His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (4 page)

They stopped from time to time—mid-morning, noon,
mid-afternoon—to rest and water the horses and to let them
graze along the roadside. He tried, the first few times, to make some
conversation with the Cesino slave, speaking in the native tongue, a
little ashamed of the shortness with which he’d spoken to him
yesterday. But the Cesino never answered him a word and after those
first few tries Tyren didn’t press him. In truth he was ashamed
the slave was here at all. He was sharply aware of his own hypocrisy.
He’d commanded Cesino soldiers in his time at Vione and they’d
been good men. He’d respected them, had earned their respect.
He’d been punished now for standing up for one of them to that
bastard Luchian Marro. Hypocritical to treat this Cesino as though
none of that mattered, as though it didn’t make a difference to
him. Easy, of course, to dismiss it as the hypocrisy of the world in
general, because this was what the Empire thought of Cesini when you
got down to the bare truth of the thing: unlettered savages who’d
still be living in their skin huts or mountain caves, fighting
amongst themselves like dogs over table scraps, if the Empire hadn’t
come in force, if there were not the Empire to keep order now. No
matter some of them wore the harness of the Imperial military, gave
their blood in its service. They were inconsequential, like animals.
Slave or free made no real difference. In the end, in the Empire’s
mind, a Cesino life was nothing.

But it was more than the hypocrisy of the world in general, because
there was Cesino blood in his own veins—Varro blood, the blood
of the old Cesino kings.

It was Cesino tradition to say the Varro line was ended, because
Tarien Varro, the last king of independent Cesin, had died in battle
against the Empire, and had left no heir. He’d return to take
his throne when the time came, would come back from the dead to free
Cesin from the Imperial yoke. Until then the line was ended. That was
their tradition. Comforting, maybe, for them to think of it like
that. Dignifying to think of it like that. But that was only
tradition, and as with most traditions the truth behind it was less
glorious. There’d been a brother—the Traitor, the Cesini
called him. He’d turned against Tarien to fight alongside the
forces of the Empire, and had been rewarded handsomely for that
service, given the hereditary governorship of Cesin by the emperor’s
own order. He’d taken a Vareno name afterward, and a Vareno
wife, and he’d built the great house at Vessy in Vareno
fashion. But his was Varro blood, Cesino blood, as much as Tarien’s
had been.

That was long enough ago now that most people probably didn’t
give it much serious thought—most Vareni, at least. He’d
never given much thought to it himself, growing up. He’d had
Cesino slaves all his life and had felt no guilt for it. Tempting to
try to justify it, of course: Torien Risto had always seen to it his
slaves were treated fairly, had once dismissed a man of prominent
family from his guard for beating a stable-boy. It wasn’t
drudgery to be a slave in the Risto household. But however he might
have justified it once, he couldn’t do so now. It was different
now. The thing that had happened in Choiro had changed all of that.
Against his will, maybe, but it had changed all of that for him. He
wished the Cesino were not here, now, to constantly remind him.

* * *

Rain came softly and quietly before sundown and he knew they wouldn’t
make it much further that night. There was a farm house, a low
black-earth cottage under a roof of straw thatch, set back a short
distance from the road, down in a hollow before a stand of black
Cesino pine. Beside the house was a rough stable made of the same
black earth. He reined in the colt, considering the options in his
mind. He decided against trying to sleep out. These Cesino rains were
long and soaking. The family might be willing to put them up in the
stable; that would at least be better than a night in the mud. He
took the colt off the road and pressed him down towards the house.
The Cesino slave followed along automatically on Risun.

He dismounted in the yard and held the colt’s reins in his left
hand while he rapped on the thick oak door with his right. After a
little interval a girl of fourteen or fifteen years pulled the door
open. She had long, loose-falling hair, a wheat color unusual among
the Cesini, and she was tall for her age, gangling and elbowy as
though the rest of her hadn’t yet caught up. For a long moment
they just looked at each other, the girl leaning on the door as if
she’d fall back into the room otherwise, her eyes wide, her
mouth open. A woman’s voice floated through the doorway
suddenly, chiding the rain would come in, and the girl’s mother
came over to open the door wider and move the girl out of the way.
She froze when she saw Tyren. He saw her face go white.

