by Trish Mercer
“But she doesn’t really seem your type—”
“All girls are the same ‘type.’ She’ll come around soon enough and be mine by . . . The Dinner, next year.”
“Really,” Radan said, sounding unconvinced. “So why her?”
“There’s no other girl with her bloodlines. Imagine: the Shin line mixed with the Thorne and Cush lines? Our son will be the greatest general the world ever saw, under my tutelage.”
“So . . .” Radan said hesitantly, “it’s only her blood you want. Her ability to give you a boy.”
“What else is there to want in a girl?”
“I’ve often wondered that myself,” Radan murmured.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, sirrr. Nothing.” But Radan wore an enigmatic smile.
Thorne shrugged at it. “She’ll present me with the most remarkable son,” he said confidently. “Maybe even two. Could always use a spare.”
---
“Oh, no you don’t!” Perrin shouted, trying to catch his breath. For once, Jon Offra was faster.
The lieutenant didn’t expel any unnecessary energy as he raced past the fort, but he couldn’t suppress his grin. He’d finally understood what the colonel had been trying to teach him about lengthening his stride and matching his breathing to his pace. While he was only three paces ahead of his commander, it felt like miles.
“You can’t keep it up, Jon!” Shin panted, seemingly right behind his ear.
That sent a chill down the lieutenant’s back, but the good kind that kicked up one’s speed that extra notch.
Four paces ahead. Now five. They sprinted past the barns and beyond the fort, out toward the canals in the east. The race would be decided by whomever leaped across the canal first, stopping before they hit the slope down to the thick marshes that extended for miles to the sea.
Neither man noticed the audience of several dozen soldiers at the fort, shouting encouragement and cheering to see the thin lieutenant, who’d bulked up over the past season, finally outpacing their commander. The men flew by so quickly no sounds reached them.
Captain Thorne’s glare didn’t reach them either. His shoulders tensed, his eye twitched, and he folded his arms in defiance as he watched the race that occurred several times a week now.
But neither of the men, with sweat streaming down their faces, thought for one moment about Captain Thorne. All they saw was the blur in the distance that would soon be the canal. Clearing it accurately would be even more important right now since it was full and running swift.
Offra saw the distant goal and felt his chest swell with pride. Then his chest began to tighten, as if ready to split his flesh. The colonel was right; he couldn’t keep up the pace. Every muscle suddenly protested his speed—
The colonel’s panting was right next to him. Not bothering to waste any energy gloating, Shin raced alongside, his eyes focused solely on the end in front of them.
Offra flagged, a cramp developing, and he fell back—
“Oh, no you don’t!” the colonel shouted for the second time. “Stay with me, Jon! Look beyond the goal. Run to the marshes. Stay with me, son!”
Offra didn’t expect his eyes to fill suddenly with salty water. He thought maybe it was sweat dripping into his eyes, but a stinging around his tear ducts told him otherwise.
The colonel had called him “son.”
No one had ever called him “son.” Not even his father before he died when Jon was twelve.
“Stay with me!” the colonel gasped, somehow finding the strength to turn his gait into a sprint for the last one hundred paces.
Jon wasn’t about to let him finish the race alone. Ignoring the pain and cramps, he pushed until he found himself matching the colonel’s pace.
“Yes!” he gasped in surprised joy.
It didn’t last.
“Noooo!” Both men cried as they reached the edge of the canal—
It took the officers about fifteen seconds to realize that they were flailing chest deep in cold water.
“Did it suddenly get wider?” Shin gasped, wiping his face and grabbing an exposed root along the bank side to keep upright in the current. “I’m sure it got wider!”
Offra shook his head and shivered. When he looked downstream for a way to climb out, he groaned. “There, sir. That’s where we usually jump the canal! The narrower section.”
To his surprise, the colonel laughed. “It is! How’d we miss it?”
Offra dared to smile back. “I guess I was so focused on beating you, I just . . .” he shrugged.
