Cook, Glen - SS - Soldier of an Empire

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SOLDIER OF AN EMPIRE
UNACQUAINTED WITH DEFEAT
by Glen Cook
The empire of the title is Shinsan-The Dread Empire. The soldier is Tain, disillusioned with his
past life and seeking peace and a new identity. But the difficulties of leaving one's past behind
are insurmountable and Tain must finally accept what he is-a soldier of an empire unacquainted
with defeat. For those of you who have read and enjoyed Cook's wonderful Dread Empire books, and
for those of you who haven't yet, here is another piece of that world.
I
His name was Tain and he was a man to beware. The lacquered armor of the Dread Empire rode in the
packs on his mule.
The pass was narrow, treacherous, and, therefore, little used. The crumbled slate lay loose and
deep, clacking underfoot with the ivory-on-ivory sound of punji counters in the senyo game. More
threatened momentary avalanche off the precarious slopes. A cautious man. Tain walked. He led the
roan gelding. His mule's tether he had knotted to the roan's saddle.
An end to the shale walk came. Tain breathed deeply, relieved. His muscles ached with the strain
of maintaining his footing.
A flint-tipped arrow shaved the gray over his right ear.
The black longsword leapt into his right hand, the equally dark shortsword into his left. He
vanished among the rocks before the bowstring's echoes died.
Silence.
Not a bird chirped. Not one chipmunk scurried across the slope, pursuing the arcane business of
that gentle breed. High above, one lone eagle floated majestically against an intense blue
backdrop of cloudless sky. Its shadow skittered down the ragged mountainside like some frenetic
daytime ghost. The only scent on the breeze was that of old and brittle stone.
A man's scream butchered the stillness.
Tain wiped his shortsword on his victim's greasy furs. The dark blade's polish appeared oily. It
glinted sullen indigoes and purples when the sun hit right.
Similar blades had taught half a world the meaning of fear.
A voice called a name. Another responded with an apparent "Shut up!" Tain couldn't be sure. The
languages of the mountain tribes were mysteries to him.
He remained kneeling, allowing trained senses to roam. A fly landed on the dead man's face. It
made nervous patrols in ever-smaller circles till it started exploring the corpse's mouth.
Tain moved.
The next one died without a sound. The third celebrated his passing by plunging downhill in a
clatter of pebbles.
Tain knelt again, waiting. There were two more. One wore an aura of Power. A shaman. He might
prove difficult.
Another shadow fluttered across the mountainside. Tain smiled thinly. Death's daughters were
clinging to her skirts today.
The vulture circled warily, not dropping lower till a dozen sisters had joined its grim pavane.
Tain took a jar from his travel pouch, spooned part of its contents with two fingers. A cinnamon-
like smell sweetened the air briefly, to be pursued by an odor as foul as death. He rubbed his
hands till they were thoroughly greased. Then he exchanged the jar for a small silver box
containing what appeared to be dried peas. He rolled one pea round his palm, stared at it
intently. Then he boxed his hands, concentrated on the shaman, and sighed.
The vultures dropped lower. A dog crept onto the trail below, slunk to the corpse there. It
sniffed, barked tentatively, then whined. It was a mangy auburn bitch with teats stretched by the
suckling of pups.
Tain breathed gently between his thumbs. A pale cerulean light leaked between his fingers. Its
blue quickly grew as intense as that of the topless sky. The glow penetrated his flesh, limning
his finger bones.
Tain gasped, opened his hands. A blinding blue ball drifted away.
He wiped his palms on straggles of mountain grass, followed up with a dirt wash. He would need
firm grips on his swords.
His gaze never left the bobbing blue ball, nor did his thoughts abandon the shaman.
The ball drifted into a stand of odd, conical rocks. They had a crude, monumental look.
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A man started screaming. Tain took up his blades.
The screams were those of a beast in torment. They went on and on and on.
Tain stepped up onto a boulder, looked down. The shaman writhed below him. The blue ball finished
consuming his right forearm. It started on the flesh above his elbow. A scabby, wild-haired youth
beat the flame with a tattered blanket.
Tain's shadow fell across the shaman. The boy looked up into brown eyes that had never learned
pity. Terror drained his face.
A black viper's tongue flicked once, surely.
Tain hesitated before he finished the shaman. The wild wizard wouldn't have shown him the same
mercy.
He broke each of the shaman's fetishes. A skull on a lance he saved and planted like a grave
marker. The witch-doctor's people couldn't misapprehend that message.
Time had silvered Tain's temples, but he remained a man to beware.
Once he had been an Aspirant. For a decade he had been dedicated to the study of the Power. The
Tervola, the sorcerer-lords of his homeland, to whose peerage he had aspired, had proclaimed him a
Candidate at three. But he had never shown the cold will necessary, nor had he developed the
inalterable discipline needed, to attain Select status. He had recognized, faced, and accepted his
shortcomings. Unlike so many others, he had learned to live with the knowledge that he couldn't
become one of his motherland's masters.
