His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (21 page)

Tyren directed his attention back to the common when Aino had gone.
There was new movement on the Rien road, horsemen and men on foot
coming down to the common from the northern slope. Cesini from the
hill country all round—Mægo had sent out the summons and
they’d come to answer it. He watched the newcomers with a
dryness in his mouth, a painful emptiness hollowed out deep inside
him. He might have prevented this, might have ended it that day at
Muryn’s. Except he didn’t fight like that, did he? As
Verio would have fought—loosing the sword of Imperial justice
against farm folk and wounded men. No matter it meant eleven of his
own men dead in this place, and more tonight or tomorrow or the day
after, until the last of them had gone down into the black earth—no,
he didn’t fight like that.

* * *

More Cesini streamed onto the common all the rest of that day, while
his own men worked to repair the gate: one man or two or three on
foot, or sometimes larger groups of mounted men, most of them garbed
only in their plain wool farmers’ tunics but some of them in
scraps of ancient harness, carrying whatever weapons they’d
managed to take up in a moment’s notice from their homes. By
nightfall, when he gave the letter to his rider and sent him out to
skirt round the village northward to the Rien road, the common was
lit all over with cook-fires and the smoke and the smell of roasting
meat were drifting over the gate-wall.

He half expected the next attack would come down soon as it was full
dark, the way the attack on the storehouses had come, and he posted a
double guard at the rear wall as well as on the gate in anticipation
of that, requesting a report from each wall at every quarter hour.
Their own evening meal was quick, cold, eaten where they stood. The
men were tense, restless, fingering their weapons and saying little.
The hours dragged on very slowly. He didn’t go to his quarters,
didn’t allow himself that comfort. He sat in the gate-house
with the men of the watch, his sword unsheathed beside him, his cape
wrapped tight about him against the night chill. His thoughts were
heavy, dark. Doubt had been gnawing away at him all evening now. Too
many of them, too many Cesini. And Mægo was right. He was
counting too much on the technical advantage of armor, of weapons,
counting too much on all those fool Choiro drills. This was Cesino
land, Cesino ground. For them this was something intimate, something
vital, almost holy. It meant nothing to him. A name on a map. Foolish
to think his better armor and weapons would be enough to counter
their zeal, their fervor.

Aino was standing before him and saluting. “Everything’s
quiet on the rear wall, sir.”

“Thank you,” Tyren said.

Aino saluted again and turned on one heel to go, but Tyren said,
“Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Sit a moment, Lieutenant.”

Aino sat down obediently beside him, settling his back against the
wall, crossing his legs under him.

“Yes, sir?” he said again.

Tyren spoke in a quiet voice, a dead voice, so the words wouldn’t
carry to the guardsmen. “He swore to me he’d grant us
safe passage to Rien if I surrendered the fort to him.”

“Sarre did, sir?”

“Yes.”

Aino said, “I take it you refused him, sir.”

Tyren leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He
jerked his chin up, sharply.

“I—wouldn’t consider it, earlier. But now—now
I wonder if that was foolishness on my part. Maybe I should have
accepted it. For the sake of the men, Aino, maybe I should have
accepted it. He outnumbers us, has us cut off. Four days until Rien
can be here, and his numbers will grow all that time.”

Aino was silent so long Tyren opened his eyes again to look at him.

“You think I should have accepted it,” he said.

“I think that’s the best Sarre might have hoped for,
sir,” said Aino.

“Then you think he’d have broken his word.”

“Easy enough to fall on us once we were out on the open road,
sir.”

“Maybe that was his intention. Maybe. I don’t know. I can
guess. But if I guess wrongly, Aino—if I guess wrongly it’ll
be blood spilled for nothing.”

Aino shook his head. “I don’t think you’ll need to
regret your decision, sir. His numbers are greater, maybe. But he’s
their leader, their lifeblood. Without him they’re nothing.
They’ll break if he’s taken down—at least for a
little while, time enough for us to gather our strength and prepare a
real offensive, now they’ve declared themselves openly. And if
we can’t take him down—we can last four days as we are,
sir. If they stir too much Carent will get wind of it. We’ll
last, sir.”

Tyren said nothing for a while.

“You’re from this mountain country, Aino?” he said,
at length, to let some distraction ease his thoughts.

