Sunset Mantle

by Alter S. Reiss

  On the south and east of the wall that Marelle had built around her orchard was a terrace wall, and below that, there were olive trees and apricot standing on narrow terraces. Too young to bear much fruit, they were an investment in the future of the Reach. To the west, though, was a fine orchard, fifteen trees all more than twenty years old, planted before the land was sold to those forced to live beyond the walls. A perfectly flattened piece of land, and the trees were widely spaced. Beside the olives it looked as though there had been a stand of timber trees that had recently been harvested.

  The land and the trees were worth two hundred and fifty. Cete paid all he had gotten from the sale of the weapons, and was happy to see the money go. The saying was that silver forgets its fathers, but he remembered, and he did not want to feel the sale of trophies rightfully earned when he held those coins.

  With the money paid, he and Marelle paced out the borders of his land with the old owner, and with his neighbors on all sides. It was a good purchase, though it might mean having to hire help when work needed to be done. But he had not bought the land for its trees, or for growing up a stand of timber to sell. When the neighbors had drunk the water and the wine to show that they were all in agreement as to the borders, and when everyone else had returned to their homes, Cete paced out a circle in the land that had been used for timber, and began to practice with his axe.

  As a fifty-commander, he had practiced his routines daily, but he had not had a chance since. The healing skin of his back pulled and ached as he moved, but the cuts were sharp, and though his legs and arms complained at the twists and rises of the routine, they did not fail him. He practiced from late in the afternoon into the evening, until after the sun had set. Then he returned to his house, where Marelle had laid a table on the roof, so they could take their meal in the cool of the night.

  “The neighbors were impressed,” she said. “It has been a long time since they have seen the fighting routines properly performed.”

  “Mm,” said Cete. Fighting men were no more or less likely to be cast out from a town than others, but those that were seldom practiced. There was no law against it, but there were those who thought it defiled the routines. “If they wish to join me, they can. There is a good deal of space in our newly acquired land.”

  Marelle was silent for a time, as they ate their lamb with pomegranate. “I will let them know,” she said. “Oh, Cete. You are taking a grave risk, yet again. I know what is expected of women, and again I tell you: I will not take the strength from your arm, and I will not counsel you to give up when there is fight left. I do not want a single hair on your arm to think of safety rather than war. But you can see why those weapons had to be sold.”

  Cete stiffened. Those men had come by night to kill. It was wrong that their families could sleep well at night, that they would be able to pass the harness to a younger son, to give the axe in a dowry, as though there was honor still left in the steel. “When a man fights,” he said, slowly. “The motion comes from the hips, the strength from the lower belly and spine. Perhaps I think too much with my lower belly and spine, but I can do no other. It is who I am.”

  “I know,” said Marelle. “And I love you for it. But I am not a fighting man. And it is customary for fighting men to serve a lord, a position seldom reached by those who think with their spinal cord and lower belly. If you wish to feud, I cannot stop you. But I tell you not to feud, and I warn you that if you do, Radan’s men will use it against you.”

  She was right, but he didn’t like it. “I hope they do not use that bait on me, my wife. I will try not to bite, if they do.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and extended her arm for him to take. There were rush mats up on the roof, for sleeping when the weather was fine, and now that the priest had made his threat to Radan, it seemed they could sleep there securely. Cete led his wife over to the mats, to do his duty by her. She pulled him down, held him; tender and demanding, soft and strong. It was a moment of glory, beneath all the stars of heaven.

  Chapter 8

  It did not take long for the word to spread that Cete was rehearsing the fighting forms in public, and had invited all who wanted to join him in the practice. They were the rightful property of all men, but for most the practice was dropped when it became too demanding, when youths became men, and the days filled up with other concerns. Now the news of what Radan meant to accomplish was spreading. Sickle heads were being beaten into daggers, axe heads were being polished and fitted with new hafts. And men who now felt the absence of martial training were looking for instruction.

  The Reach army had left with no more than a week’s rations. There was no hope of turning the masses of Reach Antach into a force that could oppose them in that time. But the fighting forms were a foundation. They taught the cuts and the blocks, pressed them into the mind and the muscle. Cete went through them, time after time. Morning form, evening form, the variants for holiday and public fast, again and again.

  Some of those who came to participate fell out after a few repetitions, returned to their homes or to their work. Others remained until they could not continue. Cete was no commander, no hired teacher, and he was careful never to act as though he were; when he offered a correction, it was always, “I have been taught this,” and never, “You must do that.” The people who attended learned, for what good it would do.

  That is, the people who had come to learn learned. As Marelle had predicted, there were some of Radan’s men left behind in the Reach, and as Marelle had predicted, they did not leave Cete to teach the fighting forms in his orchard in peace. Two different men tried to trip him, another let his axe slip at a critical point, so that it went skipping out where Cete had been standing. It was the hardest thing in the world to let that pass, to continue to teach in the face of insult. Cete had the tribal dagger in his belt, and it leapt up into his hand, as though it had a will of its own.