He had become one of her soldiers instead, and his Aspirant training had served him well.
Thirty years with the legions. And all he had brought away was a superbly trained gelding, a
cranky mule, knowledge, and his arms and armor. And his memories. The golden markings on the
breastplate in his mule packs declared him a leading centurion of the Demon Guard, and proclaimed
the many honors he had won.
But a wild western sorcerer had murdered the Demon Prince. The Guard had no body to protect. Tain
had no one to command.... And now the Tervola warred among themselves, with the throne of the
Dread Empire as prize.
Never before had legion fought legion.
Tain had departed. He was weary of the soldier's life. He had seen too many wars, too many
battles, too many pairs of lifeless eyes staring up with "Why?" reflected in their dead pupils. He
had done too many evils without questioning, without receiving justification. His limit had come
when Shinsan had turned upon herself like a rabid bitch able to find no other victim.
He couldn't be party to the motherland's self-immolation. He couldn't bear consecrated blades
against men with whom he had shared honorable fields.
He had deserted rather than do so.
There were many honors upon his breastplate. In thirty years he had done many dread and dire
deeds.
The soldiers of Shinsan were unacquainted with defeat. They were the world's best, invincible,
pitiless, and continuously employed. They were feared far beyond the lands where their boots had
trod and their drums had beaten their battle signals.
Tain hoped to begin his new life in a land unfamiliar with that fear.
He continued into the mountains.
One by one. Death's daughters descended to the feast.
II
One ivory candle illuminated a featureless cell. A man in black faced it. He sat in the lotus
position on a barren granite floor. Behind a panther mask of hammered gold his eyes remained
closed.
He wasn't sleeping. He was listening with a hearing familiar only to masters of the Power.
He had been doing this for months, alternating with a fellow Aspirant. He had begun to grow bored.
He was Tervola Candidate Kai Ling. He was pursuing an assignment which could hasten his elevation
to Select. He had been fighting for the promotion for decades, never swerving in his determination
to seize what seemed forever beyond his grasp.
His body jerked, then settled into a tense lean. Little temblors stirred his extremities.
"West," he murmured. "Far, far to the west." The part of him that listened extended itself,
analyzed, fixed a location.
An hour passed.
Finally, Kai Ling rose. He donned a black cape which hung beside the nearly invisible door. He
smiled thinly behind his mask. Poor Chong. Chong wouldn't know which of them had won till he
arrived for his turn on watch.
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III
Tain rested, observing.
It seemed a calm and peaceful hamlet in a calm and peaceful land. A dozen rude houses crowded an
earthen track which meandered on across green swales toward a distant watchtower. The squat
stronghold could be discerned only from the highest hilltops Solitary shepherds' steads lay
sprinkled across the countryside, their numbers proclaiming the base for the regional economy.
The mountains Tain had crossed sheltered the land from the east. The ivory teeth of another range
glimmered above the haze to the north. Tain grazed his animals and wondered if this might be the
land he sought.
He sat on a hillside studying it. He was in no hurry to penetrate it. Masterless now, with no
fixed destination, he felt no need to rush. Too, he was reluctant. Human contact meant
finalization of the decision he had reached months ago, in Shinsan.
Intellectually he knew that it was too late, but his heart kept saying that he could still change
his mind. It would take the imminent encounter to sever his heartlines home.
It was ...scary. . . this being on his own.
As a soldier he had often operated alone. But then he had been ordered to go, to do, and always he
had had his legion or the Guard waiting. His legion had been home and family. Though the centurion
was the keystone of the army, his father-Tervola chose his companions, and made most of his
decisions and did most of his thinking for him.
Tain had wrestled with himself for a year before abandoning the Demon Guard.
A tiny smile tugged his lips. All those thousands who wept on hearing the distant mutter of drums-
what would they think, learning that soldiers of the Dread Empire suffered fears and uncertainties
too?
"You may as well come out." he called gently. A boy was watching him from the brushy brookside
down to his right. "I'm not going anywhere for hours."
Tain hoped he had chosen the right language. He wasn't sure where he had exited the Dragon's
Teeth. The peaks to the north, he reasoned, should be the Kratchnodians. That meant he should be
in the part of Shara butting against East Heatherland. The nomadic Sharans didn't build homes and
herd sheep, so these people should be immigrants from the west. They should speak Iwa Skolovdan.
It was one of four western tongues he had mastered when the Demon Prince had looked westward,
anticipating Shinsan's expansion thither.
"I haven't eaten a shepherd in years." An unattended flock had betrayed the boy.
The lad left cover fearfully, warily, but with a show of bravado. He carried a ready sling in his
right hand. He had well-kempt blond hair, pageboy trimmed, and huge blue eyes. He looked about
eight.
