Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy)

by Bell, Hilari

  “We’ve three more loads this size waiting in the bushes outside the entrance,” Kavi told them proudly. “We’re hoping to get it all in, and the mules away tonight. The longer we’re at this the more risk for everyone. But speaking of risk, why’s a journeyman carpenter playing tunnel guard? Aren’t we paying the town guard for that?”

  “It’s master carpenter now, you young lout, and the guardsmen are all needed on the walls. If I weren’t posted here tonight, I’d probably be up there with them. This new group of Hrum isn’t as foolish as the first. They’ve been pushing us. Last time they set fire to the main gate, and we had a hard time driving them off and putting it out. We lost several men.”

  Grief showed in his face, even in the wavering torchlight, and Kavi saw the same expression on the faces of the men beside him. In Kavi’s day, the townsmen hadn’t cared much for the guard—and vice-versa. The siege was changing things.

  “How are you holding up?” Kavi asked quietly.

  “Oh, we’re doing fair. We smuggled out most of the children—all the babes—and their mothers with them, so it’s just adults left. Which is good when the Hrum shoot fire arrows. We’ve too much thatch here. But we were running low on food. This”—the carpenter gestured to the mule train—“will help a lot. In fact you’ll be getting a hero’s welcome, so we’d best be—ah, almost forgot. I need all of you to take off your shirts.”

  Kavi’s heart sank. Surely he couldn’t know . . .

  “Our shirts?” asked one of the farmers. “Why do you want our shirts off?” But he was removing his as he spoke, the last words muffled by folds of cloth.

  “Turn so I can see your shoulder, please,” said the carpenter. “All right, you can put it back on. It’s not important,” he added reassuringly. “Just something we’re supposed to be checking for. On everyone.”

  His eyes were on Kavi now. Not yet suspicious, but his hand tightened a bit on the lance.

  “Ah . . . There’s something I need to explain to you,” said Kavi. “You see—”

  It was another man who leaped from the walkway, tackling Kavi into the water. He didn’t resist, keeping his muscles limp in the other man’s iron grip. After a moment the man stopped trying to wrestle with him, and hauled him to the surface. Kavi reached up to wipe his face, but hard hands seized his wrists, pulling his arms behind him. Three were in the water now, including the carpenter, but two more men had appeared on the walkway, lances ready.

  “Take it easy, all of you. I said I’d explain.”

  The carpenter’s knife ripped through the cloth of his sleeve, exposing the tattoo and the arrow scar above it. The hands gripping Kavi’s arms tightened, bruising, and one man spat.

  “What’s going on here?” an older farmer demanded. “What is that?”

  “I really can explain,” said Kavi, but the carpenter’s voice overrode his. “This is how the Hrum mark their spies.”

  “Their spies? But that’s ridiculous. He’s been helping us. Besides, why would anyone mark their own spy?”

  “It’s so I can convince any officer, even one who doesn’t know me, that I’m working for them,” said Kavi wearily. “But I’m not—”

  A fist exploded into his stomach and he bent over, wheezing. Rough hands pulled his wrists together, binding them behind his back.

  “No.” The farmer’s voice was firm now, and determined. “I don’t care how he’s marked, he’s been helping us—for months! He organized these supplies! They come from villages all through this part of the country, and he’s the one who set up all the deliveries. And other things too. He works for Sorahb! He can’t be a Hrum spy.”

  “You’re probably working for them too,” one of the townsmen growled. “And the food is probably poisoned.”

  A number of lances were pointed at the farmers now. The siege had frightened the townsfolk, Kavi realized. Hardened them. He wondered frantically what he could say that would make matters better instead of worse.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Damad,” said another farmer impatiently. “You’ve known me for years. How often have you picked fruit in my orchard? You can’t possibly think I’m a Hrum spy.”

  “Then why is he marked as one?” another townsman demanded.

  “I don’t know,” said the old farmer. “But he says he can explain, so I suggest you listen. Unless you plan to slit his throat here and now—”

  The townsmen rumbled agreement, and Kavi winced. Of all the fool suggestions!