He saw Aino smile in the torch-light.

“No, sir. I was born in Rien.”

“Tell me about your family.”

“Dead, sir. When I was young. There was sickness in the city.”

“I’m sorry.”

Aino’s voice was steady. “I was too young to know them,
sir. It’s no matter.”

“You’d kin to take you in?”

“My mother’s kin, for a while. They never thought much of
me. Too many mouths of their own to feed.”

“So that’s why you joined up.”

“Yes, sir. It seemed better than scraping up some living in the
streets, sir. I was glad enough to leave Rien at the time.”

Tyren said, sourly, “To leave Rien so you might come and die in
Souvin, Aino?”

Aino smiled again. “The governor’s son left Vessy to come
to Souvin, sir, so I was told.”

“I had my reasons for it. Or I thought I’d reason for
it.”

“Maybe I had my own reasons, sir,” said Aino.

* * *

Mægo didn’t make another move that night. Instead, in the
morning, he’d ridden back with Magryn to the near end of the
common, was looking up to the gate-wall and waiting.

Tyren rode out again on the fort road to meet them.

“You’ve changed your mind about the need for words?”
he said coldly as he reined Risun up.

“I’ve come to repeat my offer,” said Mægo.

“I remember it well enough.”

“Listen to me, Risto. There’s no need for this, you know
that. End it now and save the lives of your men.”

“We pushed you back yesterday. We can do it again.”

“Maybe,” said Mægo. “Maybe, for a little
while.”

“In four days you’ll be dealing with Rien, not just with
me.”

“You think Rien’s coming save you?”

Tyren lifted his chin. “They’ll have word of your night
raid by now, word of this attack by tomorrow. You don’t have
enough time, Sarre.”

Mægo was still as a statue a moment. Then, unhurriedly, he
dropped his left shoulder and reached to open the flap of his
saddlebag, not taking his eyes from Tyren’s. He took out a
bundle of papyrus sheets and held them up so Tyren could see the
broken seals. Then he let them fall to the ground.

“Don’t be a fool, Risto,” he said. “I told
you I held the road.”

The silence that followed seemed to stretch to the furthest ends of
the earth. Tyren looked down at the papyrus scattered in the mud and
said nothing, tried to show nothing in his face, to hide the sudden
dry-mouthed fear. Tried to think calmly, coherently. But the earlier
doubt sprang up again inside him, with renewed vigor. So Rien
wouldn’t come, or they’d come too late. Surely Mægo
was right, then, and Aino wrong: foolishness to take this further. No
reason save duty to take this further now.

But what was there save duty, after all? He’d thrown it away
once already, hoping for peace. What had that accomplished? Nothing
except that Verio was dead and Mægo alive. They’d found
him out, Mægo and the priest. They knew he’d hand over
the fort. They knew he’d lead his men to slaughter on the Rien
road. He’d do anything they asked, willingly, without question,
so long as he thought there was the least chance of peace in the end.
They knew it and he knew it. Because he was weak, just as Verio
thought—because he was too much a coward to do what must be
done, because he was the only one blind enough, stupid enough to
believe there might actually be peace in this place.

He looked back up to Mægo and shook his head. “My only
foolishness is that I didn’t end your life when I first had the
chance, Sarre. I won’t surrender the fort.”

“Then you’re the one throwing lives away,” said
Mægo.

He ignored that. He turned Risun to ride back down the fort road. He
dismounted inside the gate and went up onto the wall to watch the
Cesini form their ragged ranks down on the common. There was hot,
bitter anger inside him all at once, rising in his throat as he
watched Mægo ride back and forth in front of the mob,
brandishing his sword: anger at Mægo, at Muryn, at all the
Cesini, all their stupid bravery; anger at Verio, at Luchian Marro,
at the Berioni, at the fools in Choiro who knew nothing about this
place, about this war. And anger at himself, more than anything
else—his own stupid Vareno pride in thinking he could handle
this command in the first place.