“So which of us won?”
Offra shrugged again.
“Judging by the splash—” An unexpected voice carried over to them, belonging to Sergeant Major Zenos who was accompanied by ten new recruits all on horseback, and all of them sniggering.
“—I would say it was a fair tie. So, am I to expect swimming on the next Strongest Soldier Race?” He was uncoiling a length of rope from his saddle, readying to toss it to the two wet officers.
Colonel Shin glared good-naturedly as he caught the rope and automatically handed it over to Offra. “Just get us out, Zenos!”
---
Ten minutes later the two drenched men, grinning sheepishly, slogged back into the compound of the fort to a variety of stares and snickers from soldiers trying not to show disrespect.
But Captain Thorne was appalled. “Sir! What happened? Offra, what’d you do to the colonel?” He stood in front of the command tower doors, his hands on his waist.
The colonel laughed lightly and put a hand on Offra’s shoulder. “Relax, Captain. We did this to ourselves. Just missed the mark. Quite refreshing, actually. Offra, go change and get back up to the tower. Captain, don’t you have something you should be doing?”
Thorne knew all kinds of things he should be doing; firstly, he would have made sure the colonel wasn’t shamed and humiliated in front of his men.
But all he said was, “I’m doing all I can to serve you, sir.”
He didn’t understand the scowl of the colonel. Even though he’d sidled as much as he could to be under his wing, there was so much about Perrin Shin he just didn’t get. But he would, when he was his son-in-law. And then he’d get the rest of the world.
But for now, he headed to the barracks for a surprise inspection, fuming. Why did Shin bother with Offra? That insignificant—
Thorne stopped dead in his tracks, a most revolting thought occurring to him as he remembered the words of his mother: Jaytsy will feel obliged to love the man her father most approves of.
Thorne clenched his fist.
It was Offra!
He was trying to impress the colonel to get to his daughter! But Offra was so hopelessly incompetent, so completely wrong for Jaytsy. He had no army heritage, no family—weren’t his parents dead?—and no ability to become more than a second-rate officer.
Lemuel turned to the officer’s quarters and noticed the door to Offra’s room had just shut. Thorne pounded on the door.
“Yes?” he heard Offra’s muffled voice. “Enter?”
Thorne opened the door and did his best to smile.
Offra squinted nervously, stopping in mid-motion to remove his white undershirt.
“Just seeing if you need any assistance, Offra?”
“To change my clothes?”
Lemuel realized it sounded stupid too. “I wanted to apologize to you for snapping out there. I was just surprised.”
Offra’s eyes grew bigger. “That’s quite all right, sir. No offense taken.” He pulled off the wet shirt and dropped it on the ground. “Good thing my washing was finished yesterday,” he chuckled tensely. “Everything should dry soon in this heat.” He looked at Thorne to see if he was going to watch him remove his trousers.
“I, uh, was just wondering . . .” Thorne tried to find the best way to bring it up, “how often you and the colonel run?”
Offra sat on his bed to pull of his boots. They made a squishing sound as he yank
ed one off, and water poured out on the wooden floor. Offra smiled uncomfortably at it. “Several times a week, sir. Long run once a week.”
Thorne nodded slowly, shifting his own boot slightly to keep it from the growing puddle on the ground. “And do you ever run by the colonel’s house?”
Offra shrugged as he removed the other sloshing boot. “I suppose we do. We run past every house in Edge.”
Thorne stepped back to avoid being touched by the new splash of water. “So you’re familiar with the colonel’s home, then.”
Offra sighed. “Sure,” he said. “Captain, I’m not sure where this is going—”
“You really don’t, do you?” Thorne squinted. “Let’s keep it that way.”
And he walked out of the room, leaving a baffled Offra.
Chapter 21 ~ “It was an ambush! Look at us!”
A week later Colonel Shin stood in front of his soldiers gathered in the training arena. There was another duty ahead of them, not as deadly as Moorland to be sure, but fearsome in its own way.