“We were on the Rien road,” he said to her. “I
wondered if you’d some room to spare us for the night. We can
sleep in the stable if need be.”

Her eyes went past him, out into the yard, and she took in the Cesino
slave sitting there silently on Risun, and then she looked over to
the stable, and when Tyren turned to follow her gaze he saw there was
a man coming up from the stable with a boy of ten or eleven behind
him. The man was short and thick-set, kindly-looking though his face
was grave now. His dark hair and beard were streaked with gray. He
and the woman looked at each other wordlessly a moment and then the
man said, in a level voice, “You’re welcome to spend the
night, lord, and you needn’t spend it in the stable. Let me put
up your horses for you.”

The Cesino slave dismounted then, and Tyren gave the man the colt’s
reins and took down his bags from the saddle. The Cesino slave and
the farmer took the horses off to the stable. The woman was still
holding the door open, standing aside now so Tyren could go in past
her.

“I was just preparing the meal, lord,” she said, very
quietly. She was gripping the door so tightly her knuckles showed
white. She looked to the boy, who was still standing out in the yard.
“Geryn—take the bags for him.”

Tyren gave his bags to the boy and ducked in after him through the
doorway. Inside he took off his gloves, unpinned his cape, unbuckled
his sword-belt and his cuirass, looking round as he did it. The main
room was long, low, smoky, lamp-lit, divided at the far end by a
leather curtain hung on rings from one of the rafters. The floor was
hard-packed black earth. In the center of the room there was a heavy
wooden trestle table with long benches on either side and rough-hewn
stools at the ends. A broad fire pit was dug before the northern
wall, a flag-stone hearth round it, a lug pole built over it so
cook-pots could be hung over the flames. Bundles of dried herbs hung
so low from the rafters Tyren had to sidestep them as he followed the
boy across the room. The boy put down Tyren’s bags against the
far wall. Tyren laid his cape over them and set down the cuirass next
to them and propped his sword upright beside the cuirass. The woman
stood at the hearth now, ladling stew from her cook-pot into clay
bowls, and the girl was setting the bowls round the table, moving
slowly and carefully. There was tension hanging heavy as the smoke on
the air. Tyren stood with his back against the far wall and said
nothing and the boy stood a little way away from him, his arms
crossed tight across his ribs, with such a look of hostility on his
face that Tyren was amused a little, though he didn’t show it.
He wasn’t going to pretend ignorance. He knew well enough the
kinds of things his own people had done to earn that hostility.

He felt there was a palpable lessening of the tension when the man
returned, coming in from the rain with the slave behind him. The man
took off his own cloak and hung it on a wooden peg by the door and
went over to the hearth to dry himself, holding out his hands over
the flames. He said something low and quick to the woman in Cesino.
The woman made no reply but she nodded, shortly. She finished with
the stew and gave the girl an earthen jug of some drink to set on the
table. Then she stood stock-still next to the hearth, her hands
clenched at her sides.

The man said, “You can sit here, lord.”

They were waiting for him to sit first. He sat down on the stool at
the end of the table, where the man had indicated, his back to the
hearth. The man sat down on the bench directly to his left. The woman
went round to sit at the other end of the table and the boy and the
girl sat on the bench across from the farmer, taking their places
silently. The farmer looked up expectantly to the Cesino slave. He
alone was still standing and for once his gray eyes fell directly on
Tyren, wordlessly questioning. Tyren nodded, his mouth tightening. He
hadn’t meant to cause the Cesino any embarrassment. The Cesino
sat down on the bench beside the farmer and didn’t look at him
again.

He saw the man and the woman look at each other over the board as if
words were passing silently between them. The woman shook her head
once, tightly. Her shoulders were set very straight and stiff, her
back rigid. Her lips were parted just a little but she didn’t
speak. The man made no move for a long moment. Then he bowed his head
and cleared his throat and began to speak a prayer.

