His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1)

by Amanda McCrina

  By noontime it was over, and there was a dazed, exhausted stillness hanging over the yard and the gate-wall and the fort road beyond.

  For a long while he was too busy to think, and he was thankful for that. He was light-headed, unsteady on his feet from the blood loss. He could hardly put weight on his left leg. He limped to his quarters and wrapped up the knee himself, to spare the surgeon the time and effort needed more urgently for other men. When that was done he went into his office and cut a length of papyrus scroll and penned a hasty report of the battle and a fresh request for reinforcements. He went back out into the yard and found a man sound enough to make the ride to Rien. Then he went to the infirmary and moved slowly and stiffly among the rows of his wounded, kneeling to say words of commendation to them, smiling when they congratulated him on his victory.

  He rested on the infirmary portico afterward. A heavy pain had started in the knee and he stood with his weight thrown on his right leg, his head leaning back against the wall, his eyes closed, listening to the activity all round him: the surgeon barking orders at his helpers, the blows of a hammer falling over by the gate. Quieter and more comfortable in his quarters, but the pain and the noise kept him from having to think.

  He heard Aino coming and spoke without opening his eyes. “How many dead?”

  “Thirteen dead, sir,” said Aino.

  “Eighteen total, then.”

  “Twenty, sir. Our messengers to Rien.”

  “You have the list?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He took the tablet from Aino and ran his eyes over it without really seeing it.

  Aino said, after a moment, “Sir, what are your orders concerning the rebel wounded?”

  He looked up. “How many of their wounded?”

  “I counted twenty-eight total, sir. We’ve housed them in the barracks for now. There isn’t room left in the infirmary.”

  He didn’t say anything for a while. The knee was hurting fiercely now and the pain was making his head spin, hot blood pound behind his temples. He could hear Mægo’s voice over the din. Anything for duty, Risto. Shouldn’t have expected otherwise of you.

  He shook his head, once, tightly. “No need to waste the surgeon’s time, Lieutenant. I intend to execute them.”

  Aino said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Pick out a detail and have it done. Then put the bodies together with the rest of their dead on the common. Burn them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lieutenant,” said Tyren.

  “Yes, sir?”

  His thoughts overwhelmed him as he tried to speak—words and sounds and images and feelings flooding his head, drowning whatever he’d intended to say. The way Maryna Nyre had smiled at him that day in the infirmary. (Only yesterday. It seemed longer, seemed a lifetime.) The way it had made his heart jump, his breath catch in his throat. How he wished he might see her smile again. But that had been only a moment, and the moment was gone, and there was the wall back up between them. No, there was far more than a wall between them now. There was Verio’s death, and Mægo Sarre’s death, and this war, and duty, above everything else. Anything for duty.

  He was silent so long that Aino prompted him, quietly.

  “Commander Risto,” he said.

  He pulled himself back, with effort. There was an ache in his heart.

  “Afterward,” he said. “Afterward, Lieutenant, I want you to go to the Nyre farm. I want you to find the girl and bring her to me. Only the girl, do you understand? Do it alone.”

  Aino’s eyes searched briefly over Tyren’s face. His own face was blank. “I understand, sir,” he said.

  He didn’t watch the executions. He went to his office instead and sat there with the muster list and the list of his dead spread out on the desk before him and he took comfort, for a while, in the mindless routine of the letter-writing. The words came easily, detachedly. Meaningless marks on the papyrus: your son died doing his duty for the Empire, died for the glory of the Empire. Was hacked into pieces in the mud for the glory of the Empire.

  A knock on the office door interrupted him, at length. He expected it was Aino returned from the Nyre farm and an icy coldness shot through him and the ache in his heart sharpened all at once, so keenly he shuddered. He didn’t look up from the writing, though his fingers were so stiff and numb now the quill was useless in them.

  “Enter,” he said. His voice sounded raspy to his ears.

  But it wasn’t Aino. It was a regular whose name he didn’t know. The man saluted him. “Commander Risto,” he said.