“Men,” he announced loudly, as if he needed to draw their attention even though they were already watching him intently.
Captain Thorne had told them there was yet another difficult task, and that had all of the soldiers wondering. Since the Guarders had been wiped out several moons ago, the world had been silent . . . except for the trouble caused by many teenagers who seemingly had nothing else to do since they had no Guarders to steal for anymore. So for some reason roving bands of boys had found it entertaining to scatter livestock and spend their nights removing wheels off of wagons. Fortunately the same boys were also stupid, and left those wagon wheels on the front doorsteps of girls they liked so it was relatively easy for Mahrree, Peto, and Jaytsy to suggest to Perrin who was at fault based on who they had heard was trying to impress someone else. As a result, Perrin now had a list of teenage boys who needed some rehabilitation.
That’s where the soldiers came in.
“As you know,” he said as he slowly paced in front of them, “we still have a problem with the youth of Edge. We also have a problem with the fact that many Edgers passed away this year because of the pox. And we have an additional issue that many of them planted gardens and crops intended to fill our storehouses, which gardens and crops are now not being tended to.”
Perrin noticed his soldiers squirming, worried that he was about to recruit them to be farmers.
“Soldiers, not only does Edge have this situation, but the entire world. The Administrator of Security has embraced this plan of every village in the world raising extra to store against difficult years.”
He didn’t go on to tell them that the document so thoroughly created by Lieutenant Offra explaining the idea and sent to Giyak, on Perrin’s recommendation, was accepted by Idumea but not acknowledged. Instead, the initiative for storehouses came solely from Giyak’s office.
When Perrin broke the news to Offra, who was likely hoping for a promotion for his work—as if anyone would be allowed in Fort Shin to be promoted to the same level of Thorne—the modest lieutenant merely nodded that it was all right.
But Perrin had told him a few weeks ago, “It’s more than all right, Jon. What we’ve established here is an excellent idea. But now that Idumea has its hands on it, they’ll mess it up somehow—mark my words. And when they do, the blame will go straight back to Giyak and the Administrators, not to us here at Edge.”
Offra had smiled at that, and he was smiling again now at the back of the training arena because he knew what was coming next.
“So men, while Idumea has recently sent me a decree that we are to demand that the citizens help with the care of the extra plantings—”
Actually, Idumea was demanding forced labor—at point of sword, if necessary—to take care of the crops.
Perrin’s gaze fell upon Lieutenant Offra again who, for once, wasn’t trying to look shorter than he was. He was beaming back at Perrin because when he read the report from Idumea, he recognized the wisdom of his commander.
“Sir!” he had exclaimed, “you’re right! Can you imagine if we had taken all the credit for the idea? Right now we’d be having to take all the blame, too, for people being forced to weed and harvest. But sir, how did you know?”
“Seriously, Jon? You thought the government would do this right? Tell me the last thing they did really right.”
When Offra didn’t have a ready answer, Perrin pointed at him. “Remember this moment when you first realized that the government can’t properly take care of people. In fact, that’s never been their responsibility. They’re supposed to keep our borders safe so that we can live as we wish. It’s our responsibility—yours and mine and Zenos’s and everyone else’s—to take care of each other.”
To that, Offra fired off the snappiest salute Perrin had ever seen.
He looked like he was about to do it again, too, as Perrin continued his speech to the soldiers.
“Men, I don’t want you forcing the good and law-abiding citizens of Edge into taking care of their neighbor’s storehouse crops. Instead, Offra and I have developed one plan to solve all problems: we have a number of teenage boys with too much time on their hands. Starting this afternoon we’re taking those boys and we will let them do a bit of weeding and harvesting and working for the village.”
Perrin hadn’t expected his soldiers to laugh and cheer, and he watched Offra as the reticent soldier guffawed at the enthusiastic response. Lieutenant Radan was also smiling, but as Perrin’s gaze traveled to the side of the room to Captain Thorne, he was scowling.
