by David Weber
.VII.
Ky-su, Cliffwall Pass, Tiegelkamp Province, North Harchong.
Zhynzhou Syang tipped back in his chair, propping his heels on the hearth before the quietly seething flames, and considered the exquisite calligraphy of the letter in his hand. He was a simple man, and the elaborate, illuminated capitals were too showy for his taste. In fact, they made it difficult for him to puzzle out some of the words.
But underneath all of the fanciness, the letter was as simple as he was.
He read through it again—not easy, given the quality of lamp oil available in the Chiang-wu Mountains with autumn coming on—then stood, dropped it on the battered table which served him for a desk, and crossed to the window.
Darkness fell swiftly in the Chiang-wus’ deep passes as the year aged, and the night beyond the window’s cloudy glass was dark, shot through with the first windy flakes of a snow that was early, even for northern Tiegelkamp. He wondered if any of it would stick. Probably not much, this early, and any that did accumulate would melt quickly. But it wouldn’t be very many more five-days before snow that didn’t melt began to pile high in Ky-su’s narrow streets.
He’d managed to accumulate enough supplies to get them through the winter … he thought. He’d never really considered the administrative responsibilities of even a minor nobleman, but it seemed he had a knack for it. The right combination of ruthlessness and organization. That was the real reason he’d survived as long as he had. The disintegration and chaos of the Rebellion might offer opportunities, but the risks were just as great, and he knew he was no military genius. Yet his ability to keep his followers fed through a Tiegelkamp winter had been all the “genius” they’d needed. Now they expected him to do it again, and unless the winter lasted longer than usual or it turned out he’d miscalculated somewhere, he should be able to.
Probably.
He sighed, looking out into the night, feeling the future grind towards him, and thought about that letter.
The Chynduk Valley’s farmers had made the difference for Ky-su last winter. Their willingness to trade with him, to sell him the food he’d needed, was all that had gotten him through, and he’d bought a lot of grain—much of which their gristmills had ground into flour—this year, as well. But there was a bottom to his purse, and he lacked the strength to expand his territory. Indeed, he was hard-pressed to hold what he already held. He’d eked out a barter-level economy largely by raiding outside his own borders, but plunder was growing more scarce. All the easy pickings were gone, and he was too small a fish to compete with the krakens emerging from the Rebellion’s chaotic womb. He had too little land and too few farmers to feed his followers out of his own resources, and as more and more refugees streamed into the Valley, the Valleyers had less and less surplus food to trade, even if he’d had the wherewithal to buy it.
He leaned closer to the window, bracing his hands on the sill, and closed his eyes as he felt the night’s chill radiating from the glass, a gentler promise of the bitter cold to come.
Yes, he thought. He’d make it through this winter. But he couldn’t keep it up forever, and he’d seen what happened to other would-be warlords when that happened.
He drew a deep breath and opened his eyes again, looking out into the cold, windy dark, and faced the truth. He didn’t much care for the inevitable decision, but that was what it was: inevitable. He had increasingly less to trade; the Valleyers wouldn’t feed his men for free out of the goodness of their hearts; and he lacked the strength to compel them to feed him. Even if he could have broken into the Valley successfully, he could never have held it. And that meant he really had no choice, didn’t it?
He didn’t like a lot of what he’d heard about this Spring Flower, and Zhailau Laurahn had been a pain in the arse even when Syang outranked him. The thought of acknowledging him as his superior was less than pleasant. But unless an even more efficient predator unexpectedly sprang up, Spring Flower’s steady expansion would reach the Cliffwall Pass eventually. Staying on his good side had to be a good thing, especially if that “regularized” Syang’s status as Baron Cliffwall. He doubted much would come of Spring Flower’s hints about sharing the Valley with him, but Zhynzhou Syang had learned a lot over the last four years. He’d learned that power and wealth might be wonderful things to have, but that something else was even more important.
It was called “survival.”
.VIII.
Zhutiyan, Chynduk Valley, Tiegelkamp Province, North Harchong.
“And bow to your partners!”