  “But if you do, we’re taking this food right back down the tunnel. And if you kill us and take it—and you’ll have to kill us, if you kill him!—then you’ll never see another shipment. How long can you survive without food from outside? You slit his throat, then sooner or later you’ll be wearing Hrum tattoos yourselves—slave tattoos! So you’d better listen to him, because he’s been helping us against the Hrum for months. He really is working for Sorahb,” the farmer insisted. A rumble of agreement from his own men backed him up.

  Slowly they all turned to where Kavi stood, blinking water out of his eyes. “I can explain. But it’s being a long story, and I’d rather not tell it twice. If you’ll take me to the Craft Council, or Commander Siddas, I can tell everyone at once.”

  “We ought to take him to the governor,” one of the townsmen grumbled. “He’s for hanging Hrum spies from the battlements, and no questions asked.”

  “He was for doing that,” said the carpenter slowly. His face, in the flickering light, seemed to have aged more than five years could account for. “If you’ll remember, the commander stopped him. And the council agreed. All right. Bring him with us. But send men ahead, and not just to the commander and the council. I want an escort of real guards waiting when we get out of the tunnels.”

  THEY DRAGGED KAVI THROUGH the water—harder to keep his balance in the shifting gravel with his hands tied behind him. When he stumbled, they hauled him up and set him in motion again with cuffs and kicks.

  At least they weren’t taking him straight to the governor to be hanged, but how much difference would that make in the end? Kavi knew they had released the Hrum spies they’d caught earlier, but that was before the siege, before hatred had had a chance to grow. And they might be seeing a difference between an honest Hrum spy, and a Mazad man who had spied for the besiegers. Kavi shivered.

  The farmers, seeing that he wasn’t really being damaged despite the townsmen’s anger, kept their peace. But Kavi felt battered as well as bedraggled when they finally emerged from the aqueduct into one of the warehouses that abutted the walls.

  A guard unit was waiting for them, but they didn’t look like the easygoing street patrols that had sometimes caught Kavi in childish pranks. For all their scruffy tabards, these men looked like soldiers, professional and dangerous.

  The guard squadron’s commander questioned both the farmers who’d accompanied Kavi and his captors. After some discussion, it was decided that he wasn’t important enough to get the commander and the council out of bed in the middle of the night.

  The cobbles were hard under his bare feet, but Kavi made no complaint—no one had expressed any hesitation about getting the governor out of bed.

  The quiet, dark streets woke memories of dozens of childhood pranks, some as innocent as slipping out to try night fishing in the Sistan River, and some . . . Well, given who he was going to face tomorrow, Kavi was glad no one had ever found out who had managed to coat the Craft Hall steps with grease on the night before the parade of crafts, when each craftmaster emerged from the hall in his best finery . . . and most slippery shoes.

  In the daylight the streets would be even more familiar, echoing with the clamor of a busy town, brimming with familiar faces. Kavi knew every twisting street within the walls, and most of the suburbs as well. The suburbs were gone now, burned in the Hrum’s first fury, but the people had survived to fight.

  His town.

  Had the guard allowed him, he could have led them to the lockup in the basement of the Craft Hall, even in
the dark.

  It wasn’t a cell, just a storeroom with a stout door and bolts on the outside, and Kavi had slept there before. He hadn’t gotten away with all his pranks. But in the morning he would face, not just the master metalworkers but the whole council, for this was no childish prank, to be taken care of by a small fine from his master and a few weeks confined to the yard. He could hang for this.

  Despite the semifamiliar surroundings and the reasonable comfort of straw tick and blankets, Kavi slept badly.

  THEY GAVE HIM BREAKFAST but no chance to wash or shave, though Kavi asked—no use appearing before the council looking more of a ruffian than he had to.

  In fact it wasn’t long after breakfast when the guards came, binding his wrists once more, leading him up the winding stone stairs to the great hall.

  Despite the open windows, high in the walls, and the colorful weavings displaying the labor of each trade, the dark, gray stone made the huge room into a dim cavern. Only in full festival, with tables laid, full of brightly clad masters and their wives, and apprentices hurrying back and forth to serve them, was the great Craft Hall really alive.

