by Helen Gosney
He had them now, he could see. They were stunned and appalled at what he’d said, but he knew that their battered pride would overcome their pain and weariness and hopelessness if nothing else could. He looked around at the brave little troop from Trill, standing slightly behind him, and as determined to get themselves home as ever. Cade caught his eye and winked at him. Only one man would dare to speak to the troopers like this, Cade thought, and I truly believe he’s the only man who will get through to them and get them moving. Cholli and the others couldn’t, or they would surely have done it by now.
“You’re doing well, Rowan lad. Keep going,” he said softly, “They’re yours.”
Rowan nodded slightly, braced himself for what he was about to say, and turned back to the other troopers.
“You all saw us come back from Trill…” he’d heard the shocked gasps and mutterings amid the cheers as they’d returned to Messton, “It was a bloody nightmare there, lads. I’m not sure I can even really speak of it yet… but I’m truly sorry if any of you have kin or friends there. Rollo and his men killed everyone in the town and their barbarity was… it was unspeakable. I’m so sorry to tell you, but we found no survivors in the town or on the surrounding farms… they were all dead when we got there.” He shook his head slowly. “Trill was far worse even than anything that’s happened here at Messton… truly, it will… it will probably haunt us forever, but lads, none of us has given up and we’re not about to now. We’ve got ourselves this far, and we can get a bit further. And I truly believe that all of you… all of us here now can get a bit further too, and some of us can get home.”
The men were completely silent now, watching him with rapt attention, but he could see the new sense of hope and belief in their faces.
“It doesn’t matter now if you’re from Den Siddon, or Den Mellar, or Den Ree or Den bloody Woop Woop. Don’t think of us as a mixed troop any more, lads. We’re one single troop and we will all stick together, we will help each other and we will never give up. I know there are a lot of us who can’t do much, but we’ll all just do whatever we can and, truly, I don’t care who does what. Officers, troopers, it doesn’t matter. We will not have anarchy, lads, but if an officer is able to drive a cart, or… or dig a latrine, then he’s the man who’ll do the job. We’re all in the same damned boat here, and we’ll all be getting our hands dirty, one way or another. ‘Tis the only way we can hope to do this.” Rowan stopped to get his breath again. Almost done, he thought, almost done. “But we can do this, lads, and we will do it. We will get home to our loved ones and we will make that bastard Commandant pay. He will learn the true glory of warfare… and he will learn the true courage and honour of the Wirran Guard.” He tried not to wince as he took another breath. “So, now… up off your backsides, my brave lads! We leave here tomorrow, all of us. Nobody will be left behind and we’ll keep going for as long as we can. We will not sit here and die in the mud like… like dogs. If we die on the way home, and you know that some of us will, then at least we will die as men.”
The troopers stared at him: he was as ragged, filthy and battered as any of them, and more badly hurt than many, by the careful way he moved and the painful way he breathed. It was obvious that the pursuit of Rollo and his men had done their brave young Captain and his little troop no good at all, but it was equally obvious that nothing was going to stop any of them from keeping going. And suddenly they knew what they had to do, no matter how hard it might be.
They stood as straight as they could and saluted him. They’d followed him without question in battle and they’d do so again.
“Red Rowan! Red Rowan!” they shouted, just as they had on the battlefield.
“Red Rowan’s Troop!” someone cried and the call was quickly taken up by all of the troopers, officers and men alike.
Rowan lowered his head for a moment, blinking tears from his eyes as he fought for more breath. How many of these poor brave souls am I going to be able to get home, he wondered. He felt Cade’s hand on his uninjured shoulder for a moment and he forced down the thought and raised his head again.
“Thank you, lads. You’ll be as bloody stubborn as I am by the time we get home, and you’ll need to be. Now, I need… six or eight men who can drive a cart, please. Officers, troopers, I don’t care. And three dozen or so of our strongest horses and as much spare rope and straps of harness as we’ve got. Can someone saddle a fresh horse for me, too, please? And Cade, can you take some men back to harvest more willowbark for the healers? Show them what to do and then they can show others next time.”
