Sunset Mantle

by Alter S. Reiss

  “Perhaps,” said Cete. He came forward. The limp was feigned, and he proved that—Radan moved quickly enough, when it was that or have his side cut. But the weariness was not, nor the weakness in his left arm. Cete had taken hurts as well, was tired as well. But it was not enough to make up the difference; Radan Termith would lose.

  Radan saw that too, paled. “Quarter!” he cried.

  “No,” said Cete, still circling.

  “The law says you must—”

  “A man who leads a congregation astray,” said Cete, “is a public menace, akin to a wolf or hyena that has come within the walls of a city. He shall be struck down, and also his family shall bear the sin.”

  “Damn you!” Radan shook his head, tried to clear it. “This is the will of the Termith of the Termith, the Hainst of the Hainst, the Coardur of the Coardur! I’ve led nothing; I’ve followed, and more will follow.”

  “More will follow,” echoed Cete. “And follow further down your road as well.”

  Radan tried again, driving forward. Cete gave him ground, clipped the side of his head with his axe. Not deep enough to cut bone, but enough to peel back a strip of flesh, send blood down his neck and side.

  “The Antach,” said Radan. “He’ll want me alive. This is his chance, to have something to bargain with. Kill me, and risk the future of the Reach. The Antach will want me alive, the Termith will want me alive. Give quarter, and you’ll be rewarded by both—you and your wife will have a place with the Antach so long as they live, and the Termith when they fail.”

  It was true that the Antach would like Radan Termith alive, and confessing his treachery. And it was true that he was a son of the Termith, and for all that he had failed, they would not wish to see him dead on the battlefield, his bones scattered in a strange land. Cete pulled back, out of range; damned if he’d let Radan take an advantage while he thought. And rational thought all pointed in one direction.

  “If the Antach of the Antach wished for me to spare you,” he said, “he ought to have paid me more.”

  Radan tried to say something else, but then the madding had Cete, a rage so vast he could not contain it. He came in, Radan’s axe came up, faster than Cete had expected. Not fast enough. He took Radan’s throat out with Marelle’s knife, and as the former captain general fell and choked, his axe went through the man’s chest, cutting through armor and muscle and bone to lay open his heart.

  It was done. Cete threw back his head, and a roar tore from his own heart, as open as the ruin of Radan’s. It was better to live than to die, and for the heaps and rows of those slain by the gate of the Reach Antach, he could not suffer Radan Termith to live, no matter the politics or the cost. Rational thought pointed in one direction, but it was not a road down which Cete could travel. It was done, and it was well done, and it was over.

  Chapter 12

  The Antach and his brother met on the field, after the fighting was done, and embraced each other. The men of the tribe came up into the Reach for the feasting, and the survivors of the battle were made welcome in the tents of the White Horn tribe, and in the tents of their allies pitched in the valley below, and up on the hills. All those slain of the Reach Antach—militia and clan army and Reach army, those who fought with honor and those who had attempted to bathe in blood the Reach who owned their service—were laid to rest in the graveyard just outside the walls of the Reach Antach. There is no treachery in death, there is no honor, just the long silence of the underworld, and the judgment of the true judge.

  There were a great many dead. Cete stood beside the Antach at every burial, said a blessing for the names of all the slain whose names were known, gave over to God those names which were not known. Tarreer was dead, as was Arthran, the boy from the gauntlet. He had fought with the wall fifty, and his face looked even younger in death, his nose still crooked from Cete’s punch.

  When the slain were buried and the wounds of those who lived were treated by the doctor’s apprentices, Cete retreated back to his house on the outskirts of town, back to Marelle. They had to tend to their trees before the harvest, and had to consider what would be done with the bare patch of land he had purchased during his long battle with Radan Termith. Cete was still the captain general of the Reach Antach, but it would be some time before that title had much meaning. The Reach army numbered eighty men hale enough to be called up to fight, with another hundred in the militia.