  Now, with only the craftmasters seated at the high, curving table at the end of the room, it felt as empty and imposing as a djinn’s cave. Meant, no doubt, to intimidate hapless miscreants such as himself. Kavi set his teeth, lifted his head, and walked toward the open space before the raised dais without the guards’ prodding. As if he had a townsman’s right to the fair judgment of his friends and neighbors. He’d been away from the city, wandering the roads as a peddler, for half a decade. Would they still see him as one of them?

  The guard commander, Siddas, sat in a chair to the right of the table, Kavi saw—not part of the council, but placed level with them. That too was a change. In his time, the guard captured people for the council, as well as for the governor, but they’d nothing to do with judgment.

  His old master, Tebin, sat in a chair to the left of the metalworkers’ craftmaster, but that wasn’t unusual—a man’s master would always be called to bear witness, for or against him. With Tebin it had been about fifty-fifty, at least where Kavi was concerned.

  He came to a stop and gazed up at them, old men’s faces, lined with years of work and responsibility. Even their disapproval was familiar. These were his people, and this his town. No wonder he had never betrayed Mazad.

  “You first, Tebin.” It was Golbas, the leather-workers’ craftmaster who sat in the central chair this year, for leadership of the council rotated among the trades, each in turn. “Is this man your journeyman Kavi?”

  Ex-journeyman, the bitter thought flashed through Kavi’s mind.

  “He is,” Tebin replied calmly.

  Golbas sighed. “Well, his identity is established. Guard, turn him so we can see—”

  “There’s no need,” said Kavi, trying to sound calm and assured, despite the pounding of his heart. “The Hrum marked me as one of their spies some six months ago.”

  “And why would they be doing that?” Golbas sounded as if he was honestly curious.

  Kavi took a deep breath. “Likely because I agreed to spy for them.”

  The faces of the men on the dais showed surprise at this damning statement. Kavi had spent most of the night weaving tales, each more fantastical, more exculpatory, than the last. He wasn’t sure when he’d decided to tell the truth, but Mazad deserved truth from him. He knew it was the right choice. He hoped it was. He was staking his life on it.

  “I can explain,” he said, for the final time. “But I don’t know if you’ll understand. When the Hrum first captured me, they were spying themselves, scouting inside our borders. They were all for slitting my throat once they knew I’d identified them. I was promising to say anything, do anything, to keep them from killing me right that moment. I was thinking I could promise now, and escape later.”

  Heads nodded around the table. These were practical men, who knew a practical choice when they heard it.

  “Ah, so that’s how you came to be marked. And you didn’t, in fact, spy for them.” It was the metalworkers’ craftmaster, glad to see the matter so easily resolved.

  “Not at first,” said Kavi. Where had this strange compulsion to speak true to these men, to cast himself upon their judgment, come from? After months of siege, he was taking the Flame’s own risk!

  “At first I just wanted to escape. But then I got to talking with them. One man in particular, a tactimian, Patrius. He told me a bit about the Hrum. A lot, actually. And they . . . They’re better than the deghans, you know. They really are. Or so I thought. I still think so, in most ways, though I didn’t know about the draft.”

  Not very clear, that, and not persuasive, but his quaking nerves were clouding his wits. Calm. He had to stay calm.

  Golbas was considering his muddled explanation. “So Tactimian Patrius recruited you? And he lied about the Hrum? Emphasized their good points and ignored the bad?”

  It would have been so easy to say “yes.”

  “If you knew Patrius, you’d know better than that,” said Kavi. “He’s one of those honorable, earnest types. He was scrupulously honest. That’s what made it so effective. That I didn’t know about the draft, that was just . . . a cultural misunderstanding.”

  The guard commander, Siddas, was listening intently, but he showed no desire to intervene. Kavi had known him by sight in the old days, and had heard he was a fair man. He wished he’d known the man better, for Kavi wasn’t fooled by that modest chair, set off to the side. If this man chose to take the matter to the governor, Kavi was dead, no matter what the Craft Council decided. At least, that was the custom under the old law. The deghans’ law.