**********
“We couldn’t stay there either. It was… it was horrible. The men were just sitting about like… like corpses themselves, waiting for death to come to them. They were all injured, some were sick… there was nothing from Den Siddon… they’d just given up. And I thought, no. I’m not having it. I won’t let the Commandant just leave us here, and I won’t let these men just give up and die like this. I was pretty angry.” Rowan glanced up at Rhys again. “So I… I told them to get up off their backsides and get going. Maybe they just needed a good kick up the backside to encourage them along. Maybe they saw the lads from Trill who were all in a bad way, and saw how determined they were to get home or die trying. Maybe they… well, I don’t know. And I don’t know what I’d have done if they’d simply refused to do it. All I know is they did, they accepted it and did their best from there, poor brave souls. It was a nightmare of a different sort, but a bloody nightmare all the same. We’d been struggling along in the damned rain for a couple of days when a small troop from Den Siddon came to help us. I’m truly not sure we’d have made it but for them.”
“Ah, Rowan, my brave lad. I think you would. I think you’d have got as many of those poor troopers back home as you could, with or without help from Den Siddon.”
Rowan shrugged and shook his head.
“I know you don’t believe it, lad, but you really were the true hero of the whole damned mess,” Rhys said gently.
“No, Pa. The men from Den Siddon who defied the bloody Commandant were the heroes. And the men who struggled so hard to get home. I wish… I just wish I could have got more of them home, Pa… we lost so many good men…”
“None of them would have got home at all if you hadn’t got them going and kept them going, Rowan.”
“No, they wouldn’t have, ‘tis true,” Rowan sighed. “But they just needed someone to stand up and tell them what to do and how to do it. I was the only Captain left, and well… it was up to me, I suppose, so that’s what I did. It could have been anyone.”
But it hadn’t been just anyone, Rhys thought. Out of all the men there, it had taken this stubborn forester to get them moving and somehow keep them moving, and he thought rank had probably had little to do with it. He knew he’d never get Rowan to agree to his own heroism, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t so.
“Why didn’t you stay in Den Siddon with Fess, lad?”
Rowan shrugged again. It had seemed so clear to him at the time, but now… well, he wasn’t sure if anything about it made sense at all.
“When we got back and I’d, er, told the Commandant what to do with himself among other things… Well, I went back to the Captain’s Cottage and… I couldn’t bear it, Pa. Zara wasn’t there, and…” he blinked away tears, “Fess wanted me to go back with him to the Married Quarters and stay there for a bit, rather than the Cottage, he damn nearly dragged me there, but… I knew that Bella would be grieving nearly as much as I was, and they had their new baby too. I… I just couldn’t. I couldn’t face it. It was just too much. And I wanted to come home. That’s it, really. I thought I’d be all right, I’d got back from Trill with my broken ribs, and… well, it was daft, really. But I truly thought I’d be all right… and I… I just wanted to come home.”
Rhys nodded. He remembered when his wife Rhianna had died, remembered how shattered he’d been. If he’d lost his child too, he didn’t know what he might have done. If he’d had to fa
ce Messton and Trill and the Commandant’s betrayal as well… no, it was unthinkable. He thought he might well have done much the same as Rowan. The poor lad probably hadn’t known if he was coming or going. Rhys put his arm around Rowan’s shoulders again and they sat together under the Forest Giant, lost in their memories for a time.
**********
Finally Rowan looked up.
“When I lost Zara, Pa, I…” he closed his eyes in pain for a moment, then shook his head slowly, “I couldn’t bear it. ‘Twas bad enough to lose our little boy like that, but… I felt so guilty that I couldn’t save Zarinya… and then, then… I’m ashamed to say it, but I was angry too. Angry with her for dying like that and leaving me… and angry at myself for feeling that way…” He blinked away tears again.
