“Do you believe him? His story? We could bring him back to Jupelos for detailed questioning if he is going to tell us the truth.”
“He surrendered without a fight. My men will ask around, see if anyone knows what crimes he committed.”
“You…you ask the people here. I didn’t do anything.” Then his face fell, and he said in lower voice, “Not as much as the others, I mean.”
“We have to go back to Essebeg and fetch Kagne. The folk here have suffered enough. There’s no good reason for us to stay here, what with all the wailing. If this one is still alive when we get back, we might take him to Jupelos. You can ride, can’t you?”
The young prisoner paled at the threat implied in Sir Ako’s words. He simply nodded and kept his mouth shut.
“What will happen to the other prisoners?” Sandun asked Gorgi.
“The shaman of Olitik will look into their souls,” Gorgi replied, as if that were perfectly normal. “If they have some good in them, they will be kept on as bound workers and eventually set free. The evil ones will be executed. It’s the same as with criminals: we usually send word round to the other villages before the punishment. Other shamans may come to give their own opinions or just watch. This is the old way. Villages closer to Jupelos send their criminals to the big city for judgment. Perhaps we will start doing that eventually; justice is a messy business. The shamans are usually right but not always.”
Sir Ako rinsed his mouth and spat out bloody water. “We will rest beside the stream up near the forest edge. Let’s leave.” As the Keltens walked their horses up the street, the villagers of Olitik got down on their hands and knees and thanked them for their rescue.
Several hours resting beside the stream resulted in no news of any other raiders coming in search of revenge. Consequently, the Kelten war band mounted up and slowly rode along the tree line, back to the path leading to Essebeg.
Sandun didn’t know what he felt. Happy? Victorious? Sad? He kept remembering the sight of the small child lying dead beside the path. If they had stayed the night in Olitik, perhaps none of the villagers would have died. Or perhaps more people than Ro would have died defending the town. Who could say?
Of the warriors, only Jay and Ven seemed unaffected by the battle. How long had they been fighting against the Kitran in Shila? Sandun decided to ask.
“Five, almost six years,” said Jay.
Ven nodded. “When news reached our house’s leaders of the revolt in Naduva by the iron miners, they decided that House Kirdar would restart the war against the Kitran.”
“Town by town,” Jay continued. “We killed the Kitran soldiers and their followers until all of the southwest was free. It was a slow war. Sometimes we retook the same village twice.”
“Like Marsolil,” said Ven. Jay looked intently at Ven and then looked at Sandun as though Marsolil meant something to him. Ven seemed abashed and looked down at the ground. The two Rutal-lil stayed silent the rest of the ride.
As they rode along the path heading uphill to Essebeg, Sir Ako dropped back alongside Sandun.
“I’m sorry for berating you back in Olitik, Sir Sandun,” the big man said. “You fought well. It’s not my place to question a knight’s method in a melee.”
“I don’t think I’m good. Although I have this.” Sandun put his hand on Skathris’s hilt. “I’m hardly a knight.”
“You have both courage and skill,” Sir Ako said firmly. “I have known a number of knights that lacked both. If you weren’t already a knight, you would have earned your spurs today.”
Sandun thanked Sir Ako, but he felt utterly wrung out, and he spent his remaining energy simply staying on his horse.
At Essebeg, Filpa broke the news of Ro’s death to the young man’s sister, as he had been introduced to her the previous night. She wailed for half an hour before she and her husband set out to Olitik to bury Ro’s body.
Kagne woke from his sleep and joined them in eating roast boar and drinking a watery beer made from boiled wheat and fermented in tubs of pine wood. The locals called it pine beer. Gorgi returned with his men around sunset.
“Fifty-three raiders killed, ten wounded and likely to die, five surrendered, four fled east along the buffalo road,” he reported. Then he named the villagers of Olitik who had been killed; Sandun lost count at eighteen. Many of the folk in Essebeg were both anxious and saddened by the news. One young woman broke out in tears and was led away from the bonfire in the center of town.
