My first full wakefulness, then, came a day and two nights later, when the hut was silent except for the soft snore of a guard nearby.
Some time during my sleep I had been transferred onto a cot, for I was several inches from the floor. I was still lying on my side. I shifted my eyes – the only part of my body I could bear to move – and looked around me. All about the room I could see the dark shapes of men lying on the floor on thin pallets, covered by the same sort of rough blankets that now covered my back and scratched at my wound bandages. Red embers, as small as demon's eyes, glowed from the central hearth, casting a light as dim as twilight shadows. I was placed close to the fire, facing toward the open hut door that pulled wind-whistles in from the mountains. A sound behind me, as soft as a sigh, almost caused me to jerk my head around, but in the next moment, the source of the sound came round to my front, looked down at me for a moment silently, then sat down on the floor in front of me. He was holding two cups and two long flasks, as tall as pitchers.
"Wild-berry or wall-vine?" asked Carle, holding the flasks forward for my inspection. "We drink both here in the mountains; you have your choice."
"What is wall-vine?" I asked, trying to keep my voice as low as Carle's so that I wouldn't wake the others.
"It's an Emorian wine."
"I'll take that one," I replied quickly. I was aware that I was being tested, but I would have made the same choice in any case. My father has no taste for Emorian wine, so this was the first time I had been granted the opportunity to taste an Emorian vintage.
It was hard to tell from Carle's expression whether I had passed the test. He handed me the flask; it was so warm to the touch that I knew he must have heated it by the central hearth-fire nearby, which was filling the room with a mist of smoke. Somewhere above us, the smoke-hole whistled from the night wind.
Carle was sitting to the side of the cot, so I had not even needed to raise my head in order to see him. Now, with a movement that sent pain down my spine like white lightning, I propped myself up on one elbow and sipped from the flask.
I tasted green meadows. Green meadows, and dew shining under the dawn sun, and just a touch of the sweetness found in white clover. I looked up at Carle, who was sipping silently from his own flask, and I said with surprise, "This is good!"
He didn't quite smile, but I thought I saw a spark of satisfaction flare in his eyes. "I've always thought so," he replied. "Of course, it takes some Koretians a while to adjust to wall-vine wine. A lot of them think that the taste is too bland."
I shook my head, sipping from the flask again. The wine was like cool water compared to the fire of wild-berry wine; it blended well with the soft breathing of the sleeping patrol guards and the hushed sigh of the wind. Faintly on the border of the wind, I heard a short whistle, and the whistled reply.
"I lied to you, you know."
My gaze returned to Carle. He had set the flask upright on the floor and was sitting more stiffly than before. When I made no reply, he said carefully, "Emorian judges have leeway in how hard a sentence they impose. The lieutenant could have given you anything between twenty and sixty lashes. He chose to give you forty lashes; it had nothing to do with you being Koretian."
My mind was still befogged with the drugged wine; I groped toward a coherent thought. When I still did not speak, Carle said, with his spine now as stiff as a black mountain, "I told the lieutenant afterwards what I'd done, and he called the patrol together so that he could give me a public reprimand. He said that, the next time I disobeyed his orders in such a manner, he'd have me stripped of my rank." There was a pause, during which a fire-breath of smoke passed between us; then Carle concluded, "He didn't tell me I must apologize to you, but that was obvious enough. So I'm sorry. I behaved in a manner unworthy of one of the Chara's soldiers."
I couldn't think of anything to say at first. I had thought that Carle was approaching me of his own free will, but now it appeared that he was talking to me only out of a sense of duty toward his official. Carle was still sitting as rigidly, as though he were pinioned to a wall, though, so I finally said, in a stumbling manner, "Well, that's all right. It doesn't matter."
Carle's face grew as dark as the Jackal's face. "Of course it matters!" he said in a voice that might as well have been a shout, though both of us had been speaking softly all this while. "I disobeyed my army official. My crime is greater than yours, since you owed no duty to Fowler."
"No, I mean— I only meant that I've done things wrong before too. Gone against my duty."
Something melted in Carle's spine. He reached forward for his flask, though his gaze remained upon me. "You mean your broken blood vow?" he said. "Would you like to tell me about that?"
