His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (13 page)

An arrow sped from the trees and took Verio’s man in the throat
as he returned along the cliff face from his kill. He fell from his
horse with the reins still clutched in his hand. The horse shied and
bolted. Tyren saw Verio’s head jerk up in startled realization,
saw him slide from his saddle and gesture wildly for a defensive
formation—saw his men dismounting, falling back against the
cliff in a ragged half circle, their shields out, facing the trees.

He straightened in Risun’s saddle.

“Columns,” he said, to the four men who were still
sitting their horses behind him. “Follow my lead.”

He dug his heels into Risun’s belly and took him down the hill
and into the wood, westward. He could see the cliff through the trees
ahead, could see the gold-bossed shields of Verio’s troop
glinting in the sun. He was distracted by a sudden blur of movement
directly in his path. A man in greens and browns stood up quickly
from the underbrush before him, a bow in his hands. He drew back
patiently, carefully, as Risun bore down on him. Tyren gauged the
distance in his mind, knew Risun wouldn’t make it in time. He
threw himself from the saddle as the man let fly. He rolled a little
when he hit the ground. He got up quickly to his feet, drawing his
sword. He came upon the rebel before the man had time to drop his bow
and take out the long knife sheathed on his belt—ran him
through cleanly and pulled out the blade and let him fall.

His four men rode on past him towards the cliff. More Cesini stood up
to face them. There were seven or eight of them altogether, all
garbed in the same kind of cloth—rough homespun wool dyed in
greens and browns to blend in with the trees. They wore black mud
streaked on their faces for masks. They carried bows and flint-tipped
javelins, few steel weapons. They were too lightly armed to counter
the Vareni; some of them simply threw down their weapons and ran,
scattering into the wood. The ones who stood their ground were
outmatched quickly. Tyren saw three of them fall at the first pass.
After that there were only two left, and they fell back towards the
gap in the cliff face, pausing to loose arrows as they ran, using the
cover of the trees. Then they were gone, and there was a long moment
of dumb confusion while his own men realized it was done and there
was no one left to fight. It had happened very quickly.

Tyren found Risun and took him by the reins and went down towards the
cliff to see how Verio had fared.

Beneath the cliff face, Verio’s troop was putting itself
together again. They’d lost only the one man and Verio grinned
up at him as he came out from the trees. He wiped his blade with a
cloth and held up the sword in salute.

“Victory, sir,” he said.

“You’re all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well done,” Tyren said.

A few of the men had gone on horseback to give pursuit to the Cesini
who’d fled. They were returning now along the cliff face. He
watched them return, listened to their talk, felt pride stirring in
him suddenly and unexpectedly—they were his men and they’d
been victorious today. It was his victory, his first victory.

One of the men was leading a second horse beside his own, a tall
black horse with trimmed mane and tail, dressed hooves that gleamed
in the sunlight. It caught Tyren’s eye and he stared at it,
unbelieving; knew in a moment, without a doubt, it was the colt, his
colt. He went over slowly, still leading Risun, not saying anything,
running his eyes up and down the colt, wanting to laugh at the
improbability of it.

Verio, coming behind him, sucked in his breath in admiration and
said, “That’s a fine horse right there.”

“Yes,” Tyren said. It was all he could manage to say.

“Leave the horse a moment, soldier,” Verio said.

The man saluted wordlessly, gave over the reins to Verio, took his
own horse and went on. Verio held the colt’s head and ran one
hand along the tapering face and laughed.

“I didn’t know they had such horses for their rebellion,
sir,” he said.

Tyren reached and put his right hand on the colt’s shoulder as
he’d done back home in Vessy, felt the fire in the colt’s
blood. He nodded, saying nothing. His eyes were on the saddle now, a
plain leather saddle cinched over a woolen cloth on the colt’s
high back. It had been Risun’s saddle. There was fresh blood on
the saddle and the cloth. He saw it and his heart tightened,
inadvertently. He forgot about the colt for the moment.

He left Risun with one of the men and went back up into the trees on
foot, wanting a look at the dead. Verio, reluctantly leaving the
colt, came with him. There were eight Cesino dead, counting the ones
who’d been cut down as they tried to run, lying about the wood
before the cliff. But none of them were the man he thought he’d
find. He was relieved by that, inwardly, though he didn’t
really know why.