“You are no farmer,” Sir Ako said to Gorgi, almost teasingly. “You…are a soldier. You know how to follow orders. I approve.” Ako had been drinking the Essebeg pine beer like it was water and was now a bit drunk.
“As you say,” replied Gorgi. “I was a soldier for the empire for a few years before I returned here. This was my home, and it is again.”
“You fought for the Kitran Empire?” Sir Ako looked like he had just bit into a lemon. As numbed as Sandun was by the events of the past twenty-four hours, he was still shocked by this admission. He stared bleary eyed at the man, but Gorgi looked like an ordinary warrior.
“Some of the Kitran generals are decent enough,” Gorgi said conversationally. “Everyone not of their tribe starts out with a black mark against them, but if you prove that you can knock an apple off a post at a hundred paces with a javelin…well, they respect skill. So, yes, I joined; they paid enough and regularly. I spent a fair bit of time killing Red Swords. Lunatics, like mad sheep they are! I have no regrets about putting them in the earth. But when we were ordered south to Tokolas to fight Lord Vaina’s men—well, dying early was not my plan. So I went home. Didn’t hurt none that the woman I fancied, her first husband was carried off by illness. We got married, and we have three children.”
“The empire feared Lord Vaina’s army?” Sir Ako asked.
“Bloody Kitran fear damn near nothing. Us footmen, ordinary folk, we feared him. Hell yes. He and his generals: Erdis, Kun. Like gods of war. Supposedly never lost a fight. None of us wanted to battle his soldiers. And I tell you this: the empire would much rather fight with Red Swords or the Iron King than the Riverboatman.”
“Well, since you feared him, you should join him. Join us! Lord Vaina’s army, I mean. In Jupelos.” Sir Ako drained his mug. A pretty young girl perched by his side instantly filled it up for him. “Bring your men. If you come, I give you…” Sir Ako leaned over conspiratorially. “I give you four horses. That’s a fair trade! Bring the prisoner from Olitik with you.”
“Join the governor’s army? Fight Nilin Ulim’s horde outside the gates of Kemeklos?” Gorgi scratched at the hair under his arm. “Well, boys, we saw what Nilin’s raiders did to Olitik, didn’t we?” He looked at his men. They nodded. “And there were no Red Swords there, were there?” Cackles of derision came back in response.
“It would have been us next, wouldn’t it? Could we have fought off seventy-five raiders?” The men of Essebeg looked at each other uncomfortably. Sandun realized Gorgi was challenging them.
“As I see it, we owe you Keltens, and heaven demands that we repay our debts,” Gorgi said. “So, yes, I’ll join. Don’t reckon any other raiders will dare enter these parts after what you did today. Who else is with me?”
First one man stood, then two more, and then they all got to their feet.
“Here I thought my days of soldiering were over,” Gorgi said. “We can’t use your horses, though. I was just a foot soldier, and none of these doughty spearmen can ride.”
At this, one of the spearmen, a short, wiry fellow, spoke up. “I can ride, Gorgi. You don’t know, but while you were away with the army, I spent a couple years working at a stud farm outside of Jupelos.”
“I thought you were just mucking the stables?”
“Well, I was, but I learned how to ride.”
“Then why don’t you guide these good men tomorrow and take them down the split
-tree path,” Gorgi told him. “That will save the opmi time; they won’t have to backtrack to Olitik.”
Hours later, almost all the villagers had retired to their homes, and most of the Keltens were asleep beside the fire. Sandun had dozed off several times but was awake again, listening to Sir Ako, Jay, Ven, and Filpa talking about horses. The pine beer had a pleasing flavor once you got used to it.
Sir Ako, getting ready to stand up, had to push the pretty girl who had been plying him with drinks off his lap.
“Hey now, lassie, I’ve got a new wife, and I’m not fooling around till I get home to my sweet princess.” Sir Ako said this in Kelten, but the young woman got the message. She flounced over to Jay and put her arms around him and started nuzzling his neck. Sandun thought this was funny, and he was curious to see how Jay Kirdar would react.
