by Jackson Lear
They each pulled a face like I had just farted onto their dinner. “No. We’re … no. You don’t see those banners there?”
Twisting roses on a green background.
“We’re in Governor Gustali’s army.”
“Oh. Your cavalry guy has one of Kasera’s banners on his horse.”
They grumbled, shaking their heads at me until one eyed me carefully. “How come you know that?”
“I used to live near Kasera’s villa.”
Two of them snorted, muttered under their breath.
“You guys don’t like Kasera?”
“Never said that,” they said, reminding themselves that they were talking to a stranger about a general. They may be up for release soon, but they were still too cautious to risk saying anything dismissive about someone who could slap them with another fourteen year service.
I asked, “Is the general in trouble or something?”
“Nah, nah. It’s nothing, really. One army rivals another, one city rivals another, that sort of thing. We’ve got nothing against any other army, it’s just … you know. Us and them.”
I bowed my head to their wisdom and looked to the back of the pack. “One of your guys celebrated a little too heavily, did he?”
They looked over to the cart being led by a donkey. In the back was the dead aide-de-camp. “Sure seems like it,” said one of them.
“Had he just retired or something?”
“Nah, him? He was a lifer. He just choked on his own vomit.”
“Yikes. I guess he should’ve stayed clear of the Verseiian beer.”
That gave the threesome a moment to fall silent. No doubt they had all drunk beer the night before.
I dug into my food pouch. “You guys want some spicy beef?”
Two passed. One was intrigued. I handed him a strip of cured meat.
“I’ll warn you, it’s pretty fucking spicy.”
He tore off a chunk between his teeth, winced, hacked a cough. “You weren’t kidding.”
“If you’ve scared off barbarians in the frozen north you can handle a little peppered meat.”
He turned what remained over in his hands. “You sure this is beef?”
“That’s what I asked for and it’s what I got, so who knows?” I tried again with the other two. “You sure you don’t want some?”
One gave in, tried it. The other caved to peer pressure and had a bite himself.
The first one asked me, “So what brings you to Torne?”
“My sister. She got married last year and is already onto her second kid. And since my dad can’t really make the journey, I’m supposed to get all the stories and relay them back to him before he passes on.”
They nodded, no doubt wondering when the hell I was going to leave them alone.
I glanced back to the dead guy in the cart. “So what happens with him? Some kind of grand funeral?”
“Not likely.”
“That doesn’t happen for officers?”
“Well … I mean, yeah, he’ll probably have a funeral …”
They all shared a look of ‘but I wouldn’t count on it being all that grand.’ I asked, “He rubbed people the wrong way?”
A couple of nods and mutters. “None of the officers really liked him.”
Another nod from the quiet one. “And he fucked up. Probably drank himself to death.”
“Did he fall asleep on his watch?” I asked.
“Nah. Stewards don’t really have a watch. And doing something like that isn’t much of a big deal. I mean, it is, but the sergeant will just have you do pushups until you puke and then run laps of the camp until you shit yourself. Whenever you’re done with one pushup or one lap, you have to shout out, ‘I will never fall asleep at my watch again.’ And then you’re on double watch detail for a month.”
“Shit, really?”
A round of wide eyes. One with personal experience, the other two grateful that they were on their way out of the army in a few days.
I asked, “What’d he do, sleep with a junior officer?”
“Nah, just … there’s a lot of egos going around among the officer’s, yeah?”
“Even if there is only supposed to be one person in charge?”
“Yeah, but there’s many ‘one person in charge.’ The emperor barks at the governor, the governor barks at the general, the general barks at the commanders, the commanders bark at the lieutenants, the lieutenants bark at the sergeants, and the sergeants bark at us.”
The second one added, “And everyone who gets barked at thinks the barker is … you know.”
“An asshole?”
They didn’t answer, probably because they didn’t want anyone to overhear them. I had been around enough disgruntled former soldiers to have heard this story a thousand times. “So, the … what is he, lieutenant?”
They nodded.
“The lieutenant pissed someone off.”
Three pairs of wide eyes, accompanied with slow nods.
I glanced around, theatrically, dropping to a whisper to emphasize the point. “It wasn’t the general, was it?”
“You mean the governor?”
“Don’t generals run the army?” I asked.
“Gustali is the general, yeah, but he’s also the governor. And governors can order other generals around.”
“So the lieutenant pissed off the governor. Yikes.”
The chatty one shook his head at me. “No. But, just as bad.”
The quiet one who gave into peer pressure followed it up with, “His son.”
“The dead lieutenant is the governor’s son?”
They rolled their eyes at me. Of course I knew the dead guy wasn’t the governor’s son. All kinds of hurricane-like shit would’ve flown in Verseii if the governor’s son was found dead in an inn on his way back home.
“Gustali’s son is also a lieutenant,” whispered the quiet one.
“Ohhhh. So he and the dead guy …”
“Yeah. The commander was having a hard time keeping things civil between them.”
“Wait, if one was the aide and the other is the governor’s son, then they wouldn’t have needed to butt heads all that often, right?”
