by Guy Antibes
One morning he felt the link with Restella strengthen for a moment. Why would that be? Could she be finding him? He felt it again some time later that day. She still resided in Beckondale. He wished he could use the link to communicate with her so Mander could rescue him.
~
Lotto found a vein of silver and reported it to the mine supervisor. The supervisor and the guards clustered around the vein and became excited. Lotto had expected to work on his discovery but they quickly transferred him to another mine a league away.
“You’re new here from the other mine. You must have found something useful,” one of the miners said, putting a full plate of the same shapeless food down on the table. The man was shorter than Lotto but just as fit with streaks of premature gray in his hair. He had obviously singled Lotto out from the other miners and sat next to him to talk.
“Silver. A vein of it.”
The man nodded. “They’ll use their own men to work the ore out. Half of it will go to the king and the rest into their own pockets.”
“I’m Lotto.” He extended his hand to the stranger. The man seemed to know more than the average miner and Lotto knew that knowledge could be a powerful tool.
“The name is Gully Workman. I’m glad to meet you. What you in for?”
“Some weeks ago I was a recruit in the army and the corporal decided that he didn’t want me around. I killed him in self-defense, but evidently that doesn’t count for much, and here I am. I’m afraid I lost count of time.”
Gully laughed. “The only ones they ship out of their ‘training’ camp to the army are the dumb ones who don’t notice their scams. Most end up in the mines like you. So you signed up?”
Lotto felt his face heat up as he realized that he ended up as one of the dumb ones. “A friend of mine died at the hands of Oringians, so I immediately signed up and right after I scrawled my name, they loaded me into a wagon and shipped me and nine others up here.”
“Didn’t even give you a chance to tell anyone, I’ll bet. No family?”
Lotto nodded. ‘Friends, but no relations.”
“They must have thought they had gone to heaven when you said that. It’s very possible that the recruiter received a nice bonus to sign you up. I’d say that two thirds of the recruits at the camp down the road eventually end up in the mines. Like I said, those that they let return to the army are dumber than a rock and only good for front line fodder. You just made it here a bit earlier than your colleagues.”
“I’m stupid, impulsive and made at least two idiotic mistakes,” Lotto said. “I still want to fight in the army, but I’m better trained than the trainers, it seems.”
Gully looked Lotto over and then stood up. “You think you’re good with a sword? There’s a full moon tonight, let’s test you out. I need some practice, anyway.” He took Lotto outside towards a pile of refuse and pulled out two broken pick handles. “These ought to do. Show me your stuff.”
Lotto smiled and took one of the sticks and bowed as he did in Kenyr’s training room.
“You have trained before.” Gully gave Lotto the barest smile and did the same and they began to spar.
The man must have been a soldier, for Lotto found himself hard pressed under an initial barrage of strokes. His hand hurt, since the stick had no cross guard and every parry shocked his hand and arm, but Gully’s hand would be hurting too. Lotto found the man’s rhythm and found Gully’s weaknesses and, through them, a way to become the aggressor. He began to push him back and gave better than he got.
“Enough, enough.” Gully said, chest heaving. “I can see why they didn’t want you around. You’re too good and would obviously be marked for officer material. That doesn’t work for those chaps. The last thing they want is for one of their recruits to become an officer and report them. I’d sure like to work out with you, if you don’t mind. I’d like to be able to return to duty with decent reflexes. I can’t teach you anything about swords, but in return for sparring with me, I can tell you how a soldier acts and thinks. If you’re up to it, I’ll teach you more soldiering than you’d ever learn at the Bluerock garrison.”
“What rank were you?”
Gully barked out a mirthless laugh. “Lieutenant of a detachment of scouts. I bedded the wrong woman and the husband, a Captain of the Western Fourth, had me framed for theft and sent me here. I’ve served my time in the mines, but no one seems to care that I’m here and the mining supervisor refuses to let me go.”