I did, very much – that is to say, I had wanted for days now to ask another person's opinion of what I had done. If I had still owed any duty to the gods, I would have sought out a priest before this. Still I hesitated, not wishing to bore a stranger with my life's troubles.
In the end, I gave him the minimum he needed to understand my tale: my friendship with Fenton, Hamar's death, the blood feud, Fenton's death, my father and the blood vow, and finally, my moment of revelation concerning the gods. By the time I was through, the fire-logs had settled lower in their bed, and Carle had his legs spread out upon the floor.
He was silent for a while after I finished, and I felt a tightness in my chest, wondering how he regarded the revelation of how far my dishonor extended. His gaze remained fixed on his flask, untouched for some time, and then rose to meet mine. "I was thinking about Fenton," he said. "He was a good man; he didn't deserve to die that way."
"Well, yes . . ." I stopped, bewildered. Something deeper than sympathy for a stranger's death was etched into the lines of Carle's face.
He started to raise the flask to his lips, then abandoned it, saying softly, "Fenton was my father's slave. I'm the boy that Fenton told you about, the one who helped him escape." He took hold of the flask again, but did not raise it. "The lieutenant is Quentin, the other boy Fenton mentioned . . . though I don't advise you to call the lieutenant by his name. He comes from a long line of patrol guards named Quentin, and I don't think he likes to be reminded of his heritage."
"But . . ." My bewilderment had reached its peak; I had forgotten, now, the fire burning my back. "But Fenton said that his master's son lost his opportunity to join the patrol."
Carle shrugged. "The patrol is more forgiving than its reputation suggests; you've witnessed that for yourself. Of course, it helped that Quentin was willing to speak on my behalf."
I stared at Carle. His body was being licked by the flicker of the fire, turning his skin golden and highlighting the copper in his hair. There was a watchfulness to his eyes I had not noticed before, a patience that I guessed had been hard learned. I felt a shiver join the pain along my back as I remembered where I had seen that watchfulness last. I ought to have noticed before his resemblance to Fenton.
"But—" My voice staggered to a halt.
"Yes?" Carle turned his gaze toward the men around us. One of them murmured in his sleep, while another snored softly. At the front of the hut, the door was open a crack, and the smoke was edging through it.
"It seems so odd, you helping Fenton to escape to Koretia, then Fenton helping me escape to Emor, and us meeting this way . . ."
Carle shrugged, picking up his flask and running his fingers along the leather. "It's not so strange if you think about it. The patrol is the key in both cases. I was able to help Fenton escape because I wished to join the patrol, so I'd memorized the patrol whistles. You were nearly able to pass the patrol because of the patrol whistles I'd taught Fenton. It's just a coincidence." His gaze returned home to me. "I hope you're not going to say that it was the will of the gods that we met."
His brows were drawn low now; I wondered whether this was what lay behind his watchfulness. "I'm not a servant of the gods any more," I said quickly, as though that answered his question.
Carle nodded. His gaze fell to his flask, and he began tracing its outline once more. After a while, he said, "So . . . you've refused to murder an old friend, which means that your family believes that you've been cursed by the gods. If your family finds you, they'll murder you in order to please their gods. That's what it comes down to in the end?"
It was odd, hearing him describe my dilemma that way. Having witnessed for myself how the Chara's law worked, I could see now how the workings of the gods' law would appear to an Emorian, yet dimly I felt that Carle wasn't being entirely fair to the Koretian perspective on what I had done.
My hesitation must have seemed like unwillingness to speak of the shadow of my fate, for Carle didn't await an answer, but instead added, "So you're emigrating to Emor, both to escape your family and to live in a land where blood feuds are forbidden."
"Yes," I said, relieved that Carle understood. "I want to live under the Chara's law. The lieutenant . . . Quentin . . . he hasn't changed his mind about letting me enter Emor, has he?"
Carle shook his head, his gaze still carefully fixed on the flask. "Have you decided what you'll do there?"
"Find out more about the law," I said promptly.
The side of Carle's mouth twitched slightly. "I meant, have you decided what sort of work you'll take up? Are you trained for a trade?"