Tain cautioned himself: the child was no legion entry embarking upon the years of education,
training, and discipline which gradually molded a soldier of Shinsan. He was a westerner, a
genuine child, as free as a wild dog and probably as unpredictable.
"Hello, shepherd. My name is Tain. What town would that be?"
"Hello." The boy moved several steps closer. He eyed the gelding uncertainly.
"Watch the mule. She's the mean one."
"You talk funny. Where did you come from? Your skin is funny, too."
Tain grinned. He saw things in reverse. But this was a land of round-eyes. He would be the
stranger, the guest. He would have to remember, or suffer a cruel passage.
Arrogant basic assumptions were drilled into the soldiers of Shinsan. Remaining humble under
stress might be difficult.
"I came from the east."
"Over the mountains?" Disbelief flavored the boy's tone.
"Yes."
"But the hill people....They rob and kill everybody. Papa said." He edged closer, fascinated by
Tain's swords.
"Sometimes their luck isn't good. Don't you have a name?"
"Steban." The boy relented reluctantly. "Steban Kleckla. Are those swords? Real swords?"
"Longsword and shortsword. I used to be a soldier." He winced. It hurt to let go of his past.
"My Uncle Mikla has a sword. He was a soldier. He went all the way to Hellin Daimiel. That was in
the El Murid Wars. He was a hero."
"Really? I'll have to meet your uncle." "Were you a hero when you were a soldier? Did you see any
wars?"
"A few. They weren't much fun, Steban." How could he explain to a boy from this remote land, when
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all his knowledge was second-hand, through an uncle whose tales had grown with the years?
"But you get to go places and see things." "Places you don't want to go, to see things you don't
want to see."
The boy backed a step away. "I'm going to be a soldier," he declared. His lower lip protruded in a
stubborn pout.
Wrong tack. Tain thought. Too intense. Too bitter.. "Where's your dog? I thought shepherds always
had dogs." "She died."
"I see. I'm sorry. Can you tell me the name of the village? I don't know where I am."
"Wtoctalisz."
"Wtoctalisz." Tain's tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables. He grinned. Steban grinned
back. He edged closer, eying Tain's swords. "Can I see?"
"I'm sorry. No. It's an oath. I can't draw them unless I mean to kill." Would the boy understand
if he tried to explain consecrated blades? "Oh."
"Are there fish in the creek?" "What? Sure. Trout."
Tain rose. "Let's see if we can catch lunch." Steban's eyes grew larger. "Gosh! You're as big as
Grimnir." Tain chuckled. He had been the runt of the Demon Guard. "Who's Grimnir?"
The boy's face darkened. "A man. From the Tower. What about your horse?" "He'll stay."
The roan would do what was expected of him amidst sorcerer's conflicts that made spring storms
seem as inconsequential as a child's temper tantrum. And the mule wouldn't stray from the gelding.
Steban was speechless after Tain took the three-pounder with a casual hand-flick, bear fashion.
The old soldier was fast.
"You make a fire. I'll clean him." Tain glowed at Steban's response. It took mighty deeds to win
notice in the Dread Empire. He fought a temptation to show off.
In that there were perils. He might build a falsely founded, over-optimistic self-appraisal. And a
potential enemy might get the measure of his abilities.
So he cooked trout, seasoning it with a pinch of spice from the trade goods in his mule packs.
"Gosh, this's good." As Steban relaxed he became ever more the chatterbox. He had asked a hundred
questions already and seldom had he given Tain a chance to answer. "Better than Ma or Shirl ever
made."
Tain glowed again. His field cooking was a point of pride. "Who's Shirl?"
"She was my sister." "Was?"
"She's gone now." There was a hard finality to Steban's response. It implied death, not absence.
IV
Steban herded the sheep homeward. Tain followed, stepping carefully. The roan paced him,
occasionally cropping grass, keeping an eye on the mule. For the first time Tain felt at ease with
his decision to leave home.
It was unlikely that this country would become his new home, but he liked its people already, as
he saw them reflected in Steban Kleckla. He and the boy were friends already.
Steban jerked to a stop. His staff fell as he flung a hand to his mouth. The color drained from
his face.
That Aspirant's sense-feel for danger tingled Tain's scalp. In thirty years it had never been
wrong. With the care of a man avoiding a cobra, he turned to follow Steban's gaze.
A horse and rider stood silhouetted atop a nearby hill, looking like a black paper cutout. Tain
could discern little in the dying light. The rider seemed to have horns.
Tain hissed. The roan trotted to his side. He leaned against his saddle, where his weapons hung.
The rider moved out, descending the hill's far side. Steban started the sheep moving at a faster
pace. He remained silent till the Kleckla stead came into view.
"Who was that?" Tain hazarded a second time, when he reckoned the proximity of lights and parents
would rejuvenate the boy's nerve. "Who?"