When Perrin told him of the plan yesterday, the captain was completely astonished.
“But . . . but this is not an approved method of using the soldiers, sir!” It was rare nowadays that Thorne countered Perrin, too eager to try to stay on his good side. But every now and then the books he had so dutifully memorized burbled out of him.
“Aren’t we supposed to be keeping the village secure?” Perrin had reminded him.
“Well, yes, sir, but—”
“And don’t the teenagers of Edge pose a security threat?”
“Well, naturally, but—”
“And isn’t filling our storehouses another security concern?”
“Well, there’s a case to be made that—”
“And how many more ‘wells’ do you plan to dig, Captain?”
That threw Thorne completely off course, allowing Perrin to walk away from him before the captain could protest.
When the soldiers quieted their cheering, Perrin continued. “Men, Offra has a chart prepared and posted, and there you will see what supervising duties you have over the next couple of weeks. You will go out in force accompanying our bored little boys, surrounding them in the fields, and making sure they do their duty for once. Captain Thorne will lead the first group today, and thirty of you will assist him. I promise that all of you will have an opportunity to sun yourselves as you guard our laborers. Dismissed!”
---
Mahrree normally wasn’t one for sneaking around, but so curious to see if Perrin could really get some of her students to work, she made an exception. About the time she knew Captain Thorne would be leading out a group of twenty of Edge’s youth to a large garden on the west side, Mahrree slipped out of her house and followed from a safe distance.
She noticed that the soldiers seemed to enjoy their task of keeping the boys paired up and marching in parade behind Thorne, but Mahrree could hear the annoyance of the captain when he ordered the boys to get down on their knees among the plants.
Mahrree slipped behind a large bush next to the now-empty house to which the garden was attached and settled in for the show.
As the soldiers formed a perimeter around the field where the teenagers reluctantly placed themselves, Thorne began pacing and shooting menacing glares while a sergeant explained which green things were vegetables and which green things were weeds that needed extracting.
With rapt fascination Mahrree watched as
the boys reluctantly began to pull out weeds and toss them any which way. A few times some began to complain loudly, until Thorne marched over and shouted in their ears that it was this or incarceration. Mahrree didn’t think his strong-armed approach was entirely what her husband was expecting when he wanted the boys “rehabilitated.”
There’s discipline, Mahrree knew, and then there’s abuse. The first works while the second never does. And some people, like Lemuel Thorne, had no idea there was even a difference.
Mahrree began to notice something. She was too far away to see clearly, but it was obvious to her that the boys were sending some kind of silent messages, probably a system they worked out when they were still employed by the Guarders.
Mahrree bit her lip in anticipation, sure that the boys were thick in planning with their subtle gestures. But Thorne was too busy practicing an elongated stride that looked as if he was avoiding stepping into manure to notice.
Mahrree wondered how she could send Thorne a warning, but then—
One boy coughed.
At that, each young man yanked tomatoes off the vines they were weeding and pelted the soldiers with red, orange, and green projectiles. Mahrree knew she shouldn’t laugh, but she couldn’t help it once she realized the main target was Captain Thorne. She covered her mouth and collapsed in a fit of shaking behind the shrub.
But it wasn’t as if anyone would have heard her; the soldiers exclaimed so loudly nothing else could be heard, except for the gleeful laughter of the boys as they fled in every direction. Two rushed so closely past Mahrree that they nearly tripped over her boots which stuck out a bit.
By the time Mahrree composed herself enough to peer out from behind the bush not a single teenager remained. Behind her, the sound of a horse trotting to the scene caused her to cower even further behind the bush, especially when she heard the booming voice.
“Captain! Exactly what just happened here?”
“Colonel Shin!” Thorne panted, shocked, angry, and now a bit panicked as an orange smudge dribbled down his face. “Sir, they surprised us! It was an ambush! Look at us!”