  “I hated the deghans,” he said aloud. “I hated them so much, the Flame itself looked better to me than they did.”

  It had burned within him, that hate, stifled for years, since he’d known he’d never have a chance to avenge himself on the deghan who had maimed his hand when Kavi tried to stop him from stealing a sword from Tebin’s shop. Or at least, he’d known that if he avenged himself he wouldn’t survive it. Then the Hrum had offered him a chance. . . .

  The craftmasters’ expressions were changing, some growing softer, some harder, as they remembered his story. This was his town—he didn’t have to explain his history to these men. Even Commander Siddas’ face bore the mark of sudden understanding.

  “So you agreed to spy for the Hrum?” Golbas asked. “Of your own free will?”

  “Yes,” Kavi admitted, praying he wasn’t signing his own death warrant with the words. “I found out about the deghans’ troop movements, their battle plans. It helped the Hrum defeat them.”

  Tebin rubbed the bridge of his nose, concealing his face. Kavi wished he wouldn’t. Even through his fear, it mattered to him what this man thought. Then again, perhaps he should be glad his master’s face was hidden.

  “If you wanted revenge, you seem to have achieved it.” It was the millers’ craftmaster, dry as the flour he ground.

  “I did, and I did,” Kavi confirmed. To his own surprise, his voice was steady. “But after that . . .”

  How to explain what had happened after that. The night that had followed the battle, as the Hrum celebrated their victory. Kavi had left a bag of gold coin in his tent, uncounted, and wandered through the camp. He’d seen a girl he’d liked, for all she was a deghass, about to be hauled off to a life of drudgery as some Hrum merchant’s kitchen slave. How to explain . . .

  “Well, the matter seems clear to me,” said the craftmaster of the weavers and dyers. “He admits to having spied for the Hrum, and with some success—by his own account! So we must—”

  “But the farmers with him swore he’s been helping them resist the Hrum,” said the millers’ craftmaster. “With equal success, by their account. Without the shipment of food he organized and brought in to us—almost all his doing, according to the farmers—we wouldn’t have lasted more than another month. Don’t you want to ask him why he did that?” />
  It was also the Hrum gold Kavi had earned that had paid for most of the food—but now probably wasn’t the best time to bring that up.

  The master weaver snorted. “All right. Why?”

  All eyes turned to Kavi, awaiting his answer.

  “I changed my mind.” How lame that sounded. The watching faces were stiff and cold. Truth, it seemed, had some serious drawbacks. His heart beat as if he’d been running.

  “It was the slaves,” said Kavi. “I knew they kept slaves—Patrius told the truth of that, like everything else—but when I actually saw them—”

  “All your hatred for the deghans vanished, and you were filled with repentance?” The master weaver was sneering now.

  “No,” said Kavi slowly. “No, I still hated them. I still hate them. But at their worst they never kept slaves. I realized that if I allowed—helped—to enslave these people, then I’d have become one of them. And I didn’t want that.”

  The silence should have been weighty, but it felt strangely light. As if, having spoken the ultimate truth, their judgment mattered less. Which was absurd, for their judgment could have him hanging from the battlements of the city he loved.

  “I knew if the Hrum were defeated, then the slaves they’d taken would be returned,” he went on. “And I found out about the draft, how folks hated it. And it seemed to me that with the deghans gone, if we could get rid of the Hrum, we could be ruling ourselves for a change.”

  It felt odd to say it aloud, his most secret hope.

  “I see,” said the master weaver coldly. “So you say that you worked for the Hrum once, but not any longer. You say that now you’re fighting against them. And if we ask, you’ll no doubt say that we can trust you, and you’d never betray us to your Hrum friends . . . again. But we’ve nothing except your word for any of that, and all we can see is the Hrum’s mark on your shoulder.”

  So much for telling the truth. Tebin’s eyes met his for a moment, then turned away, and Kavi felt a flash of pure despair.