Verio had wandered a little way away from him. He prodded one of the
bodies with the toe of his boot and said, “This one’s
still alive, sir.”

He went to look. The rebel was on his back, his right arm
outstretched, fingers reaching feebly for the flint-bladed knife that
lay in the grass just beyond his reach. Verio went round and picked
up the knife and flung it away. Tyren knelt, slowly. The man watched
him, his jaw clenched tight, sweat standing out on his ashen face. A
sword stroke had opened up his left shoulder from the top of the arm
to the collarbone. Tyren leaned over him and peeled away the mantle
of his cloak and the blood-soaked woolen tunic beneath to have a look
at the wound. Then he looked up to Verio.

“Help me carry him,” he said.

They took the Cesino between them down to the cliff face. On Tyren’s
orders one of the men wrapped up his shoulder in a bandage, and then
they got him onto a horse and tied his wrists to the horns of the
saddle and put the horse on a lead, though Tyren doubted the man
could have ridden away if he’d tried. He was near senseless
from the pain. He sat leaning forward with his head bowed, his eyes
closed. They’d taken off his bloodied cloak and it was lying
cast aside on the grass below the cliff. Tyren bent over it to look
at the cloak pin—the intertwining lines and circles that stood
for independent Cesin, wrought carefully in silver. He unfastened it
from the cloak, took it in his hand, ran his thumb over it, slid it
into his wallet and straightened again before Verio could see.

They left the bodies of the Cesino dead where they lay and rode back
in file to the eastward ridge, leading the prisoner on the one horse,
Verio’s casualty on another. The two men who’d been left
with Rian had made up a litter for him with some sturdy pine boughs
and their uniform capes. The litter had to be carried on foot as they
went on, couldn’t be trusted to a horse over that ground. They
all took turns at it: two men before, two men behind, the litter
balanced precariously between them. It slowed them down, having to
walk back over the hills with that burden, but the men were in good
spirits because of the victory, exultant in their freshly
blood-sealed camaraderie, laughing at the way the Cesini had dropped
their weapons and run, and that helped relieve the tediousness of the
work.

Tyren listened to their talk and said nothing. The pride of the
moment had faded a little; his thoughts were elsewhere now. He was
thinking of the Cesino slave who’d run from him in Rien. Born
in Souvin, he’d said. So he’d come home among his own
people. He’d planned it so from that evening at table in Vessy,
perhaps: to come back home a free man, however he might manage
it—except now home and freedom must mean nothing more than to
skulk in the mountains, hunted like an animal. A bitter mockery of a
homecoming, Tyren thought. Better never to come back at all. Better
to have taken the colt and run to the last ends of the earth than
come back home to this.

VII

It was past the twentieth hour by the time he brought the troop back
to the fort. He had two of the men take the Cesino prisoner off to
one of the empty storerooms adjoining the stable. He himself went to
the infirmary and stood and watched while the surgeon tended Rian,
who’d taken a knife blade in his gut. It hadn’t been
meant to kill him, most likely, but to disable him and thereby cost
them all time and effort, and it was ugly and painful and the delay
hadn’t helped.

Rian was awake and grinned up at him, with some effort, while the
surgeon worked. “Congratulations on the victory, sir,” he
said.

“How do you feel?”

“I’ll live, sir.”

“What did they want with you?”

“They wanted a hostage, sir, in case you tried to give pursuit.
I think—I think they were worried about pursuit, sir. I’d
wounded one of them. They were going to have to move slowly.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t reach you sooner.”

Rian said, bravely, “No matter, sir.”

Tyren said, “Get some rest, soldier.”

Afterward he sent the surgeon to have a look at the prisoner’s
shoulder and he went wearily to his office, feet dragging a little,
sore all over from the fall he’d taken from Risun. He hadn’t
really regretted that until now.

The Cesino-blood corporal, Aino, was waiting for him in the office,
as he’d requested.

“You went down to the hall, Corporal?” Tyren said. He sat
down in the chair behind the desk and rested his face in his hands.