The caller had a deep, resonant baritone that boomed out over the fiddles, flutes, and drums as the dance reached its conclusion. A cheer went up from the spectators as the dancers obeyed the call, bowing deeply to one another across the square, then reached out to one another, laughing while men thumped each other on the back and women embraced.
“Ten minutes!” the caller announced as Father Yngshwan ceremoniously turned the big sand glass mounted on the wall behind him. “Ten minutes! You boys—” he smiled at the musicians “—better take the chance to wet your whistles! Next set’s a wind dance, and I’ve not been run out of wind once in the last twelve years! Won’t happen tonight, either!”
A loud, laughing groan—and not a few catcalls—greeted his announcement. The traditional Harchongese wind dance continued until either every one of the dancers—or the caller—“ran out of wind” and acknowledged defeat, and the competition for bragging rights was ferocious. Exactly when to announce one was always a nice tactical decision for the caller, based upon the competing fatigue levels of his dancers and his voice. Only a supremely confident caller actually offered the dancers a rest break before the dance, but if the burly, white-haired farmer calling tonight’s dance felt a single qualm, there was no sign of it.
“Might’s well wet my whistle, too!” He wiped his forehead—the weather was unseasonably warm for the Chiang-wu Mountains in October and he’d worked up a sweat—and his smile turned broader. “Setting up for my best work, you might say. None of you sissies’re gonna outlast me, anyway!”
More laughing catcalls answered, then he jumped down from his wagon-top perch and headed for the kegs himself. At least a dozen men were waiting to buy him his beer, and he deserved it. He’d worked hard already this boisterous evening, and the wind dance, especially the version of it performed in the Chynduk Valley, could last a long, long time.
Tangwyn Syngpu stood with his own beer mug, watching with a smile of his own. He’d found a quiet, private little pocket between two walls of baled hay from which to enjoy the festivities. Those hay bales were purely decorative, but that was hardly surprising. Technically, the enormous structure around him was a barn, and there was even a loft filled with hay, but its floor was not only planked but varnished, and the wagon of the caller’s traditional perch was brightly painted, its metalwork polished. He was reasonably sure it had been parked exactly where it was since the day it had been built. Since the day the entire barn had been built. Langhorne, they’d probably built the barn around it!
There’d been nothing like it in Thomas Province, where he’d grown to manhood. Thanksgiving barn dances there had been held in far more modest structures, or even in the open—weather permitting, which it had seldom done, at this time of year. The fact that Zhutiyan had built its dance barn on such a scale, with such permanence, only underscored the Valley’s relative prosperity. Looking around it—or out the enormous open doors at the long tables on the roofed veranda, laden with roast wyverns, huge kettles of corn and lima beans, tub-sized bowls of mashed potatoes, squash, and green beans, and platters of corn bread and rolls—made him truly realize what he and his men had accomplished here. They hadn’t built this place, but they’d certainly helped preserve the prosperity—and the people—it represented.
“He hasn’t, you know,” a voice said beside him, and he turned to discover Yanshwyn Gyngdau at his elbow. He hadn’t seen her approaching his quiet—although “quiet” was a purely rela
tive term, under the circumstances—vantage point. Of course, that wasn’t too surprising, given her diminutive size and the dance barn’s crowded state.
“What?” Syngpu shook his head.
“He hasn’t,” she repeated, smiling up at him. “Run out of wind in the last twelve years, I mean.” She pointed at the caller with her chin. “I don’t imagine he will tonight, either.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Syngpu cocked his head, his expression thoughtful. “Suppose that depends on who’s doing the dancing.”
“Is that a challenge I hear?” another voice asked as Miyang Gyngdau appeared in his sister-in-law’s wake, with his wife, Rouchun on his arm.
“Evening, Squire. Madame Gyngdau,” Syngpu greeted them, raising his mug in salute.
“Don’t you think it could be Miyang and Tangwyn tonight?” Gyngdau quirked an eyebrow. “It is Thanksgiving. Sondheim says we’re all family today.”
