with one of Verio’s men close at his heels. He fell before he’d taken five stumbling steps.

  An arrow sped from the trees and took Verio’s man in the throat as he returned along the cliff face from his kill. He fell from his horse with the reins still clutched in his hand. The horse shied and bolted. Tyren saw Verio’s head jerk up in startled realization, saw him slide from his saddle and gesture wildly for a defensive formation—saw his men dismounting, falling back against the cliff in a ragged half circle, their shields out, facing the trees.

  He straightened in Risun’s saddle.

  “Columns,” he said, to the four men who were still sitting their horses behind him. “Follow my lead.”

  He dug his heels into Risun’s belly and took him down the hill and into the wood, westward. He could see the cliff through the trees ahead, could see the gold-bossed shields of Verio’s troop glinting in the sun. He was distracted by a sudden blur of movement directly in his path. A man in greens and browns stood up quickly from the underbrush before him, a bow in his hands. He drew back patiently, carefully, as Risun bore down on him. Tyren gauged the distance in his mind, knew Risun wouldn’t make it in time. He threw himself from the saddle as the man let fly. He rolled a little when he hit the ground. He got up quickly to his feet, drawing his sword. He came upon the rebel before the man had time to drop his bow and take out the long knife sheathed on his belt—ran him through cleanly and pulled out the blade and let him fall.

  His four men rode on past him towards the cliff. More Cesini stood up to face them. There were seven or eight of them altogether, all garbed in the same kind of cloth—rough homespun wool dyed in greens and browns to blend in with the trees. They wore black mud streaked on their faces for masks. They carried bows and flint-tipped javelins, few steel weapons. They were too lightly armed to counter the Vareni; some of them simply threw down their weapons and ran, scattering into the wood. The ones who stood their ground were outmatched quickly. Tyren saw three of them fall at the first pass. After that there were only two left, and they fell back towards the gap in the cliff face, pausing to loose arrows as they ran, using the cover of the trees. Then they were gone, and there was a long moment of dumb confusion while his own men realized it was done and there was no one left to fight. It had happened very quickly.

  Tyren found Risun and took him by the reins and went down towards the cliff to see how Verio had fared.

  Beneath the cliff face, Verio’s troop was putting itself together again. They’d lost only the one man and Verio grinned up at him as he came out from the trees. He wiped his blade with a cloth and held up the sword in salute.

  “Victory, sir,” he said.

  “You’re all right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well done,” Tyren said.

  A few of the men had gone on horseback to give pursuit to the Cesini who’d fled. They were returning now along the cliff face. He watched them return, listened to their talk, felt pride stirring in him suddenly and unexpectedly—they were his men and they’d been victorious today. It was his victory, his first victory.

  One of the men was leading a second horse beside his own, a tall black horse with trimmed mane and tail, dressed hooves that gleamed in the sunlight. It caught Tyren’s eye and he stared at it, unbelieving; knew in a moment, without a doubt, it was the colt, his colt. He went over slowly, still leading Risun, not saying anything, running his eyes up and down the colt, wanting to laugh at the improbability of it.

  Verio, coming behind him, sucked in his breath in admiration and said, “That’s a fine horse right there.”

  “Yes,” Tyren said. It was all he could manage to say.

  “Leave the horse a moment, soldier,” Verio said.

  The man saluted wordlessly, gave over the reins to Verio, took his own horse and went on. Verio held the colt’s head and ran one hand along the tapering face and laughed.

  “I didn’t know they had such horses for their rebellion, sir,” he said.

  Tyren reached and put his right hand on the colt’s shoulder as he’d done back home in Vessy, felt the fire in the colt’s blood. He nodded, saying nothing. His eyes were on the saddle now, a plain leather saddle cinched over a woolen cloth on the colt’s high back. It had been Risun’s saddle. There was fresh blood on the saddle and the cloth. He saw it and his heart tightened, inadvertently. He forgot about the colt for the moment.

  He left Risun with one of the men and went back up into the trees on foot, wanting a look at the dead. Verio, reluctantly leaving the colt, came with him. There were eight Cesino dead, counting the ones who’d been cut down as they tried to run, lying about the wood before the cliff. But none of them were the man he thought he’d find. He was relieved by that, inwardly, though he didn’t really know why.

  Verio had wandered a little way away from him. He prodded one of the bodies with the toe of his boot and said, “This one’s still alive, sir.”

  He went to look. The rebel was on his back, his right arm outstretched, fingers reaching feebly for the flint-bladed knife that lay in the grass just beyond his reach. Verio went round and picked up the knife and flung it away. Tyren knelt, slowly. The man watched him, his jaw clenched tight, sweat standing out on his ashen face. A sword stroke had opened up his left shoulder from the top of the arm to the collarbone. Tyren leaned over him and peeled away the mantle of his cloak and the blood-soaked woolen tunic beneath to have a look at the wound. Then he looked up to Verio.