“The commander was getting sick of them both,” whispered the quiet one.
“Isn’t the commander sick of everyone under his command?” I asked.
More shrugs. Given the despondent look I had seen in the young commander this morning when he exited the inn, it didn’t seem like it was simply a nuisance that is aide-de-camp was dead.
“Were all the lieutenants staying together?” I asked.
“No. We were all close together in our centuries.”
“What kind of century would the aide-de-camp be in?”
“Seventh.”
“The … wait, not the first?”
“Seventh is with the cavalry.”
I looked ahead. There wasn’t a single horse on the road. “Where are they?”
“They rode ahead earlier.”
“Oh. So what did Gustali’s son catch the aide-de-camp doing?”
The three of them eyed me, their suspicions rising. “What’s with all the questions?”
I had lost them.
Despite my best efforts to persuade them that I was nothing more than a gossip king, they locked up pretty tight after that one. And, considering that they would’ve been able to call upon literally hundreds of their brothers and sisters to have me questioned officially, I decided to leave them in peace and fall back.
After another hour of walking the command came from ahead to stop for a rest. I kept walking, making my way towards the front of army while everyone moved off the road to pick pebbles out of their sandals and massage their feet.
They remained grouped together in batches of eighty. In all, there seemed to be two people who were the top dogs in each group; standing and laughing, lounging around without giving a fuck what was going on. All except for one group. The second to last group saw four top dogs, talki
ng it over, laughing, with three of them staring wistfully at one, like he was the pure object of their affection. I had seen him and one of his friends before, standing outside the magistrate’s building, giving a hard time to two of Kasera’s riders. Mr ‘My Dick Is Bigger Than Yours.’
I walked on with my heart pounding through my chest. A whole half a mile of being eyeballed by every soldier there was. Seen and remembered. I was the only dumb fuck on the road, walking on, like I had a great big sign over my head saying, ‘Look at me!’
The three wistful ones turned their attention from the fourth and glared at me. I was a trouble maker and they knew it.
I carried on. At the head of the army was a group of infantrymen and mages, numbering around a hundred and fifty. Since it was uniquely absent of any top dog lounging around or doing anything of note, I presumed he was with the previous group, one of the foursome. And, if I was a decent gambler, I’d say it was the debonair man-crush. A squat, broad young man with dark hair who was going to have some weight issues creeping up on him before he hit thirty.
Thankfully I didn’t see Commander Lavarta, Zara, or Alysia.
I reached the wide open road with an Isparian army at my back and a jitter running down my spine screaming at me to get the hell off that road if I knew what was good for me. A lifetime of avoiding these people at all costs had left its mark, yet I was about to poke at their most recent wound just because I could.
Chapter Seven
Torne. The capital of Syuss and seat of the governor. Behind it; the jagged hand-print of a natural harbor, home to shipwrights and dry docks, merchant vessels and a naval fleet at rest. Along the front of the city; walls that at first made me swear in surprise, then swear in admiration, then swear as I wondered how the governor came to believe that his inland city surrounded by hundreds of miles of imperial land was at risk of being overrun by a military rival. Slabs of gray rock rose from the ground with three-story towers sitting atop, puncturing the sky. Not just ordinary towers, either. Word had it that in order to pay for this wondrous expansion the governor had devised a deal with the richest up-and-coming families in the city: for the low, low price of a king’s ransom they could own and live in one of the towers. It would be dressed up as a luxury home with more rooms than they could possibly use. The only catch came in the event of the city falling under siege. If that were to ever happen, those families would be hurried away and their homes would be used by the army inside to hurl javelins, rocks, and arrows at the besiegers. Not that the city was in any real danger of being attacked, but you never know. General’s Kasera and Renair weren’t that far away in Erast and Solento respectively, so to attack by land would be inadvisable. ‘What about the river?’ you might ask. Well, that was more of an inlet which led towards the North Sea and the wind tended to favor blowing north-east. There has only ever been one attack by the river, as far as I’ve heard. Twenty ships came down. Under full wind, two imperial ships crashed into the advancing armada, effectively blockading the river completely. Two imperial armies marched alongside the river, one on each side, and fired arrow upon arrow into everyone who tried to swim ashore. Anyone who made it had their throats slashed. The river turned red. No one has tried that approach since.
After a grueling seven hour walk without rest, I had just about made it. As always, the last hour is the worst. You’re so close that you start to fantasize about being there already, rather than dealing with the aches in your feet and the boredom of reliving the same daydream over and over again. I made my way past the farms, past the pockets of homes as the city started to rise across the horizon, until the towers of Torne greeted me from a distance.
Laborers were still at work on the walls and paving the moats. Dawn to dusk for minimal pay. Sometimes for no pay since several of them had their ankles chained, with a member of the city watch standing guard. Prisoners of lesser crimes, I imagine, who had bargained a year of their life to save themselves from a more severe punishment.
Two members of the city watch were at the gate, bored and completely done with the day. One raised his hand. “Easy there, buddy. Who are you?”
I said, “I work for General Kasera. I was told his daughter and her escort would be riding with the Lavarta army.”