  It took effort not to let his relief show. He swallowed, closing his eyes briefly. Then he lifted his head and nodded to acknowledge the salute. “What is it, soldier?”

  “Sir, we were gathering the rebel dead on the common, as you ordered.”

  “Yes?”

  “There are men from the Magryn household guard among their dead, sir.”

  It took a moment for the full meaning of that to sink in. “They fought for Sarre?”

  “I don’t think they were in the fighting, sir. They were unarmed. Executed, by the look of it. We found them with their hands bound.”

  He was already standing, gripping the desk with one hand to keep the weight from his left leg. “Show me,” he said.

  They brought out Risun for him and he followed on horseback while the regular led him on foot, out through the gate and up the fort road to the common. The rebel dead were being piled with their gear at the center of common, under the marble column. There was a body hung on the column. It was hung as Magryn’s body had been hung, but by one wrist only, and Tyren knew, even before he was close enough to make out the pale high-cheekboned face or any detail of the blood-soaked tunic, it was Mægo’s body. His heart went tight and cold. He stiffened. Risun sensed it and tossed his head and the reins nearly slipped from Tyren’s hands before he could force his frozen muscles to move again.

  “Who ordered that?”

  He said it harshly and the regular glanced up to him, startled. “Sir?”

  “Who ordered the body displayed?”

  The regular seemed puzzled. “I don’t know, sir.”

  He was fighting the urge to be sick. His throat was thick with bile, his mouth dry. He very nearly leaned over in the saddle to retch on the ground. He kept himself from it, his right hand tight upon Risun’s neck for support, swallowing to steady himself.

  The regular, watching him, said, “Do you wish it removed, sir?”

  He swallowed again and turned his face away from the column. “Show me the Magryn dead,” he said.

  There were eight men in the harness of the Magryn household guard among the piled rebel dead. He dismounted and went walking among them, crouching down on his heels once or twice to look at the bodies more closely. There wasn’t much point to it. All eight had died in the same way, their hands bound at their backs, their throats slit. He might have told as much from the saddle.

  He stood. He went back over to Risun and took the reins and mounted up again.

  “You and five others,” he said to the regular. “Come with me.”

  This time he led. He took the troop across the common and over the water channel to the hall of the Magryni. The gate doors stood open, unguarded. The ivy-choked yard lay still and dark and silent. The house, too; there was no smoke rising from the opening cut in the thatched roof of the great room, no light flickering in the window slits. He slid down from Risun’s saddle at the center of the yard. There were five fresh graves dug in the black earth a little way from the house, west and south across the yard, alongside a sixth grave he knew was Magryn’s. He went over to them, leading Risun by the reins. He gave orders, over his shoulder, for the men to search the house. There was no need for it. The house was empty and he’d seen everything he needed to see. But he wanted to be alone. He stood looking down at the graves, his weight on his sound leg, leaning against Risun’s shoulder for balance, while his thoughts sorted themselves out. Four of the graves he could accou
nt for: the woman’s grave, the two younger boys,’ the girl’s. He wasn’t sure of the fifth. A lone loyal servant, perhaps. Then again the guardsmen had most likely thought they were the loyal ones even as they’d spilled the woman’s blood. Surely it was loyalty to Ryn Magryn, their true lord, that had driven them to rid the hall of the woman and the rival heir she’d have raised up as lord in Ryn’s stead. They’d have expected reward and favor for it, perhaps. Instead Mægo had given them justice.

  He posted two men of the six to guard duty out in the yard. The others he set to work gathering together the hall’s valuables: the coffers of coin from the great room, the gear and weapons from the guardsmen’s armory. When he’d taken stock of all of it, and given orders for its transport, he rode back alone to the fort. He took care this time to keep his eyes from the column.

  * * *

  Aino was waiting in his office by the time he got back.

  “The Nyri have fled, sir,” he said.

  “Fled?”

  “The farm was abandoned, sir. The tracks I found led towards the mountains. I’ll take a troop in pursuit, if you wish.”

