His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (20 page)

Aino was there, suddenly. He came up behind Tyren, stopping short
when he saw the body. He looked down at it in silence a little while
and then he said, “Who did it, sir?”

Tyren came back to himself slowly, struggling to think clearly. It
was imperative now he think clearly. He didn’t say anything and
Aino said, “Commander Risto—”

“You saw the girl leave,” said Tyren.

Aino was silent again a moment.

“They’re in the village, sir,” he said, finally.
His voice was quiet but tight with urgency. “The rebels.
They’re raising the people against us. I think it’s
possible they intend to move on the fort, sir.”

Tyren said, “The men are at the ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

He stood. The numbness was gone, all at once. There was a cold, sharp
clarity in his head now, though his heart was heavy and the old
tightness had crept back in between his shoulder-blades. He spoke
calmly.

“Have the surgeon prepare the body for burial, Corporal. Then I
want you with me on the wall.”

“Yes, sir,” said Aino.

He went to his quarters to buckle on his cuirass and his sword-belt,
moving unhurriedly, with deliberate patience. He pulled on his gloves
and tucked his helmet into the crook of his left arm. Then he went
back across the yard and up the steps onto the gate-wall. He stood on
the wall beside the gate-house, at the end of his line of archers,
and he looked out over the thatch-roofed huts and the fort road to
the common. A mob was gathering there now: men of the village,
perhaps sixty, seventy strong, armed with clubs or javelins or old
rust-stained swords, flooding onto the common like water at the
buckling of a dam, carrying Mægo’s troop forward towards
the fort. Mægo rode at the forefront, his head held high, eyes
fixed upon the gate-wall, so Tyren could see his face clearly. There
was another rider close beside him: Ryn Magryn, garbed in the plain
green-and-brown wool cloth of the rebellion, a sword slung across his
back. They were shouting for him in Cesino, chanting his name: the
lord of Souvin, a Magryn to lead us again, a Magryn to avenge Rylan
Sarre!

Aino had come up beside him now, stood with him to look down at the
crowd on the common.

“Lord Magryn,” he said, after a moment. There was
surprise in his voice.

Tyren said, “Yes.”

“And that’s Rylan Sarre’s son, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed it would be the two of them,
sir.”

Tyren lifted his shoulders stiffly. The coldness had spread all
through him now. He wanted to laugh, though there was no humor in
him, just a bitterness in his throat and the ache of the betrayal in
his heart.

“Sarre’s no fool. Magryn alive is more use to him than
Magryn dead, he knows that. It was one or the other before
this—loyalty to the rebellion or loyalty to the hall, to their
lord. Now they’re the same. It was the only thing going to
unite these people against us. Even after he showed them we were
vulnerable, could be taken at unawares—they weren’t going
to rise against us unless he could reconcile their loyalties. He knew
that. This is what he wanted.”

And you, too, Muryn, he thought. This is what you wanted all along,
isn’t it? Enough talk of peace and trust and justice to take me
off my guard—and then this.

Mægo had reined up his horse just beyond a bow shot from the
wall, his troop spreading out in a line across the common with the
mob milling restless and excited behind them. He hadn’t taken
his eyes from the wall; he was looking up to where Tyren stood. Tyren
met his gaze, lifting his chin a little. They looked at each other
across the common and the fort road a long moment. Then Mægo
leaned over in his saddle to say something to Magryn, and Magryn
nodded once, shortly, and they both rode forward towards the wall.

Tyren turned away from the balustrade. “Bring my horse,”
he said to Aino.

“Let me go, sir,” said Aino. “In case they intend
deceit.”

He shook his head. His fingers, working at the chinstrap of his
helmet, felt suddenly thick and stiff. “No,” he said.
“I’ll do this.”

He rode Risun out from the gate and down the fort road to meet Mægo
and Magryn. He reined up across from them at the edge of the common.
The mob quieted, watching—were perhaps beginning to realize the
full meaning and weight of their recklessness. The young Magryn had
realized it already. His face was pale, his hands white-knuckled on
his horse’s reins, his shoulders rigidly straight as a spear
haft. But Mægo was smiling. He’d bent forward a little in
the saddle again, his right arm crossed over his stomach, against the
wound, but that was the only sign of discomfort. His head was thrown
back defiantly and there was a burning in his eyes, an eagerness.
He’d been waiting for this.

