The Seventh Friend (Book 1)

by Tim Stead

  “Yes, my lord,” they said in chorus. For the first time Skal exchanged a look with Arbak, a man he had once despised, and he saw an ally, a friend, a capable man. “It will be an honour to serve with the general again,” he said. General was only a courtesy title now. Militarily, Arbak was just a colonel once more, but Skal knew that he would always think of him as the general who held the gate, who inspired men from three nations to work like brothers.

  Aidon looked at him. It was a long, hard, appraising look, and then he turned away. King Raffin stirred again, and immediately was the centre of attention.

  The rest of the day passed in a daze for Skal. When the King released them he realised that he was starving and went in search of food. Somehow the news of his elevation had spread around the camp, and men shook his hand, bowed – half serious, half playful. He was their Lord of Latter Fetch, just as much as Arbak was their Lord of Waterhill. At first Skal had felt that the honour was his, but he quickly learned that all the men believed that they shared in it. They did not seem to resent that they had fought and he had been given a living for their dying. His elevation told them, perhaps, that they had fought for a reason, that their efforts were highly valued by the King and the Duke. Only the Duranders seemed a little distanced by it.

  It was in this mood of shared congratulations that he sat outside his tent with Feran, sipping wine and telling jokes. It seemed that Berashi jokes were all different from Avilian ones; partly because they poked fun at pompous Avilians, but also because they seemed to express a different set of values. They were full of clever young men who found clever new ways of doing things. Avilian humour seemed to revel in the stupidity of people who were not Avilian. Skal was surprised that he found both schools of humour equally amusing.

  A boy approached them. Skal thought of him as a boy, but he was probably only a year or three younger that Skal. He looked younger, and he stood nearby for a while, hesitant in his manner, though he was clearly waiting for a moment to speak. He was dressed badly – a soldier for sure, and an Avilian by the cut of his tunic. He was wearing a short sword, a cheap thing, tucked into his belt, his trousers were stained with either mud or blood and his boots were worn and cracked. Despite his impoverished appearance the boy looked bright, with an even, pleasing face, grey eyes, straight nose, compact ears, hair cut short and ragged.

  “What do you want?” Skal asked. The boy had not expected to be spoken to. He looked startled, and then bowed a deep, respectful bow.

  “My lord,” he said. “I’m sorry, my lord, I did not mean to trouble you.”

  “Yes you did,” Skal said. “What do you want?”

  “Only to serve, my lord.” The boy risked a glance as Skal’s face, then snapped his eyes down to the ground again.

  “You are a soldier. You already serve.”

  “To serve you, my lord. I mean I wish to serve you.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Tilian, my lord. Tilian Henn.”

  “And what are you, Tilian Henn?”

  “A soldier, my lord.” The boy did not seem to appreciate the inadequacy of his reply, and Skal heard Feran chuckle. He tried again.

  “What were you, before you volunteered?”

  “’Prentice, my lord.”

  “Apprentice in what trade?”

  “Warehouseman, my lord.”

  “Were you a good apprentice, Tilian Henn?”

  He looked down at his dusty boots. “Better than some,” he said. “Worse than others.”

  Feran laughed again. It was an evasive answer, but honest at the same time. Clever.

  “And what skills do you have?” Skal asked.

  “I can run fast, my lord. I can swing a sword, I can pull a bow, and I can read and write.”

  “Can you indeed?” A warehouseman who could read and write would be a rare thing.

  “I can, my lord.”

  Skal pulled a rolled vellum parchment out from his tunic and handed it to the boy. “Read this to me,” he said.

  The boy unrolled the document, and nearly dropped it. The vellum coiled again in his hands, and he opened it again more carefully, more reverently. “My lord,” he said. “This is…”

  “Just read the words.”

  Tilian Henn held the document open with both hands, like a herald, and cleared his throat. He glanced at Feran, at Skal, sniffed, shifted from foot to foot, and then began.

  “This document, given under my hand on the seventeenth day of winter on the twenty sixth year of my possession, in the name of the king, by all the rights and privileges held by my title, according to the law, confirms upon the man Skal Hebberd, Knight of Avilian, colonel of the Avilian army, regiment of the Seventh Friend, the lordship of Latter Fetch, its houses and buildings, its lands and waters and people, and for all time as long as his line shall have life and honour to hold it…”

  “That will do,” Skal held out his hand and received the document back. He tucked it into his tunic. “You read well,” he said. “Who taught you?”

  “Taught myself,” the boy said.

  “I don’t think that’s possible. Do you think it’s possible?” he asked Feran. Feran shrugged.

  “I did!” the boy said, his face colouring. “I taught myself. My lord.” The title was an afterthought, an attempt to retrieve what his intemperance might have lost.

  “Tell me how.”

