by JD Byrne
Her warriors flew down off the beach, skittering over the ice to the water. She hoped the speed would impress the Degans. In truth, her warriors knew this was coming and were prepared to act when told. That it might look like a spur-of-the-moment action, undertaken voluntarily and with such swiftness, helped to make an impression. Regardless, Antrey was proud of her warriors for executing the plan with such skill. Hundreds of men who had just moments before been engaged in fatal combat now plunged into the icy waters to save the lives of men who were, just moments ago, trying to kill them. If this did not make Antrey’s point to the Degans, nothing would.
Antrey turned back to the water, to the Degans standing there, too stunned to move. “Who leads you?” she demanded, but was given no response. She asked again. The question must have registered the second time, as several Dagan warriors pointed towards a man standing on the ice, icy water sloshing around his feet. He stood with sword in hand, but his body was loose and without tension. The frenzy of battle had faded, replaced by confusion and fatigue.
Antrey walked over to him, her trio of new bodyguards on her heels. “Are you in command?” she asked him. Either he did not hear her or could not process the question again. Antrey asked again, in the most careful and precise Neldathi she could. He turned slowly to face her.
“I am War Leader Yimir of the Akan,” he said, his voice unsure not of the answer but of what difference it might make. “Command is mine.”
Antrey introduced herself, which led Yimir to nod slowly, but say nothing. “There’s no need for that,” she said, pointing at his drawn sword. “You may put it away. You are no longer in any danger.”
Yimir complied slowly but without protest. Everything about him was slow and halting, as if he was unsure whether what was happening to him was real. After a moment of silence between them, he said, “So you are the woman who would dare lead us.”
“Yes, I am,” Antrey said, calmly but forcefully. “A woman. A halfbreed. But as you can see, I can lead.”
He nodded again, turning to watch Antrey’s warriors pull his drowning men out of the freezing water. “This was a clever trap that was laid for us,” he said, gesturing towards the confusion. “It was yours?”
“It was.”
“How did a woman who grew up in a northern city devise such a plan?”
She smiled. She had given variations of this speech many times. “Cities are filled with books. Every one like a Speaker of Time, collecting the wisdom of the ages. The lessons of history. Do you know of the War of Unification?”
Yimir shook his head, as she knew he would.
“The Kingdom of Telebria, one part of the Triumvirate, used to be separate nations called Greater and Lesser Telebria, which lay on either side of the River Teleb. The two nations fought each other over the years, before people on both sides began to see the value of working together.” She shifted around Yimir to remain in his sight. “But there were those, like you, who did not agree. They would lose status and power if the two nations became a single kingdom. And so there was a war. A brief one, as these things go, but a war nonetheless. Needless blood was shed. Needless divisions were sown. I had to find a better way.”
“And this is it?” he asked, gesturing round the battlefield, still shrouded in some places by a fine layer of fog.
“I tried to convince you otherwise. Your leaders did not listen. They were too blinded to what must be done, blinded by the fear of being led by a halfbreed woman. Now she has shown you that she can defeat you on the field of battle. Yet she does not, because victory between us is not important now. Unification is what is important. Wouldn’t you agree that I have shown today that I am capable of bringing our people together and striking back at the Triumvirate?”
Yimir was silent, in thought, for a long while. All around him his warriors, who had once looked certain to drown, were being warmed by campfires and tended to by their former combatants. “I am not certain,” he finally said. “But I cannot bring myself to argue otherwise.”
“Come, my brother,” Antrey said, extending her hand. “Meet with my advisors. Dine with us. We will drink to the memory of our brave brothers and sisters who have fallen today and pray that their lives will not have been lost in vain. If, after our discussion, you still cannot argue otherwise, what else will be left to say?”
He looked out over the lake for a moment, as if to find one last bit of guidance from the opposite shore. Then he turned and took Antrey’s hand. “Very well, jeyn.”
~~~~~
Two days later, Antrey’s column and the Dagan army that once sought to destroy it made camp together at the southern end of the lake. It would have been naive of Antrey to expect the camp to feel truly unified in such a short period of time, particularly after the loss of life in battle. As it happened, the Dagan army was just that—an army, without any of the other parts of those clans involved. Antrey’s column, on the other hand, had always been a complete entity, just like the clans themselves, only so much larger, made up of soldiers, hunters, mothers, children, and every other part of society. It made certain charms of home available to the Degans for the first time in months and helped to soothe their eager nerves.
Though short, the battle had been fierce. Almost four hundred of Antrey’s warriors had been killed, with three times that number wounded. The Dagan losses were similar, but felt worse, given their expectation of easy victory. Antrey knew, both from the stories of the Speakers and of Alban’s books, that it would not go down in history as a particularly bloody clash. Regardless, she felt the sting of every death and maiming. She wished it had not come to this.
