Red Country (2 page)

Firstly he taught me to sift evidence, to distinguish hearsay and fact, to accept only what could be substantiated, and of the rest to say firmly, “I do not know.” He showed me how to respect others' beliefs without blindly accepting them, and to suspend my judgment in matters where there could never be proof. He gifted me with a deep interest in the natural world, and the mental methods to order both these enquiries and their results. He taught me to argue by the rule of logic, the mind's rapier, and, best of all, to keep clean the windows of the intellect from superstitious and shoddy thought. He never tired of saying, “You can confidently state, ‘The sun rose this morning.' You cannot say, ‘It
will
rise tomorrow,' or even, ‘I believe it will rise tomorrow.' You can only say, ‘I hope it will.' Nor can you truthfully state, ‘It rose yesterday,' unless you were there to see. Belief is irrelevant, princess. You know, or you do not know.”

Taking his post seriously, he did not confine his teaching to the tools of thought. He had held power in Estar. He knew the bones of it throughout the Confederacy, and he anatomized them for me, a far more valuable grounding for a future queen than all Zathar's lists of battles and dynasties. Not that Kastir disdained the past; but in his hands it was important as the well springs of the present, not for the Who and When and How, but for the Because and Why.

For me he traced the rise of Quarred's Tingrith from the eight noble families' obsession with “birth,” Holym's elected Consul and permanent Scribe from the cattle-lords' insularity and pre-occupation with fighting their own floods and droughts, Hazghend's tyrants from their endless blood-feuds and brigand temperament, Estar's dogfights from the factions of money-lord and guild-leader and their secret wars for power. Always he saw with merciless clarity. “Men rule as they live, for their own benefit. In all history, look for the motive, princess. And look low, not high.”

So he dissected his own career for me, warning me that emotion must not weigh in the mind's balance. “What happened to me and why is of value, princess. How I felt and if it was justice are irrelevant. Learn what it tells you of Estar, and keep the knowledge for use.”

With the same clarity he exposed flaws in all the Confederate governments, Estar's turmoil, Holym's power behind the throne, Quarred's oligarchy, Hazghend's unsanctified tyrant, even Everran's monarchy. “One man ruling by right of succession, yes. Well, if he is efficient.” Kastir never used the word
good.
“If he is not, trouble and oppression. Always incipient trouble over the succession, and if he dies untimely, real peril to be faced.”

When I said in despair, “None of them are any good!” He merely smiled his cold, keen smile. “None of them are perfect, princess. This is the one case where you must fall back on beliefs. Every country believes its government is the best. I prefer to say, ‘Mine is the worst of all possible governments—excepting all the rest.'”

And we both understood without words that the debate was more than academic: that, one day, forms of government would be another of my choices, when I sat on Everran's throne.

Not that I thought much of that, for with a father just hale and heartily fifty, accession seemed many vague tomorrows away. However burdened by Zathar, I had plenty of free time. I played at life with my palace pack, as it is easy to play when you are a royal heir, young, healthy, carefree, and handsome enough for your needs. We might take Kastir with us, but we hawked, we hunted, we danced, we banqueted, we rode on every royal progress, from Maer Selloth in the south to Dun Stiriand at the limits of the north, from Meldene's gray hethel groves to the red levels of Gebria, and I was lucky, I know now, that in those years Everran's borders were quiet. We traded with the Confederacy, our wine and oil for Holym's cattle and Estar's merchandise, Quarred summered its sheep with us, and we tithed a quarter of the clip before they went home. Hazghend was only a bad reputation in the distant south. Nor did the Lyngthirans descend, as they do so frequently, over the northern border, and everyone knew we were safe from the east. That way the Sathellin carried our wine along Hethria's desert ways to a great nation no one else could name, but no army could have tracked their road back to us. The mighty Gebros frontier wall and Everran's doughty soldiers were waiting if they had. No, we were safe enough in our little kingdom, and we played as only the children of safety can.

All too soon that play reached its end. I was just eighteen when my father, climbing Asterne's hundred and fifty steps to watch them fly the kites on Air's day, fell down with a terrible pain in his chest and died.

I do not mean to say any more. He was my father, I loved him dearly. He was a good king, and he is dead.