  “I got Ebner to tell me things, how to say what was writ. What was written,” he corrected himself. “Just words, and I remembered them. I could see what letters made what sounds, well, most of the time. I wrote stuff down and got Ebner to read it back. I read signs in the street; stuff like that.”

  Skal looked the boy up and down. If what he said was true it was impressive. It must have taken years. But then again…

  “You didn’t learn to read like that from street signs,” he said.

  “No. Ebner gave me a book.”

  “A book?”

  “Yes, a book. It’s called Ten Tales of Karim. There’s lots of words there I didn’t know, so I asked Ebner. He told me what they meant.”

  “Just who was this Ebner?”

  “He was clerk at the warehouse,” Tilian Henn said. “But he died.” His face fell as he said the words. Ebner had been a friend, a mentor. His death had been a blow. That much was written on his face.

  “If you think working for me would be easy duty, you’re mistaken,” Skal said. “I’d expect you to fight beside me, and when other men get time off, you would have to work. If I give an order it has to be obeyed without question, without delay. You would make tea, cook, put up my tent, make sure my clothes are clean and my armour polished, and all that on top of a soldier’s duty.”

  The boy nodded. “Yes, my lord.”

  “And if I decide I don’t like you, you go back to the ranks. If I find you lazy, cowardly, incompetent, you go back to the ranks.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Henn’s eyes were bright now, alight with the certainty that he was going to get the job, and serve a lord.

  “And the pay is a florin a week. Still interested?” Half a soldier’s wage. He saw Feran raise an eyebrow. It was a test, of course. He’d pay the boy a florin the first week and then put it up to three, and he’d have to dress him better, too, and get someone to teach him how to fight. He didn’t want a green boy at his back.

  The boy’s face was a picture. It had crashed at the mention of the wage, but Skal was pleased to see a firmness about his mouth. Henn nodded.

  “Yes, my lord,” he said.

  So he was still set on it. Skal wondered why.

  “Tea, then,” he said. “Let me see if you can make drinkable tea for us.”

  The boy nodded once and ran off.

  “You were a bit hard, my lord,” Feran said. “The boy seemed bright to me, and keen on the job.”

  “Since when did you call me lord?” Skal asked.

  Feran shrugged again. He used the gesture a lot. “Well, you are,” he said.

  �
�And you are heir to one of the better estates and titles in Berash. You’re more a lord than I am, truth be told. Are we not friends?”

  “You do not really intend to pay the boy a half wage, do you?”

  “Of course not. It was a test.”

  “And what did you learn by this test?”

  “That he is not motivated by money.”

  “I could have told you as much.”

  “Then perhaps you are a better judge of men than I,” Skal said. He felt the rise of resentment again. Somehow he did not doubt that it was true, and Feran confirmed it.

  “I know of no one who is worse,” he grinned suddenly. “Can’t you see it, man? The lad thinks you are a hero, one of the two Avilian commanders who did well out of this.”

  “A hero?” The word seemed alien to Skal. Heroes were people in tales, usually dead people. Was he a hero? Was Arbak a hero? No, he’d been on the wall with other men just as brave, who’d fought just as well. The credit was given to him because it had been his place to give orders, and things had worked out his way.

  “It’s what he thinks,” Feran said. “And the general already has those around him who see to his wants. You should have the same, but use him well, Skal.”

  “I’ve no desire to mistreat the boy,” Skal said.

  “So I believe. He will be loyal if you are kind to him.”

  Tilian Henn put an end to their conversation by returning with two steaming mugs of tea which he handed to each of them, and then produced a plate, and carefully unpacked two golden honey cakes onto it. Skal exchanged a look with Feran.

  “I would almost credit the tea,” he said, looking at the boy, “but you have definitely not had the time to bake biscuits.” He sipped the tea, and it was very good, flavoured with honey and herbs, better than anything he had tasted in the mess tent.

  “I hope that you will pardon me, my lord,” the boy said. “But I do not know how to make tea, or not a brew that would be fit for a lord, so I had someone else make it, and the biscuits were already made, so I borrowed two.”

  Feran chuckled again.

  “You borrowed two? The tea is good; very good. Who did you get to make it for you?”

  “A man called Bargil, my lord.”

  Feran laughed again. “You got the General’s Dragon to make tea for you? Gods Skal this man is worth a king’s ransom!”

  “And he promised to show me how to make tea the way he does it, my lord,” Tilian said.

  Skal knew Bargil. He didn’t know him well, but well enough to know that the man was not so approachable. He had a bark and a bite.

  “Why would Bargil do so much for you, Tilian? Are you married to his sister?”

  “I told him it was for you, my lord.”

  Bargil had agreed to show Tilian how to make tea on his account? It was possible, he supposed, but it seemed as likely as catching a fish with a short end of rope.