“Can’t you escape?”
“Not willing to try, lad. We don’t really get overworked and we are fed well enough. If I escape, they’ll kill me outright, but if war comes, I’ll be out of here in an instant. I have enough friends who know where I am. So what do you say?”
Lotto didn’t know, but he had few options and even if the man plied him with war stories and no usable knowledge, then it might help pass the time. If war had come, and Mander called to the castle, the probability rose that Gully might be released and could get word to Mander. All of the other miners seemed to keep to themselves.
“I’m up to it. I’ve found that mining doesn’t seem to work the same muscles as swordplay.”
“Indeed it doesn’t, lad, unless you know what you’re about.”
“You can call me Lotto.” Now he had committed to a friendship of sorts—perhaps an alliance. It gave him the tiniest bit of comfort, if the man had been honest with him. At this point, Lotto didn’t have much trust in his fellow men.
Gully worked alongside Lotto the next day.
“Here, you want to use the kind of actions that will maintain your fighting shape.” He showed Lotto different ways of using the pick and the other mining tools such as a long iron rod that had a heavy pointed end for cleaning out a seam of ore. It reminded Lotto of a much larger version of his poker back at the bookshop. How he wished he were back, studying, training with Kenyr, chatting with Mander and Lady Anne. He regretted his hasty enlistment with every thought.
As the days progressed, Lotto learned fighting techniques he’d never dreamed of with a tunnel wall as his opponent. Gully’s swordsmanship improved as well as Lotto taught him more advanced aspects to swordsmanship.
Their fighting ground turned to mud as spring rains began to pour. The pair sat away from the others as they ate the filling stew that never varied in taste and texture.
“What’s scouting like?” Lotto said, biting into his small loaf of bread.
“Successful scouts assume a frame of mind. The more you can sense your environment the better you’ll be at figuring out what’s out of place. There are some good scouts out there and that awareness is what sets the great ones apart from the good ones. It’s not just being good at unconventional fighting.”
Lotto liked what Gully said. Sensing the environment. He realized that even at Heron’s Pond he had used similar skills, even in his diministhed state, to survive the relentless taunting in the village and in poking around in the surrounding forest.
“Is there a way we can practice scouting while we’re here?”
Gully rubbed his chin and closed his eyes. “Yes.” He opened them up again. “Look around you and then close your eyes. See if you can feel the lay of the land. Walk into the mines and try and sense the walls around you. Don’t try to feel how close it is, think about the mine itself. It’s a hole in the ground. Concentrate on the hole instead of the walls.”
“I can do that already,” Lotto said, smiling. He closed his eyes and could sense the camp, even feeling where men were when they walked around them.
“Continue to practice that. What if you were in the woods and you looked for signs of the enemy? Could you detect them? What other senses would you use?”
“Senses, eh?” Lotto closed his eyes and them kept them closed as he tried to get that feel for all that went on around him. “I smell food. Bodies smell. Some smell differently than others. Their steps make different sounds as they walk. I can feel the heat of a miner when he walks close by me in the mine and
the gentle movement of air that he causes along with the stench of his unwashed body.” He opened his eyes and grinned.
Gully laughed. “Admirable. You’d make a good scout, then. You just need practice. So we’ll practice in the mines as well.”
The next few days, Gully and Lotto played tag catching each other as they moved through the mines. Lotto caught on quickly and realized that he would like to be a scout, if he ever had the opportunity. His friendship with Gully grew along with his training.
The independence that Gully demonstrated reminded him of Mander in an odd sort of way. His mentor navigated through politics, war and personalities as he worked to find out what happened in Besseth and in the surrounding domains. Even Mander’s hair length declared him to march to the tune of a different drummer, just like the scouts had to use unconventional techniques to get their part of soldiering done.
Gully had worked beneath the army’s strict discipline. Scouts were supposed to use their initiative and ability to move through territory and return. The army didn’t care how they did it as long as it got done.