Goshen had proven very useful in the aftermath of the battle. Strangely, the Degans seemed drawn to his ideas about the Maker of Worlds as the one true god. Goshen presided at a massed memorial service, one that honored all of those who had died in the fighting. It had been Kajtan’s idea, and Antrey was grateful for it. Ceremonies and rituals always felt pointless to her, but she was coming to see their value, if only as an organizational tool. The service brought the two groups together, recognized what they had done to one another, and galvanized those present into believing that something better must come out of it. It was a start, Antrey realized.
Once the service was complete and some measure of peace had settled over the camp, there was no longer any reason to remain at Lake Neyn. As the column broke camp, Antrey sent one last group of emissaries out to the clans whose theks were not already with her. She bid them to come, once more, to a meeting site. Only theks this time, however, for only they could approve what she had planned.
Chapter 29
As the weeks passed in Oberton, Strefer realized that, aside from the nervousness inherent in waiting for the council’s decision, the time had served them well. It had not passed quickly, however.
They had been given accommodations in a building that, in any other city, would be an inn. However, in Oberton, instead of being run by a surly older couple with bad teeth, it was apparently run by the city itself. The staff was friendly and made an extra effort to make Strefer and her company welcome. Strefer had her own room, a luxury about which she had almost forgotten. Rurek had one too, or rather he would once he was released from the city infirmary. Forlahn and Malin shared a room just down the corridor. It settled Strefer that Forlahn had decided to stay. He had a financial incentive, of course, but he also knew what he was doing in this world. Right now he was backing her, which gave her a great shot of confidence.
Strefer had taken Gillem’s advice and used the time to begin working on the book. At first she procrastinated, worrying outwardly about how best to organize the material, how to present her firsthand account versus the historical documents. Finally, Rurek convinced her that, regardless of the final format, the final order in which things were set down, it would have to be written first. Properly chastised, she went away and started writing.
It was slow going, which frustrated Strefer greatly. After all, she was a member of the Guild of W
riters. She had been raised to do just this thing. By this point in her life it should come naturally to her. For years she had spent the wee hours banging out stories to meet deadlines for the Daily Register. Only on rare occasions did she have the chance to finely craft them through endless revisions. Perhaps it was the extra time she had now that was the problem. She was used to writing under stress, with a scowling Tevis looking over her shoulder, casting nervous glances at the clock on the wall. She needed that pressure, but was hesitant to ask Gillem to give it to her.
Part of the problem was that Strefer was not used to writing about herself. Regardless of the deadlines at the Daily Register, she was always writing about someone else’s problems. They became characters in a story to her, except that they wouldn’t do as they were told. It was easy to go back through her notes of several interviews and reconstruct an incident, or even a particular conversation.
Writing about herself was an entirely different matter. Although she knew that she needed to do no more than tell the world what happened, what she did, and what she found, Strefer could only proceed in chunks of one or two paragraphs. It brought back memories of the cliques that formed during her time at the Guild school.
All the young writers in a particular city attended the same school, but rifts developed among them based on various areas of interest. The largest division, naturally, was between those who wanted to write fiction and those who did not. Beyond that, in the nonfiction group where Strefer had found herself, there was another divide between those who wanted to write about themselves, for the most part, and the historians and journalists who were more outward focused. The would-be writers of memoirs, for example, were looked down upon as selfish whiners. At least poets, who stood altogether apart from the fiction–nonfiction schism, took their angst and forged it into something purely artistic. To Strefer, writing a memoir took scant talent and little more than an unseemly willingness to talk about yourself in public.
Strefer fell into a habit. Sometime in the midafternoon, when she had gotten to the point of complete frustration with herself, she went to visit Rurek. He was making a steady, if slow, recovery. For two weeks he did nothing but lay in bed, much to his dismay. Now he was up and moving around, albeit with the aid of a sturdy walking stick. He had initially insisted that he be able to use his pikti in that role, but was vetoed by his nurses. They found him a wonderfully carved stick of dark wood to take its place, with carvings that told the mythical tale of Oberton’s founding.
As Strefer understood the tale, Elom was a public speaker and philosopher in Vertidala. He had a particularly argumentative style and few friends, even among those who agreed with his positions. He became the most outspoken critic of the oligarchy that ruled the city at that time. The precise nature of his disagreement with the oligarchs varied depending on who was telling the tale. Regardless, he was charged with treason and sentenced to be hanged, all without trial or public hearing. A student whose father was in the party that would be dispatched to arrest him told Elom of the plan. Elom fled into the depths of the Arbor.
To his surprise, Elom was followed out of town by Gabril. Gabril was also a philosopher and often disagreed with Elom. Nonetheless, he was appalled by the plan to hang Elom, particularly when the decision to do so was made in secret. Traveling alone, Gabril caught up with Elom. Perhaps inevitably, an argument ensued. Gabril tried to convince Elom to return to Vertidala, confront the oligarchs directly, and fight the charges against him. Elom was not persuaded by this, given the decision had already been made to hang him. The two men bickered back and forth, the debate turning to more fundamental questions about justice and how to change society. At some point, they realized that if they remained where they were and kept arguing, the forces from Vertidala would soon find them. Rather than seek shelter in another city, Elom and Gabril agreed to climb up into the trees, where they could continue their debate uninterrupted.