  “Bargil, the fearless, limping, ex dragon guard Bargil is going to teach you how to make tea because you said it was for me?”

  “He thinks highly of you, my lord.” But there was something else. The boy had turned quite red in the face and was looking at his boots again.

  “What did he say?” Skal demanded. “Exactly what did he say?”

  “With all respect, my lord, I’d rather not repeat his exact words.”

  Skal could hear Feran chuckling again, but inside him there was rising resentment. How dare a sergeant, an ex-sergeant of a foreign power show disrespect? “Tell me,” he said.

  Tilian’s gaze was fixed on his boots and his voice was barely audible. “He said that you would make a damn fine officer one day, once you got the stick out of your arse.”

  Feran roared with approval. “You shouldn’t ask if you don’t want to know, Skal,” he said. Skal himself felt the heat of anger inside him, the resentment, the pride, the cursed fragile pride that made him… that made him…

  It all drained away, the anger and indignation, and he felt his lips stretch into a smile, and then before he could think of his dignity he was laughing, too, laughing so hard that it hurt. He managed to put the tea down without spilling it and rolled back in his seat, slapping his thighs. It lasted less than a minute, and when he was calm again, or calm enough, he picked up the tea and sipped it.

  “Damn fine tea,” he said. It set them off again, both Feran and Skal, laughing like hyenas. “Tilian Henn,” he said when he had his breath back. “You have the job, and the pay is four florins a week, and never, ever lie to me.”

  Later that night he thought he might have been a bit generous, caught up in the moment. It had felt like a release of some kind; like a prison door opening. What did it really matter what Tane Bargil said? The man was a real soldier, or had been. Even such a backhanded compliment from such a man was an endorsement that others would heed. Pride was nothing. Pride was three parts a traitor.

  He had orders. He would ride back to Bas Erinor with Arbak and what remained of the Seventh Friend. That was less than fifteen hundred men, but those men were veterans now, and even better, they were undefeated veterans. He would be a colonel with a full regiment at his command, and he was wise enough to know that their victory at the Green Road had not ended the war. Spring would come, and the whole thing would begin again. For the first time he wondered if that was what he wanted.

  53 Waterhill

  It was curiosity that drove Arbak to Waterhill. Just a couple of hours ride along the King’s highway, he’d been told, and it is yours; yours and your children’s’ for as long as your line exists. But Arbak had no line. He had no children and no wife and he was the wrong side of forty years. So it was that he came to Waterhill, looking at the place as no more than a loan from the Duke, who would doubtless receive it back when he died.

  Arbak was tactician enough to know that Seth Yarra would attack again in the spring, and that they would probably not try the wall again. Their Telan allies would have told them that there was a better way, that there was a pass through the Dragon’s Back with no high wall to defend it: The White Road.

  Nobody used the White Road. It connected the forest realm with the great plain and it was well within the lands given over by Pelion to his Benetheon. No man would dare to so anger the gods by trying it, except Seth Yarra. They cared nothing for the laws of Benetheon gods.

  It was impassable in winter. Snow lay fifty feet thick for most of its length, driven there by north west winds that brought the chill of the frozen lands with them, packing snow and ice tight, but too loose still for wagons and feet to pass. Spring, however, brought a thaw. It did not come quickly, but a month or six weeks shy of summer the road would be muddy and passable, and nothing short of an open confrontation would stop them coming through.

  He rode in silence, then, along the road to Waterhill. Sheyani was with him, and he had left Bargil in charge of the tavern. The place would not be as popular as it had been under the spell of Sheyani’s pipes, but his new found notoriety would ensure that it continued to be a source of whatever funds he might need. Already the money he had accumulated dwarfed the colonel’s salary that sat, undrawn, in the kingdom’s accounts, and that was a gold guinea a week.

  The tavern was in better shape than he had expected to find on his return. His other staff had kept it clean and warm, and mostly open. It was quieter, of course. A lot of his regular customers, at least most of those of the requisite age, had signed up to serve with the regiment, and he had left a lot of them back on the green road, feeding the grass.

  All he had ever wanted was a comfortable retirement. Maybe a small tavern, or even a share in one; a place where he could grow old and grumpy getting disgracefully drunk when he felt like it, always having plenty of food, a warm bed and company. Strange how what you want and what you get rarely seem to be on speaking terms.

  They came at last to the gates. He thought there must be some mistake. Two great stone pillars straddled a well made track like trunkless legs. Wrought iron gates barred the way. They
were as high as a mounted man’s head and wide enough that a standard wagon could pass through with ten feet to spare either side. They looked like palace gates, and beyond them the track twisted away through grand old trees, passed by a small lake, and in the distance he could see the colours of brick and stone through the bare winter branches.