  Each time, he forced it back to its sheath. The attacks were blatant enough, there were witnesses enough that if he called them on it, the law would probably be with him. But then he would spend two days, three, making his claim before the judges, one of whom would have been appointed by Radan to sit for him when the army was in the field. That Marelle was right didn’t mean it was easy to do what she had told him.

  Then came Mase, and Cete could feel the madding throbbing behind his eyes, had to fight to keep control of his hands.

  The sergeant was careful, and cleverer than Cete had expected. He had brought along a jug of wine, and he sat himself down beyond the line of Cete’s land, in the path between the fields. He didn’t say anything, just laughed when one of the shopkeepers or outcasts or other students made a mistake. It wasn’t long before he was joined by one of his cronies, and soon the two were pointing, calling out the beat incorrectly, and laughing when people fell, or missed their turns.

  The men who had come to learn were working in a field where they had little familiarity. As stonemasons or fig-cutters they had expertise, but here they did not—otherwise, they would not have needed Cete’s example. Men who are working beyond their familiarity, with no contract or lord’s order—their morale was shaky, and there are few weapons so insidious as laughter, as the fear of looking a fool. The crowds which had been growing started to shrink, and those who remained grew even more uncertain in their steps, which led to more hilarity from the side.

  “I think that I shall take a break,” said Cete, “and study a section of the law.”

  “Whoo!” yelled Mase. “A scholar-priest! Everyone quiet down, so we can hear the words of the scholar-priest!”

  Cete smiled over at him. He had been winning, and he had his wine, but Mase flinched at that smile. Just a hair, but enough to tell Cete that Mase knew the line he was walking. “I cannot recall,” said Cete. “But what is the law if a fighting man should leave his post upon the wall, and spend his time drinking wine beyond the city gates?”

  There was laughter at that, and some of the joy left Mase’s e
yes. “Seventy lashes, and scarring, I think,” said Jereth, a large and placid silver miner. Heavy work in the sun wasn’t easy for someone carrying that much fat, but Jereth had kept at it, despite the heat and the mockery from Mase. “No,” said Tarreer, a fig-cutter, who was some years too old to be a success as a fighting man. “If he leaves his post on the walls, that’s death by fire. ‘For the walls of a town are its men,’ as the verse says.”

  “I’m not on duty, you thieves and prostitutes,” said Mase, stepping forward. The man he had brought along was pulling at his sleeve.

  “I think you’re right,” said Cete. “Drunkeness on duty is lashes, leaving a post on the walls is death by fire.”

  “There are people,” said Mase, turning to his friend, “who are so ignorant of military form that they cannot tell the difference between a soldier on duty on the wall fifty, and a man on barrack duty.” His friend laughed without any conviction that there was a joke there to laugh at.

  “And what does one call a man who twice in a row finds himself on barrack duty, when the army marches out the northern gate?” asked Cete.

  There was a silence from the men who had come to practice the fighting forms. This was no longer a joking matter, and none of them wanted to fight a duel with a sergeant of the Reach army, for all that he had found himself on barrack duty twice in a row.

  Mase took another step forward. “This is a slander,” he said. “And the law says—”

  “So go thou and seek the judges!” roared Cete. He had been talking quietly throughout, while Mase had been blustering. Mase took a step back at that, looking pale. “See if they will hear your case.”

  Mase opened his mouth, shut it, opened again. He had been sent to harass Cete, but he seemed to have forgotten that there were three judges who would hear the case, and two were not kindly inclined towards Radan Termith. They would not listen to his plea, and Radan was not there to protect him from the consequences of annoying the Antach. He could attack, and when Cete killed him, then Cete would be forced to spend his time in court, rather than holding a court of his own. But it seemed Radan Termith had not bought that full a measure of loyalty from his man.

  Cete laughed, loud and long, and Mase went from pale to flushed. “You look like a fish, Mase,” said Cete. He puffed out his cheeks, opening and closing his mouth.

  Mase took another step forward. His friend grabbed his arm and pulled him back, just beyond the line of Cete’s property. As they started to argue in angry whispers, Cete turned, picked his axe up, and began the morning form once again, and the others joined in.

  After a time, Abdelken, a mine engineer, half tripped on a difficult turn, and Mase began laughing yet again.

  “Breathing at the right time is worth the concentration,” said Cete. “For instance, you might want to try this turn more like a fish.” He demonstrated, puffing his cheeks, opening and closing his mouth. The men who had come to learn laughed at that, and once again Mase went red. Twice more, he tried to disrupt the lesson with laughter, and twice more, Cete aped him, turned the laughter back at its source.

  Then Mase left, and Cete loosened his knife in its sheath. It would not be what Radan had ordered, but Mase had left in a rage, and there was always the chance that he’d come back with more men, and that there would be a riot. Though Cete had been as cautious as he could, this probably came closer to feuding than Marelle would have wanted. Nothing to be done about it, and besides, if he had taken too many insults, he would not have had enough weight in people’s minds for them to come to his field to practice their forms.

  Not long after Mase left, a few more men came to stay and watch. They were not wearing their colors or armor, but they were men of the Antach clan army. Cete had seen them at services, and at practice. Preempting a riot by Radan’s men, perhaps, or merely curious. Either way, they were there and watching, which meant that he could move to the next step.

