His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1)

by Amanda McCrina

  “You don’t think we could have killed him in the Outland, then?”

  Verio said, shrugging, “If he’s anything like his father, sir, it won’t matter he’s dead. They’ll rally behind him anyway—make a martyr of him.”

  * * *

  That evening went busily. He reviewed the stores and the armory and gave orders for a troop of twelve horse to be ready to ride out at first light in the morning, impressing upon Verio he intended to continue the work in the Outland they’d begun yesterday—to meet the rebels again while they were still dazed, still recuperating from the earlier blow, maybe even to finish them.

  Later, when Verio had retired, he wrapped himself in his cape and went alone in the darkness to the surgeon’s storeroom. He took down two flasks of acetum and emptied both into another bottle and poured water into the flasks and set them back on the shelf. Then he went back to his own quarters and put the bottle and a skin of red wine and some bandage cloth into one of his saddlebags. He stowed the bag under his cot. It would have to be enough. Anything more and the loss would be noticed, would have to be explained.

  Afterward he lay awake on the cot and wondered how he could do this thing so willingly, so readily. Had it been like this since Choiro? Of course he’d never been particularly zealous about duty, about loyalty. Not the way some were. Maybe it was being Cesin-born, knowing he had the blood. But he’d been proud enough to earn his commander’s braid and his sword and to stand before Senate and Emperor and swear his allegiance on that sword. He could still remember that cold white sun-washed spring day clearly as if he were there—could remember his heart racing so quickly, as Mureno pinned the gold braid on his shoulder, it had been almost painful. He’d been proud enough then.

  If he’d only ever seen the Empire as it had been on that day—maybe it would be easier, now, to do his duty without question, without hesitation, without remorse. Duty would demand the Cesino’s life, and the priest’s, and maybe if he’d only ever seen that glorious face of the Empire it would be easier to accept that, to justify it in his own mind. But he’d seen the other face too, the uglier face, the lie underneath. There was no glory in it, no honor, no virtue to be dearly and jealously defended. Maybe there had been once. Now it was just the hollow shell and a cold emptiness inside him. He couldn’t go on clinging blindly to duty for duty’s sake, as if nothing had changed that day in Choiro—as if he hadn’t changed.

  * * *

  He took the Cesino-blood corporal Aino with him on patrol the next day, leaving Verio in command at the fort. He led the troop out from the fort and took them westward up the valley to the patrol path. They came to the path by the seventh hour, the early morning sun warming their backs while a cool wind tossed the pine-boughs above them, and they rode in file up the tree-clad hill and then down into the Outland, the way they’d gone before.

  They made better time this day, because there was no trail to be looked for and because the men weren’t so uneasy. They came to the broad valley before the cliff, where they’d met the rebels in battle, and they went north a little, riding along the ridge, until they came out onto the long, bare, stone-topped plateau atop the cliff—he didn’t have much inclination to venture through the straight-sided gap below. He called the troop to a halt and they sat their horses a little while in the stark white sunlight and took in the surroundings: the blue mountains circling them like a wall, the valleys hidden in deep shadow below them.

  Aino spoke up suddenly from beside him. “This is the furthest the Empire’s ever come into this place.”

  “The Empire was here?”

  “There was a battle—the last stand of Tarien Varro against Berion’s armies, if you believe the legend. When it was done they vanished into the mountains, those of Varro’s people who were left. It was slaughter for both sides, though Berion claimed the victory. But that’s why the Vareni avoid this place. If you believe the legend their ghosts are still here—or Varro himself, waiting to reclaim his throne.”

  Tyren said, a little sourly, “Do you believe the legend, Corporal?”

  Aino smiled.

  “Superstition, most of it, sir,” he said. “They’re not ghosts, the rebels in this place. They’re real enough.”

  “They might as well be ghosts. They leave no signs.”

  “This is their land, sir—the last scrap of independent Cesin left to them. They know it the way you know your own Vessy. Better, maybe. They know how to stay hidden. It was some great luck you had a victory against them here.”

  Tyren said, “Yes, great luck.”

  He didn’t say anything else, his thoughts fixing upon something suddenly, and Aino, mistaking his silence, turned his head away and said, “Forgive me, sir, for speaking out of turn.”

