Part 13 (1/2)
”What's that got to do with it?”
”Everybody stops here, Marshall. I picked this spot the day we dragged ourselves back through here after we chased that O s.h.i.+ng halfway to them heathen lands in the east.
It's right in the middle of everywhere. Gots water and good hayfields.... Well, never mind the what do you call it? Economics? People just stops. It's a place to take a break. You stopped yourself, and it's plain you're in as big a hurry as them fellows this morning. Even people what has no business stopping do. Soldiers. A platoon going up to Maisak? They stops, and you don't hear the sergeants saying nay. Just every body stops. Except them as rides by night.”
”Thanks. You've helped. I'll remember. You can do something else for me.”
”Anything, Marshall. It was you made it possible fora man like me to have a place like this for himself....”
”All right. All right. You're embarra.s.sing me. Actually, it's two things. We go back out, you put on a show of what a good choice of dessert I made.””That's it?”
”No. It starts when we leave. You never saw us and you don't know who we were.”
”True enough, excepting yourself, sir.”
”Forget me too.”
”Secret mission, eh?”
”Exactly.”
”It's as good as forgotten now, sir. And the other thing?”
”Don't argue with me when I pay for my meal. Or I'll box your d.a.m.ned ears.”
The innkeeper grinned. ”You know, sir, you're a d.a.m.ned good man. A real man.
Down here with the rest of us.”
Ragnarson suffered a twinge of guilt-pain. What would the old veteran think if he found out about Elana and the Queen?
”That's why we followed you back then. Ain't why we joined, I grants you. Them reasons you can figure easy enough. Loot and a chance to break our tenantcy. But it's why we stuck. And there's plenty of us as remembers. The hill people too. Some of them comes in here of a time, and they says the same. You go up on the wall over there in Vorgreberg City sometime if n you got trouble, and you stomp good and hard and you yell 'I needs good men' and you'll have ten thousand before the next sun shows.”
He only wished it were true, dire as tomorrow smelled.
”You marks me, sir. There's men what never marched in the long march, and men what even missed Baxendala, but they'd come too. They maybe wouldn't have the sword you said they should have, because swords is dear, and everybody wanting one, and they wouldn't have no s.h.i.+elds, except as some makes ' they own out of oak in the old way, or maybe green hide, and they wouldn't have no mail, but they'd come. They'd bring they rakes and hoes and butchering knives, they forge hammers and chopping axes....”
Ragnarson sniffed, brushed a tear. He was deeply moved. He didn't believe half of it, but just having one man show this much faith reached down to the heart of him.
”The hill people too, sir. 'Cause you done one thing in this here country, something not even the old Krief himself could do, and, bless him, we loved him.
Something not even Eanred Tarlson could do, and him a Wesson himself and at the Krief's ear.
”Sir, you gave us our manhood. You gave us hope. You gave us a chance to be men, not just animals working the lands and mines and forges for drunken Nordmen. Maybe you didn't mean it that way. I don't know. We likes to think you did. You being down in Vorgreberg City, we judges only by what we seen in the long march. Coo-ee, we gave them Nordmen jolly whatfor. didn't we sir? Lieneke. I was right there on the hill, not fifty feet from you, sir.”
”Enough. Enough.”
”Sir? I've offended?”
”No. No.” He turned away because the tears had betrayed him. ”That's what I wanted. What Her Majesty wanted. What you say you've got. Down there in Vorgreberg, it's hard to see. Sometimes I forget that's only a little bit of Kavelin, even if it's the heart. Come on now. Let's go. And remember what I said.””Right you are, sir. Don't know you from the man in the moon, and I'll gouge you for every penny.”
”Good.” Ragnarson put an arm around the man's shoulders again. ”And keep your eyes open. There's trouble in those riders.”
”An eye and an ear, sir. We've got our swords in this house, me and my sons. Over the door, just like it says in the law. We'll be listening, and you call.”
”d.a.m.n!” Ragnarson muttered, fighting tears again.
”Sir?” But the Marshall had fled to the common room.
”What do you think?” Ragnarson asked, referring to the creamed fruit he had helped the innkeeper prepare. ”Mixed. A trick my mother used to pull when I was a kid.” And then, to Oryon, ”Colonel, I don't think I'm as frightened of High Crag as I was.”
”I don't understand.”
”I thought of something when we were mixing the fruit. You know my old friend?
Haroun?”
”Bin Yousif? Not personally.”
”Five, six years ago he published a book through one of the colleges at h.e.l.lin Daimiel. You might read it sometime. Your answer is there.”
”I've read it already. Called On Irregular Warfare, isn't it? Subt.i.tled something like The Use Of The Partisan In Achieving Strategic As Well As Tactical Objectives.
Excellent treatise. But his own performance discredits his thesis.”
”Only a.s.suming he has failed to do what he wants. We don't know that. Only Haroun knows what Haroun is doing. But that's not the answer. Now, innkeeper, the tally. We have to get going.”
Somehow, now, the future looked a lot brighter.
TEN: Lord of Lords
”It's a whole new world, Tarn,” said Tran. The forester couldn't stifle his awe of Liaontung.
”What's that?” Tam asked their escort, an old centurion named Lo. Tam and Lang were as overwhelmed as Tran.
”Ting Yu. The Temple of the Brotherhood. It was there before s.h.i.+nsan came.”
Lo was their keeper and guide. Their month in his care hadn't been onerous. An intimate of Lord Wu and a senior noncom of the Seventeenth Legion, Lo had been a pleasant surprise. He was quite human when outside his armor.
”Where do you live, Lo?” Tam asked. ”You said you had your own house that time we visited the barracks.”
The boy's curiosity invariably amazed the centurion. He had never married, and had had no childhood himself. He knew only those children in legionary training. ”It's not far, Lord.” With a hint of embarra.s.sment, ”Would it please you to visit. Lord?” Behind his embarra.s.sment lay a gentle, almost defiant pride.
Tran sipped tea and shook his head as Lo showed them his tiny garden.
”What's this one?” Lang asked, fingertip a whisker off the water.Lo leaned over the pool. ”Golden swallowtail.” Sadly, ”Not a prime specimen, though. See the black scales on this fin?”