The words were Cesino but Tyren recognized the prayer at once. It was
a prayer for the restoring of Tarien Varro’s throne. His heart
went cold. A common enough prayer among Cesini, of course. But it was
still treason to speak as if the Varro line were ended, no less so
for being commonplace. There was Varro blood in the veins of the
Risti. Treason and sedition against the Empire to deny it.

Beside the farmer, the slave had frozen. Tyren saw his fingers curl
up and clench into a white-knuckled fist. Tyren looked to his face,
quickly. His eyes were down but his jaw was tight and Tyren could see
anger in the way he sat—tensely, not moving a muscle.

Finally the prayer was finished. The woman looked briefly across to
Tyren, as if looking to see what he might do, but he said nothing,
made no move, and he saw the set of her shoulders ease a little.
Maybe she thought he hadn’t recognized the words. He’d
recognized them, knew what they meant. He was torn inside. Surely it
was mere tradition to them. They spoke the words by rote, not really
even thinking about them, because it had been tradition two hundred
years now, since the war, since Tarien Varro’s death.
Thoughtlessness, nothing more. Foolish thoughtlessness, maybe, but
nothing more than that, in the end.

But if it were something more? If it were open defiance and he said
nothing, did nothing? Let it go unheeded this time and next time it
would be more than words. That was how rebellion started.

No, he thought. The fool hadn’t known it was a Risto sitting at
his board, that was it. He wouldn’t have done it if he’d
known. Thick-headed Vareno brutishness to think anything had been
meant by it.

There was silence a while after the prayer, except for the occasional
dull clink of a bowl against the table. Then the man spoke,
unexpectedly, and the woman gave a start when he did.

“You come from Chælor, lord?” the man said to
Tyren.

The Cesino slave had turned his head towards Tyren without raising
his eyes—listening, waiting. He’d taken his bowl tightly
in his hands but he made no move to bring it to his mouth.

“I’ve just come from Choiro,” Tyren said.

“You’re going to Rien?”

“Further. Souvin.”

“In the mountains?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve the look of the mountain people,” the man
said to the Cesino slave.

The Cesino put down the bowl and looked up, then. He didn’t
look at the farmer right away. He looked at Tyren.

“I was born in Souvin,” he said.

He spoke so smoothly and evenly it took Tyren a moment to realize
he’d spoken at all. When he did realize it he stared at him,
too taken aback to say anything or to care he must look a fool. But
the Cesino had looked over to the farmer now and of course the farmer
wouldn’t know it was anything unusual.

“This rain will slow you down, going into the mountains,”
the farmer said to Tyren.

He stored his surprise carefully away and brought his thoughts back
round.

“Maybe it’ll let up,” he said. “It’s
been a while since I was in Cesin last. I’d forgotten about the
rain.”

They ate in silence again. The woman stood after a while and came
round to refill their cups with ale from the jug. Her hands trembled
as she poured for Tyren. The man said, “It’s a fine horse
you have, lord. The black.”

“My thanks,” Tyren said.

He could tell the man was speaking to ease the tension, to keep the
woman steady; she was close to tears and perhaps in silence she might
build up to breaking. He hated himself for coming here, suddenly.
Should have spent the night out and never minded the rain.

When the meal was finished the woman and the girl cleared the table
quickly and silently, scraping out the bowls and washing them and
setting them up on the shelf built into the north-facing wall. Then
the girl took the boy down to the other end of the long room and drew
the leather curtain shut. The woman took out some woolen blankets
from a wooden chest against the wall and laid the blankets down on
the floor by the hearth. The man said, “You can sleep here at
the hearth, lord. I apologize we’ve nothing better.”

“Better than a night in the mud,” Tyren said. “Thank
you.”

The man and the woman went down to the other end of the room, the
woman putting out the lamps on the table as she passed, and there was
only the firelight; the rest of the room was in darkness. Tyren sat
down against the hearth and unlaced his boots. The Cesino slave sat a
little way away, his back against the long wall.

“So you can speak,” Tyren said.

The Cesino looked over to him.