His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (28 page)

“And my son?”

“Remains in Rien, lord. He was wounded; they’re giving
him some time to recover before he goes to the court martial.
Commander Marro has charged him with treason also—charged he
aided the Cesino rebellion in Souvin.”

“He put down the rebellion in Souvin. What does that Marro
bastard think he’s going to prove?”

“Forgive me, Lord Risto. Commander Marro claims your son
arranged to let the priest and certain of the rebels escape—that
he’d planned the thing from the beginning. He’s saying
that’s why your son went to Souvin.”

There was silence a while. Torien couldn’t find the words to
speak, just looked at Senna’s man dumbly, his tongue heavy, his
thoughts stumbling.

He gathered himself together slowly and turned to Moien. He spoke in
a clipped, cold voice. “See to his lodging and treatment. Then
ready horses. I’ll go to Rien and put an end to this.”

“That’s what they’ll want of you, Torien,”
said Moien, quietly.

The anger burst forth inside him all at once. “I don’t
care what they want. I mean to save my son’s life.”

Moien hesitated. Then he bowed his head and said, “Yes, sir.”

He went back briefly to the bedchamber for his boots and his sword.
He lingered a moment by the bed, but in the end he decided against
waking Chæla. He didn’t have the time now to explain the
thing to her, to give her some reassurance—wasn’t sure he
could find it in himself to do so. He buckled the sword-belt on his
hip and went out into the corridor.

Tore was waiting for him there. “What happened? Your guard
captain will tell me nothing.”

He went past Tore down the corridor. He spoke over his shoulder. “The
Marri have charged Tyren with treason.”

Tore came along quickly behind him. “Treason?”

“It’s a damn-fool thing. The charge will never hold, I’ll
see to that.”

Tore spoke up sharply. “Was it treason, Father?”

“The Marri will twist it until it looks that way. The truth of
it doesn’t matter.”

“No, it matters.” Tore spoke with urgency now. “It
matters, Father. Think about it a moment. If he’s truly guilty,
and we make any move to protect him, the charge can be laid against
all of us. Don’t let your grudge against the Marri blind you in
this, at least. If he’s guilty of treason let them punish him
for treason. He brought this on his own head.”

“No,” said Torien. “No, the Marri brought this on
him, and I won’t stand aside and let them do to him as they did
to my father and my brother. If you’re willing to do that,
Tore, you’re a coward, nothing more.”

Tore’s voice went suddenly low and cold. “Cesino rebels
killed your father and brother. You’ve let yourself be led on
with this delusion—for twenty years you’ve dishonored our
family, our name, so you could feed this delusion.”

“You forget yourself, Tore,” said Torien.

“No, I think I’m the only one left in this family who
sees sense. Do as you like, then. But when the Emperor takes the
governorship from us it’ll be your doing, not mine—certainly
not the doing of the Marri. Your own pride, your own blindness,
because for some reason you find it easier to believe Lucho Marro has
this plot against you than that Tyren might actually be guilty.”

They’d come round the atrium to the doors now. Another time
he’d have met Tore’s words, let the anger come spilling
out again. Right now he didn’t have the time or the will. The
old weariness had spread over him instead.

“I’ll deal with you when I return,” he said.

“If you return,” said Tore. “Remember the Marri are
dangerous, Father.”

Torien struck him across the mouth, suddenly. For a moment afterward
there was a heavy stillness between them. He was surprised by the
thing as Tore was; they looked at each other with a kind of
dazedness. Then Tore lifted his right hand to wipe away the beaded
blood from his lip. He smiled a harsh, humorless smile.

Torien said, “When I return—if I succeed in saving your
brother’s life—he takes your place as my heir, do you
understand?”

Tore lifted his shoulders. “As you wish,” he said. “I
want no part of the inheritance you’ll leave.”

Torien didn’t waste any more words on him. He pulled open the
door and went down the steps into the torch-lit yard, across the yard
to the stable. Moien had horses out in the stall row, his own
chestnut and Torien’s bay. The bay was already saddled,
tethered by the reins to the post of the stall door. One of Moien’s
guardsmen, shaken from sleep, still working at the buckles of his
corslet and sword-belt, came after Torien into the row and went
quickly to ready his own horse. Torien took the bay’s reins and
mounted and took the horse out into the yard. Moien followed him at a
little interval, the guardsman coming behind. They rode out from the
gate and down through the city to the southwest road.

