She spoke in a clear, cold voice.
“I am head of the Magryni now. I swore to you our loyalty would always lie with the Empire, Commander Risto. If my son won’t fulfill that pledge, then I will—until another of my sons reaches an age to be fit for ruling.”
Tyren looked over briefly to Verio, who stood by the doorway. Then he looked back to the woman. “Where is he now—your son?”
“Fled, gone.” She lifted her shoulders. “To find Sarre’s son, he said. To find the rebels. The fool. They’ll cut his throat anyway, when he finds them.”
He was both impressed and a little sickened by the indifference in her voice.
“I want your assurance, Commander Risto,” Lady Magryn said. “I want your assurance the agreement still stands between us—that nothing has changed between us because of this. And I want assurance of your help. My people must know I have the support of the garrison if I’m to ensure their loyalty.”
“You’ll have the support of the garrison, Lady Magryn,” Tyren said. “I give you my word.”
He stood with Verio on the headquarters portico and watched while she mounted up again and rode with her guards back up the gravel path towards the common.
“Better than we’d hoped, sir,” said Verio, quietly. It was the first time he’d spoken since the meal last night.
“Maybe,” said Tyren. He didn’t feel that way about it.
XI
Maryna Nyre didn’t come again until mid-morning of the next day. She rode her shaggy-coated horse when she came; she’d been up into the hills. She took down the leather saddlebag and brought it into the infirmary and sat on her knees by the hearth to make a fresh poultice of the long green leaves. Afterward she made up a honey tonic for Regaro to drink, holding the bowl for him while he did so. He thanked her in fumbling Cesino when he’d finished, and she smiled down at him, and her eyes came over briefly to Tyren, and for that moment it almost seemed the smile was meant for him—or he could pretend it was, anyway. It made his heart lurch. It was gone from her lips quickly as it had come, but it lingered in his mind’s eye. He hadn’t seen her smile like that before—a real smile, warm, without bitterness. She was beautiful when she smiled.
He said nothing, but when she’d packed up her saddlebag again he went with her out onto the portico.
“If there’s anything I can give you in payment—” he began, hesitantly.
She shook her head. Just like that the wall went up between them again.
“I don’t want your payment, Vareno. You think every little thing is to be bought and paid for, don’t you? All your people are the same. Show us some Vareno gold and we simple-minded farm folk will do anything you ask.”
He said, “That isn’t what I meant.”
She ignored him. “But who can blame you? It’s our own fault.”
He looked down at her in silence. Words wouldn’t come. All he could think of, suddenly, was the way she’d smiled, and how he wished she’d smile again. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aino coming over from the gate-wall and he turned his attention that way, thankful for the distraction. Aino saluted when he’d gotten close. He looked briefly to the girl before he spoke.
“Sir, there’s activity on the road.”
“I’ll come,” Tyren said.
He left Maryna there on the portico and he went with Aino up into the gate-house to look out across the village. There were riders on the crest of the hill above the village on the northern side, where the thick black-pine forest closed round the Rien road: ten or twelve of them spread out in a ragged line across the road, just sitting their horses, watching the village and the fort. There were men on foot behind them. He couldn’t tell the number from here. As many again as the horsemen, maybe more.
“Rebels, sir?” said Aino, quietly.
He nodded wordlessly, his heart quickening. No way to make out their faces at this distance, but the one he took to be the leader, sitting his horse a little way forward from the rest, wasn’t a big man, and it seemed to Tyren he was hunched over in his saddle, as though nursing a lingering wound. He straightened as Tyren watched, urging his horse forward down the road towards the village. The others fell in behind him. They came unhurriedly, keeping their horses to a walk so the men on foot could keep pace.
Aino said, “Why do they show themselves, sir?”
He didn’t say anything right away. He knew, of course—all at once, but with tight-hearted certainty. He knew Mægo Sarre was there and he knew why they were coming down to the village in full daylight. It was falling into place, now, all of it, all of the pieces—the attack in the night, the lack of word from Muryn. Magryn. He couldn’t explain it to Aino, not all of it, but he knew.