"That rider. On the hill. You seemed frightened." "Ain't scared of nothing. I killed a wolf last
week." He was evading. This was a tale twice told already, and growing fast. First time Steban had
bragged about having driven the predator away. Then he had claimed to have broken the beast's
shoulder with a stone from his sling.
"I misunderstood. I'm sorry. Still, there was a rider. And you seemed to know him."
The lights of Steban's home drew nearer. Boy and sheep increased their pace again. They were late.
Steban had been too busy wheedling stories from his new friend to watch the time closely.
"Steban? That you, boy?" A lantern bobbed toward them. The man carrying it obviously was Steban's
father. Same eyes. Same hair. But worry had etched his forehead with deep lines. In his left hand
he bore a wicked oaken quarterstaff.
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An equally concerned woman walked beside him. Once. Tain suspected, she had been beautiful. In a
round-eye sort of way. Doubtlessly, life here quickly made crones of girls. "Ma. Papa. This's my
new friend. His name is Tain. He used to be a soldier. Like Uncle Mikla. He came across the
mountains. He caught a fish with his hands and his horse can do tricks, but his mule will bite you
if you get too close to her. I told him he should come for supper."
Tain inclined his head. "Freeman Kleckla. Freelady. The grace of heaven descend." He didn't know
an appropriately formal Iwa Skolovdan greeting. His effort sounded decidedly odd in translation.
Man and wife considered him without warmth.
"A Caydarman watched us," Steban added. He started coaxing the sheep into pens.
The elder Kleckla scanned the surrounding darkness. "An evil day when we catch their eye. Welcome,
then. Stranger. We can't offer much but refuge from the night."
"Thank you. Freeman. I'll pay, that your resources be not depleted without chance of replacement."
There was a stiffness about Kleckla which made Tain feel the need to distance with formality.
"This is the Zemstvi, Stranger. Titles, even Freeman and Free-lady, are meaningless here. They
belong to tamed and ordered lands, to Iwa Skolovda and the Home Counties. Call me Toma. My wife is
Rula. Come. I'll show you where to bed your animals."
"As you will.. .Toma." He bowed slightly to the woman. "Rula." She frowned slightly, as if unsure
how to respond.
This would be harder than he had anticipated. At home everyone had positions and titles and there
were complicated, almost ritualized protocols and honorifics to be exchanged on every occasion of
personal contact. "They'll need no fodder. They grazed all afternoon."
One bony milk cow occupied Kleckla's rude barn. She wasn't pleased by Tain's mule. The mule didn't
deign to acknowledge her existence.
Toma had no other stock, save his sheep. But he wasn't poor. Possessing cow and flock, he was
richer than most men. Richer, in some ways, than Tain, whose fortune was in metal of changeable
value and a few pounds of rare spice. Which would bring more in the marketplace of the heart?
"You'll have to sleep out here," Toma informed him. "There's no room. . . ."
Tain recognized the fear-lie. "I understand." He had been puzzling the word zemstvi, which seemed
to share roots with frontier and wilderness. Now he thought he understood.
"Are you a new Caydarman?" Toma blurted. He became contrite immediately. "Forget that. Tell me
about the man you saw."
Because Toma was so intent, Tain cut off all exterior distractions and carefully reconstructed the
moment in the manner he had been taught. A good scout remembered every detail. "Big man. On a big
horse, painted, shaggy. Man bearded. With horns."
"Damned Torfin." Toma subliminated anger by scattering hay.
"He didn't have horns. That was his helmet." There was a lot to learn. Tain thought. This was an
odd land not like the quiet, mercantile Iwa Skolovda he had studied at home.
He considered the little barn. Its builders had possessed no great skill. He doubted that it was
two years old, yet it was coming apart.
"Might as well go eat. Isn't much. Boiled mutton with cabbage and leeks."
"Ah. Mutton. I was hoping." Responding to Toma's surprise. "Mutton is rare at home. Only the rich
eat it. We common soldiers made do with grain and pork. Mostly with grain."
"Home? Where would that be?"
"East. Beyond the Dragon's Teeth."
Toma considered the evasion. "We'd better get inside. Rula gets impatient."
"Go ahead. I have a couple of things to do. Don't wait on me. I'll make do with scraps or
leftovers."
Toma eyed him, started to speak, changed his mind. "As you will."
Once Toma departed. Tain pursued the Soldier's Evening Ritual, clearing his heart of the day's
burdens. He observed the abbreviated Battlefield Ritual rather than the hour of meditation and
exercise he pursued under peaceful circumstances. Later he would do it right.
He started for the house.
His neck prickled. He stopped, turned slowly, reached out with an Aspirant's senses.
A man wearing a horned helmet was watching the stead from the grove surrounding the Kleckla's
spring. He didn't see Tain.
Tain considered, shrugged. It wasn't his problem. He would tell Toma when they were alone. Let the
Freeman decide what ought to be done.
V
The sun was a diameter above the horizon.