“Yes, sir,” Aino said.

“Tell me what happened.”

“There were five rebels, sir. They killed three men of Lord
Magryn’s household guard and then executed Lord Magryn with his
wife and his children watching.”

“They killed the woman and the children, too?”

“No, sir. Only Lord Magryn, sir. Lady Magryn and the young Lord
Magryn are unharmed.”

Tyren looked up from his hands. “Strange,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“So we’ve a new Lord Magryn now.”

“Yes, sir.”

He said, “You saw to it Sælo was buried, Corporal?”

“Yes, sir,” said Aino.

“You can go, then.”

He’d have to write a letter to Sælo’s family, of
course, and to the family of the man they’d lost today. He’d
do it tomorrow. He was too tired now to think clearly. He got up from
the desk and went into his quarters and undressed and lay down
stiffly on the cot and squeezed his eyes shut. But he couldn’t
sleep. His muscles ached, and there was too much going through his
head: his victory, and the prisoner out in the storeroom, and the
black colt, and the Cesino slave, who’d been there with the
rebels today. He lay there in the darkness with his thoughts
wandering on and on. The night went very slowly.

In the morning, after the muster, he sat in his office with the log
book before him to write his report of the action. Verio came to find
him.

“What do you intend to do about the prisoner, sir?” he
said.

Tyren spoke without looking up. “What did the surgeon say?”

“The shoulder will heal, sir. It’ll take some time, but
it’ll heal.”

“I’ll question him,” Tyren said.

“And after that, sir?” Verio said, almost forcefully.

“I’ll make the decision when the time comes,” Tyren
said.

He knew what Verio wanted, of course—knew he’d demand the
Cesino be made example of, to show the village folk the consequences
were hard, that this was what you got when you spat in the face of
the Empire. He finished writing the report and then he went out to
the storerooms on his own. There was a guard posted by the door of
the empty room where they’d put the prisoner. He brought up his
spear in salute when Tyren came close.

“Open the door, soldier,” Tyren said to him.

The prisoner sat against the far wall, his legs crossed under him,
his hands on his knees. His eyes were closed at first, but he opened
them when Tyren crouched down across from him—frost-gray eyes
to mark him as one of the mountain people. His face wasn’t so
pale now. He was older than Tyren, Verio’s age or a little
older still; a farmer, judging by his rough, sun-browned skin, the
lean muscles in his arms and shoulders. The bandage swathed round his
left shoulder was blood-stained and Tyren could see, from the
tightness in his mouth, he was in some pain. But he was calm. He
looked at Tyren in silence and waited.

“I can speak in Cesino if you wish,” Tyren said.

“I can understand your tongue well enough, Commander,”
the Cesino said. He spoke steadily, unhurriedly.

“In my tongue, then. It doesn’t matter to me your people
killed Magryn. I understand he was a traitor to you. But you killed
one of my men, the other night, and mutilated his body. My adjutant
wants vengeance for it. The rest of my men also, I’m sure.”

The Cesino said nothing.

“I’m more concerned with fighting a war than with
vengeance,” Tyren said. “I’ll give you a choice. I
want to know the locations of your safeholds within the Outland, the
number of men who fight for you, the names of your leaders. I swear
to you no harm will come to the families of those involved. I don’t
fight like that. But if you refuse to speak I’ll let my
adjutant deal with you in his own way. Do you understand me?”

The Cesino said, quietly, “I understand you, Commander.”

“I’ll give you an hour to decide,” said Tyren.

He waited in his office for the hour to pass. He’d intended to
use the time to write the letters but instead he found himself
sitting with his back to the desk, watching the shadow move slowly
across the face of the weathered bronze sundial out in the garden,
wondering if he’d really meant the threat, if he could really
give this man over to Verio and let Verio deal with him. He didn’t
think, deep down, that he could. He’d rather see the man hanged
than give him over to Verio. That was if the man didn’t speak,
of course, but Tyren didn’t really think he’d speak.
They’d shown they were willing enough to suffer and die for
their cause, these Cesini. But maybe he’d speak. Let him speak,
Tyren thought. Easier on both of us if he speaks.