There were hoof beats in the yard below and he looked down to see Maryna taking her shaggy-coated horse out through the gate at a run. Something stuck in his throat all at once—a sudden knotting of regret he hadn’t had the chance to finish words with her. Didn’t even know what he’d wanted to say. Maybe there was nothing left to say. But the regret was thick in his throat just the same. No chance now, maybe never again. This day would change things.
“Call the men to arms, Corporal,” he said to Aino, tightly. “Archers on the wall. Do it quickly.”
He went down into the yard to find Verio. He went to the mess first, because it was nearing meal-time. Afterward, not finding him, he went through the headquarters and then out to the stable to look along the stall row. Verio’s horse was there. The stall where Maryna’s horse had been put up stood empty and silent in the dim light and he’d have passed it by except he saw there was something lying on the floor in the far corner. When he went into the stall to look more closely he saw it was the edge of an indigo-dyed uniform tunic coming out from under a loose pile of bedding straw.
He crouched down to clear the straw away, a dryness spreading in his mouth and throat, a sluggishness in his muscles. It took effort to move his arms, his hands, his fingers. He knew what he’d find—knew it with sudden certainty, just as he knew why Mægo had come down to the village today—but he forced himself to do the work anyway. When he’d gotten the straw away he just sat a long while and looked at it: Verio’s body, face-down; the blood drying to rust on the dirty straw beneath.
He reached out a hand, finally, and turned the body over so he could find the killing wound. He found it and knew it was a knife-wound: too narrow, too clean for a sword. The blade had gone up between the ribs and into the heart. He took that in with a heavy numbness seeping all through him, pressing down on him like a physical weight, remembering that day on the patrol path, the steel-bladed knife Maryna Nyre carried under the flap of her shaggy-coated horse’s saddle.
He sat on his heels and looked down at Verio’s bloodless face while his thoughts stumbled on and on, dazedly. No different than if he’d wielded the blade himself. He’d let this happen. He’d chosen to trust her. It wasn’t even that he might blame her for it. It wasn’t that she’d deceived him, led him on so he trusted her. No, she’d told him from the beginning where her loyalties lay. He’d known it and he’d chosen to pretend it didn’t matter, because of the thing that had happened in Choiro, and because of Muryn’s talk, and because he didn’t want to be like Verio, or like Luchian Marro, or like his father. His own willing blindness because he was afraid of being blindly loyal. How long until he realized that? There wasn’t any honor in it—standing aside to let others die for his own foolishness. The priest had done his work well: all that damn-fool talk of peace to take him off his guard. He’d listened to it, let it blind him; otherwise he might have seen this and stopped it. Verio had seen it. Not him. He’d let himself be blinded, and Verio was dead for it.
Aino was there, suddenly. He came up behind Tyren, stopping short when he saw the body. He looked down at it in silence a little while and then he said, “Who did it, sir?”
Tyren came back to himself slowly, struggling to think clearly. It was imperative now he think clearly. He didn’t say anything and A
ino said, “Commander Risto—”
“You saw the girl leave,” said Tyren.
Aino was silent again a moment.
“They’re in the village, sir,” he said, finally. His voice was quiet but tight with urgency. “The rebels. They’re raising the people against us. I think it’s possible they intend to move on the fort, sir.”
Tyren said, “The men are at the ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
He stood. The numbness was gone, all at once. There was a cold, sharp clarity in his head now, though his heart was heavy and the old tightness had crept back in between his shoulder-blades. He spoke calmly.
“Have the surgeon prepare the body for burial, Corporal. Then I want you with me on the wall.”
“Yes, sir,” said Aino.