  “Help me carry him,” he said.

  They took the Cesino between them down to the cliff face. On Tyren’s orders one of the men wrapped up his shoulder in a bandage, and then they got him onto a horse and tied his wrists to the horns of the saddle and put the horse on a lead, though Tyren doubted the man could have ridden away if he’d tried. He was near senseless from the pain. He sat leaning forward with his head bowed, his eyes closed. They’d taken off his bloodied cloak and it was lying cast aside on the grass below the cliff. Tyren bent over it to look at the cloak pin—the intertwining lines and circles that stood for independent Cesin, wrought carefully in silver. He unfastened it from the cloak, took it in his hand, ran his thumb over it, slid it into his wallet and straightened again before Verio could see.

  They left the bodies of the Cesino dead where they lay and rode back in file to the eastward ridge, leading the prisoner on the one horse, Verio’s casualty on another. The two men who’d been left with Rian had made
up a litter for him with some sturdy pine boughs and their uniform capes. The litter had to be carried on foot as they went on, couldn’t be trusted to a horse over that ground. They all took turns at it: two men before, two men behind, the litter balanced precariously between them. It slowed them down, having to walk back over the hills with that burden, but the men were in good spirits because of the victory, exultant in their freshly blood-sealed camaraderie, laughing at the way the Cesini had dropped their weapons and run, and that helped relieve the tediousness of the work.

  Tyren listened to their talk and said nothing. The pride of the moment had faded a little; his thoughts were elsewhere now. He was thinking of the Cesino slave who’d run from him in Rien. Born in Souvin, he’d said. So he’d come home among his own people. He’d planned it so from that evening at table in Vessy, perhaps: to come back home a free man, however he might manage it—except now home and freedom must mean nothing more than to skulk in the mountains, hunted like an animal. A bitter mockery of a homecoming, Tyren thought. Better never to come back at all. Better to have taken the colt and run to the last ends of the earth than come back home to this.

  VII

  It was past the twentieth hour by the time he brought the troop back to the fort. He had two of the men take the Cesino prisoner off to one of the empty storerooms adjoining the stable. He himself went to the infirmary and stood and watched while the surgeon tended Rian, who’d taken a knife blade in his gut. It hadn’t been meant to kill him, most likely, but to disable him and thereby cost them all time and effort, and it was ugly and painful and the delay hadn’t helped.

  Rian was awake and grinned up at him, with some effort, while the surgeon worked. “Congratulations on the victory, sir,” he said.

  “How do you feel?”

  “I’ll live, sir.”

  “What did they want with you?”

  “They wanted a hostage, sir, in case you tried to give pursuit. I think—I think they were worried about pursuit, sir. I’d wounded one of them. They were going to have to move slowly.”

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t reach you sooner.”

  Rian said, bravely, “No matter, sir.”

  Tyren said, “Get some rest, soldier.”

  Afterward he sent the surgeon to have a look at the prisoner’s shoulder and he went wearily to his office, feet dragging a little, sore all over from the fall he’d taken from Risun. He hadn’t really regretted that until now.

  The Cesino-blood corporal, Aino, was waiting for him in the office, as he’d requested.

  “You went down to the hall, Corporal?” Tyren said. He sat down in the chair behind the desk and rested his face in his hands.

  “Yes, sir,” Aino said.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “There were five rebels, sir. They killed three men of Lord Magryn’s household guard and then executed Lord Magryn with his wife and his children watching.”

  “They killed the woman and the children, too?”

  “No, sir. Only Lord Magryn, sir. Lady Magryn and the young Lord Magryn are unharmed.”

  Tyren looked up from his hands. “Strange,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So we’ve a new Lord Magryn now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He said, “You saw to it Sælo was buried, Corporal?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Aino.

  “You can go, then.”

  He’d have to write a letter to Sælo’s family, of course, and to the family of the man they’d lost today. He’d do it tomorrow. He was too tired now to think clearly. He got up from the desk and went into his quarters and undressed and lay down stiffly on the cot and squeezed his eyes shut. But he couldn’t sleep. His muscles ached, and there was too much going through his head: his victory, and the prisoner out in the storeroom, and the black colt, and the Cesino slave, who’d been there with the rebels today. He lay there in the darkness with his thoughts wandering on and on. The night went very slowly.

  In the morning, after the muster, he sat in his office with the log book before him to write his report of the action. Verio came to find him.

  “What do you intend to do about the prisoner, sir?” he said.

  Tyren spoke without looking up. “What did the surgeon say?”

  “The shoulder will heal, sir. It’ll take some time, but it’ll heal.”

  “I’ll question him,” Tyren said.

  “And after that, sir?” Verio said, almost forcefully.

  “I’ll make the decision when the time comes,” Tyren said.

