His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (19 page)

“You’ve skill with healing. I’m asking for your
help.”

She said, mocking, “My help.”

“I want to know if you can cure him.”

“Fool. Have you any idea what you’re asking me to do?”

He was impatient now. “Do I understand he wears the harness of
the Empire and your loyalty lies with Sarre and his rebellion? Yes, I
understand that.”

“And it means nothing to you?”

“I don’t know what it means to me,” he said,
truthfully.

She looked down at him in silence a while, her lips parted just a
little to show her teeth.

“Tell me why you let Mægo live,” she said, at
length.

“Muryn trusted me, that was one thing.”

“You did it for the priest?”

“I did it because I don’t believe in killing wounded
men.”

She was silent again, studying him. Then she turned her face away
from him. She knelt, slowly, reached out a hand, pressed the swollen
skin of Regaro’s shoulder gently with her fingertips, felt his
forehead against her wrist. Regaro made no move, lay still as a dead
man. His rasping breath was loud in the silence.

Maryna sat back on her heels. “I’ll need to bring some
things from home,” she said, in a low voice. She was careful to
keep her eyes from his.

“I’ll saddle my horse for you,” Tyren said.

She shook her head, tightly. “No, I’ll walk, Vareno.”

He said, “I do understand what I’m asking you to do.”

She lifted her shoulders a little. “Then our debts are settled
after this,” she said.

* * *

She came back to the fort before the evening meal, carrying a
woven-grass basket under her left arm. She knelt by the infirmary
hearth and put down the basket and took out a stone mortar and a
pestle and a bundle of long, narrow green leaves folded in a thin
flaxen cloth. Then she stirred up the coals for a fire.

“I can make a poultice for the wound—for the poison,”
she said to him, over her shoulder. “I can’t promise you
he’ll live, do you understand?”

“Tell me what I can do,” he said.

“I can do it well enough,” she said.

So he sat on his heels beside Regaro and watched while she boiled
water in a pot over the fire and crushed the long leaves in the
mortar and added a little of the hot water to make a paste. She
scraped the paste onto the cloth and brought the cloth over to Regaro
and pressed it to his shoulder and wrapped it up tightly with fresh
bandages. She didn’t speak again until she’d finished.

“I’ll need some time to gather more of the herb,”
she said. “I’ll come again when I can. See that he’s
given plenty of water.”

“Let me take you back,” said Tyren.

“No.”

“At least I can do that. You needn’t walk in the dark.”

“No,” she said again, more forcefully.

He said nothing. A heavy silence settled between them. He sat beside
Regaro’s mat without moving, his jaw tight, humiliation burning
on his skin, while she went back to the hearth and knelt and gathered
up her things into the basket. She got to her feet again and went
past him to the doorway. She paused there, looking back to him.

“I’ll come again, Vareno,” she said. Then she went
out into the yard.

He went to the officers’ mess for the meal when she’d
gone. There was a bitterness inside him, a sick regret it had to be
this way between them, the sudden cold certainty it was useless to
wish it were different, no matter what Muryn might say. Verio and
Aino were waiting at the table when he came in. They stood and
saluted, waiting for him to take his seat before they sat down again.
He sat down at the head of the table. Verio’s eyes stayed on
him as he sat.

“How’s Regaro, sir?”

“Too soon to know if he’ll live,” Tyren said, with
irritation.

Verio said, “I see.”

There was something odd in the way he said it and Tyren looked up
questioningly to him from the bowl of stewed lamb and beans and green
herbs an orderly had set before him.

Verio said, “You don’t think it’s a risk to have
her tending him, sir?”

“You think one farm girl’s a risk here, Lieutenant?”
said Tyren.

Verio said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “I’m
concerned you’re allowing her to come and go freely, sir.”

Aino had looked up now, his gray eyes going back and forth from Tyren
to Verio, but he said nothing.

“It’s my concern, not yours,” said Tyren.

“It’s the concern of every man in this garrison,”
said Verio. “Sir.”

There was silence in the room a little while.

“I’m trying to save Regaro’s life,” Tyren
said, at length, very quietly. “I’m willing to take some
risks for that. Maybe you’re not, and if this were your command
it would be your decision. But this is my command, my decision, and
your questioning of that constitutes insubordination, Lieutenant. If
it continues I’ll have no choice but to punish you for it, do
you understand me?”