“Commander Risto,” he said, in Vareno.

Tyren didn’t say anything right away. He took the time to
gather his thoughts, to put his words together clearly and carefully.

“What do you think you’re going to accomplish here,
Sarre? You’re just throwing lives away.”

Mægo’s smile widened. “No, I know the way you
think, Risto. You’ve the men, the armor, the weapons, your
training in Choiro. What’s a handful of Cesino farmers with
bows and hunting spears? That’s the way your people always
think. Otherwise you might have stopped us before it came to this.”

Tyren said, “Sarre—”

Mægo spoke up sharply before he could get anything else out.
“Save your words, Risto. I’ve listened to empty Vareno
words too many times before. Listen to me now. You’re
outnumbered, cut off. My people hold the road. But there doesn’t
have to be bloodshed. Surrender the fort to me now, lay down your
weapons, and I’ll grant safe passage to Rien to your men—and
to you, if you wish it, though I’ve heard the Empire doesn’t
deal too kindly with commanders who surrender and live to tell about
it.”

He was too startled at first to make a reply. He realized only slowly
he was staring at Mægo open-mouthed. Finally he managed to
laugh, though his throat was tight and the sound that came out was
raw, hoarse, more like a strangled cough than a laugh.

“You thought it’d be that simple? That I’d
surrender to you without any challenge, without bloodshed, and this
would be done with?”

Mægo shrugged. “It could be that simple, if you’d
put aside your Vareno pride and think for a moment. That choice is
yours to make.”

“What reason do I have to think you’d keep your word?”

Mægo drew himself up in his saddle.

“There’ll be no bloodshed if you lay down your weapons
now,” he said. The mockery had gone from his voice. He spoke
quietly, firmly. His face was stern and hard as stone. “I swear
it to you on my father’s grave.”

Tyren said nothing. A cold trickle of doubt had started at the back
of his mind and it was dividing him against himself now, wearing him
down, wearing away his newfound resolve. There’d been sincerity
in the oath. He was angry, suddenly. He should have refused the offer
outright. Foolish to ask for the assurance. Now the choice was
harder.

He spoke at last through shut teeth.

“You think Rien will sit idly by with Souvin in your hands,
Sarre? You won’t last a fortnight, even if you take the fort
now, even if you think to use Magryn to raise your people in
rebellion from here to Carent. You really think you’ll be able
to stand against Rien?”

Magryn shifted a little in his saddle and darted a glance to Mægo.
Mægo didn’t move. “That’s my offer,” he
said.

“I refuse it,” said Tyren.

“Anything for duty,” said Mægo. He tilted up his
chin and smiled. “Shouldn’t have expected otherwise of
you, Risto.”

Tyren said, “Sarre.”

Mægo had already started to back his horse away. “Speak
quickly,” he said.

“The woman. Lady Magryn. Let her go unharmed, she and her
children.”

The young Magryn looked swiftly to Mægo again. Mægo’s
smile had vanished. There was fierce, dark anger in his face all at
once.

“You understand nothing of my people, Risto, and nothing of
justice. Do you think I left them alive to kill them now? They’ll
be unharmed, and not on your account.”

He turned his horse sharply away before Tyren had the chance to say
anything else. Magryn followed him at once. Tyren jerked Risun’s
reins and took the horse at a hard run back down the fort road and
through the open gate into the yard. Aino was waiting for him, saying
nothing but questioning with his eyes.

“Brace the gate,” Tyren said to him, dismounting.

He went up the steps and onto the wall again. Mægo and Magryn
had ridden back across the common now and Mægo had drawn his
sword, was holding it upright over his head and shouting something
wildly in Cesino. A full-throated roar went up from the men round him
at his words. Sarre! they roared, brandishing their own weapons.
Sarre, Sarre and Magryn, Cesin! While they were still raising the
cheer Mægo heeled his horse round to face the fort again. He
let the excited animal dance quivering and shying beneath him a
moment while he had some brief words with Magryn. Then he let it go,
kicking it into a run, and Magryn came immediately behind him, and
the mob surged forward at once to follow, mounted and unmounted men
moving as one across the common and down onto the fort road.