You could see it written across his face: okay, that was not the answer I was expecting. He recovered, now wondering if he had to call me ‘sir’. “You’re late. Miss Kasera came through here several hours ago.”
“And Commander Lavarta?”
“Came even earlier still.”
Even though they left Verseii at around the same time, both on horseback. I guess Lavarta hauled ass to get here. “So I’ve missed his army?”
The young fella smacked his lips and gave me a pass with that one. “Not yet. They’re coming in tonight.”
The other one, older, wiser, more suspicious than his counterpart, lifted his eyes from my outfit to my face. “What business do you have with Miss Kasera?”
“I’m part of the general’s security team. You met the woman Miss Kasera Lavarta was riding with? Long brown hair, foreign accent? Zara?”
They both leaned back with a nod, accepting that I at least had accurate information.
I waved my hand towards the open gates. “May I?”
The wiser one stepped away. “Go on.”
In I went.
If I had been in Erast and wanted to find the richest person in the city, I would’ve looked for the biggest home. That was close to impossible here, as hundreds of homes sprawled out in ridiculous directions across the city. I’d need an eagle’s help to figure out which was larger than the rest. Rows of villas with their own underground vaults stretched in this direction while other villas with towering views of the city stretched in that. Each estate seemed to be a town within a city. Lush gardens behind each wall, banks of trees and fountains, obelisks dedicated to each family’s gods of choice, and flocks of exotic birds who had all escaped their confines were nibbling at their trees of choice.
Everything was larger than anything I had seen before. Civilian homes with walls fifteen feet high, and even then I could still see the top of every home behind their monstrous fortifications. There would’ve been enough space between each building and the outer walls to make an atrium redundant. Gardens in the front and back with ponds, lakes, manicured mazes of flowers, and dogs the size of wolves. Each home was its own oasis, free from the burden of the lower class who begged on the streets outside. Some family crests stood more prominent than others. Two scrolls crossed. Wreaths inverted. A moon over a lake. I had no idea what any of them meant.
Women walked in fine dresses which flowed to their ankles. Some silk, most cotton. Men in rich tunics with sashes across the chest and down to the waist, clasped in place with some kind of shoulder pad to accentuate a tougher, warrior-look about the wearer. Some carried daggers at their sides. Most seemed skittish, hurrying to get home before dark. The women favored long hair tied at foot-length intervals with ribbons. The men wore fine beards and short hair on top. No doubt the emperor and his concubine had been making the rounds in public, there to bring peace of mind to the masses who, only last year, had seen four emperors rule in Ispar, one for each season. For that year, fashion had taken on a neutral appearance, the locals afraid of being seen siding with one deposed leader over a new one.
Wherever I went I was met with immaculately well-paved boulevards. Horses, carts, and carriages clopped and clattered along the ground in all directions. City watch walking along in pairs, spears jangling about. Others in similar uniforms, spear-free but armed with short swords. Lighter armor. A burnt-out look in their eyes, like the day couldn’t end fast enough. One of them glared at me, locking me into his mind. Enough to make me jump and walk on with my head down, convinced that I was about to have to run for my life yet trying to remind myself that I still hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d heard that some of the capital cities employed mages within their city watch, but I never expected to actually see one.
>
Ahead of me, two riders with green blankets under their saddles emerged from a gate. I slowed, trying to find any clue to indicate that I might have found the exact house I was looking for within less than an hour. A soldier closed up, locked everything in place. I strolled past the iron gate, glancing into the home of – possibly – Commander Lavarta. The crest belonged to the army, not the family. A small home lay beyond, though it was only small in comparison to its megalithic neighbors. A two-room frontage with the main door in the middle and wide glass windows on either side. Single story. How deep into the back of the property it went, I had no idea. I searched for Kasera’s horses, even for Zara making a round along the perimeter or Alysia out on an evening stroll. No luck on any front.
At the first corner I took a quick left, hurried along without looking too guilty, and found my way back to the city gates. I figured the army would’ve been an hour behind me. The governor’s military police would want to take Artavian’s body, ask a few questions, and no doubt relieve Kasera’s rider of his duty. I wanted to be there when the army arrived to see who walked off with Artavian and the general mood of whoever came to receive Kasera’s rider, the Lavarta-appointed investigator.
Soon enough, the first bearer appeared, holding a staff in the air with his century’s details proudly displayed. First Century of the Fifth Army. Behind him, a man in his mid-twenties strolled in, a grin from ear to ear like he was returning from a battle against the greatest foe the empire had ever defeated. Dark hair, squat, yet mostly athletic in stature. The little shit even spread his arms out wide, chest puffed out, announcing to the world, ‘Your hero has returned!’
The city guards made no effort to delay him, not with the five hundred soldiers to his rear. Heads turned, the city bell sounded, and the army stepped into a march through the main streets of Torne like they were on parade. No one cheered. Not that they weren’t eager to see the return of the army, it was simply more of a curious spectacle. The troops marched through the street, victorious in keeping the northern border safe from the rabbling horde of barbarians … barbarians who numbered in the dozens, not the thousands the empire would have you believe.
