The Window and the Mirror

by Henry Thomas

  “Your son?”

  “No. Not mine. My own sister’s though.” The driver started sobbing again. “What am I to say to her? I didn’t save him. I ran. I ran away.” His face was pale, and he looked poorly. “I got him in on this line of work and everything. He was going to apprentice to a Weaver, you know, and I says, ‘Boy don’t need to be kept up inside all day, Sister. Let me take him on,’ I says.” He shook his head ruefully.

  “He managed to shoot one of them, you could tell her that.”

  “Pity that didn’t save him.” The driver shifted in the saddle and grimaced.

  “I saw you tried to help him, he didn’t listen. No one can fault you for that.”

  He let the sword clatter to the ground and unwrapped his cloak from about his shoulders and waist. “You will be all right,” he said to the driver by means of farewell.

  “I got the bastard. Got the bastard’s horse now.” The man smiled at him courteously and inclined his head slightly. As he turned, the driver called out to him, “I know who you are. Don’t think I don’t.”

  The man stopped and turned. The sword was only a step away. “It’s a dangerous path, friend.”

  The driver swallowed hard, then let out a thin chuckle, “Don’t you worry none, your lordship. Your secret’s safe with me. See, I got the bastard, his horse and all…but he managed to stick me pretty fair, see?” His left leg was dangling loosely from the stirrup and the blood was streaming off of the saddle and spattering the cobblestones. “So the way I see it, I got nothing to lose.” The mounted man picked his way closer to him.

  “I knew it was you by the way you moved with that sword. I seen you many times, as a youth. Not every fool knows a master when he sees one, but this fool does.” He gave a thin chuckle again. “Like I says, seen you many times. I was your loyal soldier, my lord. I fought with you at Valianador.”

  Here it comes, he thought.

  “Why did you not avenge their deaths?”

  The question stopped time for him, as it always did.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Pardon, my lord?”

  “I’ve been stripped of all titles, so you don’t bloody have to call me that.”

  The driver just nodded and lowered his head.

  “They said the fight went out of you when they was killed, that’s what they said. I can believe that. We was all so sad for you, my lord. All your family.”

  “Best not to speak of it further. I thank you not to.”

  “There are many of us still who would follow you if you was to raise your banner again. Many of us, my lord.”

  “Not another word.” His eyes flashed and the driver sobbed into his hands, then held them up in a gesture of supplication. “I’m sorry, my lord.”

  “You’re sitting a horse bleeding to death and you’re talking to me of rebellion and treason!” He looked around him at the burning town and the dead men and the jailer’s cart and threw his hands in the air. He laughed like a madman. I should have gone with them, he thought, I should have avenged them. I shouldn’t have run. But he had run, and he had kept running, and now he didn’t quite know how to stop.

  “Who did this?”

  “We don’t know. They hit us right afore we got to the low gate.”

  “What about the siege lines? How’d you get across in the night, and how big is their force?”

  “Weren’t no siege lines, begging your lordship’s pardon. Didn’t see no army to speak of neither. We’s halfway over the last hill and we sees the bloody town lighting up, and then riders coming after us.”

  It was making less and less sense to him the more he heard, but he knew that the man was telling him the truth. At least as much of the truth as he knows, he mused.

  “Poor Simma. He was only just twenty this summer.” With that he slumped from the saddle and would have fallen had the cloaked man not caught him and eased him to

  the street.

  He was silent for a moment but then suddenly opened his eyes and said, “So they made you a commoner now?”

  “Yes, I suppose they did.”

  “If you say so, my lord, but I think it a queer notion.” He motioned the man closer to him and reached for his hand.

  “Take my knife. It’s the closest thing to a sword we commoners can carry.” He smiled and closed his eyes. “Us common men, we must look after one another.”

  “I don’t want to take your knife.”

  “Please, my lord, it would mean so much to me. In honor of my service to you in the past and all.”

  He could see the man had taken a fatal wound in his thigh. There was a large artery there that would bleed a man out in a short time if opened.

  “I thank you for your service,” he said to the pale dying man. “I’m sorry…I despise all of this killing.”

  “I noticed by the way you was hitting them boys, my lord. Like you was drilling.” He smiled.

  “They’ll be stirring soon.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, my lord. I’m done here. Oh, take my knife, and the key to the lockbox.” The driver clawed at a leather thong about his neck, grimacing as he used his failing strength to break the cord, and he pressed it into the man’s hands. “Give it to whoever is commanding the garrison here in this cursed place. Rode into a damned hell storm is what happened to us. I’m done. All for a bloody Tribe girl.” He was mumbling then, and sobbing and shaking, and in moments he stilled and never moved again.

  The man shook his head. What a waste of life, it seemed. All because some man somewhere wants something that he doesn’t have, he thought, something that had to do with a Dawn Tribe girl in a rolling cell and an ambitious yet foolhardy attempt on a town of little significance. Things weren’t adding up in the mind of the fugitive General Tyl Illithane, but to the cloaked man who now stood belting on a commoner’s sword, the only thing that mattered was that he had just missed his chance at a clean escape.

  He stared at the key in his hand. He’d had to make hard decisions, and he had made them without remorse. Such was the life of a man of power who held a command and many lives in the balance.

  Or even just one, he thought.