  For the time, the defense was left to the Antach’s brother and his White Horn tribe, and the allies that had followed the White Horn banner. It was a tribe with a celebrated lineage, and hunting grounds extending far to the north and northeast. The delay the Termith had thrown at them had been entirely to their benefit—they had hit an army that was already uncertain and weary, and had earned a great harvest of plunder and slaves, at relatively little cost. That would bind the tribal allies to them, in the same way that what had passed before the walls of Reach Antach would cause tribes to fear any contact with the Termith. If the Reach Antach was still perched on perilous ground, the future of the White Horns seemed secure, at least for the season.

  They were certainly strong enough to protect the Reach, or to sack it, regardless of what Cete did. So he appointed fifty-commanders and sergeants, and left them to rebuild the army as best they could; he signed the contracts, he took responsibility for the men they hired on, but he did not oversee their training, nor did he seek out volunteers, nor train men up for work with spears. For a week, he saw to raising monuments over the burials, and worked with the Antach’s men to make sure that all those who sought the gifts given to the bereaved had legitimate claims.

  Marelle had her commissions to attend to. And there were some small tears in the sunset mantle; while she appreciated the nature of Cete’s gesture, it required careful work to repair what he had damaged. When she could, she helped with the work in the orchards, or gave Cete advice about the men in the army. But there were times when she would sit with a haunted look, her hand on the shoulder where her friend’s blood had been spilled. The cut with the axe was not the only blow she had taken on the field that day, nor even the one that pained her most.

  One evening, when the sun had not yet set, but the heat of the day had faded, the Antach’s men came up around the orchard, as they had the night that he had been made captain general, and once again, the Antach was in the field waiting, with his son at one side, and Lemist Irimin on the other. Cete bowed, took up the chair which had been made ready for him.

  There was some casual talk, before any business was mentioned. The Antach inquired after Marelle, Kern complimented Cete on the rebuilding of the Reach army, and the steps he had taken to probe the Reach walls for weakness, and to repair the damage that they had undergone during the administration of Radan Termith. Cete replied with compliments for the Antach clan army, for the valor and timely arrival of the White Horn tribe.

  When that was done, the Antach leaned back. “I have not had a chance to properly congratulate you on your victory. Were it not for the minor observances of mourning between Summer Candles and the Festival of Sheaves, I would have called a feast in your honor, and sent presents to you and your wife. It was a victory unlooked for, and your name is now heard upon the lips of the mighty men of the cities.”

  Cete winced slightly at that last. Those mighty men of the cities—“the Termith of the Termith, the Hainst of the Hainst, the Coardur of the Coardur”—were the ones Radan had named as the men who had sought the destruction of the Reach Antach. While his name was certainly heard from their lips, it would not be surrounded by praise of his work, or prayers for his continued success. “It’s not just the minor observances of mourning that hold you back,” he said.

  “No,” said Lemist. “The orders you had been given were wrong, but they were not criminal. Besides, a court has ruled on this issue, and there is no evidence that corruption or bribes changed the result. You are outcast, and you shall remain outcast. A feast might be given in your honor, but you would not be p
ermitted to sit at the tables with the men of the Reach.”

  “It would be peculiar,” said Cete, “for me to sit outside the gates, and ask for scraps from the feast, amidst the other outcasts.”

  “Peculiar,” said the Antach. “But within the law. All honor that can be done for you within the law shall be done.”

  “Thank you,” said Cete, and waited.

  “It is a difficult thing which I have come to ask you,” said the Antach.

  “You wish to buy back the remainder of my contract,” said Cete. The simplest thing for the Antach of the Antach to do would have been to have arranged for Cete’s murder, but there were risks involved in that. This would be more honorable, and safer, and Cete had expected it from the moment he stood over the lifeless corpse of Radan Termith, and watched the last of the tribesmen flee into the hills.

