His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (7 page)

“How many men in the garrison?” he said to Verio as they
ate.

“Fifty-eight on the current muster list, sir,” Verio
said. “That’s not counting the officers or the civilian
labor.”

“You’ve been here long, Lieutenant?”

“Four years this summer, sir,” Verio said.

“You know this country pretty well, then.”

“Yes, sir.” Verio’s voice was flat, suddenly. “We
all know this country pretty well.”

Tyren said nothing to that. He understood what the man’s tone
meant. We know this country pretty well, sir, and you know nothing at
all. No use here for some rich politician’s whelp who’d
lost a dice throw or bedded the wrong senator’s daughter.

He concentrated on his food after that, finished it quickly, told
them he was worn out from the road and would be retiring early. They
stood when he left, dutifully, wishing him a good night in near
unison. He went back to his quarters and drew the curtain shut and
went over Verio’s words in his head while he undressed. The man
had reason to be hostile. Four years in this place and nothing more
than lieutenant. He should have had the command by now—and he
had had it, for two months, and most likely they’d all gotten
used to that, and now this unseasoned stripling comes riding in from
the parade-grounds with a slip of papyrus freshly signed and sealed
by some fat legate in Choiro. Four years in this place only to be
passed over for the command in favor of a coddled patrician’s
son. Yes, Verio had reason to be hostile.

Well, it just meant he’d have to earn their respect, show them
he could learn this country too, show them his upbringing didn’t
matter. Hadn’t really expected anything different, had he? He
was glad now he’d brought nothing from Vessy. That was another
world. Two different worlds that couldn’t meet. He wouldn’t
think about Vessy again.

* * *

In the morning he rode with Verio round the little valley, learning
the lay of the land, listening as Verio talked about the village
folk—wheat and barley farmers, most of them, but there were
some hunters and a tanner and a smith (the garrison has its own
farrier, Verio said). There was also the village lord, a Cesino named
Magryn, who was of the old-blood mountain people, descended from some
tribal chief or little king who’d ruled this black-pine country
before the rebel Anien Varro had united all the tribes under his own
banner—before Taigo Berion, the first of the Berion emperors,
had brought his army across the mountains to cow the Cesini into
submission. There’d been many of that sort of tribal lord in
ancient Cesin, but the Magryni, unlike most of them, had survived the
great war, had held onto their lands and titles, because they’d
swallowed their pride, and agreed to swear allegiance to Berion, and
still paid heavy tribute each year to Choiro. Traitors, if you
thought about it like that, but they’d survived the war.
Survived, and were powerful.

Verio took him to meet Magryn, whose flag-stone hall lay across the
water channel on the the southern side of the common. It was a
thoroughly Cesino-looking place, the ancient hall of the Magryn
lords. It had a crumbling stone gate arch and a close walled yard
overgrown thickly with ivy, and hall and outbuildings alike had low,
mossy thatched roofs and narrow, unshuttered slits in their
age-blackened stone walls for windows. Tyren disliked Magryn almost
immediately. He was short and sturdy, dark-haired like all the
mountain people; laughed loudly and readily, was eager to
please—greedy and therefore weak, Tyren thought, certainly
untrustworthy. He wore a thin silver circlet on his dark head, a
heavy seal ring on the forefinger of his right hand, an ornate silver
brooch set with garnets on the shoulder of his tunic. Tyren and Verio
sat at the table in the smoky great room while he poured them wine in
carved wooden bowls. He bowed as he gave it them and stood until
Verio told him he could sit. Then he took his seat with another bow
and a murmured ‘my lord.’

“This is Lord Tyren Risto,” Verio said to him as he sat.
“Our new commander.”

Magryn looked up quickly to Tyren’s face. His gray eyes were
sharp, appraising.

“Risto,” he repeated. “Your father’s the
governor, Commander?”

Tyren looked back at him evenly. “Torien Risto,” he said.
“Yes.”

“A great honor to have you in Souvin, Commander Risto,”
Magryn said. “I didn’t think they posted governors’
sons to places like this.”

There was silence a moment. Verio was amused, though he was trying
not to show it, looking down intently into his wine bowl.