“I guess he does … Miyang,” Syngpu acknowledged.
“See? That wasn’t so difficult, was it, Tangwyn?” Rouchun said teasingly. She was a tall, sturdy woman, barely an inch shorter than her husband, who was only a couple of inches shorter than Syngpu himself. She would have made two of her sister-in-law, Syngpu thought.
“No,” he agreed. “It’s just we’re in public.”
“I know.” Gyngdau nodded.
Syngpu was always careful to address him and Mayor Ou-zhang—for that matter, all of the Valley Assembly’s members—formally in any public venue. As a general rule, Gyngdau approved of that, and it was like Syngpu to emphasize the point that he respected the Assembly’s authority. Too many men in his position would have been looking for the chance to increase his own power at the civilians’ expense.
In fact, that was exactly what far too many men were doing outside the Valley.
“I know,” Gyngdau repeated. “But you and your men are the real reason all of this—” he waved at the laughing, jubilant crowd around them “—is still here.”
“Like to think we’ve earned our keep,” Syngpu acknowledged. As always, he felt vaguely uncomfortable at the praise.
“You’ve done more than that,” Yanshwyn said so quietly he had to strain to hear her through the background sound. “A lot more.”
Syngpu looked down at her, automatically shaking his head. He opened his mouth to rebut her comment, although he wasn’t sure why he wanted to.
“She’s right,” Gyngdau said before he could speak. His eyes swiveled to the squire, and Gyngdau chuckled.
“You told us that first day that we wouldn’t regret giving your men ‘honest work’ to do, and you were right. Without you, and the rifles you brought with you, and the militia you’ve trained, Spring Flower and Qwaidu would have forced this Valley months ago, and you know it. We know it. But that’s not all you’ve done for us. I can think of at least a dozen other things—bringing back Baisung to get the manufactory back up and running, to name just one—and Langhorne knows nobody else in the Valley knew how to make gunpowder!”
“Might be you’re right about that,” Syngpu said after a moment. “To tell the truth, though, I’d as soon be back in Thomas watching my sheep. Nothing personal,” he added hastily. “Not saying your folk haven’t made my boys right at home here in the Valley. It’s just—” He paused. “It’s just that it was so much … simpler then.”
“For all of us,” Gyngdau said quietly. “And I suppose I wish you could be there still, too. But since you can’t, I hope you won’t mind my being thankful you’re here, instead.”
Syngpu felt his face heat and bobbed his head in acknowledgment without speaking. Gyngdau looked at him for a second or two, then smiled and shook his own head.
“Well, Rouchun and I are supposed to lead out the wind dance,” he said. “I think I’d better get over there and see how much beer I can pour down old Fyngzhow before he climbs back up on that wagon!”
“And how much good do you think that’s going to do?” his wife demanded. “He’s been doing this for over thirty years, Miyang! And the man can drink more beer than any three other men I know. You’re certainly not going to get him drunk in only ten minutes!”
“No, but if I can get enough beer into him he may run out of bladder before he runs out of wind!”
Rouchun shook her head with a laugh, nodded to Syngpu, and followed her husband off through the crowd, and Syngpu smiled after them. He was a bit surprised by the warmth of his own smile.
“It’s not going to work, but it’s probably worth a try,” Yanshwyn said.
“Anything’s worth trying at least once,” Syngpu replied.
“Anything?” she repeated. There was something a bit odd about her tone, and he looked back down at her.
“Just about,” he said slowly. “Why shouldn’t it be?”
“I haven’t seen Pauyin tonight,” she said, instead of replying directly.
“She’s over at the nursery.”
Syngpu twitched his head out of the open doors to the schoolhouse on the far side of the square. Its un-shuttered windows blazed with lamplight, and a temporary waist-high fence had been constructed around it to help the dozen or so women riding herd on the gaggle of young children inside it. At the moment, the volunteer nannies had organized some sort of game that seemed to involve lots of squealing as the competing teams streamed in and out of the schoolhouse door doing something Syngpu couldn’t quite figure out.