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Tain released the mule and roan to pasture. He glanced round at the verdant hills. "Beautiful
country." he murmured, and wondered what the rest of his journey would bring. He ambled a ways
toward the house. Rula was starting breakfast.
These people rose late and started slowly. Already he had performed his Morning Ritual, seen to
his travel gear and personal ablutions, and had examined the tracks round the spring. Then he had
joined Toma when his host had come to check the sheep.
Toma had first shown relief, then increased concern. He remained steadfastly close-mouthed.
Tain restrained his curiosity. Soldiers learned not to ask questions. "Good morning, Steban."
The boy stood in the door of the sod house, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Morning. Tain. Ma's
cooking oats."
"Oh?"
"A treat," Toma explained. "We get a little honeycomb with it."
"Ah. You keep bees?" He hadn't seen any hives. "I had a friend who kept bees. ..." He dropped it,
prefering not to remember. Kai Ling had been like a brother. They had been Aspirants together. But
Ling hadn't been able to believe he hadn't the talent to become Tervola. He was still trying to
climb an unscalable height.
"Wild honey," Toma said. "The hill people gather it and trade it to us for workable iron."
"I see." Tain regarded the Kleckla home for the second time that morning. He wasn't impressed. It
was a sod structure with an interior just four paces by six. Its construction matched the barn's.
Tain had gotten better workmanship out of legion probationaries during their first field
exercises.
A second, permanent home was under construction nearby. A more ambitious project, every timber
proclaimed it a dream house. Last night, after supper, Toma had grown starry-eyed and loquacious
while discussing it. It was symbolic of the Grail he had pursued into the Zemstvi.
Its construction was as unskilled as that of the barn.
Rula's eyes had tightened with silent pain while her husband penetrated ever more deeply the
shifting paths of his dreams.
Toma had been an accountant for the Perchev syndicate in Iwa Skolovda, a tormented, dreamless man
using numbers to describe the movements of furs, wool, wheat, and metal billets. His days had been
long and tedious. During summer, when the barges and caravans moved, he had been permitted no
holidays.
That had been before he had been stricken by the cunning infection, the wild hope, the pale dream
of the Zemstvi, here expressed rudely, yet in a way that said that a man had tried.
Rula's face said the old life had been emotional hell, but their apartment had remained warm and
the roof hadn't leaked. Life had been predictable and secure.
There were philosophies at war in the Kleckla home, though hers lay mute before the other's
traditional right. Accusing in silence.
Toma was Rula's husband. She had had to come to the Zemstvi as the bondservant of his dreams. Or
nightmares.
The magic of numbers had shattered the locks on the doors of Toma's soul. It had let the dream
light come creeping in. Freedom, the intellectual chimera pursued by most of his neighbors, meant
nothing to Kleckla. His neighbors had chosen the hazards of colonizing Shara because of the
certainties of Crown protection.
Toma, though, burned with the absolute conviction of a balanced equation. Numbers proved it
impossible for a sheep-herding, wool-producing community not to prosper in these benign rolling
hills.
What Tain saw, and what Toma couldn't recognize, was that numbers wore no faces. Or were too
simplistic. They couldn't account the human factors.
The failure had begun with Toma. He had ignored his own ignorance of the skills needed to survive
on a frontier. Shara was no-man's-land. Iwa Skolovda had claimed it for centuries, but never had
imposed its suzerainty.
Shara abounded with perils unknown to a city-born clerk.
The Tomas. sadly, often ended up as sacrifices to the Zemstvi.
The egg of disaster shared the nest of his dream, and who could say which had been insinuated by
the cowbird of Fate?
There were no numbers by which to calculate ignorance, raiders, wolves, or heart-changes aborting
vows politicians had sworn in perpetuity. The ciphers for disease and foul weather hadn't yet been
enumerated.
Toma's ignorance of essential craft blazed out all over his homestead. And the handful of
immigrants who had teamed their dreams with his and had helped, had had no more knowledge or
skill. They, too, had been hungry scriveners and number-mongers, swayed by a wild-eyed false
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prophet innocent of the realities of opening a new land. All but black sheep Mikla, who had come
east to keep Toma from being devoured by his own fuzzy-headedness.
Rula-thinking had prevailed amongst most of Toma's disciples. They had admitted defeat and
ventured west again, along paths littered with the parched bones of fleeting hope Toma was
stubborn. Toma persisted. Toma's bones would lie beside those of his dreams.
All this Tain knew when he said. "If you won't let me pay, then at least let me help with the new
house." Toma regarded him with eyes of iron. "I learned construction in the army." Toma's eyes
tightened. He was a proud man. Tain had dealt with stiff-necked superiors fur ages He pursued his
offer without showing a hint of criticism. And soon Toma relaxed, responded. "Take a look after
breakfast." he suggested. "See what you think. I've been having trouble since Mikla left." "I'd
wondered about that," Tain admitted. "Steban gave the impression your brother was living here. I
didn't want to pry."