Nor shall I deal at length with the mourning, the funeral, the pyre, the solemn procession to lay his ashes with those of Harran's previous heirs in the tomb at Asterne's base. It seems now as if that time is separate; shut away behind the ponderous bronze-studded door that swings to at my back with its grinding thump! Life begins again on its other side.

It begins as I look out over Saphar's roofs, sleek bright red from the first winter rain, over the Resh stripped to tawny dark-stippled earth beneath the pruned stumps of vines, down to the loop of Azilien shining steely blue beneath the steely gray clouds, and the backs of my mother and two younger brothers receding slowly toward the royal apartments. As I feel the weight of the royal coronet on my brow, the swing of the royal crimson cloak against my skirts, and I think, It is over. The past is past. This is Now, and Now is mine.

I was still the princess Sellithar, for tradition decrees that those already crowned keep the vice-regal title till they come of age, at twenty-one. It did not stop me hatching plans with infernal glee. A clean sweep, I wanted, harpers, door-holders, chamberlains, every crusted bastion of tradition gone. Kastir would help me. With his advice, I resolved, I would strip Everran's monarchy down to the fact. Slough the ritual, the formalities, the rigid, pointless, fossil program for every moment of my day, and become a ruler, not a figurehead so hobbled in robes I could not even walk.

* * * * * *

Needless to say, it was easier to plan than to perform, for every cleansing meant a painful amount of maneuver, adjustment, resettlement of superseded retainers, arguments with irate traditionalists. Or wounded ones, which was worse. I had hardly managed to cancel the royal harper's unquestioned right of entry to his sovereign's private apartments when the Quarred embassy arrived.

In the Quarred tradition they were, superficially, excessively polite. They had a “Note” in a huge parchment scroll bearing the seal of the Tingrith's ram horns, but they did not ask me to demean myself by actually reading it. They grouped before my high seat in the audience hall in strict order of precedence, and the eldest, who had the longest beard and the largest cauliflower of a turban, recited what their government had said.

Under the compliments and tautology, it boiled down to Quarred's concern for a fellow Confederate, intimately linked by bonds of trust and border and trade, now deprived of its noble lord. Here followed an oblique glance at past military alliances and a long eulogy on my father, whose effect I overcame by mentally writing between the other lines. Quarred summered half its sheep in our Raskelf highlands. Wool was Quarred's chief export, Estar paid weight for weight for it in gold. Their income was in jeopardy.

Moreover, civil disturbance in Everran might embroil the Quarred shepherds, refugees would certainly cross the border, punitive expeditions might follow, it could come to open war. I was just eighteen, and worse still, female. It behoved them to secure their pastures, their border and their purses by forestalling trouble and backing the legitimate heir.

“Well enough so far,” said Kastir, when we were alone in the royal presence chamber. “But not far enough. What more do you know of Quarred, princess?”

I studied the thick crimson Quarred carpet which matched the rosewood paneling's patina of age. It was made in Harran's day.

“The Confederacy is a balance,” I said, “and Everran is its fulcrum. Estar, Hazghend, Quarred, Holym. Whoever has Everran's support can tip the balance. And Quarred has always wanted to rule the Confederacy.”

“And so?”

It was just like our old discussions, except that now the examples, and the consequences, would be real. I thought aloud to the ram horns on the big red seal.

“And so the clever way is to arrive before Everran falls apart or any other Confederate takes us over, and offer me ‘protection'—in effect, annex me. Make Everran a province, and me a puppet queen.”

He smiled his cold, keen smile. “You were right, princess. I could teach you to think like me.”

So the embassy took back a note as flowery and euphemistic as their own, with grateful thanks for Quarred's offer of support; promises, should need arise, to call on them first; and a query, with many delicate circumlocutions, on whether they wished to forego the Raskelf pastures that year
. If, in your opinion, the flocks are in the slightest danger, we shall be more than willing to agree.

At which Kastir smiled again and said, “The sweet way to say, if you badger me, I'll tread on your toes. Deny you your pasture, which is more important than ambitions to lead the Confederacy. Quite right, princess. Aim low.”