Tyren said, “I serve the Empire as it has need of me, Lord
Magryn. My father’s name should make no difference to that.”

“Of course not, Commander,” said Magryn, smoothly.
“Forgive me. I spoke only in jest.”

He could tell Magryn was guessing at the reasons, putting things
together in his head. A Risto didn’t get sent to a place like
Souvin unless it were punishment for some misdeed. Magryn would know
that well enough.

Laying that thought aside, he said, “I can count on your help,
Lord Magryn, to ensure cooperation between the garrison and the
village folk?”

“Certainly, Commander,” Magryn said. “I’m at
your service, I and my household.”

“I’ll be glad to have dealings with someone who knows
these people well,” Tyren said. He didn’t bother to hide
his contempt. “Thank you, Lord Magryn.”

He went with Verio back out to the yard, to their horses.

“That’s the kind of Cesino I dislike the most,” he
said as they mounted.

“He has his uses occasionally,” Verio said.

“A man who sucks the lifeblood of his own people so he can sell
himself to Choiro?”

Verio shrugged. “He’s a Magryn. That’s what
matters. He has their respect. Makes our work a little easier—he
has their loyalty, we have his. You’ll find he’s useful.”

“They fear him because we prop him up,” Tyren said. “I
doubt they respect him.”

They’d come back into the heart of the village now—low
thatch-roofed stone huts scattered here and there across the grass as
if they’d just sprung up that way.

“How’s their attitude towards the garrison?” Tyren
asked, looking round. There were few people directly about. Most of
those he could see were out in the grain fields below the northern
hillside. The village itself lay still and silent except for the
sound of the wind moving through the grass and the distant ringing of
metal from the smithy.

“Quiet,” said Verio. “Mostly quiet. But the trouble
is, sir—the trouble is most of these people here, they show
themselves to be dutifully obedient, swear their allegiance to the
Emperor—and underneath it all, in their hearts, they’re
loyal to the rebellion. Easier for us if they were openly
hostile—easier to deal with. But instead they’re quiet
about it, and that’s harder to root out.”

“So there’s a resistance movement in the Outland.”

“Yes, sir. Small but persistent. Usually nothing more than
ambushing our supply trains or the pay wagon. Occasionally something
bigger. Last year they attacked a troop headed from Rien to Carent.”

“I didn’t hear of that,” Tyren said.

“In Choiro? No, in Choiro they keep the whole thing shut up,
probably. An embarrassment to admit something like that. Some
legate’s head would be off.”

Tyren said nothing. Verio glanced at him sidelong, decided perhaps
he’d said too much, and spoke quickly of something else.

“Ten years ago they thought they’d stamped out the
rebellion once for all. They caught the leader. Did you hear of
that?”

Tyren smiled. “I’d have been nine years old,” he
said.

Verio said, “Well, sir, they captured the leader. Here in the
village—a man named Sarre, Rylan Sarre. One of these damn fools
going on about the restoration of the Varri—of Tarien Varro’s
line.” He glanced over again. “You know the tradition,
I’m sure, sir.”

“I know it,” said Tyren.

“They made an example of him. Before my time, but they told me
about it. They executed him, and he’d a woman and a brat they
sold down in Rien. You’d think that would be the last of their
resistance, but it didn’t work that way. All these people
here—if they didn’t support rebellion before, they did
then. We lost some good men putting out that fire.”

“I see.”

“The garrison—I think they’ve learned to ignore us.
They hate us, maybe, but they ignore us. But I don’t think
it’ll always be that way.”

Tyren looked at him curiously. “You think they’ll rise
against us?”

“It’s been too quiet lately, sir. Yes, I think they
will.”

“They’ve a leader again, then?”

Verio’s lip curled. “A man who’ll lead them in a
fight? I don’t know. But I think there’s a priest here,
sir.”

“A priest?”

“They’re a cultish lot, sir, these mountain tribes. It’s
always their priests who are the goading stick behind the rebellions,
preaching Tarien Varro will come back from the dead to defeat us,
drive us out. Except for the priests I almost think these people
would’ve forgotten there was ever an independent Cesin.”

“They aren’t of the Church, these priests, I take it.”

“No, sir. No, these native priests are nothing but political
firebrands, sir. They’ve no other function.”

