by Robin Hobb
I did not open my eyes. I had no eyes. I became aware of Soldier’s Boy rubbing his eyes, and when he was finished and opened them again, an immense vista of detail unrolled in front of me. Color and shape and shadow. I could not at first interpret it all. There was so much, it was overwhelming, painfully so. Was this what it was like the first time a newborn child beheld the world? I held myself back from it, keeping my distance as if it were a fire that might burn me with its intensity. Very, very gradually the scene resolved itself around me.
I was indoors, in a place I didn’t recall. It was a comfortable place. There were woven rugs on the floor, wall hangings, and comfortable furnishings. I sat in a sturdy chair with cushioned arms and a well-padded seat, comfortably close to an open hearth. Near my elbow was a laden table. An open bottle of wine was flanked by a steaming roast with near-bloody slices of meat coiling from the side of it. Roasted round onions were cozy with thick, bright orange baked roots. A loaf of dark bread had been cut into thick slabs and a pot of golden honey rested beside it with a large spoon sticking out of it.
Soldier’s Boy had been outside. Had he been reviewing the troops? Mud crusted my boots. Someone crouched before me, taking them off my feet, his head bowed to his task. One of the feeders who assisted Olikea with my care, I suddenly knew. His name was Sempayli, and he had come to my service from another kin-clan because he wanted to serve the Great Ones who would strike back at the intruders. A number of men and a few women had come to me that way. Dasie had been right about that. There was a deep discontent stirring among the Specks. Things were changing too quickly for the older folk, and the younger folk felt affronted by the intruders’ assumptions. Many felt it was time to strike back, and hard.
All that information poured into me in an overwhelming flood. I could scarcely digest it, but there was no respite. Life was happening all around me, unpausing and constant. All I could do was try to catch up. Soldier’s Boy drank red wine from a crystal glass, and for a long moment, the twin sensations of taste and smell ruled me. Heavenly, heavenly wine.
Across from me, Dasie was enthroned in a similar chair. Her feeder was kindling a pipe for her. The Great One had grown. Her belly and thighs and bosom were burgeoning curves that spoke of her wealth and comfort. That realization came to me so naturally that I did not at first recognize it as a Speck interpretation. My mind fluttered round it like a moth around a flame. They saw the lean, muscled folk of Gettys as the result of hardship and unnatural strife. Such bodies were the result of people who lived against the world rather than with it. They did not relax and accept the bounty the world offered them. They did not recline with one another in the evenings, making music or having soft talk. They constrained their deprived bodies with restrictive clothing and tight belts and snug shoes, and punished themselves with endless activity. They forced themselves to go out in the harsh sunlight and the cruel cold, as senselessly as if they were animals rather than humans. They seemed to rejoice in the harshness of life, restricting themselves from the enjoyment of food, sex, and plenty.
As if in reaction to the stinginess they inflicted on their bodies, they demanded largesse everywhere else. A trail through the forest created itself as folk traveled from here to there. A trail was as big as it needed to be for the traffic on it. Only the intruders would think that they needed to enlarge a trail with axes and shovels and wagons. Only the intruders would build a crust of dwellings over the lands so that they could winter in a place where the snow fell thickly and cold was a crushing blow. Only the intruders would rip all plants and trees from a space and then open the skin of the earth and force new plants to grow in precise rows, all the same. The Specks would never understand a folk who chose hardship over comfort, who insisted on tearing a life from the land rather than one flowing over the world and accepting its plenty.
It was like seeing a stranger across a crowded room and actually “seeing” him before recognizing him as an old friend. All that I accepted about my own people, all our values and customs, were, for that moment, peculiar and harsh and irrational. If a man had enough to eat and plenty besides, why should he not be fat with enjoyment of his life? If he did not have to work so hard that life leaned the flesh from his bones and put muscles on his limbs, why should he not have a softer belly and a rounder face? If one had the good fortune to be treated well by life, why should it not be reflected in an easier body?