The weather dried out for a few days and the pair was fighting each other with sticks in both hands in the light of a new dawn when a burly messenger rode up and entered the supervisor’s shack.
“Workman and Lotto, come here,” the supervisor said as he walked out with the messenger. Lotto blanched when he recognized Kenyr. His sword trainer gave his head a little shake and Lotto took it to remain impassive.
“You two have been drafted back into the army and are to report back to Beckondale for assignment. I’ll be sorry to see you go. Both of you have more than carried your weight in the mines and your antics in the yard have kept us all amused. I don’t imagine you have very much to take with you. The messenger has orders to escort you to the training camp and pick up a couple of horses and he will accompany you back to the capital.” The supervisor grunted and left the three of them standing in the middle of the yard.
“Don’t hug me here, boy. You’re not out this hellhole until we get you both fitted with mounts and are well away from the training camp. If I didn’t have a good description of you, Lotto, they would have ignored my request. Workman, you’ve got some friends in high enough places to get your commission back.”
Gully put his hands on his hips. “I don’t mean to reject salvation, but who, may I ask, are you?”
“Kenyr of Serytar.”
Gully looked at Lotto. “The Kenyr?”
Lotto nodded. “He’s my trainer. I think we’d better leave while we can.”
Gully could barely keep his jaw from dropping as the three of them walked for over half a day to the training camp.
“Let me do the talking. I’ve got the proper paperwork. It looks like they didn’t exactly issue you a uniform, Lotto,” Kenyr said.
“We get cast off civilian clothing from the recruits at the training camp, when they are available. This is all I have. I signed up after Jessie, the healer woman I lived with in Heron’s Pond, died in an Oringian raid. The soldiers wouldn’t allow me to get my weapons and refused to let me send a message.”
“I hope you still want to be in the army,” Kenyr said, “because I’ve got orders for you, my boy. Mander said I couldn’t get you out of the mines unless I had army orders in my fist.”
Lotto shook his head. “I still want to fight. The army isn’t made up entirely of nasty recruiters.”
Gully laughed. “Look at what happened to me. There’s plenty of nastiness at all levels, boy. If you can put up with them, they can put up with you, if you don’t go poking around where you don’t belong, if you know what I mean.”
“I know. Perhaps I can be assigned as a scout.”
Kenyr nodded. “I’ll bet your Mander can make that happen.”
“Your Mander as in Mander Hart?” Gully said, his eyebrows rising towards his hairline.
“I worked for him,” Lotto said, shrugging his shoulders.
“He commands his own regiment of scouts. Drag me along with you. They’re the best of the best.”
Lotto frowned. He didn’t know if he could be counted even among the worst of the best. Gully had taught him that scouting and soldiering required skills that Lotto still worked to master.
“We’ll see what happens in Beckondale, eh?” Kenyr said as they entered the training compound. “I don’t want a word out of you two while I’m negotiating for mounts. Got it?”
Gully and Lotto nodded their heads and trudged behind Kenyr’s mount.
The training sergeant hadn’t changed during the time Lotto worked in the mines.
“I’ve got orders to take these two back into active service with the army.” Kenyr waved the two letters in front of the sergeant.
“I don’t care about the older man, but the boy killed a man. I can’t just let him go.” He took the letters and disappeared into the Captain’s quarters.
The Captain walked out with the letters in his hands. “I can’t let you have him… the boy.”
“You already released him to go to work in the mines. Look at the signature on the orders,” Kenyr said.
“Hart, himself, huh? Next step up would be King Goleto.” The captain glared at Lotto. “A few months in the mines seems to be too a light of a sentence.”
“Not for defending himself against an attack in the night, but he’s not your worry anymore. I’ve come to requisition a couple of mounts so we can be out of your hair.”
The captain stared at the paperwork and grunted. He turned to the sergeant. “Get two horses for these two. Not our best since we won’t be seeing them again.”