He kept himself from thinking of Tore at first. There was what lay
ahead in Rien to think about: this treason charge, the court martial,
the Marri. But his thoughts drifted slowly back to Vessy, over the
long, dark miles, to what had happened in the atrium, and then he
could think of nothing else but that. If only there’d been more
time, if he’d had the time to reason with Tore. No—if
only he hadn’t wasted all that time, all those years, so it
wouldn’t take cold reason to bring Tore to his side in the
first place. It might have been different once, if he’d let
this thing go when there was still time, if he’d swallowed the
pride, the anger. But he’d held onto it instead, and everything
since then had been a narrowing, darkening path, and now this was the
only end, and he’d no other choice left but to meet it.

Moien, riding alongside him now, broke him abruptly from the
thoughts—purposefully, maybe.

“You know the Rien courts are all in the pay of the Marri,
Torien. You can’t expect justice from them, no matter the truth
of it, no matter how empty the charge really is.”

“I’ll speak with Lucho Marro.”

“He’ll use it against you if you try to bribe him. At the
least he’ll be able to say the governorship should be taken
from you. More likely he’ll appeal for your execution.”

“I’ve no intention of bribing him,” said Torien. He
spoke flatly, indifferently. His thoughts were already running
elsewhere again. “There’s no need for it. He and Berion
need the army behind them if they hope to move against the Senate,
and there are still far too many men in the army who’ll swear
loyalty to me when it comes down to it, when the truth comes out.”

“I believed that before tonight,” said Moien. “But
they rid themselves of Senna easily enough.”

Torien ignored that. “Sere,” he said.

“What is it?”

“If I fail, Sere, swear to me you’ll see to my family. I
charge you with that. If I fail in this I want you to return at once
to Vessy and see to their protection. Viere may be willing to help
you.”

Moien looked over to him sharply. “Then you’re expecting
to fail,” he said.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Torien.

“Torien—”

“Swear it to me, Sere.”

Moien was silent a long while.

“I swear it on my life,” he said, finally, quietly. “If
that’s what you wish. God knows I owe it to you.”

“And tell Tore I ask his forgiveness. I owed him better than
this. I owed him the governorship. It would have been his if I hadn’t
neglected that duty. Tell him I ask his forgiveness.”

“If you wish,” said Moien again. His voice was tight.

“There are too many things that I wish,” said Torien.

They took the horses off the road, at length—ten miles or so
beyond Chælor—to water them at a swift, rocky stream
cutting north-and-south across the grain fields. He went a little way
away from the rest while the horses drank. He crouched on his heels
on the bank and watched the water swirl and churn below him, his
thoughts churning in the same way, heavy and dark as the
early-morning darkness round him. You know there’s still time,
he thought—time enough left to mend it with Tore. Not easy to
do, perhaps, but simple, at least. Simple enough to go back to Vessy
and ask Tore’s forgiveness himself. Simple enough to go back
and let the lie swallow him up and pretend all that mattered was the
governorship and his own good name and his duty to empire and
emperor. Because what had the truth accomplished in all these years?
What had this war accomplished? He hadn’t seen Tauren Risto’s
death vindicated, as he’d once sworn he would. He hadn’t
seen justice done. It hadn’t serve Berion’s purpose for
justice to be done. Twenty years and he’d accomplished nothing
but to destroy his family and his father’s name and his
inheritance, and Berion and the Marri had stood aside and waited
while he did it.

He could salvage some of it still. Not all of it—too late for
that. He’d put it off too long. There was the certainty of the
governorship and of Tore’s loyalty, if he’d give up this
dogged, futile hope for justice under Berion’s Empire—only
now, through his own doing, it came at the cost of Tyren’s
life.

Out of the corner of his eye, absently, he saw the guardsman bringing
the horses back up from the water. He heard Moien making his way down
the bank towards him, but he didn’t turn his head, didn’t
move. He was frozen with the indecision.

