Sunset Mantle

by Alter S. Reiss

  “Thank you,” said Cete. “Welcome to my fields; they and I are yours.”

  “Thank you.” The Antach leaned back, looking at Cete. The torches left deep shadows, and Cete could not read his expression, but the way he sat in the chair, the tension in his arm, the angle of his shoulder, they all conveyed interest and authority. It was only because of the shadows of the torches that he looked sad, and afraid.

  “I owe you a debt of gratitude,” said the Antach. “The general of the Reach is allied with the enemies of the Reach, and you traded your honor to protect me from him.”

  Cete looked quickly around. The guards the Antach had brought with him were all standing beyond the borders of his land—far enough away that they would not hear the conversation, but close enough that they could respond to any attack. A clever piece of business; if there was a spy hiding amidst the shadows of the trees, he would hear what was said, but he would also be in another man’s property after dark. The word of a trespasser could not be accepted in court.

  “And you haven’t stopped fighting on my behalf since,” said the Antach. “We have few enough allies, and of those which we have, few have served me as well as you have, though you are no longer under orders, and though you owe me no debt.”

  “Thank you,” said Cete, keeping himself back in his chair, cautious, not bowing at the compliments.

  “You’ve not met my son,” said the Antach. “Cete, this is Kern Antach, the general of the clan army.”

  Kern bowed in his chair, and Cete replied in kind; it was time for caution, not rudeness. This display, this honor being done, for all that it was done in secret—there was something the Antach wanted.

  “It is on my advice that we are here,” said Kern. He was very young, scarcely out of boyhood, but his voice was clear. “My taking the post of clan general was one of the conditions the Termith imposed, and while I cannot point to any great defeats, I fear they are not disappointed in my performance.”

  That was a hell of a thing for a man to admit—particularly a young man in a position of authority. Cete gave Kern a closer look. If he survived what was coming, this was a man who could make himself fit to rule.

  “We would like to give you command of the forces of the Reach Antach,” said the Antach.

  The damnable shadows! Cete needed to see what that meant, but the light of the torches did not reach the Antach’s eyes.

  “Is this lawful?” he asked. “To give an outcast authority over men of a reach?”

  “It is,” said Lemist. “But it gives the opportunity for violation of the law. Even in the heat of the battle, you must remember what you are, and what your position is.”

  That was why they had brought the scholar-priest; to confirm that what they were doing was within the law. If they triumphed on the battlefield, there would be the law courts to follow, and the Antach had his eye on that future, remote though it might appear.

  It had been a mistake for Radan to use the priest in his play against the Antach. Cete could hear the faint echoes of anger in Lemist’s tones. She had been forced to twist the law, to apply it on behalf of the guilty. It would be equally unwise for the Antach to make a similar mistake, and he was coming close to it. So long as they remained within the law, they might be safe.

  Not safe. Cete immediately corrected himself. Even in the depths of his heart he could never count the Reach Antach safe. The Antach were a steer before the butcher, they were standing grain before the scythe. “Thank you,” he said. “I will serve as best I can.”

  Kern passed a tightly wrapped parchment scroll over. “Your contract,” said the Antach. “As Kern has said, his position as general of the Clan army is written into our contract with the Termith. He will retain command of my house troops. Similarly, Radan’s contract is still valid. He still commands the Reach army and the militia.”

  “Mm,” said Cete. “As clan general, are you bound to listen to my orders, Lord Kern?”

  “Not bound,” said Kern. “That would be beyond the limits of the law. But any instruction you might give will be given full consideration.”

  Not the clan army, not the Reach army, not the militia. “I understand,” said Cete.

  When defeat looked inevitable, there were many who would take shelter in the church. There, by law and tradition, the conqueror would do them no harm. Depending on the provisions stored in the church, and the ability of their clan and kin to raise up ransom, they might leave in comfort, or into slavery, or into the ruin of a reach whose walls have been torn down, and whose houses have been taken stone from stone, to beg bread where they could find it.

  Some would take refuge in the church at the first sign of a hostile army. Others might be induced to fight, and it seemed that Cete was seen as someone who might induce them. “The mustering ground is property of the militia,” he said, “and its use would doubtless violate Radan Termith’s contract. But I will need a field large enough that all the men who wish to fight can come, where I can see them performing the routines.”

  “It will be arranged,” said the Antach. “Is that all?”

  “No,” said Cete. “The mine guards, and the caravan guards, and the troops of the private houses. By law and custom, you cannot command them, and private holders of fighting labor will need it now. But they can volunteer their services, if they are allowed by the holders of their labor. I need those men, and I hope you can get them.”

  “I will try everything I can,” said the Antach. “Within the confines of the law.”

  “Thank you,” said Cete. “I will also need spears. At least one for every man that will stand behind one, but better two or more, to replace those which break. Straighten the blades of bill-hooks, strip the iron from the doors of the Brotherhood Hall, but I need those spears. And I will need men to teach those who wish to learn. We have at most five days before a hostile army is camped at our gates. Your men have seen the simplified spear form that I was teaching; have them learn it, and have them use what time we have to teach it to whomever will learn.”