  “They have already reached you?” asked the Antach. “I would have expected more caution on the part of the city clans, but I suppose it would be well for them to act quickly.”

  Cete hesitated, tried to fit things into place, and could not. “I am sorry,” he said. “I do not understand.”

  “I feel it is the Termith who have the fullest understanding of what happened here,” said the Antach, “for reasons that I shall not discuss, lest I inadvertently slander an ancient and honorable clan. But the other city clans have watched what transpired with a keen interest as well. There are men coming to the Reach Antach who will seek you out over the next few days and weeks, offering to buy your labor at rates much higher than those which I am able to pay.”

  Cete was silent, stunned, hands lifeless on the arms of his chair. He had set himself against the Termith when he forced Radan to brand him as an outcast, and he had counted them as his enemy ever since.

  “If a man owns racing pigeons,” said the Antach, kindly, “and a rival he had not considered worthy of attention flies a bird that outpaces all of his, his first instinct is not to cut that bird’s throat, Cete. They will seek to buy you, and with offers that are not mere silver.”

  He had been thinking like a fighting man, and not like the lord of a clan. The Antach was right. The Termith of the Termith would resent that his plan was foiled, but Cete was no more his enemy than his own hook-bladed tribal knife was Cete’s mortal foe.

  “They will promise you doctors who will restore Marelle’s sight, and they will promise you a new trial, with witnesses who will swear that the orders you heard were not legitimately given, that two of the three judges in your previous trial had not judged honestly. And perhaps they will deliver on these promises. More than that, they will offer you something that I assuredly cannot. They will promise you long life, far from the field of battle, a safe place where you can raise up sons and daughters, and that your name will live through them.”

  From within his mantle, the Antach pulled forth a small pouch, and tossed it to Cete. There was the weight and sound of silver. “One quarter of the value remaining in your contract,” said the Antach. “You are free of the contract between us, your duties discharged in a satisfactory fashion. I owe you too much to stand in your way. If you choose to leave, go in good health, and with my blessing.”

  “I take it, then, that you wish to offer me another choice,” said Cete, fighting for his balance.

  “I do,” said the Antach. “The mines of the Reach Antach have done well, and as of the festival of Sheaves, we will have paid off the founding debt and all the interest that we owe to the city clans.” This was an astounding bit of news. The Reach Antach had been founded in living memory; Reach Tever had stood for three hundred years, and owed a debt greater than the cost of its founding.

  “Accordingly, I do not have the silver to pay you what your labor is worth, or even to match the offers that the city clans will make. Furthermore, I cannot promise you a doctor who can restore sight to the blind, or a court who will take in what another has cast out.”

  “It was a fair trial,” said Lemist. “And the verdict was in accordance with the law.”

  The Antach gave a short nod at that. “More, and worse, the Reach Antach is not so safe a place, as you have seen. And when a pigeon racer cannot acquire a rival’s birds, there is the ferret and the hawk and poison in the mash. There are a great many reasons why you should not take the offer I shall make, and I will not fault you for hearing the voice of those reasons.”

  Cete felt a tension within him. The Antach of the Antach knew him well; what he had said, and how he had said it made Cete wish to take up the offer, whatever it was. But those were good reasons, and he ought to listen to them.

  “If you would fight with us, continue on as my captain general, there will be no further need of contracts between us. You would be adopted into the Antach, to share in our fortune, to eat the meat from our table, and your voice would be heard in the councils of our family.”

  It was as sudden and as hard as a well-struck blow from an axe. To bear the name of the clan—for a city clan like the Hainst or the Termith, there would be hundreds of men and women in the family. The Antach were a young clan. There were not yet cousin lines and second-cousin lines or any of the endless branches of a well-established dynasty. “How many . . .” Cete trailed off.

  “You would be eighth in line,” said the Antach. “After my sons, and four of my cousins.”

  “Too high,” said Cete. “Too much of a risk of an outcast Antach.”