"He walked out." Toma stamped toward the house angrily. He calmed himself before they entered. "My
fault. I guess. It was a petty argument. The sheep business hasn't been as good as we expected. He
wanted to pick up a little extra trading knives and arrowheads to the tribes. They pay in furs.
But the Baron banned that when he came here."
Tain didn't respond. Toma shrugged irritably, started back outside. He stopped suddenly, turned.
"He's Rula's brother." Softly, "And that wasn't true. I made him leave. Because I caught him with
some arrowheads. I was afraid." He turned again. "Toma. Wait." Tain spoke softly. "I won't mention
it." Relief flashed across Kleckla's face.
"And you should know. The man with the horns. The ... Caydarman? He spent part of the night
watching the house from the grove."
Toma didn't respond. He seemed distraught. He remained silent throughout breakfast. The visual
cues indicated a state of extreme anxiety. He regained his good humor only after he and Tain had
worked on the new house for hours, and then his chatte was inconsequential. He wouldn't open up.
Tain asked no questions.
Neither Toma nor Rula mentioned his departure. Toma soured with each building suggestion, then
brightened once it had been implemented. Day's end found less of the structure standing, yet the
improvement in what remained had Toma bubbling.
VI
Tain accidentally jostled Rula at the hearth. "Excuse me." Then. "Can I help? Cooking is my
hobby."
The woman regarded him oddly. She saw a big man, muscled and corded, who moved like a tiger, who
gave an impression of massive strength kept under constant constraint. His skin was tracked by a
hundred scars. There wasn't an ounce of softness in or on him. Yet his fingers were deft, his
touch delicate as he took her knife and pan. "You don't mind?"
"Mind? You're joking. Two years I haven't had a minute's rest, and you want to know if I mind?"
"Ah. There's a secret to that, having too much work and not enough time. It's in the organization,
and in putting yourself into the right state of mind before you start. Most people scatter
themselves. They try everything at once."
"I'll be damned." Toma, who had been carrying water to the sheep pens, paused to watch over Tain's
shoulder.
Turning the browning mutton. Tain said. "I love to cook. This is a chance for me to show off." He
tapped a ghost of spice from an envelope. "Rula, if we brown the vegetables instead of stewing
them...."
"I'll be damned." Toma said again. He settled to the floor to watch. He pulled a jar of beer to
his side.
"One should strive to achieve the widest possible competence," Tain remarked. "One may never need
a skill, but, again, one can't know the future. Tomorrow holds ambushes for the mightiest
necromancers. A new skill is another hedge against Fate's whimsey. What happens when a soldier
loses a limb here?"
"They become beggars," Rula replied. "Toma, remember how it was right after the war? You couldn't
walk a block...."
"My point made for me. I could become a cook. Or an interpreter. Or a smith, or an armorer,
according to my handicap. In that way I was well-served. Where's Steban? I asked him to pick some
mushrooms. They'll add the final touch. But don't expect miracles. I've never tried this with
mutton.... Rula? What is it?"
Toma had bounced up and run outside. She was following him.
"It's Steban. He's worried about Steban."
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"Can you tell me?"
"The Caydarmen...." She went blank, losing the animation she had begun showing.
"Who are they?"
"Baron Caydar's men." She would say no more. She just leaned against the door frame and stared
into the dusk.
Toma returned a moment later. "It's all right. He's coming. Must have spent the day with the Kosku
boy. I see his flock, too."
"Toma. . ." Fear tinged Rula's voice.
"The boy can choose his friends, woman. I'm not so weak that I'll make my children avoid their
friends because of my fears."
Tain stirred vegetables and listened, trying to fathom the situation. Toma was scared. The timbre
of fear inundated his voice.
He and Rula dropped the subject as if pursuing it might bring some dread upon them.
Steban had collected the right mushrooms. That had worried Tain. He never quite trusted anyone who
wasn't legion-trained. "Good, Steban. I think we'll all like this."
"You're cooking?"
"I won't poison you. The fish was good, wasn't it?"
Steban seemed unsure. He turned to his father. "Wes said they were fined five sheep, five goats,
and ten geese. He said his Dad said he's not going to pay."
Dread and worry overcame his parents' faces.
"Toma, there'll be trouble." Rula's hands fluttered like nervous doves.
"They can't afford that," Toma replied. 'They wouldn't make it through winter."
"Go talk to him. Ask the neighbors to chip in."
"It's got to end. Rula." He turned to Tain. "The Crown sent Baron Caydar to protect us from the
tribes. We had less trouble when we weren't protected."
"Toma!"
"The tribes don't bother anyone, Rula. They never did. Hywel goes out of his way to avoid trouble.
Just because those royal busybodies got themselves massacred.... They asked for it, trying to make
Hywel and Stojan bend the knee."