Verio’s face was hard, his mouth tight. “I understand you
perfectly, sir,” he said.

“I don’t want the matter spoken of again,” said
Tyren.

But he couldn’t be angry with Verio, not in truth. He couldn’t
fault him for thinking of the men, of his duty. At least Verio could
still think of duty without irony. At least Verio still had that
luxury. How much easier to live like that, with duty as the only
consideration—if duty were still the uncomplicated thing he’d
believed it was at Vione. How much easier if he could still think of
it like that.

* * *

Regaro improved in the night, the fever coming down, the delirium
clearing away. In the morning he was able to respond when Tyren spoke
to him, to lift his head and eat a little of the barley porridge the
surgeon brought him from the mess, to curse the fierce pain in his
shoulder.

Lady Magryn came to the fort after the morning muster.

She rode with four men of her household guard, she riding proudly
ahead, they in pairs behind her. She dismounted in the middle of the
yard and stood with her head held high, waiting for Tyren and Verio
to come down to her from the headquarters steps. She bowed stiffly
when they were come close. Tyren could see she’d been crying:
her eyelids, under the paint, were swollen, her eyes glistening. Her
face was white and hard as marble. But her voice was steady.

“Forgive me, Commander Risto, for coming to you like this,”
she said. “The matter’s urgent.”

In his office she sat down in the cross-legged chair before the desk,
smoothing out the skirt of her stola with slim, pale fingers,
straightening the palla of thin gray silk on her left shoulder. Then
she looked at him directly.

“I’ve disowned my son,” she said.

He stared at her a moment without saying anything. He hadn’t
expected that and he wasn’t sure how to respond.

“The lord Magryn?” he said, finally, stupidly, stammering
a little.

She spoke in a clear, cold voice.

“I am head of the Magryni now. I swore to you our loyalty would
always lie with the Empire, Commander Risto. If my son won’t
fulfill that pledge, then I will—until another of my sons
reaches an age to be fit for ruling.”

Tyren looked over briefly to Verio, who stood by the doorway. Then he
looked back to the woman. “Where is he now—your son?”

“Fled, gone.” She lifted her shoulders. “To find
Sarre’s son, he said. To find the rebels. The fool. They’ll
cut his throat anyway, when he finds them.”

He was both impressed and a little sickened by the indifference in
her voice.

“I want your assurance, Commander Risto,” Lady Magryn
said. “I want your assurance the agreement still stands between
us—that nothing has changed between us because of this. And I
want assurance of your help. My people must know I have the support
of the garrison if I’m to ensure their loyalty.”

“You’ll have the support of the garrison, Lady Magryn,”
Tyren said. “I give you my word.”

He stood with Verio on the headquarters portico and watched while she
mounted up again and rode with her guards back up the gravel path
towards the common.

“Better than we’d hoped, sir,” said Verio, quietly.
It was the first time he’d spoken since the meal last night.

“Maybe,” said Tyren. He didn’t feel that way about
it.

XI

Maryna Nyre didn’t come again until mid-morning of the next
day. She rode her shaggy-coated horse when she came; she’d been
up into the hills. She took down the leather saddlebag and brought it
into the infirmary and sat on her knees by the hearth to make a fresh
poultice of the long green leaves. Afterward she made up a honey
tonic for Regaro to drink, holding the bowl for him while he did so.
He thanked her in fumbling Cesino when he’d finished, and she
smiled down at him, and her eyes came over briefly to Tyren, and for
that moment it almost seemed the smile was meant for him—or he
could pretend it was, anyway. It made his heart lurch. It was gone
from her lips quickly as it had come, but it lingered in his mind’s
eye. He hadn’t seen her smile like that before—a real
smile, warm, without bitterness. She was beautiful when she smiled.

He said nothing, but when she’d packed up her saddlebag again
he went with her out onto the portico.

“If there’s anything I can give you in payment—”
he began, hesitantly.

She shook her head. Just like that the wall went up between them
again.

“I don’t want your payment, Vareno. You think every
little thing is to be bought and paid for, don’t you? All your
people are the same. Show us some Vareno gold and we simple-minded
farm folk will do anything you ask.”

He said, “That isn’t what I meant.”

She ignored him. “But who can blame you? It’s our own
fault.”