~~~
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
~
LOTTO HAD NEVER RIDDEN IN VALETAN from the south. In fact, he had never ridden a horse before. Valetan had a different feel so close to the Happlyan border somehow. Now, he wondered how Oringia might look or the Red Kingdom. Did they have their own unique look, too? There were fewer evergreens, once they descended from the mountains. More trees showed blossoms than would north in Heron Pond at this time of year.
As the horse plodded on, following Gully, Lotto closed his eyes and practiced being at one with the environment. It worked. He could sense the horses ahead of them and as they emerged from a stretch of woods, he could feel the rows of turned earth and the few farmers that worked the land. He blinked and opened his eyes to verify what his mind had sensed.
It worked better than he thought until his legs and rear end started to ache later in the day. He wondered if the saddle didn’t fit right. He’d have to talk to Kenyr about it. As they continued on into the dusk, his legs began to shiver from the pain.
“I need to get off,” Lotto said. “My body isn’t used to this.”
“A few minutes ahead and you can soak in a hot tub,” Kenyr said.
Gully looked back and gave Lotto a rueful smile. “Don’t fret, lad. It’s been a few years since I sat on a horse and I’m probably in as bad of shape as you are.”
Kenyr led them down into a little vale and they tied up at one of two inns at a village crossroads. One had a thatched roof and the other had wooden shingles. Lotto tried to get down off of the horse and fell down to the ground. He could barely stand up before his legs cramped up.
“I’m sorry, Lotto,” Kenyr said, putting his hand to his forehead. “I didn’t even stop to think.”
Gully walked gingerly as well, but he made it into the inn before Lotto. Kenyr helped him inside and talked to the female innkeeper.
“You weren’t gone long,” she said.
“Got what I went after. This lad, here, hasn’t been riding before and I’m afraid I pushed him a bit too far for the first day.” Kenyr had his saddlebag on one arm.
“All the way from Bluerock? I’ll say,” she said. “I imagine the other one who hobbled in is with you, too? I’ll get two bath’s heating up. My man’s got some liniment that will help them both. You want my room with three beds?”
Kenyr just nodded and put some coins on
the counter. “This enough?”
She nodded and quickly swept the counter with her hand and tucked the money into a pocket in her apron. “I’ll have one of the boys take care of the horses.”
“Is there a place that sells clothes in the village? Both of these men need more than the rags on their backs.”
“Nothing fancy. You’ll see a sign in the shape of a pair of trousers. Pound on the door and tell the one who opens it that Twill said it was all right to disturb him. Baths are at the far end of the hall, as is room 5.”
Lotto barely made it up the stairs by himself. He could shuffle well enough to get down the hall to their room, but he found himself sucking air as his bottom and thighs stung with every step. Gully followed close behind.
“Baths for the both of you. Use plenty of soap, you both stink,” Kenyr said. “I’m going to get you some clothes. He looked up and down at Gully and Lotto and then left them lying on their beds.
A maid poked her head in their unlatched door. “One is ready. The other in a few minutes,” the maid said.
“You go first, wake me up when you’re done.” Gully said, closing his eyes.
~
Lotto slapped on liniment before he went downstairs for breakfast, as instructed. His more sensitive parts didn’t sting as much as after his bath, but still enough to make him wince. He had more saddle time to endure, wondering if he ever would have the physical resilience to be a mounted soldier. Gully said that all scouts rode horses. Perhaps soldiering as a scout might not be worth all of the pain.
“We leave as soon as you’re ready,” Kenyr said. “And that means you, Workman.”
“I’ll be okay. Trousers without holes and proper underclothes will work well enough for today.”
Lotto could smell liniment wafting above his friend and smiled. “How much more riding to Beckondale?”
“Ten more days and I’ll be taking you both to Mander Hart, dressed just as you are. If he’s with the king, you two better be walking like soldiers rather than old men by then.”