Jay sniffed her hair; evidently, he didn’t like her scent. He lifted her arms up and gave her a firm push away. She tossed her hair and then sat in Filpa’s lap. The fast rider took her in his arms without hesitation and kissed her hard. The kissing rapidly became passionate.
Sir Ako, more than a little drunk, made his way over to Jay and sat heavily on the bench beside him.
“Jay of the Rutal-lil, you’re a valiant swordsman. You too, Ven. But, Jay, don’t you like women? I mean, oh…what’s the word? Sandun, you know what I mean.”
Sandun found this translation request too funny, and he started laughing.
Jay, who had been drinking almost as much as Sir Ako, said, “Yes,” in an offended tone.
“We both do,” said Ven.
“Well then, when a nice-looking girl like that puts her arms around me, I don’t say no. Except I’m married now, so I do…say no, I mean. Are you married?”
Both Jay and Ven shook their heads.
“The Rutal-lil rarely marry,” said Jay.
“It’s a custom, really,” continued Ven. “Not forbidden, just tradition.”
“And I never see you with a woman, because…? It’s not like there aren’t some good-looking women following along behind the army. You can’t tell me you haven’t seen them on their boats, sunning themselves, wearing only tiny pieces of silk…”
At this, Filpa went off into the night with the pretty Essebeg girl, holding her tight as she in turn wrapped her arms around his chest.
Jay watched the couple disappear from the firelight, and then he responded. “Between friends, Opmi Ako, very few Serice women smell the way a woman should.”
“And their hair,” said Ven. “It doesn’t shimmer. A woman’s hair should fall down past her neck like a stream of water in the evening light.”
“The women of Serica are not like highborn Shila ladies,” said Jay.
Ven nodded vigorously.
“Shila noblewomen are just right,” Jay continued. “And once you’ve had a few…” At this, Ven made a funny snorting noise. “All right, more than a few, why settle for less, say I.”
“Some Budin women are pretty close,” Ven said thoughtfully.
“You are thinking of Lord Onell’s daughter?”
Ven nodded.
“She is sweet, yes, but her mother, and grandmother, and great-grandmother—all from Shila.”
Sandun noticed the way they talked about Lord Onell’s daughter.
“You’ve both…enjoyed this woman?” Sandun asked, and then felt embarrassed about asking.
Jay tried to hold his face expressionless for a few moments, but when Ven started laughing, his reserve broke, and he smiled broadly.
“She liked me best.”
“You keep thinking that, brother. It’s bound to make you a better warrior!” Ven rolled his eyes like a crazy man.
To Sandun, the life of the Rutal-lil suddenly seemed like the stories commoners told each other about the life of hedge knights in Kelten. Shila was more like Kelten than Serica! He wondered if Miri would think that was true, and then he realized he hadn’t talked about life in Kelten with her, or really about much of anything.
“If you are not going to look at the local women, you must bring women from Shila to Tokolas!” Sir Ako said emphatically. “And…you should rethink this matter of getting married.” With the issue resolved to his satisfaction, Sir Ako closed his eyes and leaned his head on Jay’s shoulder, suddenly asleep.
“That’s what we did,” Sandun said, gesturing to Sir Ako and himself. Then he started to laugh again as he realized what he just said was completely inane.
“You’re both right,” Jay replied. He finished his beer and suddenly threw his mug far away into the night. “If we two stay in Tokolas, some things must change!”
In the morning, after some hair of the dog—more pine beer—they said farewell to the lakeside village and followed the one Essebeg warrior who could ride west into the forest. As their horses slowly picked their way along the split-tree path, Sandun rode to the head of the line and asked the man if there were any stories about the tall cliff that looked over the lake and the village.
“Not so much about our cliff, but on the other side of the mountain is a deep valley. Walled all around by steep cliffs of rock. Hard to get into, very hard to get out of. Stories tell that in days past, people farmed that valley. But until a work company makes a trail wide enough for a wagon, no one will live there now. It would be like living by yourself, and who would want to do that?”