“And then after Messton and… and Trill, nobody else was doing a damned thing to get the men home, they were all just sitting around waiting to bloody die…And it was so hard, Pa. The men kept on dying around me and it made no difference what I did… But I had to keep going, or nobody’d have made it home…” he shook his head wretchedly, “When we finally got back to Den Siddon and… people were cheering me, telling me what a hero I was… all I could see was all of the men who’d died, all the ones I hadn’t got home to their families. I didn’t feel like a bloody hero then and I still don’t. Never will. I should have got more of them back home…”
“No, Rowan, don’t say that.”
“I know, Pa. I know ‘tis daft, but that’s the way of it. I can’t help feeling the way I do. And now… well, when I finally started to get over that cursed fever, I… it just all hit me, I suppose. I couldn’t grieve properly for Zarinya and little Liam before we were sent to Messton, and afterwards… well, ‘twas like losing them all over again. And after the fever, I felt so… so bloody exhausted and so ill and so guilty that I couldn’t save her or the baby or the troopers… and so damned angry, Pa. Angry at losing everything, at not having the strength to fight it any more, angry at myself because I thought I could have… I should have done more, and if I had, maybe things might have been different…”
He looked up at Rhys, his face oddly quizzical.
“And now, I’m still bloody angry, Pa. I shouldn’t be, I hate myself for it, but I am. But ‘tis different now. We both know I’ve got a short sharp temper if I’m not careful, and we both know it doesn’t last for long, but now… well, now ‘tis like a fire in the deep forest, just smouldering away quietly until the time’s right for it to flare into a… a firestorm. I, I can’t explain it, but…”
“Rowan, lad, I know… I can see it in your eyes, smouldering away as you say. But you must be careful, lad. … don’t let it rule you and don’t let it damage you…”
Rowan shook his head.
“No, Pa, I won’t. But for now it serves me well enough. Sometimes I truly think ‘tis the only damned thing that’s kept me going at all.”
“I understand, laddie, I truly do…” Rhys hesitated, “When your mother died, Rowan, I… I felt like a piece of me had died too. I thought I’d never, ever get over it … And just like you, I thought there must have been something more I could have done for her… but there wasn’t. There truly wasn’t, and there’s nothing more you could have done for Zarinya or your little lad either. “’Twas their time, same as ‘twas Rhianna’s time. It doesn’t make it any easier to accept it, but…” Rhys looked at Rowan, so like his mother at times that it took his breath away.
“And then, like you,” he continued softly, “I was furious that she’d… she’d gone and left us… left you and Rose and me. I was… I was so bloody angry, lad. It took me a long time to come to terms with it. But, Rowan… I had to. I just had to. And you will too. Not yet, ‘tis much too soon, but… somehow, lad, you’ll have to let yourself let go. You’ll know when the time’s right. And believe me, Rowan, ‘tis the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life. You’ve already been through more than anyone should ever have to go through… but that will be even harder…”
**********
16. “… I should be reasonably competent at it.”
“Well, the One works in mysterious ways…” Tadeus said to Cris.
“Oh, stop being inscrutable, you old misery,” said Hess affectionately, “Tell him what else we thought...”
Tadeus’ grim face lightened in a smile.
“All right, old pagan, I’m getting to it... Cris, you don’t have a horse, do you? Can you even ride one?”
“Yes, I can ride, provided the horse isn’t too, er, independently minded... but I haven’t got one, no,” Cris replied. He’d been thinking he’d have to buy one somehow, and he wondered if Tadeus would go with him when he did. He knew the old man liked horses and knew a lot about them.
“Well, the Tabernacle has a few horses - so does the Temple for that matter - there’s always a few priests who are going here and there. You’re welcome to one of them... in fact I think old Bess would suit you well,” Tadeus laughed as Cris’s face fell at mention of the horse’s name.
“Don’t worry, she’s not on her last legs, far from it, but she’s a good, gentle mare... I often think she was born sensible. She’d look after you. Come and we’ll have a look at her.”
Nearby a couple of elderly gnomes were involved in a philosophical discussion of some sort, and they agreed to guard the chess game for a handful of peanuts. Then, adjusting themselves to Hess’s slow pace, Cris and the old priests walked to the stables at the back of the Tabernacle.