For that skewed moment, I saw the Gernians as a nation of folk who sought difficulty and strife for themselves. They built roads to enrich themselves, to be sure, but did they ever enjoy the riches they accrued? No. It appeared suddenly that riches only became the foundation for seeking ever more difficult tasks, and often on the backs of those that life had not favored. I suddenly recalled the road workers, those poor souls forced to labor on the King’s Road both as penance for their crimes in Old Thares and as payment for the land they would receive when they’d worked off their sentences. The Specks, I suddenly knew, regarded them with bottomless pity and horror. This was the only life those poor beings would ever know, and the intruders condemned them to live it in privation and want, knowing only work and discomfort. Viewed like that, what we did was monstrous. The Specks had no way of understanding that we considered it justice that our king punished them for crimes they had committed and a special mercy that he offered them a reward for that labor. A false reward, I thought sourly, remembering Amzil’s tenuous existence.
I came out of that reverie to awareness of myself as Nevare. I felt as if I’d been fished from the depths of a cold dark pond and revived. For a time all I could do was hover behind Soldier’s Boy’s eyes and revel in my own existence. Gradually I found my footing in time and place as well as in my self. Time had passed. I struggled to learn how much.
I was in Lisana’s old lodge, but it had been refurbished with Speck luxury. The rugs underfoot and the hangings on the wall were trade items, as were the gleaming copper pots and heavy china dishes and crystal glasses. The bed in the corner of the room was a welter of thick furs and wool blankets. The garments that Soldier’s Boy wore now had been tailored to his ease, and were all in shades of forest greens and browns. His wrists were heavy with gold bracelets; I felt the weight of earrings dangling from my pierced earlobes. His increased girth and Dasie’s were marks of their standing among the Specks. Their feeders had feeders of their own now. The People held them in high esteem and their lifestyle reflected it.
I felt in vain for the vibration of iron anywhere in the room. If Dasie felt the need to threaten him anymore, it was not with iron. Their postures bespoke two warlords taking counsel together rather than a dictator and her hostage. My mind groped back to the words I had awakened to. The Great Queen of the Specks? I considered her through Soldier’s Boy’s eyes. Yes. And he was her warlord. So they were beginning to consider themselves.
The double irony was not lost on me. To save the Specks, they were becoming a mirror of the intruders they sought to drive away. Dasie with her weapons of iron, and Soldier’s Boy with his army in training. Did they think they could ever step back from those things, once they had used them?
The other prong of irony was as sharp as any iron blade as it stabbed me. Here it was, the golden future I’d been promised as a child. I was living it. I was the leader of a military force, serving a queen, with the wealth appropriate to my station and a lovely woman at my beck and call. Olikea had just come into view. She did not carry the dishes of food, but with her hand gestured to those she wished cleared away and where the fresh ones should be placed. I suspected she had chosen my wardrobe, for her own mirrored it, rich browns and delicate greens. She resembled Firada even more now, for her body had filled out to rounder, gentler curves. The feeder of a Great One reflected his status with her own. My gracious lady, and at her heels, the son of the household: Likari in a green tunic and leggings with soft brown boots on his feet. His glossy hair had been bound back with ties and beads of green, and his smooth cheeks were round with shining health.
Soldier’s Boy’s eyes strayed to the boy and I knew his fondness and pride. Then his attention darted back to his conversation with Dasie. She was protesting.
“I listen to my warriors. They are still mine, you know. You train them, but it is to me that they bring their concerns. They are tired of rising early and standing in lines, bored with all these practices at moving together, at the same speed, doing the same thing. How does this help us to defeat the intruders? Will they stand still while we walk in lines across the field to attack them? Are they so stupid? Is that how they fought their wars?”
“Actually,” Soldier’s Boy confirmed for her, “they do. But no, we will not march on Gettys in formation. Eventually, though, when we show ourselves to the Gernians, they must see not a Speck raiding party but the Speck army. I’ve told you this before, Dasie, over and over. We have to become an enemy they can recognize. When the time comes, the warriors must dress alike and move in unison, controlled by one commander. That is power that the intruders will recognize. Only then will they respect us.”