  When Marelle came out to bring him bread and wine, she asked if there was anything else she could bring. “Poles,” said Cete, “of seasoned wood, each the length of a spear. A few dozen, if you can find them.”

  It was a difficult thing he had asked her to do, considering her blindness, but she made no objection, and it wasn’t long before she came back with some of her neighbors, carrying the poles. Cete weighed each one in his hand, rejected a handful, cut off the ends of a handful of others, as the people who had come to practice rested in the shade against the heat of the day.

  When he was done, he took up one of the poles and began a routine. There were spear routines, most commonly practiced in the eastern cities, but also among those cities and reaches who could not afford the metal for axe or sword. The form Cete was demonstrating was an eastern form, commonly used in the evening service, but stripped down to its most basic essentials. None of the broad movements of a single spearman, no casts, no rapid revolutions. It was almost a child’s routine, but the pole was heavy, and the sun was hot, and all eyes were on him; difficult enough, for all its simplicity.

  After the third repetition, one of the men picked up a pole and attempted to follow along, and soon after, more. Then he was going through the routine with the whole group doing their best to follow along. A few hours later, Mase showed up again, with five of his friends at his back. They saw the Antach’s men standing about, and got into an argument with them. Cete was immersed in his work, and couldn’t follow it completely, but what he saw from the corner of his eye showed that Mase and his friends kept their hands away from their weapons, and their voices low. Then they left, grumbling angrily.

  It seemed that his work during Radan’s absence was unlikely to earn Mase much gratitude, but that wasn’t Cete’s problem. He had to deal with men who were not accustomed to arms trying to learn a new form, with a new weapon, in the sun. All that without giving orders, or having any real authority. Every correction couched as a suggestion, every instruction phrased as advice.

  It was nearly impossible work, but there was a need, and Cete worked until the sun was low in the sky. There was no hope of teaching those men enough that they could match fighting men, or tribal warriors. But they could learn to hold a spear, and they could learn to stand down a charge, keeping their spears braced. A spear thicket, even a thicket of shopkeepers and miners, could break a charge, and leave a force of fighting men a pile of corpses, if it would hold its ground in the face of death, if it could stand and not break.

  When the day was done, Cete joined Marelle on the roof for the evening meal, and for the rush mats afterward. Later, they lay there together, her head nestled on his chest, and his hand idly moving through her hair, and he told her of the events of the day, and his hopes for the next.

  “You will need more ground,” she said. “We could cut the olives down, or buy the land to the east.”

  “No,” said Cete. “There is a limit to how many I can teach, and I am near that number. Perhaps I can—”

  Just then, there was a knocking on the door below. Marelle stiffened against Cete, as he disentangled himself.

  “If they have come to kill you, I would not expect them to knock,” she said. “Nonetheless.”

  “Mm,” said Cete. He dressed, tucked his axe into his belt, loosened the knife in its sheath, and went down. Marelle’s house had not been his home for long, but already he was so accustomed to it that he did not need light to know where to step. He came to the door, silent, and opened it just as another knock came, his hand just below the head of the axe, ready for a quick draw.

  It was one of the Antach’s men, wearing his armor, and his colors. “Blessings to the married,” he said.

  “Thank you,” said Cete.

  “If you are not otherwise engaged,” said the man, “there are those who would have words with you, in your outer fields.”

  Cete hesitated. If he was led beyond the walls of his orchard and killed there, it might be passed off as something other than a conspiracy. And if this was what his enemies intended, a man in the Antach’s ar
mor would be the sort of tool they would use.

  There was another man in armor waiting at the gate. It was hard to see in the moonlight—the moon was on the wane, so the light was not as good as it had been on his wedding night—but it looked to be the Antach’s armor and crest as well.

  “I do not—” started Cete.

  “Please,” said the Antach’s man. “It’s important.”

  The sensible thing to do was to stay behind, to bar the door and barricade the windows. And yet, there was the note of truth in the man’s voice.

  “Very well,” said Cete. “I will follow.”

  There were two men standing guard by the gate and a dozen men in full harness out in the orchard, standing amidst lit torches. There, beneath the trees where Cete had spent the day teaching fighting routines, sat the Antach of the Antach, and Lemist Irimin, and the general of the Antach clan army, all wearing the mantles of their office. They were seated in high-backed chairs, and there was one there waiting for him.

  There was the same sense of the earth whirling around him that Cete had felt when Radan Termith had called him to judgment for disobeying his orders. Calling him out beyond his walls made sense, at least—the house of an outcast was impure, and neither the Antach nor the scholar-priest could enter the walls of his garden without having to fast for two days, without bathing or anointing themselves. There was no time for that now, so the orchard was a fair compromise.

  Cete took his chair, arranged his mantle around him as he sat. For a moment, he regretted not having worn the sunset mantle when he had left his house. Oh, but it would be glorious in the torchlight, for all that it would be an act of supreme folly to be anything but humble in the face of his visitors by night.

  “Blessings to the married,” said the Antach, and there was a low murmur of blessings from the others assembled.