He went to his quarters to buckle on his cuirass and his sword-belt, moving unhurriedly, with deliberate patience. He pulled on his gloves and tucked his helmet into the crook of his left arm. Then he went back across the yard and up the steps onto the gate-wall. He stood on the wall beside the gate-house, at the end of his line of archers, and he looked out over the thatch-roofed huts and the fort road to the common. A mob was gathering there now: men of the village, perhaps sixty, seventy strong, armed with clubs or javelins or old rust-stained swords, flooding onto the common like water at the buckling of a dam, carrying Mægo’s troop forward towards the fort. Mægo rode at the forefront, his head held high, eyes fixed upon the gate-wall, so Tyren could see his face clearly. There was another rider close beside him: Ryn Magryn, garbed in the plain green-and-brown wool cloth of the rebellion, a sword slung across his back. They were shouting for him in Cesino, chanting his name: the lord of Souvin, a Magryn to lead us again, a Magryn to avenge Rylan Sarre!
Aino had come up beside him now, stood with him to look down at the crowd on the common.
“Lord Magryn,” he said, after a moment. There was surprise in his voice.
Tyren said, “Yes.”
“And that’s Rylan Sarre’s son, sir?”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed it would be the two of them, sir.”
Tyren lifted his shoulders stiffly. The coldness had spread all through him now. He wanted to laugh, though there was no humor in him, just a bitterness in his throat and the ache of the betrayal in his heart.
“Sarre’s no fool. Magryn alive is more use to him than Magryn dead, he knows that. It was one or the other before this—loyalty to the rebellion or loyalty to the hall, to their lord. Now they’re the same. It was the only thing going to unite these people against us. Even after he showed them we were vulnerable, could be taken at unawares—they weren’t going to rise against us unless he could reconcile their loyalties. He knew that. This is what he wanted.”
And you, too, Muryn, he thought. This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it? Enough talk of peace and trust and justice to take me off my guard—and then this.
Mægo had reined up his horse just beyond a bow shot from the wall, his troop spreading out in a line across the common with the mob milling restless and excited behind them. He hadn’t taken his eyes from the wall; he was looking up to where Tyren stood. Tyren met his gaze, lifting his chin a little. They looked at each other across the common and the fort road a long moment. Then Mægo leaned over in his saddle to say something to Magryn, and Magryn nodded once, shortly, and they both rode forward towards the wall.
Tyren turned away from the balustrade. “Bring my horse,” he said to Aino.
“Let me go, sir,” said Aino. “In case they intend deceit.”
He shook his head. His fingers, working at the chinstrap of his helmet, felt suddenly thick and stiff. “No,” he said. “I’ll do this.”
He rode Risun out from the gate and down the fort road to meet Mægo and Magryn. He reined up across from them at the edge of the common. The mob quieted, watching—were perhaps beginning to realize the full meaning and weight of their recklessness. The young Magryn had realized it already. His face was pale, his hands white-knuckled on his horse’s reins, his shoulders rigidly straight as a spear haft. But Mægo was smiling. He’d bent forward a little in the saddle again, his right arm crossed over his stomach, against the wound, but that was the only sign of discomfort. His head was thrown back defiantly and there was a burning in his eyes, an eagerness. He’d been waiting for this.
“Commander Risto,” he said, in Vareno.
Tyren didn’t say anything right away. He took the time to gather his thoughts, to put his words together clearly and carefully.
“What do you think you’re going to accomplish here, Sarre? You’re just throwing lives away.”
Mægo’s smile widened. “No, I know the way you think, Risto. You’ve the men, the armor, the weapons, your training in Choiro. What’s a handful of Cesino farmers with bows and hunting spears? That’s the way your people always think. Otherwise you might have stopped us before it came to this.”
Tyren said, “Sarre—”
Mægo spoke up sharply before he could get anything else out. “Save your words, Risto. I’ve listened to empty Vareno words too many times before. Listen to me now. You’re outnumbered, cut off. My people hold the road. But there doesn’t have to be bloodshed. Surrender the fort to me now, lay down your weapons, and I’ll grant safe passage to Rien to your men—and to you, if you wish it, though I’ve heard the Empire doesn’t deal too kindly with commanders who surrender and live to tell about it.”
He was too startled at first to make a reply. He realized only slowly he was staring at Mægo open-mouthed. Finally he managed to laugh, though his throat was tight and the sound that came out was raw, hoarse, more like a strangled cough than a laugh.