There was a long, tense moment of waiting and watching, the
anticipation tightening in Tyren’s heart, the blood pounding
hotly in his ears, while the mob came rushing down towards the wall.
Then one of his archers said to him, calmly, “They’re in
range, sir.”

He said, “Loose.”

His archers loosed. One of Mægo’s horsemen went down with
a shaft in his throat and another went tumbling from his saddle when
his horse, struck in the chest, dropped suddenly to its knees beneath
him. A few of the unmounted men fell away here and there. The rest
came on unhindered, faster now, closing their ranks, roaring Mægo’s
name and Magryn’s. A flint-tipped spear came over the wall and
took a man in the gut below the edge of his corslet. He fell
backward, sprawling out over the walkway, retching blood. Mægo
and Magryn had already brought their horses under the cover of the
gate-house by the time the next flight could be readied. The mob
pressed close round them, up against the gate. They pounded on the
gate, threw their weight against it in hot, senseless fervor, and
through their fervor or their sheer numbers they succeeded in
buckling the braces. The great wooden doors trembled and groaned and
burst apart, and the mob came spilling into the yard, and Aino’s
men, standing to meet them, were swept back across the yard towards
the headquarters steps.

It was a dizzying blur after that. Tyren left the wall, drew his
sword and went running down the steps into the yard, into the thick
of it, and for a little while he could think of nothing but each
moment in itself, each sword stroke to be dealt and each blow to be
dodged. Distantly, through the din of incomprehensible voices and
clattering steel all round him, he heard someone shouting for him,
shouting his name. He turned, trying to pick out the shouter from the
flowing tide of bodies, and found himself face-to-face with a Cesino,
sword raised for the death blow—had only the time to stumble
backward a little before Aino was there, swinging his own blade, a
swift, fluid motion back and forth, so quick Tyren couldn’t
really even see the steel, just a flash of red-tinged light. The
rebel fell forward to his knees and then face-down onto the ground.
Tyren looked up hurriedly and dumbly into Aino’s face, saw the
tight grin there, the acknowledgment. Then Aino was gone again, back
into the blur.

Eventually the Cesini fell back, out through the ruined gate, some of
them taking up shields from his own fallen men to cover their
retreat. The dull roar in his ears quieted, slowly. He could make
sense of the sounds trickling into his head: the moans of the
wounded, Aino’s hoarsely shouted orders. He put the tip of his
sword down into the ground and leaned on the pommel a moment to catch
his breath, blinking sweat out of his eyes, wiping it from his face
with one hand. Then he pushed himself up and looked round. He was
standing in the middle of the yard, on the little gravel path running
from the gate to the headquarters steps. There were wounded and dead
all round him, his men and Mægo’s both. The gravel
beneath his boots was sticky, black with blood. He pulled his sword
from the ground and bent down stiffly to clean off the blade on the
tunic of a dead Cesino. He sheathed it when he was done and
straightened again and started picking his way across the yard to go
back up onto the wall.

The Cesini had retreated down the fort road to the common and were
holding their ground there. From the gate-house he could see Mægo
and Magryn moving among them, speaking to them, rousing them again.
He couldn’t hear the words but he could hear how the mob
responded to them: the same roaring shouts, the cheers. Their
appetites had been whetted now. The earlier coldness, forgotten in
the heat of the fighting, spread through him again, closed round his
heart. You thought that would end it, fool? It’ll take more
than a quick sally under the gate to end this thing now.

Aino came up beside him.

“I owe you for earlier,” Tyren said.

Aino shook his head and smiled. “It was nothing, sir.”

“What are our losses?”

“Five dead. Seven wounded, sir, three of them badly.”

He was silent a moment. “How many would you say are still fully
fit for duty?”

“Altogether, sir? Forty men. No more than that.”

“We’ll have to get word to Rien.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pick out a messenger. I want him prepared to ride soon as
we’ve the cover of darkness.”

“Yes, sir.”

He said, “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

Aino paused to look back at him. His face was blank. “Yes,
sir,” he said. “Thank you, sir.”