  “It shall be done,” said the Antach. “You will want to see the contract by the light of the day before you take the position. But I do not think there will be anything in it to change your mind.”

  “Of course,” said Cete.

  “I am confident that I have made the right choice,” said the Antach. “For once.” He smiled, stood to leave. “There was one other thing that I had meant to ask you.”

  “Lord?” asked Cete.

  “What sort of man was Eber Hainst?”

  For a moment, all was quiet, even the crickets. “He was a great fighter,” said Cete, slowly. “A strong man who could see clearly. He was constrained by his line’s standing within the Hainst clan; he tried one thing, and then another, looking to join a new-founded reach, or lead a venture of his own, and was each time blocked by those who did not wish to see his father’s line gain prominence. Thwarted ambitions fester. He lost none of his strength, but gave way to black moods, and in the end, to the madding.”

  “They gave you his axe and a merit chain, when he broke,” said the Antach.

  “And a banishment, to show that the lords of the Hainst had not commissioned the death of one of their own,” said Cete. “I did what was needful, and paid the price.”

  “First for the Hainst, and then in my service,” said the Antach. “You seem to pay a great deal, to do what is necessary.”

  “I’ve spent less than what twenty-eight of my fifty paid on the field,” said Cete, “and less than fifteen of them are paying now, at the hands of Radan Termith. Less than many will pay, before the full moon next shines on Reach Antach.”

  The Antach bowed and left, with his son on one side, and the scholar-priest of the Irimin on the other. A handful of the guards remained behind, their swords bared against the enemies of the Antach who might seek to kill his newest captain general.

  Cete returned to the roof, where Marelle lay wakeful upon her mat, and told her what business had been conduc
ted in the field he had bought.

  “What do you think?” she asked, when he was done.

  “I could not have hoped for more,” said Cete. “But then, I could have said the same after my first meeting with Radan Termith.”

  “You think he will turn on you?” she asked.

  “He may,” said Cete. “It is one thing to give an outcast a command with no army. It is another thing to confirm that command when the crisis is past.”

  Marelle reached over and touched his face, looking to read something from his jaw, from his lips, from his neck. “You think that the crisis will pass?” she asked. “You think that we can win?”

  It was not a question Cete wanted to face. “It is unlikely,” he said. “The odds favor the Antach not having to make that decision,” said Cete. He considered all the ways Radan could strike, all the resources the city clans would bring to bear, and the pitiful little the Antach could muster. “It’s possible,” he said, finally. “I don’t know.”

  Marelle settled in beside him, her head on his chest. “Before Radan made his move, there was always the question lurking behind every sick sheep, every mine death, everything. Is this how the city clans will strike? Have they found a way to unleash a pestilence, will they poison the workers in the mines? It was a relief when you were called before the tribunal, in a way; I knew then how my death and the death of my reach had been arranged. If I allow myself to believe it, it will be strange to have hope.”

  “Mm,” said Cete. “Very strange.” Since Marelle had gone blind, she would have been living with the knowledge that she would be cast out. Since he had killed Eber Hainst, he had been a wanderer. If he allowed himself to believe it, to believe that what had happened in the garden brought with it the hope of a victory and the post of captain general of the Reach? Strange enough to break him like a twig, if it fell apart. When it fell apart.

  Chapter 9

  The stream that wound by the base of the hill on which the Reach Antach perched was mostly seasonal. It still had water, even in the depths of the summer, but little more than a muddy trickle. By the sides of the stream, barley fields stretched out in either direction, owned by the great families of the Reach. One owned by the Antach was given over to Cete as a mustering ground.

  All the men who were between sixteen and forty years of age had passed before Radan Termith, and he had chosen one out of every ten to serve in the Reach militia. Some few paid instead of serving, filled their obligation with hired labor. The rest trained for two days a month in the mustering grounds of the Reach, and were given gifts at New Year’s and at Sheavesday for their service; a portion of flour and of oil on Sheavesday, and a well-fatted lamb on New Year’s. They drilled on the Reach mustering ground, and would be commanded by a lieutenant of Radan’s if war came to the walls of the Reach.

  Those who had been passed over by the Reach commander had mostly let their practice of the routines lapse, had let their ancestral weapons grow rusted, let the hafts of their weapons grow loose in their sockets. They knew this, and were ashamed, and very few wanted to show how incapable they were in public. And there was no portion of flour and oil for volunteers, no fatted lamb. Yet they came; three men out of every ten in the Reach, by Cete’s estimation. By numbers, a larger force than that which Radan commanded.

  Larger, but far less useful. With a handful of exceptions, they were not fighting men. Some knew the forms, some could even move with the axe or sword. But they shuddered at the noise of blade on blade, they feared pain and their heads were filled with everything besides what they ought to have been doing. Under most circumstances, there was nothing wrong with living like that. There were men who trained all their lives, and never fought; what advantage to anyone was all that training? But this was not a Reach like those, these were not men destined to live a life of that sort, and the lives they had chosen did not produce what Cete needed.