* * * * * *

For the rest of winter I was busy traveling over Everran, and shearing away the business of tradition that had made those royal progresses as slow and conspicuous and predictable as the coming of the rains. I meant to be quick, unexpected, and anticipate my messenger's word. There was pleasure in the achievement. By spring, there was greater pleasure in feeling the Resh-lords settle back into docility, like a team that has just, at the back of the mind, contemplated rebellion when they first feel a new hand on the reins.

It was in spring that the Lyngthirans struck.

They too had heard the news, Everran's king dead in his prime, his heir an eighteen-year-old girl. They are nomads who move with the grass and the herds, and now a good season in Stiriand had brought them south to the banks of the Kemreswash, whence it is an easy step, after the floods subside, into Stiriand Resh. They came in force, five or six tribes' worth of horsemen thrown across the river in a night, whisking back with the vineyards and grainfields alight behind them, the gold and silver in their saddlebags and the women tied across their saddle-bows, showing me, for the first time, that I was fettered by more than the past.

“Why not?” I demanded of Kastir, who sat immoveable by the fireplace while I ramped about the audience hall. “I don't have to wave a sword to lead an army! I'm the head, not the fist.”

“Shall we consider the facts?” he said. “How far can you ride in a day?”

“Forty—fifty miles, if I must!”

“And the second day?”

“The same!”

“And the third?”

We looked at each other. Facts are facts. They cannot be denied for delusion, or desire, or even pride.

“I'll be in the base camp,” I said.

He studied the floor-tiles, rose and jade green, Harran's harp superimposed on Everran's shield and vine.

“Can you use a sword?”

“I can use a bow!”

“And a shield? Could you use one of the big phalanx shields as they should be used, to push a man backward, knock in his teeth, stun him with a hit under the chin, break his kneecap?”

“I shall be in the camp!”

“A postulation, then.” He eyed the rosewood roofbeams. “The Lyngthirans circle to make a rear attack. One of their favorite tactics. If they strike the camp by night, in the melee, how will you fare? If you are killed, how will Everran fare?”

Nerthor had inherited his father's post of chamberlain. He came softly in with a fresh jug of wine to set on the heirloom table. When he had gone down the walkway, I looked out over Saphar to the azure and lime of sky and burgeoning vines, and said, trying to restrain anger, which clouds perception, trying to accept facts, “Very well. I stay in Saphar. Karyx can take command in Stiriand.”

The son of my father's general had grown up with me, a lithe, dark, raw-boned young man still low in the army hierarchy, but a brisk, clever, fiery cavalry officer. Too fiery for his own good. He threw troops after the Lyngthirans across Kemreswash, was led into a plains ambush, horses and riders lying flat in the grass in a fold of ground, and had his forces massacred to the final man.

He came to report the loss in person. After he left the audience hall, Kastir shook his head at me.

I stared. Then I said, “Six hundred prime cavalry lost. A tragedy. A grievous blow to our army. A dangerous precedent for the Lyngthirans. He knows what he's done.” I saw Karyx's face, sallow, haggard, grief and shame bitten deep as if he had aged ten years overnight. “And if there were need to rub it in, it would be his father's business, not mine.”

Kastir shook his head again. Striving to flatten hackles he had lifted for the first time, I insisted, “He's a good officer. Too good to cashier for one mistake he won't repeat.”

“Princess,” said Kastir very gravely, “have I not shown you, there are mistakes no ruler, for his own sake, can afford to forgive?”

I waited a moment, since one should no more speak in anger than think in it. Then I said, “Thank you for your advice, Kastir.”

He bit his lip. At last he replied, “Princess, I hear.”

* * * * * *

The few remaining palace back-biters relished what they chose to see as Kastir's first reverse in his impudently assumed role of chancellor. Karyx returned north as Resh-commander, we increased the border garrisons, and for the rest of summer Stiriand was torn by a bitter little war. Hit-and-run raids, avoiding the garrisons to kill unarmed folk, damage the land, and cause losses among troops who could only chase the enemy fruitlessly back over the march, and then disengage. I did manage a garrison tour, which, if it left the troops unheartened, allowed me to see the situation firsthand. On the last night we lay in the keep of Dun Stiriand, the surly red border fort nearest the pass where Kemreswash heads; it was there the informer came to me.