by Tim Stead
Tilian Henn was a blessing. Skal had dressed the boy in red and grey; good winter trousers, a woollen tunic, a heavy cloak. Two pairs of new boots had opened his eyes. Tilian had never had two pairs before, just one that fell apart around his feet until he could scrounge another pair near the end of their life from some more fortunate fellow with the same size feet. Now his feet gleamed in polished black leather. Skal had also got the boy a black leather belt and a good quality sword with a leather and wood sheath, and given him another stripe to add to his veteran’s bar, and that made him a little more than just another common soldier.
He insisted that Henn train with the others; pushed him to do better than those around him. Sometimes he took a hand in the boy’s work himself, showing him little tricks and fresh moves that gave him an edge. The boy responded well. He worked hard and improved quickly. He became worth his corporal’s stripes.
Henn’s true value lay in his ability to get things done. Skal quickly learned that the incident with the tea was by no means an isolated feat or a stroke of luck. If he asked him to do something, it got done. The means by which he did this were sometimes less than proper. Henn was not above offering inducements to tradesmen, merchants and the like to see his end achieved, and though he stopped short of threats he was capable of adopting a kind of sad, disappointed manner that had men worried for their lives and livelihoods.
When Arbak took a week’s leave to visit his estates he left Skal nominally in charge of both regiments, though the innkeeper’s second, a major by the name of Shale Gorios did all the real work with the first regiment. Skal took the opportunity to deal with an outstanding debt.
Ever since Henfray he had been troubled by the ghost of Saul Bruff, Bruff the Tanner, Bruff the volunteer who had saved his life on the line when he had been caught between two blades. It was not that he saw his spirit; Skal did not believe in such things; but he thought about the man most days. He had never had the chance to thank him, to buy him a drink, even to nod and smile as soldiers sometimes do in acknowledgement of a service done.
He didn’t even know if Bruff had a family, though someone had said so.
That was the task that he set for Tilian Henn: find out if Bruff had a family, who they were, what their business was, and anything else about them that was worth knowing.
“And he’s a tanner, my lord?”
“He’s dead,” Skal replied. “He died at Henfray.”
They were sitting in a tent on the training grounds. It was supposed to be a break for lunch, but Skal wasn’t hungry. Tilian had found him a flask of hot, mulled wine and he was sipping that, still wrapped in his cloak. There was a nagging north-wester tugging at the canvas around them, making it snap and boom, pushing under and around the tent as though it was hardly there at all.
“Do you know his wife’s name, my lord?” Tilian asked.
“I don’t know if he had a wife,” Skal replied. “He was a young man, so maybe not, but there might be a mother, a father, an aunt. I don’t know. Just find out.”
“I could start now if you wish, my lord,” Tilian said. Tilian always stood in his presence, and he was standing now, legs braced, hands behind his back. Skal sipped the wine again. It was sweet and still hot; just what he’d needed on a day like this. Could he do without Henn for a few hours? Was he really getting so soft?
“Yes, start now,” he said.
Tilian bowed and turned through the tent flap and was gone.
Skal looked around the tent. There was nothing to see, really; bare canvas, a chair, a table, a jug of rapidly cooling mulled wine. He poured another cup and took a large swallow, feeling it spread its warmth down his gullet and into his stomach. He envied Cain Arbak. The man wasn’t staying in the castle, but had put himself up at his own tavern. And why not? He had friends there, endless food and wine and that pretty little Durander girl he seemed to like so much. Daughter of a king. Well, there was no accounting for fortune. He’d thought more than once of asking Arbak to rent him a room there too, but hadn’t thought it quite proper. He’d been, of course. He’d visited the tavern and been greeted like a hero, slapped on the back, stood free drinks all night, eaten a prime cut of the house roast, and that had made it worse. He should have turned all those things down, or at least insisted on paying for them, because now he felt he couldn’t go back. They’d all think he expected the same again.
He drained the cup and looked at the jug again. No. Another cup would be excessive. He didn’t want to be drunk in charge of a regiment; two regiments, technically.
Still, he had his own leave to look forwards to. Arbak had insisted that he take ten days, go to Latter Fetch, and put the place in order the way he liked it. Arbak was fair. It was the least that could be said of him, but the man had a peculiar way of running a regiment. He never seemed to give any orders. He just talked to people, asked them what they thought, discussed it with them, and that was that. Even so the men trained as hard as ever, the officers seemed to respect him, and everything ran as well as might be expected. Skal had always thought that a commander seeking advice from his men was asking for disrespect, or even mutiny. It was a sign of weakness, and ambitious men would push you aside if you showed weakness, lazy men would take advantage. Then again, all the men were volunteers. Perhaps that approach worked with volunteers, and he had tried it himself a few times with no discernable decline in discipline, and it had made him feel more connected with his officers, like he was in the regiment, and not sitting on top of it.
He looked at the wine, rejected it again and stood up, picked up the helmet that lay by his feet and left the tent. The official break wasn’t over yet. There were still a few minutes to run, but he was fed up with sitting in the tent not drinking. He felt like hitting something with a blade. That would warm him up.