  As with the fifty that Radan had given him, it was necessary to divide the troop. There were the caravan guards and family fighting men the Antach had managed to wrest loose from those who had bought their labor. A few who had been too sick to march out with the Reach army, but who had since recovered—perhaps two dozen men, all told. Added to that were those who had continued their practice, whose weapons moved where they willed them, some of the time. A handful of shepherds who knew the sling, a handful of miners who could stand and strike with sword and axe. One fifty of sling and javelin, three of sword and axe. The rest—and there were another nine full fifties of men who had shown up in that barley field below the Reach—would have to learn the spear as well as they could.

  The men of the Antach clan army came down to the field as well, drilled the spear form with the men, practiced the sword and axe with those who could manage it, and tried to teach the slingers to throw in volleys. Cete prowled up and down the ranks as they worked, picked out men to serve as sergeants, as fifty-commanders. Tarreer had the skills and the attitude, but not the stamina. Jereth didn’t have the necessary skills, but he would stand and fight, and his men would fight beside him; good enough. The best use of the Antach clan army would be as officers for the men he had been given, but that was not possible, so he did what he could, knowing that he was making more mistakes than proper decisions.

  Better a mistake than a delay. The Antach had known that Cete would feel that way, and had slipped a few things into his contract that Cete would have argued, had there been time. Pay was too low for a captain general, for one thing, and the Antach had more authority over the men than a captain general’s contract usually allowed, for another. It was reassuring, in a way—if the contract had been too generous, Cete would know for certain that he was not meant to survive the coming battle.

  For the afternoon services, one of the scholars came down from the Reach, and led the prayers on the riverbank. Here, and here alone, Cete could stand at the front of a congregation, sit beside the priest as he gave his lecture on the law. It was not much of an army, but he was its general, and there was something to that, even if nobody who came down to wrestle recalcitrant spears in the summer sun would survive a single tribal charge.

  After the services, the Antach came down with some of the servants of his house. The servants served out bread with olive relish, and pitchers of wine with water. Not a banquet, but a meal like that for nearly seven hundred men was no small expense. There were things the Antach of the Antach had done which struck Cete as foolhardy, but at least he didn’t seem to be the sort to try to save bits of bronze while his house burned down. Except when it came to the salary for his captains general, but that was another issue.

  “What do you think?” he asked Cete, gesturing with his chin towards the masses of men who had scattered to find shade at the edges of the field, to talk, and play dice, and to assert their freedom from discipline while they ate their meal.

  “If they were fighting men,” said Cete, “they would not be here. I can’t hope to change that. All this—the drills, the formation, the assignment of sergeants and fifty-commanders—it is all to put enough blood in their livers that they will be able to stand in line, three deep, and remain with their feet planted against a charge. There are children of ten with enough strength to stand in the line, and to hold the spear in place, but it takes a man to see a charge of fighting men and bare steel, and to stand fast. They are not fighters, but there are men amongst them. We will see if they are enough.”

  The Antach nodded. “I had hoped they wouldn’t be necessary,” he said. “But my brother has been delayed.”

  Cete hesitated. He was a captain general, and it was traditional for captains general to argue with their lords on matters of policy, to speak freely when they saw mistakes being made. But he was not the captain of the Reach, nor was he a captain of the clan army. He was somewhere between a militia captain and a military advisor, neither of whom were traditionally given that sort of license.

  “Your brother?” he asked, carefully neutral.

  The Antach laughed. �
��Perhaps we ought to have worked harder at concealment. But once it was known, it was known, and letting the news travel did him a great deal of good in the council-house of the White Horn tribe.”

  “His tribe,” said Cete. “Even if he were not delayed, it will not be a single tribe that the city clans will have raised up against us.” His hands were open, pleading; Cete needed his lord to give him more hope than this.

  “The White Horns can put nine hundred armed men in the field,” said the Antach.

  That was something more.

  “But as I said, they’ve been delayed. We shall have to hold until they arrive.”

  “If you’ll forgive me for asking, lord—” He hesitated again, but if the Antach wanted to call him a captain general, he’d play the part. “Were you not expecting this?”

  The Antach gave him a sideways look, with just a hint of a smile. They were away from the other men, walking in the field, where the furrows of the plows had been trampled down by the feet of the men who had been training. “The delay?” he asked.

  “Among other things,” said Cete.

  “My brother anticipated an attack. They used sheep thieves, and most of those are hanging from their heels, out in the grazing lands. Some got away clean, damn them. But there were a few who were just a hair more clever; it took more time than expected to get the tribes to stop chasing those who looked as though they might be caught. It was a near thing, and did not work a quarter so well as the city clans must have expected. If we hold three days, my brother will be here.” The Antach looked up to the northern hills, as though hoping to see a banner floating high and distant.

  “As to the rest . . . it is easy to look at a prospect and see the benefits rather than the risks. And those who do not risk do not gain.” The Antach gave a short shrug. “Every bargain we made was chewed over carefully before it was swallowed. Each one seemed like the best choice at the time, and yet it seemed that we swallowed enough unwholesome things to bring us down to the very edge of death.”