Several horses regarded them gravely over their stable doors. A tall chestnut looked down its nose at them, flattened its ears and bared its teeth, and a solid bay kicked at its stall as they passed.
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t give you either of those fire-breathers!” Tadeus said, looking at Cris’s anxious face. “This is Bess...”
A pretty bay mare pricked her ears and stretched her long nose towards them. She snuffled at Tadeus’ hand and robes as she looked for the treat he always gave her.
“I’ve only got peanuts today, my pretty, unless...” he scrabbled about and produced a withered apple from somewhere in his robes.
She was perfectly happy with this, and she crunched it as a stable lad led her about for them.
“What do you think, Cris?” asked Hess, “Tadeus knows a lot more about horses than I do, but she seems very quiet.”
“I think Bess and I’ll get on very well together,” said Cris as he stroked the mare’s glossy neck. She turned her head and shoved at him with her nose, hoping that he too might have an apple hidden somewhere. But no. She was unsuccessful in her search.
“If you like, you can take her now and stable her at Bimm’s until you’re ready to leave,” suggested Tadeus.
It seemed like a good idea. The stable boy collected the mare’s saddle, bridle and blanket, and Tadeus found a pair of saddlebags and a small bag containing a couple of brushes, a few odd straps of leather in case something broke, and some other bits and pieces that he’d thought might come in handy.
“Does Rowan have a stallion?” Tadeus asked as an afterthought. Cris had no idea, but Tadeus threw in a bag of herbs “just in case”.
“It’ll keep them all out of trouble,” he added, “Don’t worry, Rowan will know what to do with it.”
They headed back across the Square, Bess following placidly behind. The ancient gnomes’ discussion had gone the usual way of such things and now involved much arm-waving and jumping up and down, and the shouting of incomprehensible gnomish insults regarding each others’ ancestors. They quietened surprisingly quickly when Hess gave them the remaining peanuts; Tadeus just smiled a little smile to himself and set up another game of chess. As they farewelled Cris both priests pressed something into his hand.
“I’d like you to have this, maybe it will keep you safe...” Hess said.
“And I’d like you to take this... maybe it will bring you good fortune...” added Tadeus.
Cris looked down at what they’d given him. Nestled i
n his palm was a small eight-sided piece of ivory, beautifully carved with fruit and flowers, and beside it was a brightly polished disc of bronze. He hugged the old priests impulsively.
“Thank you, thank you both... I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this...” he said, touched by their generosity and thoughtfulness.
Hess and Tadeus looked at each other, suddenly as full of mischief as boys.
They stood solemnly together and chanted, “You know we expect you to come and tell us all about your adventures when you get back...” in perfect ecclesiastic harmony, then laughing helplessly at Cris’s stunned face they sent him on his way.
**********
Most of the next few days were spent in sorting out supplies and filling packs. Rose was happy to busy herself with the more domestic chores, while Rowan checked harnesses and made sure the horses were all well exercised. They were frisky and energetic after their confinement in Bimm’s stables. Cris took the opportunity to become better acquainted with Bess as Rowan rode the stallions Mica and Soot and the piebald packhorse, Max. The little ratcatcher was feeling less confident about his riding ability now. Bess seemed to be rather more fractious than he’d thought. She humped her back and pigrooted when Cris first tried to ride her, and he landed hard on his backside on the ground.
“Are you all right, Cris?” Rowan came across to him quickly and grabbed Bess’s bridle.
“Er… yes, I think so… nothing’s hurt except my pride and my backside,” he replied ruefully.
Rowan smiled at him as he helped him up.
“No damage done, then. Up you get, lad. I’ll hold her for you.”
Cris remounted as Bess stood like a statue, but then she seemed to spend most of her time fighting him. Rowan watched them struggle with each other for a little while without saying anything, and finally he asked if Cris would mind if he rode the mare for a bit. Cris had no objections, but he was starting to wonder about Tadeus’ choice of mount for him.