On the field the air was misty with smoke. It was ringed with bonfires. Arbak had insisted that the men have a chance to get warm, and the fires were built every day so they had somewhere to sit when they weren’t training, and the smoke gave the training ground an authentic battleground feel, an air of confusion.
Arbak trained with the men. He had picked up the same shield technique that Feran had been teaching Skal; probably from his man Bargil. It suited the general because he had only one hand, and the shield was strapped to the forearm, making his crippled arm useful again. Arbak trained every day with a short sword in his left hand, and when he wasn’t facing off against one of his men he spent time hacking at a sack shrouded post, building up strength. It reminded Skal of Quinnial.
And there he was: Quinnial. It’s odd how often that seems to happen, Skal thought, when you think of someone and then they turn up. Perhaps it was just those times that you remember, forgetting all the other occasions on which you thought of someone and they stubbornly refused to appear.
He began to stamp his way across the battered grass to where the stand-in ruler of Bas Erinor was standing, surrounded by a small group of men, or to be accurate men and one woman. Skal stopped walking. It was Maryal. That was damned awkward. He hadn’t seen the woman since his ill judged trickery concerning her betrothal. At the time it had seemed a clever thing to do. It was a slap in the face for Quinnial, who he saw as a rival, and Maryal was a fine looking woman. She’d have made a fair mistress of Bel Arac, and if she didn’t like it, well, that hadn’t seemed so important.
Have I changed that much? His actions now seemed foolish, even cruel. He’d known full well that the two of them were in love, and that much was confirmed is so far as they’d become betrothed as soon as he’d been disgraced by his father and lost his title. Well, it had ended satisfactorily enough for them at least, but he doubted that would cut any ice with Maryal.
Oddly he didn’t worry about Quinnial’s feelings on the matter. He’d spoken to Quinnial many times since then, and if he kept the conversation to business they seemed to do all right. He didn’t imagine that Quinnial liked him any more than Aidon did, but at least the man was fair.
There was no way he was going to avoid this, so he gritted his metaphorical teeth and carried on towards the well dressed little group. He was, after all, the officer nominally in command of two regiments.
Quinnial saw him coming.
“My lord,” Skal said as he approached. “How may I serve you?”
“Just routine,” Quinnial said, accepting Skal’s respectful bow with a brief nod of his own. “I wanted to see for myself how the men were coming along, see the conditions. I like to have a grasp of the details, as you know.”
Like to check up on my reports, more like, Skal thought. One of the other men was the secretary, and another he recognised as a significant lord from the north of Avilian, a portly high ranker whose estates bordered what had once been his father’s land. His name was Bizmael, or Bizfael, something like that. As far as Skal knew he was a buffoon, but a buffoon who could raise a regiment of two thousand men.
“You turning Berashi on us?” the buffoon asked. Skal assumed he had seen the round shields and short swords.
“Indeed you might be forgiven for thinking so, my lord,” he replied. “But the short sword and shield are very effective in a melee, and that’s how Seth Yarra like to fight.”
“Let them dictate terms, eh?” the idiot said. Skal drew a deep breath. He could feel Quinnial watching him, and he could sense, more than feel, the waves of ice coming his direction from Maryal.
“Surely you’re not suggesting we run away rather than engage the enemy, my lord?” Skal asked. He carefully pitched his tone so that what he said could be taken as a joke, but knew that the man would no see it so.
Bizmael huffed and turned a slightly redder shade, but Quinnial spoke before the conversation could take a more bitter turn.
“You can’t deny their record, lord Bizmael,” he said. “The Seventh Friend has been honoured by King Raffin as well as our own duke, and we are pleased to see them adopt tactics that have proven effective against the enemy. You should consider it yourself, perhaps.”
“We did well enough against Seth Yarra in our own way,” Bizmael said. Skal recalled that Bizmael’s two thousand had been east with Narak, and taken part in the destruction of the main Seth Yarra army.
“Indeed. I envy you playing a part in such a famous victory, my lord,” Skal said. It was laying the butter on a bit thick, but he saw a twinkle in Quinnial’s eye, and knew it for approval. Why he cared about Quinnial’s approval he could not say, but it seemed that he did.
“Yes, well,” Bizmael said, squinting uncomfortably against the wind. “We did have cavalry. You had to do without, so I suppose some tactical adjustments might be needed.”
It was the best he could hope for. The buffoon had sensed Quinnial’s desire for peace and backed down as far as he was able, which was good. They were in the same army after all. He heard a whistle behind him, and knew that the rest break was at an end.
“My lords, my lady, I would happily show you our various drills, and you can judge our progress for yourselves.” It was the first time he had addressed a word to Maryal. The title was complimentary, of course. Maryal was not raised up, but as Quinnial’s betrothed she was honoured with the title never the less. He saw Quinnial glance at her.
“Very good,” Quinnial said. “Carry on and we’ll follow.”