“You thought it’d be that simple? That I’d surrender to you without any challenge, without bloodshed, and this would be done with?”
Mægo shrugged. “It could be that simple, if you’d put aside your Vareno pride and think for a moment. That choice is yours to make.”
“What reason do I have to think you’d keep your word?”
Mægo drew himself up in his saddle.
“There’ll be no bloodshed if you lay down your weapons now,” he said. The mockery had gone from his voice. He spoke quietly, firmly. His face was stern and hard as stone. “I swear it to you on my father’s grave.”
Tyren said nothing. A cold trickle of doubt had started at the back of his mind and it was dividing him against himself now, wearing him down, wearing away his newfound resolve. There’d been sincerity in the oath. He was angry, suddenly. He should have refused the offer outright. Foolish to ask for the assurance. Now the choice was harder.
He spoke at last through shut teeth.
“You think Rien will sit idly by with Souvin in your hands, Sarre? You won’t last a fortnight, even if you take the fort now, even if you think to use Magryn to raise your people in rebellion from here to Carent. You really think you’ll be able to stand against Rien?”
Magryn shifted a little in his saddle and darted a glance to Mægo. Mægo didn’t move. “That’s my offer,” he said.
“I refuse it,” said Tyren.
“Anything for duty,” said Mægo. He tilted up his chin and smiled. “Shouldn’t have expected otherwise of you, Risto.”
Tyren said, “Sarre.”
Mægo had already started to back his horse away. “Speak quickly,” he said.
“The woman. Lady Magryn. Let her go unharmed, she and her children.”
The young Magryn looked swiftly to Mægo again. Mægo’s smile had vanished. There was fierce, dark anger in his face all at once.
“You understand nothing of my people, Risto, and nothing of justice. Do you think I left them alive to kill them now? They’ll be unharmed, and not on your account.”
He turned his horse sharply away before Tyren had the chance to say anything else. Magryn followed him at once. Tyren jerked Risun’s reins and took the horse at a hard run back down the fort road and through the open gate into the yard.
Aino was waiting for him, saying nothing but questioning with his eyes.
“Brace the gate,” Tyren said to him, dismounting.
He went up the steps and onto the wall again. Mægo and Magryn had ridden back across the common now and Mægo had drawn his sword, was holding it upright over his head and shouting something wildly in Cesino. A full-throated roar went up from the men round him at his words. Sarre! they roared, brandishing their own weapons. Sarre, Sarre and Magryn, Cesin! While they were still raising the cheer Mægo heeled his horse round to face the fort again. He let the excited animal dance quivering and shying beneath him a moment while he had some brief words with Magryn. Then he let it go, kicking it into a run, and Magryn came immediately behind him, and the mob surged forward at once to follow, mounted and unmounted men moving as one across the common and down onto the fort road.
There was a long, tense moment of waiting and watching, the anticipation tightening in Tyren’s heart, the blood pounding hotly in his ears, while the mob came rushing down towards the wall. Then one of his archers said to him, calmly, “They’re in range, sir.”
He said, “Loose.”
His archers loosed. One of Mægo’s horsemen went down with a shaft in his throat and another went tumbling from his saddle when his horse, struck in the chest, dropped suddenly to its knees beneath him. A few of the unmounted men fell away here and there. The rest came on unhindered, faster now, closing their ranks, roaring Mægo’s name and Magryn’s. A flint-tipped spear came over the wall and took a man in the gut below the edge of his corslet. He fell backward, sprawling out over the walkway, retching blood. Mægo and Magryn had already brought their horses under the cover of the gate-house by the time the next flight could be readied. The mob pressed close round them, up against the gate. They pounded on the gate, threw their weight against it in hot, senseless fervor, and through their fervor or their sheer numbers they succeeded in buckling the braces. The great wooden doors trembled and groaned and burst apart, and the mob came spilling into the yard, and Aino’s men, standing to meet them, were swept back across the yard towards the headquarters steps.
His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) Page 15