“I hope someone’s going to spell her before the evening’s over!” Yanshwyn said with a laugh.
“Oh, she and Baisung stood up for the first three dances,” Syngpu replied. “She said she’d rather spend the rest of the evening with the babies and the other kids.”
“Good for her.” Yanshwyn smiled fondly … and possibly a little wistfully. “They’re lovely babies.”
“They are,” Syngpu agreed, his eyes still on the schoolhouse windows. “Both of them.”
Yanshwyn looked up at his profile, wondering if he heard the softness in his own voice. His granddaughter, Saiwanzhen, had been born only two months after her mother’s seventeenth birthday. He’d never discussed that birth with Yanshwyn, despite how closely she’d worked with him as the Valley Assembly’s general secretary, but Pauyin had.
Yanshwyn had been teaching Syngpu’s daughter to read and write for almost two years now, and Pauyin had become a valuable assistant. She’d also become a friend. More than that, she’d become the daughter Yanshwyn Gyngdau had never had, and in many ways Yanshwyn had become the mother Pauyin had lost. And because of that, Yanshwyn knew—because Pauyin had told her—how much Tangwyn Syngpu loved the toddler. Saiwanzhen might be the child of rape—and, although Syngpu had never told her, Yanshwyn knew how the child’s biological father had died—but no man had ever loved a grandchild more fiercely. It didn’t matter how she’d been conceived; all that mattered to him was whose daughter she was.
And it was the same way with his grandson, Yanshwyn thought, watching that profile, seeing the way the expressionless face Syngpu presented to the world softened as he gazed at that schoolhouse. She remembered the way that mask-like face had softened another day, the unshed tears which had glittered at the corners of those dark eyes, when Pauyin and Baisung Tsungshai stood before Father Yngshwan and he pronounced them man and wife. And she remembered the tears he had shed the day Pauyin’s son was born and his son-in-law told him they’d named the boy Tangwyn.
He doesn’t think we know, she thought. He truly thinks we don’t know how deeply he feels. Don’t realize how good a man he is.
“Is young Tangwyn over that cold of his?” she asked.
“Seems to be.” Syngpu looked down at her. “Was ugly for a five-day or so, though. Pauyin took it better’n I expected, really.”
“Oh, she did?” Yanshwyn said, and he chuckled.
“All right,” he acknowledged. “Took it more calmly than I did. Satisfied?”
“Well, you did seem a little distracted at Thursday’s meeting,” she pointed out.
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“Sorry.” His expression turned back into an iron mask, his eyes shutters in a wall, as she watched. “Fengwa, her sister. She always had hard colds.”
Yanshwyn’s face softened and she reached out, touching his arm. She knew how Fengwa Syngpu and her brother Tsungzau had died, but Syngpu never spoke about them. There was a locked room in his heart, she thought. One he allowed no one into.
He felt her hand and his eyes refocused on her face.
“Sorry,” he said again, his voice rougher around the edges. “You don’t need to be hearing my problems.”
“Why not?” She squeezed his arm gently. “You always seem to have time to listen to mine.”
“That’s different,” he said.
“How?” she challenged.
“It’s just … different,” he insisted, and she shook her head.
“You know, generally you don’t remind me much of Zhyungkwan. Except in one way, that is.”
“What way?” he asked warily.
She seldom mentioned her dead husband to him, although he’d picked up quite a few details about him from others, especially her brother-in-law. From Miyang’s description, Zhyungkwan Gyngdau and Tangwyn Syngpu couldn’t have been much more unalike, physically, and Zhyungkwan had been a man of letters. Even now, Syngpu dreaded the very thought of the correspondence he couldn’t entirely avoid as the commander of the Valley’s militia.
“He’d fall back on that same male tactic whenever logic failed.”
“What ‘male tactic’?”
“Just repeating the same thing over and over again as if he was actually explaining something.” She shook her head. “It’s like you all think that if you just say the same word enough times your meaning will suddenly become clear to us poor, befuddled females. Or—” her eyes softened “—as if there’s something you don’t really want to be clear about.”