  “No,” Tyren said. “No—I was thinking it’s a hard thing to be from two different worlds. I was Cesin-born, Corporal. I even have the blood, if you trace the line far enough back. But it seems a lie to call this place my homeland—a lie to your people, betrayal to mine. And another lie, another betrayal, to say it of Varen.”

  Aino, not looking at him, said, “Yes, sir, it’s a hard thing.”

  The rebels didn’t come out to fight. He’d known they wouldn’t. When it was getting on towards mid-afternoon he took the troop back to the patrol path and then down to the fort, because the light faded early from the low places between the hills, and even with the rebellion broken and leaderless, as he knew it was now, he didn’t want to be in the Outland after dark.

  * * *

  He went back to Muryn’s that night, after the meal.

  He took the black colt when he went, explaining to Verio he wanted to try out the colt’s paces on the Rien road. He let the colt run when they’d gotten out of the village. The colt ran smoothly, effortlessly. For a little while he could forget about everything else: there was just the colt surging beneath him and the cool evening wind whistling past him and the nightingales piping in the dark pine wood above the road. He slowed the colt to a trot when they climbed the embankment and went west into the trees, and even the trot was smooth and light. Muryn’s clearing lay blue and silent under a rising mist but warm yellow firelight was spilling out from the open doorway of the house and woodsmoke was curling up from the opening cut in the thatched roof. He left the colt tethered to a tree at the edge of the clearing and took down his saddlebag and went up to the house on foot.

  Muryn met him in the doorway. There was weariness in his eyes and in the way he stood, but he smiled. “Tyren,” he said.

  “I apologize I couldn’t come sooner. I can’t stay long. But I brought medicine.”

  Inside, Muryn’s wife was spinning wool thread beside the hearth, her fingers moving swiftly, deftly, rolling the wooden spindle across her knees and dropping it and snatching it quickly up through the air again. She said nothing to him but she smiled a little and bowed her head in greeting. Tyren put the saddlebag on the table and looked down to the Cesino, Mægo, while he took off his cape and his gloves. Mægo was sleeping. His eyes weren’t so sunken as they’d been yesterday, his face not so sickly pale. There was another woman sitting on the hearth beside him, holding his limp left hand tightly in her right. She looked up to Tyren. He recognized her, remembered the sharp, sun-browned face, the fierce gray eyes: the girl from the patrol path. She just looked at him a moment, her mouth hardening. Then she looked accusingly to Muryn.

  Muryn said, in Cesino, “It’s all right, Maryna.”

  “This is the garrison commander,” Maryna said.

  “He’s come to help,” Muryn said.

  Tyren knelt across from her with Mægo between them.

  “How is he?” he said over his shoulder to Muryn, speaking in his own tongue.

  Muryn said, “There’s no infection. He was awake earlier—ate something and spoke to us.”

  Tyren reached a hand to peel away the dressing from the wound.

  The girl said, in Vareno, “Don’t touch him, bastard.”

  “I’m trying to help
him,” Tyren said.

  “He doesn’t need your help, Vareno. He wouldn’t want it, were he awake. Your people have done enough to him.”

  He paid no attention to that. He unwrapped the bandages slowly, gingerly. A poultice had been bound underneath and he pulled it away to look at the wound. The girl watched him all the while, unmoving, her lips pressed in a thin, tight line, her eyes hard and sharp as a steel blade. Beneath the poultice the gash was still raw at the edges but there was no swelling, no heat, no redness to indicate infection. He stared down at it, dumbfounded. He hadn’t expected the thing would heal so well, so readily. There was always infection with this kind of wound.

  He managed to say, at length, “Who made up the poultice?”

  A cold half smile touched the girl’s mouth very briefly. “It was mine,” she said.

  “It was well done.”

  She let go Mægo’s hand and slipped down onto her knees to bind up the wound again. “I said he doesn’t need your help,” she said.

  Mægo moved as she worked, his eyes drifting slowly open, his breath quickening, and the girl bent down close to his ear to say something to him in a low voice, putting a hand on his shoulder so he’d lie still. He lay there looking up at her, swallowing to keep from making any noise at the pain. Then, turning his head, he saw Tyren, and Tyren saw the recognition kindle all at once in his eyes.