  He knew what Verio wanted, of course—knew he’d demand the Cesino be made example of, to show the village folk the consequences were hard, that this was what you got when you spat in the face of the Empire. He finished writing the report and then he went out to the storerooms on his own. There was a guard posted by the door of the empty room where they’d put the prisoner. He brought up his spear in salute when Tyren came close.

  “Open the door, soldier,” Tyren said to him.

  The prisoner sat against the far wall, his legs crossed under him, his hands on his knees. His eyes were closed at first, but he opened them when Tyren crouched down across from him—frost-gray eyes to mark him as one of the mountain people. His face wasn’t so pale now. He was older than Tyren, Verio’s age or a little older still; a farmer, judging by his rough, sun-browned skin, the lean muscles in his arms and shoulders. The bandage swathed round his left shoulder was blood-stained and Tyren could see, from the tightness in his mouth, he was in some pain. But he was calm. He looked at Tyren in silence and waited.

  “I can speak in Cesino if you wish,” Tyren said.

  “I can understand your tongue well enough, Commander,” the Cesino said. He spoke steadily, unhurriedly.

  “In my tongue, then. It doesn’t matter to me your people killed Magryn. I understand he was a traitor to you. But you killed one of my men, the other night, and mutilated his body. My adjutant wants vengeance for it. The rest of my men also, I’m sure.”

  The Cesino said nothing.

  “I’m more concerned with fighting a war than with vengeance,” Tyren said. “I’ll give you a choice. I want to know the locations of your safeholds within the Outland, the number of men who fight for you, the names of your leaders. I swear to you no harm will come to the families of those involved. I don’t fight like that. But if you refuse to speak I’ll let my adjutant deal with you in his own way. Do you understand me?”

  The Cesino said, quietly, “I understand you, Commander.”

  “I’ll give you an hour to decide,” said Tyren.

  He waited in his office for the hour to pass. He’d intended to use the time to write the letters but instead he found himself sitting with his back to the desk, watching the shadow move slowly across the face of the weathered bronze sundial out in the garden, wondering if he’d really meant the threat, if he could really give this man over to Verio and let Verio deal with him. He didn’t think, deep down, that he could. He’d rather see the man hanged than give him over to Verio. That was if the man didn’t speak, of course, but Tyren didn’t really think he’d speak. They’d shown they were willing enough to suffer and die for their cause, these Cesini. But maybe he’d speak. Let him speak, Tyren thought. Easier on both of us if he speaks.

  When the hour had finally gone he went back to the storeroom. The guard saluted him again and opened the door for him and stood aside so he could go in. He froze in mid-step in the doorway, his mouth drying, his heart going cold. The prisoner lay face-down in a spreading pool of blood on the floor before him.

  For a long moment he didn’t move, just looked down stupidly at the crumpled body, the blood, steadying himself with a hand on the door jamb. Then he went down slowly into the room and crouched down on his heels and ordered the guard, over his shoulder, to go get the surgeon. Useless—the Cesino was dead—but he ordered it anyway. The surgeon came and turned the body over and took something from the Cesino’s bloodied hand. Verio had come with h
im. He stood in the doorway and watched.

  “How?” he said.

  The surgeon said, “Cut his own throat. The buckle of his belt, sir.”

  “Son of a bitch,” said Verio.

  Tyren stood. “See to the body,” he said.

  His hands were shaking and he didn’t want Verio to see. He went back to his office and sat down again in the desk chair and rubbed his face with one hand, let out a long, ragged breath, tried to return to his work and put the thing out of his mind. He cut a length of fresh papyrus and a new quill. Then he took out the codex which held the muster list and went through it, tracing the pages with one finger, until he came to Sælo’s name. He sat there and looked down at the blank papyrus and made no move. The words wouldn’t come. He sat there a long time. He couldn’t concentrate. He listened absently to the preparations for the mid-day meal going on out in the mess, his thoughts straying. Finally he tossed the quill down and pushed back the chair and stood.

  He went out to the stable to saddle Risun. His hands were shaking so badly now it took effort to cinch the saddle, to buckle the bridle straps. He finished, finally, and took the gray horse by the reins across the emptied yard to the gate. He called one of the guards down.

  “Tell the lieutenant I’ll return by the fifteenth hour,” he said.

  He left the fort and took Risun out onto the Rien road. He rode until he was out of sight of the village. Then he directed Risun to the west and rode up the embankment into the pine wood, leaving the road behind him. He came upon the Muryn farm from the eastern side.

  He dismounted at the edge of the clearing and went up to the little flag-stone house on foot, leading Risun. A dog barked as he approached. Two boys were waging a small war with sticks in the yard. Twins—the mud-streaked faces were alike. They were perhaps seven or eight years old. They looked up at the dog’s barking. They saw Tyren, stared at him a moment, and then one of them threw down his stick and bolted in through the low open doorway of the farm house, shouting something rapidly in Cesino. The other stood as he was, unmoving, his mouth hanging open in a slack circle, his own stick forgotten in his hand.