  He sat down again in the chair behind the desk and ran his eyes over the letter he’d left lying there unfinished. He picked up the quill and inked the tip afresh and started writing where he’d left off. When he was done he signed the letter and sealed it and laid it aside to dry. He started on another. He did it deliberately, forcing his mind to it, sounding out each word in his head as he wrote so his thoughts didn’t have the chance to wander.

  “No,” he said. “No, there’s work enough to be done here, for now. You can go, Lieutenant.”

  Aino made no immediate move. “Let me finish the letters, sir, while you take some rest.”

  “That isn’t necessary.”

  Aino’s eyes went briefly to the half-written letter before him, and he realized his hand, holding the quill, was shaking. He put the quill down and moved the hand to his lap.

  “You can go,” he said again.

  “Yes, sir,” said Aino.

  He went into his quarters, once Aino’s footsteps had faded to silence, and he lay on his back on the bed, the thumb and forefinger of his right hand pressed against his eyelids, his left arm outflung across the pallet, and he waited for the shaking to leave him. He slept, unexpectedly. He woke with a start, at the fourth hour, to the booted tread of the guard changing out on the wall, the soft patter of rain on the roof tiles. His head ached, and the soreness had spread from the knee and gone all over, had sunk deep into his bones. He lay there a while looking up at the shadows moving on the ceiling. He knew he wouldn’t sleep again. He got up and went back into the office and worked on the letters by lamp-light.

  * * *

  In the morning he stood in the fine gray drizzle to watch the burials of his own dead behind the fort, bracing himself against the rear wall to keep the weight off his left leg. Afterward he instructed Aino to bring him a list of the repairs to be done, and he went hobbling to his office again, and took out the log book, and sat down at the desk to write his full report of the battle.

  Aino was back sooner than he’d expected, standing before the desk and saluting. “Sir, there’s a Cesino asking to speak with you.”

  “A Cesino?”

  “Yes, sir. A man named Muryn. He says he’s known to you.”

  He froze inside. He looked up to Aino with the log book still unopened in his hands. He didn’t say anything for a moment, his thoughts running too quickly. “He’s here in the fort?”

  “I had him wait at the gate, sir.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He wishes to speak with you alone, sir. That’s all he’ll tell me.”

  “Bring him, then.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He put down the log book on the desk and sat there with his elbows propped up, his hands clenched together under his chin. There was a painful tightness in his chest. No place or time for words now. Surely Muryn knew that. Muryn had known that from the beginning, if he’d been too foolish to know it himself. No reason for either of them to keep up the pretense now.

  He tried to show nothing in his face while Aino brought the priest into the office and saluted again and stepped aside. Muryn stood before the desk with his arms folded against his ribs, his shoulders straight, his gaze steady on Tyren. Except for the gray pallor of exhaustion over his skin, the slightest hint of strain round his eyes, he seemed remarkably calm.

  “Leave us, Lieutenant,” Tyren said to Aino.

  When Aino had gone he said, “Foolish of you to come here, Muryn.”

  Muryn’s voice was mild. “Forgive me, Lord Risto. But I saved you the ride to the farm, I hope.”

  “If you’d any sense you’d have been most of a day’s journey from here by now.”

  “You thought I’d run?”

  “For your own sake, Muryn, I’d hoped you would. By right I should order your death. I’d hoped to avoid that.”

  Muryn said, “Lord Risto—”

  “You led me on so I’d stand aside and do nothing while Sarre raised this place in rebellion. All that talk of the peace. I don’t deny the fault lies partly with me. I was fool enough to listen to it, to believe it.”

  Muryn was silent a moment.

  “I didn’t know his intentions, Lord Risto,” he said, finally. “I’d have warned you if I’d known. But he told me nothing. I suppose he didn’t trust me after you came. I didn’t learn of the night attack until two days ago, the day he moved openly on the fort. I went to him then. I used every means I could muster to try to dissuade him from continuing it—reasoned with him, pleaded with him. I tried to use his father’s memory against him, painful as that was. He wouldn’t be dissuaded.”