He looked down at her in silence. Words wouldn’t come. All he
could think of, suddenly, was the way she’d smiled, and how he
wished she’d smile again. Out of the corner of his eye he saw
Aino coming over from the gate-wall and he turned his attention that
way, thankful for the distraction. Aino saluted when he’d
gotten close. He looked briefly to the girl before he spoke.

“Sir, there’s activity on the road.”

“I’ll come,” Tyren said.

He left Maryna there on the portico and he went with Aino up into the
gate-house to look out across the village. There were riders on the
crest of the hill above the village on the northern side, where the
thick black-pine forest closed round the Rien road: ten or twelve of
them spread out in a ragged line across the road, just sitting their
horses, watching the village and the fort. There were men on foot
behind them. He couldn’t tell the number from here. As many
again as the horsemen, maybe more.

“Rebels, sir?” said Aino, quietly.

He nodded wordlessly, his heart quickening. No way to make out their
faces at this distance, but the one he took to be the leader, sitting
his horse a little way forward from the rest, wasn’t a big man,
and it seemed to Tyren he was hunched over in his saddle, as though
nursing a lingering wound. He straightened as Tyren watched, urging
his horse forward down the road towards the village. The others fell
in behind him. They came unhurriedly, keeping their horses to a walk
so the men on foot could keep pace.

Aino said, “Why do they show themselves, sir?”

He didn’t say anything right away. He knew, of course—all
at once, but with tight-hearted certainty. He knew Mægo Sarre
was there and he knew why they were coming down to the village in
full daylight. It was falling into place, now, all of it, all of the
pieces—the attack in the night, the lack of word from Muryn.
Magryn. He couldn’t explain it to Aino, not all of it, but he
knew.

There were hoof beats in the yard below and he looked down to see
Maryna taking her shaggy-coated horse out through the gate at a run.
Something stuck in his throat all at once—a sudden knotting of
regret he hadn’t had the chance to finish words with her.
Didn’t even know what he’d wanted to say. Maybe there was
nothing left to say. But the regret was thick in his throat just the
same. No chance now, maybe never again. This day would change things.

“Call the men to arms, Corporal,” he said to Aino,
tightly. “Archers on the wall. Do it quickly.”

He went down into the yard to find Verio. He went to the mess first,
because it was nearing meal-time. Afterward, not finding him, he went
through the headquarters and then out to the stable to look along the
stall row. Verio’s horse was there. The stall where Maryna’s
horse had been put up stood empty and silent in the dim light and
he’d have passed it by except he saw there was something lying
on the floor in the far corner. When he went into the stall to look
more closely he saw it was the edge of an indigo-dyed uniform tunic
coming out from under a loose pile of bedding straw.

He crouched down to clear the straw away, a dryness spreading in his
mouth and throat, a sluggishness in his muscles. It took effort to
move his arms, his hands, his fingers. He knew what he’d
find—knew it with sudden certainty, just as he knew why Mægo
had come down to the village today—but he forced himself to do
the work anyway. When he’d gotten the straw away he just sat a
long while and looked at it: Verio’s body, face-down; the blood
drying to rust on the dirty straw beneath.

He reached out a hand, finally, and turned the body over so he could
find the killing wound. He found it and knew it was a knife-wound:
too narrow, too clean for a sword. The blade had gone up between the
ribs and into the heart. He took that in with a heavy numbness
seeping all through him, pressing down on him like a physical weight,
remembering that day on the patrol path, the steel-bladed knife
Maryna Nyre carried under the flap of her shaggy-coated horse’s
saddle.

He sat on his heels and looked down at Verio’s bloodless face
while his thoughts stumbled on and on, dazedly. No different than if
he’d wielded the blade himself. He’d let this happen.
He’d chosen to trust her. It wasn’t even that he might
blame her for it. It wasn’t that she’d deceived him, led
him on so he trusted her. No, she’d told him from the beginning
where her loyalties lay. He’d known it and he’d chosen to
pretend it didn’t matter, because of the thing that had
happened in Choiro, and because of Muryn’s talk, and because he
didn’t want to be like Verio, or like Luchian Marro, or like
his father. His own willing blindness because he was afraid of being
blindly loyal. How long until he realized that? There wasn’t
any honor in it—standing aside to let others die for his own
foolishness. The priest had done his work well: all that damn-fool
talk of peace to take him off his guard. He’d listened to it,
let it blind him; otherwise he might have seen this and stopped it.
Verio had seen it. Not him. He’d let himself be blinded, and
Verio was dead for it.