  They looked at each other in silence a long moment. Then, almost frantically, Mægo struggled to sit up, pushing away Maryna’s hand from his shoulder. The effort cost him. The color drained from his face; he clenched his teeth and sucked in a sharp breath. Then he groaned and put his hands to the wound.

  Maryna said, “Mægo—”

  “Lie still, fool,” Tyren said.

  Mægo looked up to Muryn, who stood silently against the end of the table, his arms folded, watching. Then he brought his eyes to Tyren again. He lay slowly back down against the hearth, his chin up, his jaw tight, keeping his hands pressed to his side.

  He spoke, with effort, in Vareno. “Listen to me, Risto. These people are innocent. Whatever business there is between you and me—these people are innocent.”

  Tyren shook his head. “I come peacefully,” he said. “I mean you no harm, any of you.”

  “He’s been here yesterday and today, Mægo,” said Muryn.

  “No harm, Vareno?” said Maryna. There was sudden hot color in her cheeks, anger in her voice. “You and your people did this to him. And you, Bryo—there’s a price for treachery, you know that.”

  Mægo said, “Maryna.”

  He hadn’t taken his eyes away from Tyren’s face. His brow was furrowed a little, the gray eyes narrowed, as though he were working something out in his head. Tyren met the look without moving. They studied each other closely, carefully. It was the first time they’d seen each other true, Tyren thought. It had been pretense before, pretense until the Outland. Pretense until blood was shed to strip it away. This was the reckoning that mattered.

  “So you’ve earned Bryo’s trust,” Mægo said, at length. He seemed amused at something, though his eyes were cold, hard, humorless.

  Muryn said, “Yes, he has my trust, Mægo.”

  “Thought you would’ve learned the lesson by now, Bryo,” said Mægo. “Thought you would’ve learned what Vareno friendship means.”

  Anger rose all at once in Tyren’s throat. “You think that’s why I’m letting you live? So I can gain your trust and then betray you?”

  Mægo laughed. “Letting me live. Should I be groveling in gratitude for your mercy, Risto, is that it?”

  “If I intended to betray you I’d have done it already. You think I don’t know what it means, that he’s your priest? Or that you’re Rylan Sarre’s son?”

  Muryn looked over to him quickly, sharply; the woman too, lifting her head a little, though she didn’t stop her spinning. Mægo didn’t move. There was the ghost of a smile at the corners of his mouth but he said nothing. Silence had settled over in the room in that moment and in the silence the snapping of the fire grew very loud.

  Tyren got up slowly to his feet. He didn’t look at Mægo again. He spoke to Muryn.

  “I have to go back,” he said. “There’s acetum in the bag, to fight the infection, if need be. And some wine, and bandages. It’s as much as I could bring.”

  Muryn came with him outside. They stood a little while at the northeastern corner of the house, beyond the patch of firelight at the doorway, looking out over the night-blackened field and the trees beyond. An owl hooted softly somewhere out in the darkness. He didn’t speak right away. He watched the wood and waited for the anger to go out of him.

  Muryn spoke first. “So you know,” he said.

  “I know. Or I guessed, yesterday. I had word it was Sarre’s son killed Magryn. It was guesswork.”

  Muryn smiled. It was a faint, solemn smile, the corners of his eyes creasing as though he were in careful thought. “I admit I didn’t trust you enough to tell you that,” he said.

  “You were right not to trust me. Mægo was right.”

  “Maybe,” said Muryn.

  It was a complicated word, empty and weighty at once. But if Muryn had meant something by it he didn’t explain himself.

  “The wound’s healing well,” Tyren said. “There’s no need for me to be here. You and the girl have done more for him than I could do. It’ll only turn him against you, my being here.”

  Muryn said nothing for a moment. Then he said, in a quiet voice, “I fear for him, Tyren.”

  “I’ll grant him safe passage when he heals. Wherever he wishes to go. There are some of his people in the Outland still. Dispersed, for now, but they live. My people won’t lay a hand on him, I swear it to you.”

  Muryn shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. There’s a great deal of hatred inside him, a great deal of bitterness. He wants vengeance for what was done to him—and for what was done to his father, most of all. I’m afraid for that.”

  Tyren shrugged. He was still stiff with the anger and he didn’t want Muryn to see, so he pretended carelessness. “I don’t know I can fault him for it. I’d want vengeance if I were in his place, if it had been done to me.”