“So you keep saying. But I do not like that we become, every day, more and more like the people we wish to drive away. You say our warriors must run faster, be harder of muscle and keener of eye when they use their bows. My people say to me, ‘we are strong enough, hardened enough to fish, to gather, to hunt. Why does he push us so?’ What am I to answer them?”
“You should answer them that, for now, they must do more. They must be harder and more ready than the warriors we will face. The hunt does not demand as much of a man as standing battle does. During a hunt, a man can rest or he can say, ‘It is too much work for that much meat. I will hunt something smaller,’ and let the prey run away from him. But in battle, the man who turns away becomes the prey. No one can stop because his arms are weary or his legs shake with strain. It stops only when your enemy is dead and you are still alive.
“It is good to say, we are brave and strong, but I have lived among the intruders. And those we will face will be brave and strong and well trained and desperate. I hope to take them by surprise and lay waste to them all before they can react. But I cannot promise you that. Once roused, they will be quick to organize themselves. They will not flee before our advance but will stand firm, for they will know they have nowhere to flee. They will shoot at us in volleys, for the men who are reloading their weapons will trust their comrades to protect them while they do so. That is the strength of an army, that the strength of your comrade’s arm protects his fellow as well as himself. And they are experienced. They will know, when we attack, that if they do not fight back strongly enough we will slaughter them all. They will fight like only the cornered fight—to the death and beyond. Even when they know that victory is irretrievably gone, they will stand and fight.”
“You speak of extremes. The warriors are ready to fight as hard as we must fight to win,” Dasie asserted.
“Are the warriors ready to die to protect their comrades, in the hope that their fellows will win?” Soldier’s Boy asked her quietly.
She was startled. “But you say that our plan is good. That Kinrove’s dance will have demoralized the protectors of Gettys, that we will fall on them when they are full of sleep and confused. You have said we will slaughter them.” She paused, her anger and indignation building. “You promised this!” she accused him.
“And we will.” He replied calmly. “But some of us will die. This we have to admit, going into this battle. Some of us will die.” He paused, waiting for some sign that she accepted this. Her face remained stony. He sighed and went on, “And when a warrior is injured, or when he sees his brother fall, dying, he cannot then decide that the price is too high to pay. Each of them must go into this battle thinking that if he must die for us to win it, then he will. It is the only way. This is what I am trying to teach them. Not just how to quickly be where I tell them to be, not just how to obey an order without conferring with one another or arguing. I must build them into a group that has a focus and a goal, a goal that is more important to each of them than his own life. We will not have more than one chance to do this well. The first time we attack them, we must wipe them out. It is our only hope.”
Dasie lowered her chin to her chest, thinking. Her eyes were closed to slits as she stared into the fire. At last she said in a soft, sad voice, “This is worse than Kinrove’s dance. In the dance, they gave up their own lives to protect us. But now you tell them they must kill, and yet must still give up their own lives. I thought to save my people from such things. You are telling me I have only plunged us even deeper into it.”
“And I have more to say.” Soldier’s Boy shifted slightly in his seat. “You will not like to hear it. But I know it is true. We need to support Kinrove in his dance. He has complained to me weekly that he does not have enough dancers for the magic to work well. He is bitter, saying that you broke his magic for the sake of your personal feelings, and now that you require it to work, you demand more of him than he can do. He says he needs more dancers, if he is to send fear and sadness not just to the edges of the forest, but deep into Gettys. And that is where we need it to be.” He paused and then looked at the fire as he said quietly, “We must allow him to summon more dancers.”