Nobody believed a word of it today, of course, even in Oberton. Particularly in Oberton. It was odd to Strefer how the city known for valuing truth more than anything else could let a myth like that continue to flower. It was a good story, she had to admit, and the citizens of Oberton took some pride in it. Rurek was greatly amused by the story, and even more amused to have a permanent reminder of it.
Today, they walked out along the walkway behind the infirmary. The clunk of Rurek’s walking stick on the wood planks rang out at regular intervals. She told him, again, of her problems writing. They paused for a moment and looked out over the forest canopy that spread out before them.
“I know I’m not a writer, Strefer,” he said, leaning heavily against his stick. “I’m barely a reader. But it seems to me that you’re being much too hard on yourself. You’ve written lots of news stories, right?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Those stories are about things that happened in the recent past, right?”
“Usually. Most of them, at any rate.”
“And when you write those stories, you do your best to tell the truth and get the facts right.”
“Of course,” she said, somewhat offended by the implication.
“To take all these different sources and blend them together.”
“Yeah.”
“So why don’t you just treat yourself like any other source?” Rurek asked. “Make notes from your own memory about what happened, then write the story up based on those notes.” He seemed hopeful, but quickly undercut his own idea. “It couldn’t be that simple, could it?”
Strefer thought for a moment, then started to laugh uncontrollably.
“Come on,” Rurek said, pulling himself upright and starting to walk away.
She ran around in front of him and faced him, walking backwards to keep pace. “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at myself. Not only could it be that simple, I think it probably is. But I couldn’t see that for myself. Thanks!” She turned and ran back to her work.
~~~~~
Once she took Rurek’s advice to heart, Strefer found the writing came easily. More easily, at any rate. In the weeks since that breakthrough, she had settled down into a pattern, like a workman in a factory. She spent about two hours each morning writing new pages, picking up wherever she had left off the morning before. After a midday meal and visit with Rurek, who had made his own breakthrough by moving out of the infirmary, she returned to edit what she had done in the morning and integrate it with what had come before. Sometimes the afternoon session stretched well into the evening and left her little further into the narrative than she had been when the sun rose that morning. But it was progress.
The crisp winter had set in and forced Strefer to move from the broad sunlit walkways of the city into the small room in the inn that had become her home. It was, at this point, perfect for her needs. It was warm, with a small fire crackling in the corner almost constantly. The small space helped her keep her focus and made it an uninviting place for visitors who might drop by unexpectedly. Even Forlahn and Rurek had learned to leave her to her work when she disappeared into her room.
The knock that came on the door one morning—slow, steady, and relentlessly firm—took her by surprise. She tried to ignore it at first and keep working, hoping whoever it was would simply give up and go away. It was too early for lunch, besides. But the knocking persisted, so Strefer put down her pen when she came to the end of a sentence. “Yes? Who is it?” she asked in her most annoyed tone. She was chagrined when the door opened slowly and Gillem poked his head inside.
“I am very sorry to disturb you, young lady,” he said. “May I come in?”
“Of course,” she said, trying to stand up and show some formality to offset her earlier tone. Instead, she slammed her right knee on the underside of the desk and cursed loudly.
“Oh my,” Gillem said, more amused than appalled. “There is no need to stand on my account, please.” He gestured for her to sit back down. “Trust me, I have heard much worse in my lifetime. Besides, the truth is not alw
ays pretty, is it? And I could certainly not argue with the truth of what you just said.” He laughed at his own joke.
Strefer smiled and sat back down, rubbing her bruised knee.
Gillem pulled out a chair and sat down across from her. “I have some news for you, at long last.”
She had waited so long to hear the council’s decision, it did not immediately register in Strefer’s mind that this was it. Once it clicked in her brain, she could barely stay seated, until her natural pessimism got the better of her. “It’s bad news, isn’t it?”
“Why would you say that, young lady?” Gillem leaned back in his seat, a puzzled look on his face.
“Because you came to tell me here, in this tiny room,” she said, gesturing for emphasis. “In private. Why do so if not to let me down gently?” Or, she thought, to let me get out of the city in advance of an angry mob. “I assumed we would have to go back to the council chamber for…”
“Oh, there will be a formal announcement this evening,” he said, cutting her off. “My clerks are working on the specific language of the announcement right now. But that is why I am here now. We need to agree on some details before the decision is publicly announced.”
Strefer felt a calm inside that she had not enjoyed in much too long. “So you’re going to publish the book?”
“Yes, young lady,” he said with a chuckle. “Of course we are going to publish your book.”
“Good,” she said, shooting for intentional understatement. “So what are these details we need to get straight?”
“For one thing, there is the matter of when the manuscript can be finished. The council is of the opinion that the quicker this matter can be undertaken the better. It is vital that the world knows what you know, young lady. How goes your progress?”