  “That would be a disaster, and no question,” said Kern. “Death of the clan, as likely as not. But it is necessary, to secure your children a place among the family lines of the first rank.”

  “I—” started Cete.

  “No,” said the Antach. “Not tonight. There is no contract, but this cannot be decided on an impulse, in the dark. Tomorrow, after the morning services, come to me and tell me what you have decided. If you are with me, it must be with your whole soul. I will not have you resentful, I will not have you feeling as though I tricked you into making a poor choice. As Radan Termith has taught us, the Reach Antach cannot trust a captain general of uncertain loyalties.”

  “Thank you,” said Cete, and bowed deeply. The Antach stood and bowed to Cete, as did Kern, as did Lemist, and then they left into the night, with their men formed up around them. Cete went back into his house, and though Marelle waited on the roof, he remained below.

  After a time, Marelle made her careful way down the ladder, with a hitch, where her side still pained her. She came over to where he was sitting, though he had said nothing, and put her hand upon his shoulder. He started at her touch, as though he had been awakened from a dream.

  “You have your mantle out,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Cete. “And the shroud you have embroidered for me. I have a choice to make.”

  “Tell me,” she said, and he told her.

  When he was done, she was silent for a long time. “It is your labor,” she said. “It must be your choice.”

  “No,” said Cete. “It is my labor, but it is your life, and it is the life of our children yet unborn. Perhaps for myself I would choose the shroud, but I cannot choose it for you as well.”

  “If you choose the Hainst or the Termith on my account,” said Marelle, “that will be the shroud for your soul, for all that your body might prosper.”

  “Not the Hainst or the Termith,” replied Cete. “Some other clan. The Antach will tell me who his allies are, who I can serve safely and with honor. If I leave here, he will want me placed as well as possible—the Antach clan will need friends in the city clans. We won a great victory, but the enemies of the Antach will not give up their war.”

  Marelle took her hand from Cete’s shoulder, and sat herself down in the chair opposite. “I don’t know,” she said. “If you will choose, I will go with your choice. Whichever you choose, it would be easier to be led than to decide. To be Marelle Antach, wife to the eighth in line to the Antach? But oh, for a doctor who could cut these clouds from before my eyes! To see your face, and the sun and the moon!
If we have children, Cete, I want to see their faces!”

  They were silent together for a long time.

  Finally, Marelle spoke. “When I was a little girl,” she said, “we lived in Coardur the City. In my fifth year, my mother died. Every day that year, I went to the church, wearing my mourning hood, and I prayed with all my heart for God to give her back to me. The priest there was of the Baern school. He saw me weeping, and my mourning hood, and after the services one day, he came over and asked me what I was praying for.

  “I told him, and for a time he stayed beside me, on the narrow bench. ‘I do not know if God will hear your prayer or not,’ he said. ‘For I do not know the mind of God. But let no one tell you that it is wrong for you to ask this thing of him, and let no one tell you that he will not hear your prayer. It is well that you ask these things of God, and it is well that he hears you asking. Never lose your faith that God can grant your prayers, no matter what the world tells you about what God can and cannot do.’ It was a good thing that he said, but as with everyone, I have stopped asking God for the impossible. And now he sets before us two tables, with an impossible meal upon each, and we are asked to choose.”

  It was long after the time for dinner, and the fire below the chimney was nothing but embers; they gave enough light that Cete could see the white of the shroud, and the black of the mantle, but little more. “Two tables,” said Marelle, “and two garments. Which would you wear?”

  “The same as you, I think,” said Cete. “I choose both the shroud and the mantle; I would stay in the Reach.”

  “Yes,” said Marelle. “It would be safer to take the long road into the cities, to live in a house with servants, to advise and train and never again smell blood in the air, never slip on gore-slick grass. To pretend that it never happened, that we do not have that weight to bear. But while you are right that it is better to live than to die, it is better to live well than live poorly, and while we have them, our lives in the Reach will be better worth living.”