“And you think there’s one here?”

“Yes, sir, I do. Magryn denies it, tells me it’s no
matter. I think he’s afraid, in truth. If we kill a priest
it’ll turn the village folk against him. That’s his
thinking. The fool. Easier to deal with an open uprising than this
quietness, I’ve told him that. And I’ve told him if we do
nothing they’ll rise against us anyway.”

“But you’ve no proof.”

“Sir?”

“You’ve no real proof one of these renegade priests is
here.”

“Ask Magryn,” Verio said. “Ask him of the priest,
watch his face. Watch the way he reacts. Proof enough. He’ll
deny it, of course, because of his people. But ask him, and watch his
face.”

“You think he’s right here in the village, this priest?”

“Maybe. Or one of the outlying farms. No way of knowing, sir.
It might be any of them.”

He turned that over in his head, carefully. “Outlying farms,”
he said. “How many farms are there outside the village?”

“Five, six. Up close to the Outland, some of them.”

“You run patrols through there?”

“Yes, sir. Corporal Aino takes the patrols out. He’s one
of their kind. He knows the country.”

“I’ll take the patrol out tomorrow,” Tyren said.

Verio said, smiling, “The garrison commander doesn’t go
out on routine patrols, sir.”

“Maybe my presence will make it clear to these Cesini I’m
serious about dealing with their rebellion,” Tyren said.

* * *

So the next morning he led a patrol up along the edge of the Outland.
Verio came too, to show he wasn’t above it—couldn’t
let the stripling outdo him. They rode up the western slope of the
valley, following the water channel into the trees. Eventually they’d
make a wide loop to the north, riding at a parallel to the mountains,
and come round and return to Souvin by way of the Rien road. The sun
was shining in a clear sky but a brisk wind was whipping down from
the mountains and even with the thick woolen uniform cape pulled
tight about him Tyren was cold. He didn’t want to think about
what this place must be like in wintertime. He gritted his teeth and
said nothing of it. He felt Verio was watching him, waiting for him
to complain. He didn’t look at Verio. He kept his eyes on the
mountains. He knew now why the Empire had never been able to root out
this Cesino rebellion decisively. Too easy for the rebels to hide in
this country, and you could lose a lot of men here, even in
summertime, if you hadn’t been trained for mountain warfare.
Too many trees, too many sheer-sided valleys, too much raw terrain
that was indistinguishable under the coverlet of the forest. In
wintertime it wouldn’t even take armed rebels to kill you. Draw
you in here and this terrain would do the work readily enough.

They turned north after a while; they’d go no further into the
mountains. They rode at the foot of a tall, tree-clad hill, on a
beaten-down path winding through the long grass under the
ever-present black pine. On their right-hand side, eastward, the land
fell steeply away back down into the valley. Verio, riding at Risun’s
flank, pointed down into the trees.

“That’s the farm of the Muryni, sir,” he said.

There was a little clearing cut among the trees, stone-walled pens
for sheep and cattle, a wheat field beyond. The farm house was built
simply of gray flag-stone and the stable, adjoining it, was a low,
round, earthen building with a roof of straw thatch. Chickens strayed
in the unkempt yard. Tyren could see the family out in the field,
weeding the wheat rows.

“Why not farm the land closer to the village?” he
wondered aloud.

“These are all old-blood Cesini, sir,” said Verio.
“They’ve been working this land since before the time of
the Varri, before the village was built up. They’re stubborn
about it.”

Yes, a stubborn people, the Cesini, Tyren thought. That was one word
to describe them.

One of the men said, “Sir, there’s a rider coming.”

He turned his eyes away from the little farm and looked up through
the trees on the hill. He could hear underbrush crackling. They
waited, watching. It was a young woman, and she wasn’t riding,
but was leading a small, sturdy, shaggy-coated mountain horse by the
reins; there were leather paniers slung across the saddle. She had
dark hair bound up tightly in a plait on her head, sun-browned skin,
was dressed plainly in a loose brown wool tunic belted at her slim
waist with a length of braided leather cord. She saw them before she
came down onto the path. Her steps slowed. Then she lifted her chin
to show defiance and turned the horse to walk down the path ahead of
them.