She looked at him incredulously. “Can you say this to me? When only three months ago, I took iron into his encampment to free the dancers? Don’t you understand at all why I did that? His dance was destroying us; the price he demanded to hold the intruders at bay was too high. It had torn the fabric of our families, and our kin-clans. I stopped the dance so that the People could go back to living as they used to live. What is the point of what I did if now I say to my people, ‘You must not only submit to being summoned to the dance, to dance until you die, but you must be willing to take death to the intruders and perhaps die there as well.’ Where is the peace and tranquility and return to the old ways that I promised them?”
I scarcely heard his response. Three months ago? My eternity of isolation had only been three months? Listening to them, I had feared I eavesdropped on an ongoing war council. I now knew, with a surge of hope, that Gettys had not yet been attacked. There was still time to stop this. How to stop it, I was not yet certain. But I had time, if only a small amount.
Soldier’s Boy was talking to her, low and earnest. “Before our people can go back to being what they were, to living as they have always lived, we must free ourselves of the threat from the intruders. So, yes, we must change, for this small time, yes, we must subject the People to these things. In order to save them.”
“In order to save them, I must permit Kinrove to work a summoning on our own people? I must let him turn the magic on the People again?”
“Yes.” Soldier’s Boy spoke heavily and with regret.
“You are certain that this is your counsel to me?”
I thought I heard a trap in her words. Either Soldier’s Boy did not or he was past caring. “Yes.”
“Then so be it.” She heaved herself out of her chair and stood. The scarlet and blue robes that she wore fell into heavy folds around her. Her feeders came immediately to stand at her side, ready to assist her should she require it. “Bring my wraps,” she told them. “And have my bearers ready my litter. We quick-walk back to my lodge tonight.” She turned back to Soldier’s Boy and grumbled, “It makes no sense that you insist on living here. It is a hardship on everyone that you are so far from every winter village.”
“Yet here I must be. And many of my kin-clan have seen fit to come and join me here.”
“Yes. I have seen that. A second little village of your kin-clan grows outside your door. And it is good that they are here. That way, when the summoning falls on them, you will see it.”
I shared Soldier’s Boy confusion and foreboding. “Falls on them?”
“Of course. I shall tell Kinrove he may resume his summoning. And your kin-clan was next in line to be summoned. Do not you recall? That was why he had invited your kin-clan’s other Great One to his encampment near
the Trading Place. He made that small concession. Before he sent each summoning, he told the Great One of the kin-clan that he would be doing so. That was why Jodoli was there. He agreed to it, as he had been forced to agree to it before. And now, it seems, you have agreed to the same thing.”
Soldier’s Boy was silent. I sensed his reluctance. He did not want the summoning to fall on his kin-clan. He dreaded that Kinrove would take the men he had so painstakingly trained for battle and use them instead for his dance. But having said that Kinrove must have the dancers for the attack to succeed, he had no way to refuse it. How could he say the sacrifice of his kin-clan was too sharp, but that others must pay it? He chewed at his lower lip and then gave a fierce shake of his head. “Very well, then. Let Kinrove send a summoning. It must be done. Those who dance are warriors of another kind. And the sooner the threat is removed, the sooner all warriors can put down their arms or cease their dancing.”
“As you wish,” she said, as if she were conceding something to him. Her feeders were all around her now, swathing her in woolen wraps and a heavy fur cloak. I heard men’s voices outside the lodge, and suddenly the door opened, admitting a blast of wind and driven rain.
Soldier’s Boy gave an exclamation of dismay. Dasie laughed. “It’s only rain, Great One. If you do as you propose, we will face snow and the great cold of the winter in the west lands.”
“I will face it when I must,” he retorted. “I do not need it blowing into my lodge right now. Soon enough I must endure it, and then I will.”
“That you will,” she replied. She pulled a heavy hood up over her hair. One of her feeders was immediately there, tugging it forward and securing it around her face. Dasie had grown in girth and importance. I had not recalled her having so many attendants at Kinrove’s pavilion. She strode toward the open door. The moment she was through it, Soldier’s Boy made an exasperated gesture and a young man rushed to close it behind her. A woman piled more wood on the fire to replace the warmth that had been lost from the lodge.