  “And you’d tell yourself you had the right to it,” said Muryn. “Yes—the mountain people have told themselves that for two hundred years now, since the war. But what does that accomplish? It’s never enough to fight only for vengeance. Rylan Sarre had a cause worth fighting for, at least.”

  Tyren glanced over to him. He was amused, but it was a cold, harsh, tight-hearted kind of amusement. The words came out more mockingly than he’d intended.

  “So you think the throne will be restored, Muryn? That Tarien Varro will come back from the dead to drive my people out of Cesin? Is that what you think worth fighting for? You told me differently that day on the road.”

  Muryn said, “That isn’t what Rylan Sarre fought for, or what he died for.”

  “They executed him for stirring up rebellion against the Empire.”

  “That’s the word that was spread afterward. Rebel and traitor to your people, hero and martyr to mine. One thing or another, as they needed him, until the truth was gone. He was no rebel, Tyren.”

  “Was he a hero?”

  “He wouldn’t have called himself so,” said Muryn.

  “But you’d call him so.”

  Muryn’s voice was steady. “Yes,” he said. “I would.”

  “You don’t deny he rose in arms against the Empire.”

  “He took up arms against injustice. There’s a distinction to be made.”

  Tyren was silent a while. “Give me your side of it, then,” he said.

  “Lord Magryn had taken land by force from certain of the farmers and pledged a portion of the harvest yield to the garrison, thinking to ease his own burden of tribute. Rylan was among those whose land and crop were taken. He went to hall with his grievance, then to the fort. Both turned him away. He took up arms then, rather than see wife and ch
ild dead from hunger. He went up into the mountains with a handful of men who’d suffered the same loss and he took to raiding the supply carts on the Rien road. As far as possible he did it without violence, without bloodshed, swearing all the while he’d lay down his weapons and reaffirm his allegiance to Magryn, if Magryn would give him recompense for the land. Magryn made him that pledge, finally. He offered peace, and Rylan showed himself willing to abide by it. He came down to the hall to give his allegiance just as he’d sworn. He’d no thought for Cesino independence, for the restoration of the throne. He wouldn’t have dealt with Magryn if that had been his cause. No, if Magryn had given him justice from the first he wouldn’t have taken up arms at all.”

  Tyren said, dryly, “You fail to mention Magryn betrayed him and the garrison put him to death. You make your point too well, Muryn.”

  Muryn smiled again, but his eyes were serious. “I haven’t yet given up hope,” he said.

  “For justice under the Empire?”

  “For peace. Not pretended, not forced. Real peace between your people and mine. And that comes of justice, yes.”

  Tyren said, “If Mægo worsens, Muryn, find a way to bring word to me. Otherwise I won’t trouble you again.”

  VIII

  It had been the Marri behind the murder attempt, Torien had no doubt of that. But there seemed no way to prove it. The dead man had kept no correspondence, had no family that any of Viere’s household knew. There was nothing among his scant belongings to indicate he’d taken payment for the work. Of course Viere pledged he’d keep up the investigation, still deeply ashamed the thing had happened under his own roof, determined to redeem himself of that. But in truth there was little more to be done. Torien knew that and he was sure Viere knew it, for all his fervor. No—the thing would go unsolved, unpunished, like all the rest of it.

  Another letter came from Choiro, a week or so after he and Tore and Moien had returned from Chalen to Vessy. This time it was from Chæso Rano and Torien knew, before he’d opened it, what it would say. He opened it anyway and ran his eyes over the long-winded words until he came to the heart of it: the betrothal was broken off. He put it aside with a sourness spreading in his mouth, a bleak, ugly humor welling in his heart. Let Rano go back on his word; what did it matter? He’d never thought much of the girl anyway. He’d never wanted her for Tyren. A Choiro whore like all the rest of them, loyal only so far as it might be counted in coin. Let all the Choiro alliances go to Hell. Let this governorship go to Hell, even, and let Tore rail against him for it. He wouldn’t go on living this life of lies—wouldn’t go on smiling, pretending, sitting down at banquet tables with the very men who’d ordered Tauren Risto’s death and pretending he didn’t know, or had forgotten, or didn’t care.