Moien, coming behind him, said, “Torien—”

He ended the word suddenly and didn’t say anything else—made
a thick, choked noise in his throat instead. Torien looked up to him,
saw him reel forward and land heavily on his knees on the wet black
dirt of the bank. Behind him stood the guardsman, drawing out the
bloodied blade. Moien swayed on his knees a moment, clutching with
both hands at the ragged hole in his chest as if to stanch the blood
that way. Then the guardsman pushed him aside with one upraised foot
and he went face-down onto the dirt, spreading his hands to break his
fall, but without the strength to push himself back up. He coughed
and shuddered and lay still.

There was no time to be stunned at it, even really to think about it.
Torien struggled up unsteadily to his feet, scrabbling for his own
sword—got the blade from the sheath in time to turn aside the
guardsman’s first stroke. He staggered backward to give himself
the chance to prepare his defenses. He couldn’t find his
balance on the crumbling wet earth and the guardsman’s next
blow sent the sword winging from his grasp. It landed a short
distance away, on a spit of pebbly sand at the water’s edge. He
threw himself down the bank after it, stretching out his right hand
until his fingers found the hilt in the gravel. He dragged it up
again and rolled quickly over onto his back. The guardsman stood over
him, sword raised for the death blow. Torien met the blow, as it came
down, with a wild arcing of his own blade. It was a desperate move, a
misjudged move. It left him sprawled open, defenseless, his sword arm
outflung, and before he could recover the guardsman brought his blade
back, brought it swiftly down.

It went wide of the heart; the guardsman had aimed the stroke with
some hasty desperation of his own. It took Torien in the left
shoulder instead, between the joint itself and the collarbone. The
pain seared through him, through his chest, up and down his left arm,
and blackness tightened at the corners of his eyes and he could taste
blood in his mouth from having bitten his tongue. The guardsman drew
out the blade, lifted it again, and Torien, gritting his teeth,
pushed himself forcibly backward across the spit with his heels—knew
he had to regain his feet if he were to live, knew he didn’t
have the time to do it. He pushed himself back, threw his weight to
the left. He slid down heavily into the water with the sword still
clenched in his hand.

The water was icy-cold and it knocked breath and movement from him at
first, like a blow to the gut. But he made himself move. He dragged
himself away from the spit and into the stronger current at the
middle of the stream, pushing with his feet so the current would
carry him. He couldn’t hear the guardsman behind him but he
didn’t let himself look back yet. He let the current carry him
a while and then he fought against it to the far bank and pulled
himself up with his left hand caught in some trailing roots, ignoring
the fierce pain in his shoulder. When he’d gotten up onto the
bank he forced himself doggedly to his feet, blinking the water from
his eyes. Then he stumbled round to face the stream again, the sword
ready in his hand.

He couldn’t see the guardsman right away and for a long,
uncertain moment he just stood there, struggling for breath in the
thin early-morning air, searching quickly with his eyes down through
the stream, along the opposite bank. Then, over the rush of the
stream and the heavy pounding of the blood in his ears, he heard hoof
beats. He realized belatedly the guardsman had gone for a horse—could
see him now, bringing the horse down towards the water at a hard run.

He ran. He didn’t let go the sword but he tore off the belt
with his left hand and let it fall so the empty sheath wouldn’t
swing against his legs. There was a little barley field full-grown
for harvest on this western bank of the stream, thick black forest
beyond, and he ran for the forest. It was dark enough still he could
lose himself amongst the trees. Distantly, dimly, he heard the horse
coming up from the water behind him. He didn’t look back,
didn’t waste the time. He crossed the field and came to the
trees, went weaving among the dark trunks, ducking low branches,
sliding over the wet dead leaves on the forest floor. He ran blindly,
heedlessly—didn’t know how far or for how long, except
after a while there was gray pre-dawn light round him, and the heavy,
expectant stillness of morning.

By then his breath was coming in great labored gasps, each gasp a
sharp pain stabbing through his lungs, and blackness was swimming
before his eyes and his legs were trembling. He was fiercely cold
from the water. He stumbled to a halt, put out his left hand to the
thick, mossy trunk of an oak tree to hold himself up—swore
savagely, with sudden frustration, as his weight fell on the arm and
the pain from the shoulder swept over him again. He sank down against
the trunk, turning so his back was to it. He had the sword in his
right hand still. He rested, sucking in his breath through shut
teeth, blinking, shaking his head to drive away the blackness from
his eyes, and he waited for dawn to come, to bring the guardsman to
him.