Men were pouring out from their seats around the fires and forming up into groups. Officers and sergeants were shouting orders and as they drew nearer he heard the first ring of steel and steel. Somewhere in the distance he heard horses and the hiss of arrows in flight. It took very little time for the men to be back into the swing of training.
It was surprising in a way how big the training grounds were. Land this close to the city, well, virtually adjacent to the river gate, was expensive and usually put to better, or at least more commercial, use. Somehow this space; the better part of two hundred acres; had remained free, laid out as open pasture. He did not even know who owned the land.
They stopped by a group of archers. Three instructors were trying to teach twenty recruits the elements of archery. Three Mesham targets were set up fifty yards away. Skal knew about Mesham. He didn’t know why really. It went back to one of the very few conversations he’s ever had with the old Duke. Mesham was a material made up of wool, cotton threads and animal fur, mixed in the right proportions. It was placed in Mesham tubs, soaked in water with a couple of cheap chemicals added – he could not recall the exact ones – and beaten with a cloth hammer, which was a sort of pole a foot wide at the head and four inches at the handle. It was left to soak and then pressed. Archers shot at the target, and eventually the material began to break apart. A few hundred arrows would normally do it. Then the target could be taken back, some extra wool, cotton and hair added, soaked, beaten, pressed, and it would be as good as new. An army was like that, the duke had told him; cut up by the enemy it could be beaten back into shape, made good as new.
The instructors were nervous to have the mighty observe their work. Skal could tell. They shouted more harshly, increased their level of intervention. Every arrow was wrong, it seemed; even those that struck the targets. Skal watched the recruits. Several of the twenty showed promise. One of them hit the roundel with every arrow he loosed; a natural, he supposed.
They moved on. A squad of fifty horsemen were training with lances. They were riding at wooden dummies wrapped in cloth, or would have been. At this moment they were practising riding in formation; wheeling in line, riding in line, and doing it without sticking your neighbour with your lance. Skal thought they looked ragged, but Quinnial seemed pleased.
“They are coming along, Colonel,” he said. “How long have they been training?”
“Just four days on horse, my lord,” Skal replied. “This lot have been learning infantry basics for the last two weeks.”
Quinnial nodded, smiled.
It went on for a while. They moved from group to group, pausing for no more than five minutes at each, making the instructors nervous, and moving on again. At one point Skal found himself standing next to Maryal, alone. They were watching a demonstration of sword technique with shield and short sword and Quinnial had drifted to the other side of the group to get a better view of something. The other lords had followed him, but for some reason she had stayed behind, and now they stood twenty yards from the others.
They stood in silence for a while, but the longer it went on the more Skal felt he had to say something. Quinnial and the others showed no inclination to return, and he could hardly leave her alone.
“Shall we join the others, my lady?” he asked.
Maryal did not move, nor did she acknowledge his suggestion. She continued to stand and stare at the demonstration as though she had not heard him speak.
“My lady?”
“Do I make you uncomfortable, Skal?” she asked.
Now it was his turn to remain silent. It was true enough. He was no longer the scion of a great house. He was a junior member of the aristocracy with little or no weight other than what his sword had earned him. Quinnial outranked him by several orders of magnitude, and Maryal was to be Quinnial’s wife, and a voice in his ear.
“I regret the wrong that I did you, my lady,” he said.
“I am certain of it,” she replied. “And you may live to regret it even more.”
“It was cruel,” Skal admitted. “But I did not think so at the time.”
“You did not think…?” Maryal made a scornful noise. “Whatever you are Skal, nobody ever thought that you were stupid. You always thought.”
Skal shrugged. A part of him was surprised that he had even tried to speak to her; she was in some ways quite slow witted; but some other part seemed to think that her opinion mattered. “I think differently now,” he said.
“I am sure that you do,” she said. She thought him unchanged, that his words stemmed from some craven instinct to ingratiate himself with those above him, and he was uncertain how changed he was. There were certainly ideas in his head that had been a
bsent before his degradation, before Henfray and Fal Verdan.
“War is a great teacher. It is a place where a tanner’s apprentice may save a colonel’s life and the man standing next to you is a friend, no matter that he’s low born and a foreigner, as long as he swings a firm blade. It taught me that pride is no friend at all, and that war is a team sport.”
Maryal frowned at his words, almost as though there was a trace of doubt in her mind after all. “They say that you were a hero on the wall,” she said.
“I was there,” he said. “I killed men and was not killed. I always did have some skill with the blade. They honoured me because I was an officer, and because other men did what I told them, and died doing it.”
She frowned again, and he knew why. She was not accustomed to modesty from his lips, but he did not think it modest to tell the truth. There were no heroes on the wall, unless they were all heroes, those that fought and lived or died. None of them had run from the fight.
Quinnial and the others came back. There was a look of concern, Skal thought, on Quinnial’s face to see him and Maryal alone together, but it seemed to pass, and the rest of the inspection went by without further excitement. He did not speak to Maryal again.