"No," I said, "not really." This was a matter that had begun to worry me in the day before I met the patrol. Absorbed as I had been by Fenton's tutoring, and confident that my family would continue to support me once I came of age, I had thought that there was no great rush in deciding upon my life's work. Then, with Hamar's death, it had seemed that the matter was decided for me. Now I was beginning to realize, with a chill, that I was in a position frightening for a young man of my age: I had no special skills, nor any money by which to apprentice myself. Could I perhaps work the fields, doing some lowly manual labor? And if so, would that leave me enough time to learn about the law? For my experiences at my trial had only whetted my appetite to learn more, and I was rapidly realizing that my need for food to feed my body was less than my need for the law to fill my spirit.
"We've been talking about you while you were asleep."
I looked up, startled out of my silence, to find that Carle's gaze was now speared upon me. He must have read the confusion in my expression, for he added patiently, "The patrol. We've been discussing you. Disagreeing about you."
"Oh?" I said faintly, unsure what this disagreement signified. Could it be that Lieutenant Quentin did not have the power alone to allow me to enter Koretia? Did the whole patrol have to vote on the matter?
"Yes." Carle's gaze rose up toward the rafters, where the smoke was rising. "We can't agree, you see, on your character. The majority of the guards are most impressed by your skill with a dagger, and by the way in which you almost managed to fool us. They say that your character is shown by your boldness and your determination. Quentin, though, disagrees; he thinks that your character is best shown by your behavior during your trial. He says that he has never before placed on trial a prisoner who showed so much honesty and so much thirst for knowledge of the law. As for myself— Well, you can guess what impressed me most."
He paused, and I wondered whether I was coming down with a fever; my skin had turned as hot as an oven. With his eyes still tilted up toward the dark ceiling, Carle concluded, "Though we can't agree on whether you're most distinguished in honor by your resolve or your love of the law or your courage, we're all agreed about one thing: that you should be offered the opportunity to join the patrol."
"The
patrol
?" My voice, which was still in the process of taking on manly tones, squeaked as I spoke, causing the guard nearest me to sigh and turn over. I lowered my voice and said, "But how could I—? I mean, I attacked a patrol guard— Surely it can't be that easy to join the patrol."
"Oh, it's not." My reaction had evidently reassured Carle, for he looked back down at me and sipped from his flask. I could see a spark of amusement in his eyes. "The Chara's border mountain patrol receives more applications for entrance than any other unit in the Emorian army; even though nine out of ten of the applications are rejected immediately, we still make it hard for qualified candidates to be accepted. For one thing, youthful vigor is needed for this sort of work, so all applicants must be between their sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays. You're qualified that way, aren't you?"
Something in his expression told me that he was hoping I would lie if I wasn't. "I am," I assured him. "The day Hamar was killed – that was my coming-of-age day, my sixteenth birthday."
Carle nodded. "You need to be skilled with your blade. Well, Fowler can give witness that you are qualified in that respect. You need to speak Common Koretian and be familiar with Koretian customs; that eliminates most of our candidates, but of course that isn't a problem for you. You even know the Border Koretian dialect, which few Emorians do. You need to be the sort of man who would show supreme loyalty to the Chara—" He stopped, reading something in my face, and said in a softer voice, "That's not something any of us can judge for ourselves. Quentin says you're qualified in that respect, and he's the best judge of men I know. . . . There are several dozen more qualifications, but I'll save time by saying that you qualify in all of the ways that matter. The question is . . ." He placed his flask on the floor and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "The question is whether you would want to join the patrol."
I suppose that my face must have been expressive, for Carle chuckled lightly. "I don't want to leave you with the impression that the border mountain patrol is like a light game of Hunter and Hunted."
I had no idea what he was talking about, but feared showing my ignorance, so I simply said, "I realize that the consequences for dealing poorly with a border-breacher can be deadly."
"Well, yes." For a moment, there was a twist to Carle's mouth that made my breath catch within my throat; then Carle turned, threw back onto the fire a branch that had slid off – we were that close to the flames – and said, "But the danger doesn't just come from the breachers. Adrian, the border mountain patrol is the oldest army unit in the world. Our origins go right back to the earliest days of Emor. So we have traditions, and we have a reputation to uphold. As a result, you're not going to find it easy to accept the strictness of the patrol's discipline. Quite frankly, even I find it a trial sometimes, and I'm as pure-blooded an Emorian as any man can be."