The Cesini came forward as they’d done yesterday, moving as one
across the common and down the fort road, shouting for Sarre, for
Magryn. His archers nocked their arrows and drew back, waiting for
his order. His jaw was clenched tight, his throat thick, and for some
reason his tongue wouldn’t form the word for a long moment. He
got it out, finally, in a harsh, rough voice—“Loose!”—and
he watched men and horses drop away from the oncoming mob, here and
there across the road. The rest surged forward to the gate unabated.
There were more of them than there’d been yesterday; his
archers could still find their marks even with the Cesini pressing
tightly under the gate-house and along the base of the wall. But the
Cesini were better prepared this day. They’d brought grappling
irons, and the hooks came up so quickly and whelmingly that not all
of them could be cut away or thrown back down. In a little while
there was fighting on the wall.

He didn’t know how long he was there on the wall. He was
fending off blows from a Cesino who wore a corslet of red burnished
leather and carried an old Cesino long sword. He found himself being
backed slowly towards the steps and he lost focus a moment, sensing
the drop behind him. The tip of the Cesino’s blade nicked him
just above the left knee as he came upon the ledge—tore
crosswise through the flesh, burst free again. He reeled wildly,
feeling the nothingness at his back, and the Cesino prepared the
killing blow, brought the blade towards him in a wide arc. He
regained his balance and ducked, heard the blade whistle through
empty air above the crest of his helmet. He hauled himself up again
and reached with his left hand to pull the Cesino forward by his
sword-belt. The Cesino fell past him down the steps, sprawling,
trying to break his fall with his arms. He reached the bottom and lay
still.

There were Cesini coming up the steps now and Tyren realized they
must have succeeded once more in forcing the gate. For a while he
stood at the top of the steps to face them, pushing them back down as
he killed them. Below him, down in the yard, Aino and his men were
fighting furiously, struggling to keep the Cesini pinned under the
gate-house. He went down the steps to make his way across to them. At
the bottom he found himself face-to-face with a young Cesino. He
recognized Magryn. The boy was white-faced as he’d been
yesterday, handling his blade sluggishly, slackly. Tyren swept it
away without effort and stood there with the boy open, defenseless
before him. He hesitated, only a moment, but in that moment Mægo
was there.

Mægo shouted something to Magryn and the boy ducked quickly
away. Tyren didn’t pay him any more heed. He kept his eyes on
Mægo. He couldn’t yet feel any real pain in the knee but
in that little stretch of stillness he could feel the hot wetness of
the blood spreading over his trouser leg and it felt odd against his
skin. He moved his feet a little so he faced Mægo fully. The
paving-stones under the gate were slick with blood and he slid as he
moved, barely recovering himself before Mægo reached him. He
turned aside Mægo’s first stroke only shakily. The second
stroke he was better prepared for. He caught it with his own blade
and pushed Mægo back, brought the blade quickly round again,
slashed at Mægo’s unprotected chest. Mægo met the
blow, turned it away, lifted a foot to kick his knee. He couldn’t
dodge it. The kick sent pain searing through him, up and down the
leg, so agonizing that for a moment he couldn’t see, couldn’t
breathe. He staggered backward and fell against the steps, spreading
out his arms frantically to catch himself, nearly losing his grip on
his sword. He swung the blade wildly, instinctively. Mægo
sprang back too late; the steel slid under his ribs, lodged there
below his breastbone. Tyren twisted the blade and jerked it free.
Mægo went down soundlessly to his knees, struggling to keep his
sword steady in his right hand, to hold himself up with his left. He
seemed confused at his inability to push himself back up onto his
feet. Tyren rolled over, got up. The knee was still throbbing
painfully. He put out a hand to the wall to steady himself. When he
had his balance again he lifted his blade and brought it down on the
wrist of Mægo’s sword hand. Then he pushed Mægo
down onto his back on the paving-stones.

The fighting was still raging all round him, round the gate, but the
roar quieted now in his ears. He was aware of nothing except the
sword, heavy in his hand, and Mægo lying there on the
paving-stones before him. Mægo was clenching the stump of his
right arm tightly in his left hand and blood was running out between
his fingers, trickling from the corners of his mouth. He spit it out,
swallowed. He looked up to Tyren, leaning back his head against the
paving-stones as though suddenly weary. He said nothing. Tyren looked
back at him. There was a painful tightness in his chest, in his
throat. For a long moment he couldn’t move, couldn’t
bring himself to finish it. He stood frozen, dumb, the blood pounding
loudly in his ears, his mouth dry. Then he clenched his teeth and
raised the blade two-handed and drove the tip into Mægo’s
heart.