“Do you have any stories about little people?” Sandun tried to ask this as though he were just passing the time.
“Of course. Well, not a story. It’s a song we sing every year. Outsiders won’t understand because we use old words, but we sing it during the Longest Day Festival. The song goes as follows. During the festival, at night, a strange boy appears, and he dances with a young girl. Eventually it’s just the two of them dancing faster and faster. When the music stops, everyone laughs and claps because they danced so well. Then the boy takes off his hat and—hello!—a gold coin is shining on his bald head. He’s not a boy at all but one of the little folk. He bows and gives the gold coin to the little girl. In the last verse, he puts his hat back on his head and runs off into the night and is never seen again. A good song. I think some other villages sing it around here.”
In late afternoon, the Keltens reached the city of Jupelos only to find the fleet and the army had left that morning. They were escorted to meet with the garrison commander. He was sitting in his nearly empty fort, a stack of papers on his desk, with just a young boy and a mangy cat for company.
“Sandun the Kelten and his companions. Yes, I have orders.” He fished out a document on his desk from under a bronze statue of a warrior figurine. He took out the paper and read it. “The governor wishes you to rejoin the fleet with all possible speed. A fast boat carrying the latest news is expected before sundown. The fleet and the army are expected to halt at three hundred tik this evening. The fast boat should reach them by…oh, I’d say midnight. Take this with you.” He handed Sandun the document. “You know where the docks are? Yes. Good. Your mission was successful? Fine, fine.”
Sandun mentioned that a group of fighters from the eastern hills was likely to arrive the next day.
“We have men coming in seemingly every hour. Half of them have no weapons, the others have no food. At the moment, I have an abundance of paper but little else. The army is north, strung along the river. Everyone we send will have to march hard to join it or hope a northbound boat will pick them up. The governor is demanding speed above all else, and his orders are not to be denied.”
Sandun left the garrison commander, and the Keltens found some eggs and terrible-tasting soup at a shack next to the fort while they talked about the horses.
“I guess the fast boat will not have room for horses,” said Wiyat, who had taken an interest in the fleet of Kunhalvar.
“And the horses need a day of rest; otherwise, they will be blown for the next two
days,” Sir Ako told them.
“Sume and I can lead the horses up north,” said Damar. “We should be able to catch up in two days. How fast is the army traveling?”
“The plan calls for twenty miles a day,” Sandun told him. “The Jupol River heads fair north for sixty miles before it bends northeast as it nears Kemeklos. Today they should be twenty miles north; tomorrow, forty; the day after, sixty miles. If you give the horses a day’s rest, that’s sixty miles to cover in one day. Can you ride so far, Damar?”
“With fifteen horses between the two of us, we can do it. It’s pretty flat north of here, isn’t it?”
“Mostly, I think. Where the river bends, there are mountains or hills on both sides for nearly ten miles.”
It was agreed: Damar and Sume would take the horses north while the rest took the fast boat.
“Don’t start the battle without me,” Damar said to them by the docks. Sume waved farewell but said nothing.
“She is a quiet one,” said Kagne as they stood on the deck of the fast boat, the new oarsmen from Jupelos pulling away vigorously.
“A match for our laconic cowherd,” said Basil. “But she is wicked good shooting from horseback. I’ve heard stories about the horse archers of Jibur, but to actually see someone do it…”
“I wonder why she is here,” Sandun said thoughtfully.
“I wonder why any of us are here,” said Kagne. They all laughed at that.
Sandun woke after midnight when the oars were shipped with a weary cheer from the rowers. Looking around, he saw watch fires in all directions, like strange-colored stars that had come to rest on the earth. He felt reluctant to go aboard Lord Vaina’s flagship and disturb Miri—time enough for that on the morrow. Also, he wanted to talk to Valo Peli about Ghost Wolf and the things he had learned. So he followed his friends down the gangplank and over to their battleship, Dragon of Mur. Valo Peli came out to greet them as they stowed their armor and weapons in heavy chests beside the central mast.
The Fire Sword Page 29