"Toma, they'll fine us too."
"They have to hear me first."
"They know everything. People tell on each other. You know...."
"Because they're scared. Rula, if the bandits keep pushing, we won't care if we're afraid."
Tain delivered the meal to table. He asked, "Who are the Caydarmen? The one I saw was no Iwa
Skolovdan."
"Mercenaries." Toma spat. "Crown wouldn't let Caydar bring regulars. He recruited Trolledyngjans
who escaped when the Pretender overthrew the Old House up there. They're a gang of bandits."
"I see." The problem was taking shape. Baron Caydar would be, no doubt, a political exile thrust
into an impossible position by his enemies. His assignment here would be calculated to destroy
him. And what matter that a few inconsequential colonists suffered?
Tain's motherland was called Dread Empire by its foes. With cause. The Tervola did as they
pleased, where and when they pleased, by virtue of sorcery and legions unacquainted with defeat.
Shinsan did have its politics and politicians. But never did they treat citizens with contempt.
Tain had studied the strange ways of the west, but he would need time to really grasp their
actuality.
After supper he helped Toma haul more water. Toma remarked, "That's the finest eating I've had in
years."
"Thank you. I enjoyed preparing it."
"What I wanted to say. I'd appreciate it if you didn't anymore." Tain considered. Toma sounded as
though he expected to share his company for a while.
"Rula. She shouldn't have too much time to worry."
"I see."
"I appreciate the help you're giving me...." "You could save a lot of water-hauling with a
windmill." "I know. But nobody around here can build one. Anyway. I couldn't pay much. Maybe a
share on the sheep. If you'd stay...." Tain faced the east. The sunset had painted the mountains
the color of blood. He hoped that was no omen. But he feared that legionnaires were dying at the
hands of legionnaires even now. "All right. For a while. But I'll have to move on soon."
He wondered if he could outrun his past. A friend had told him that a man carried his pain like a
tortoise carried his shell. Tain suspected the analogy might be more apt than intended. Men not
only carried their painshells, they retreated into them if emotionally threatened.
"We need you. You can see that. I've been too stubborn to admit it till now...."
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"Stubbornness is a virtue, properly harnessed. Just don't be stubborn against learning."
Steban carried water with them, and seemed impressed. Later, he said, "Tell us about the wars you
were in, Tain."
Rula scowled.
"They weren't much. Bloody, sordid little things, Steban. Less fun than sheep-shearing time."
"Oh, come on. Tain. You're always saying things like that." "Mikla made a glory tale of it," Rula
said. "You'd think... Well.... That there wasn't any better life."
"Maybe that was true for Mikla. But the El Murid Wars were long ago and far away, and, I expect,
he was very young. He remembers the good times, and sees only the dullness in today." "Maybe. He
shouldn't fill Steban's head with his nonsense." So Tain merely wove a tale of cities he had seen,
describing strange dress and customs. Rula, he noted, enjoyed it as much as her son.
Later still, after his evening ritual, he spent several hours familiarizing himself with the
countryside. A soldier's habits died hard.
Twice he spied roving Caydarmen. Neither noticed him. Next morning he rose early and took the
gelding for a run over the same ground.
VII
Rula visited Tain's makeshift forge the third afternoon. Bringing a jar of chill spring water was
her excuse. "You've been hammering for hours, Tain. You'd better drink something."
He smiled as he laid his hammer aside. "Thank you." He accepted the jar, though he wasn't yet
thirsty. He was accustomed to enduring long, baking hours in his armor. He sipped while he waited.
She had something on her mind.
"I want to thank you."
"Oh?"
"For what you're doing. For what you've done for Toma. And me."
"I haven't done much."
"You've shown Toma that a man can be proud without being pig-headed. When he's wrong. But maybe
you don't see it. Tain. I've lived with that man for eighteen years. I know him too well."
"I see." He touched her hand lightly, recognizing a long and emotionally difficult speech from a
woman accustomed to keeping her own counsel.
He didn't know how to help her, though. An unmarried soldier's life hadn't prepared him. Not for a
woman who moved him more than should be, for reasons he couldn't comprehend. A part of him said
that women were people too, and should respond the same as men, but another part saw them as
aliens, mysterious, perhaps even creatures of dread. "If I have done good, I have brought honor to
the house."
He chuckled at his own ineptitude. Iwa Skolovdan just didn't have the necessary range of tonal
nuance.
"You've given me hope for the first time since Shirl...." she blurted. "I mean, I can see where
we're getting somewhere now. I can see Toma seeing it.
"Tain, I never wanted to come to the Zemstvi. I hate it. I hated it before we left home. Maybe I
hated it so much that I made it impossible for Toma to succeed. I drove Shirl away...."
"Yes. I could see it. But don't hate yourself for being what you are."
"His dreams were dying, Tain. And I wouldn't give him anything to replace them. And I have to hate
myself for that. But now he's coming alive again. He doesn't have to go on being stubborn, just to
show me."