  “You expect me to believe you, Muryn?”

  “I’ve no way to prove it to you, Lord Risto, but it’s the truth.”

  “Easy enough to say that now.”

  “I made known my fear to you, Lord Risto. Mægo wanted nothing but vengeance, and I feared for that. I’d have hidden it from you if I believed in what he fought for. For his father’s sake—I wanted to hide it from you. He was Rylan’s son. For his father’s sake, Lord Risto, I wanted him to live.”

  Tyren didn’t say anything. He remembered that night, of course—remembered Muryn’s words. He should have been willing to act on them then. He couldn’t blame the priest he hadn’t done so.

  Muryn seemed to take confidence from his silence. “Mægo wouldn’t have been satisfied until every one of your people was either dead or driven from Cesin, Lord Risto. That was never what Rylan wanted. He believed there might be peace between us, believed it might come under the Empire. Mægo didn’t understand that, didn’t understand his father’s work—or understood it well enough and rejected it anyway, I don’t know. There was too much hatred in him for anything else than vengeance. But you can right his wrong now.”

  “This isn’t finished, Muryn.” He said it curtly, the words cool as steel on his tongue. “I intend to find Magryn and all the rest of his survivors—to reinforce the garrison here and put down this rebellion once for all. You’re not going to turn me aside from it. You may as well save your words.”

  “I’m not asking you to abandon your duty, Lord Risto.” Muryn spoke as though he were admonishing a stubborn child. “I never asked you to do that. No, I came to ask you remember those in the village who took no part in the fighting. There’ll be harvest work soon, lord, and there are few to do it now. You’re the authority here, Lord Risto. You’ve the power of the sword. The decision is yours. But you’ll secure their loyalty more firmly by helping these people now than by showing them force. And isn’t that doing your duty for the Empire?”

  Tyren laughed. The bitterness inside him turned it to a painful choking in his throat.

  “Those who took no part in the fighting. Which are those, Muryn? You told me peace came of justice. I tried to show these people justice. I tried to give them my trust. And my adjutant took a knife in h
is heart for that. So which of these people do I trust as peaceable, Muryn?”

  “Don’t harbor anger towards Maryna, Lord Risto.” Muryn’s voice betrayed weariness for the first time. “She acted of necessity only, and she has suffered for it.”

  “Necessity,” said Tyren. “Necessity, Muryn, to knife an unarmed man, conceal his body, and flee?”

  “The lieutenant accosted her alone,” Muryn said. “He demanded word of the rebels from her, first. When she refused to speak he assaulted her. She defended herself, Lord Risto. It was nothing more or less than that.”

  If someone had dealt him a closed-handed blow across the face it wouldn’t have matched the staggering, blinding impact of those words. He stared at Muryn without speaking. He couldn’t have spoken if he’d tried. His tongue was thick, the roof of his mouth ashy dry. His heart had gone still and heavy as a stone in that moment.

  “She came to us afterward,” Muryn went on. “She was afraid to tell her family, and afraid for them at the same time—afraid you’d take reprisals against them. But Mægo was already moving on the fort by then. That’s how I learned of the attacks, Lord Risto. She brought the word when she came.”

  He was only half hearing the words.

  “Tell me she’s unhurt,” he said. That was all that mattered. Let her be unhurt, please God. If he’d known—how that might have changed it, changed everything, if he’d known. Too late for that now. But please, God, let her be unhurt.

  “She’s unhurt,” Muryn said. “Physically, at least. There are other kinds of hurts, Lord Risto. But she’s safe now.”

  “Mægo said nothing.”

  “Mægo didn’t know. She didn’t tell him. What would she have told him? That she’d been in the fort, that she’d been tending your wounded? It would have angered him, yes, to know she’d betrayed him like that—because he’d have seen it as betrayal, no matter how right a thing it was to do, no matter she was doing it for his sake. But it would have hurt him, more, and she loved him too much for that.”