"Don't hate anybody, Rula. It's contagious. You end up hating everything, and everybody hates
you."
"I can't ever like the Zemstvi. But I love Toma. And with you here, like a rock, he's becoming
more like the boy I married. He's started to find his courage again. And his hope. That gives me
hope. And that's why I wanted to thank you."
"A rock?"
"Yes. You're there. You don't criticize, you don't argue, you don't judge, you don't fear. You
know. You make things possible.... Oh, I don't know how to say what I want. I think the fear is
the biggest thing. It doesn't control us anymore."
"I don't think it's all my fault. Rula. You've done your part." He was growing unsettled. Even
embarrassed.
She touched his arm. "You're strong, Tain. So strong and sure. My brother Mikla.... He was sure,
but not always strong. He fought with Toma all the time."
Tain glanced south across the green hills. Toma had gone to the village in hopes of obtaining
metal that could be used in the windmill Tain was going to build. He had been gone for hours.
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A tiny silhouette topped a distant rise. Tain sighed in a mixture of disappointment and relief. He
was saved having to face the feelings Rula was stirring.
Toma loved the windmill. He wanted to let the house ride till it was finished. Tain had suggested
that they might, with a little ingenuity, provide running water. Rula would like that. It was a
luxury only lords and merchant princes enjoyed.
Rula followed his gaze. Embarrassment overtook her. Tain yielded the jar and watched her flee.
Soon Toma called, "I got it, Tain! Bryon had an old wagon. He sold me enough to do the whole
thing." He rushed to the forge, unburdened himself of a pack filled with rusty iron.
Tain examined the haul. "Good. More than enough for the bushings. You keep them greased, the
windmill will last a lifetime."
Toma's boyish grin faded.
"What happened? You were gone a long time."
"Come on in the house. Share a jar of beer with me."
Tain put his tools away and followed Toma. Glancing eastward, he saw the white stain of Steban's
flock dribbling down a distant slope, heading home. Beyond Steban, a little south, stood the
grotesque rock formation locals called the Toad. The Sharans believed it the home of a malignant
god.
Toma passed the beer. "The Caydarmen visited Kosku again. He wouldn't give them the animals."
Tain still didn't understand. He said nothing.
"They won't stand for it," Rula said. "There'll be trouble."
Toma shrugged. "There'll always be trouble. Comes of being alive." He pretended a philosophical
nonchalance. Tain read the fear he was hiding. "They'll probably come tonight...."
"You've been drinking," Rula snapped. "You're not going to...."
"Rula, it's got to stop. Somebody has to show them the limits. We've reached ours. Kosku has taken
up the mantle. The rest of us can't...."
"Tain, talk to him."
Tain studied them, sensed them. Their fear made the house stink. He said nothing. After meeting
her eyes briefly, he handed Toma the beer and ignored her appeal. He returned to his forge,
dissipated his energies pumping the bellows and hammering cherry iron. He didn't dare insinuate
himself into their argument. It had to remain theirs alone.
Yet he couldn't stop thinking, couldn't stop feeling. He hammered harder, driven by a taint of
anger.
His very presence had altered Toma. Rula had said as much The man wouldn't have considered
supporting this Kosku otherwise. Simply by having entered the man's life he was forcing Toma to
prove something. To himself? Or to Rula?
Tain hammered till the hills rang. Neutral as he had tried to remain, he had become heir to a
responsibility. Toma had to be shielded from the consequences of artificial bravado.
"Tain?"
The hammer's thunder stammered. "Steban? Home so early?"
"It's almost dark."
"Oh. I lost track of time." He glanced at his handiwork. He had come near finishing while roaming
his own mind. "What is it?"
"Will you teach me to be a soldier?"
Tain drove the tongs into the coals as if their mound contained the heart of an enemy. "I don't
think so. Your mother...."
"She won't care. She's always telling me to learn something."
"Soldiering isn't what she has in mind. She means your father's lessons."
"Tain, writing and ciphers are boring. And what good did they do my Dad? Anyway, he's only
teaching me because Mother makes him."
What kind of world did Rula live in, there behind the mask of her face? Tain wondered.
It couldn't be a happy world. It had suffered the deaths of too many hopes. Time had beaten her
down. She had become an automaton getting through each day with the least fuss possible.
"Boring, but important. What good a soldier who can't read or write? All he can do is carry a
spear."
"Can you read?"
"Six languages. Every soldier in my army learns at least two. To become a soldier in my country is
like becoming a priest in yours, Steban."
Rula, he thought. Why do I find you unique when you're just one of a million identical sisters
scattered through the feudal west? The entire sub-continent lay prostrate beneath the heel of a
grinding despair, a ponderous changelessness. It was a tinder-dry philosophical forest. The
weakest spark flung off by a hope-bearing messiah would send it up.
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