  One

  A month before the attack on Kingsbridge.

  Dawn Tribe Territory. Fall.

  It pissed rain. A steady flow fell from the heavens. Here they were, miles from anywhere familiar, doing the Magistry’s bidding. One hundred and thirty-two Oestermen serving the High Mage in Dawn Tribe land, no less. Of all the forsaken places in the world, he never dreamed he would find himself here.

  Joth shifted his helm a bit so that the raindrops stopped finding their way down the nape of his neck and into his undergarments, his mood as foul as the weather. Here in these vales and mountain passes, in their squalid huts and caves and clandestine shit holes lived the bloody Dawn Tribes. For the last month they’d ridden, walked, hiked, and climbed through this unwelcoming territory, going from one shit-stained settlement to the next, looking for some secret something the bloody mages were after. Each time they entered a territory or left a village, he had felt the eyes of the men watching them from the tree lines. There had been skirmishes, and once what seemed to have been a planned ambush in a mountain pass that claimed the lives of twelve of their number. They hate us, every one of them, Joth knew from the history between his people and the bloody Dawn Tribe. The Oestermen had come long ago and battled with the People of the Dawn Tribe and driven them from the land. Now they were forced to live in the poorest areas with the least arable land here in the mountains, where they scratched out their existences.

  Living the way Oestermen haven’t lived for a thousand years, Joth mused as he spat angrily at the ground. These people lived like animals. They smelled like animals, they ate like animals, rutted with each other like animals, and their language was foreign and crude. He had seen women in a few of the settleme
nts who would have been beautiful he thought, had they not had their hair all braided and hung with savage jewelry, and if they had worn some decent clothing instead of their garish checked and striped homespun wool. If they hadn’t already been soiled from lying with their wild cave men. He had been away too long if he was starting to fancy the savage girls, he reminded himself. I’ll be back soon, I’ll be back home, and I won’t have to bloody look twenty places at once all the time. He thought, I’ll be able to sleep sound and not worry about arrows or darts or knives in the night. Just barracks food, full rations, and good Oestern ale in my cup. The thought almost made Joth smile, but a raindrop had dripped onto a sensitive patch of skin near his nose that sent him into a sneezing fit.

  “Bloody hell, get hold of yerself,” Wat said behind him. “Here comes the mage, be ready boys.” It was the usual signal that had come to signify the ritual they had undertaken in countless settlements all through the territory since they had left Oesteria. Sometimes they would make three villages in a day. It was the beginning of the madness bound to ensue should the mage choose anyone from the settlement, and they had better be ready for it.

  Then the mage was walking his horse through their ranks. Joth could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. This mage, Lord Uhlmet, had made him uneasy from the beginning. It was not something he could ever voice to anyone, not even to Wat whom he trusted more than any of the others, but he had lost several friends in the ambush less than a fortnight before and he knew the Lord Uhlmet was to blame. Joth might think ill of the Dawn Tribe and their ways, but Lord Uhlmet had a deep-seated hatred and irreverence for not only their people but their customs and superstitions as well, and he relished in tormenting and humiliating them at every opportunity. In the first village, if you could call it that, the mage had separated the families from their children and then ordered all of the womenfolk to be stripped naked and made to parade about in a circle before the men. Joth didn’t fully understand it, but apparently Lord Uhlmet knew something of their tribal beliefs and exploited that knowledge to further shame them.

  When the women refused to circle and began to get unruly, he ordered the children brought forth and selecting a fair-haired youth, he drew his dagger and made to slit the boy’s throat, upon which a great lamentation went up among them all and they finally complied in order to save the young boy’s life.

  “They believe fair hair to be an omen of good, especially if it sprouts from a buck,” Uhlmet had said as though he were lecturing them all on how to best flush game from a bush. “Tell them that their women wouldn’t pass for even the basest whores in any Oestern city.” He had looked over the men then, a thin smile on his lips that never made it to his eyes, and then he waited.

  The translator had swallowed a few times and only began to speak after Lord Uhlmet raised his eyebrows expectantly. He waited to see if any of them would move or lose their tempers but they just fixed their eyes straight ahead, some of them closing their eyes in shame. The translator relayed the mage’s words for another hour as he subjected the People to more shame and humiliation, and when Lord Uhlmet had finally had enough, he ordered the Oestermen to burn the women’s discarded clothing and to confiscate any gold or silver jewelry that any of the natives might be wearing. He then selected the three children with the fairest hair, and had them bound together like prisoners and led out of the settlement, leaving the wailing mothers and fathers and their fellow villagers behind as he mounted his horse and rode at the head of the column of men, jerking his prisoners along at an uncomfortable gait. Joth didn’t like that too much, watching those kids get dragged along. Wat didn’t either, he knew that, but neither of them was going to say a word to Lord Uhlmet or they would most likely end up dangling from a tree in one of these scenic bloody mountain valleys.

  “These people are dogs. They will only understand you when you treat them accordingly!” The mage had said it as they left the first village, and he had said it a score of times since with every settlement through which they passed. The three fair children weren’t there when they broke camp the next day, and the talk was that Lord Uhlmet had let them go and sent them wandering home. But Joth had his doubts, and in less than two day’s time they were attacked in an icy pass and hounded ever since. They had lost at least one sentry every night, and the new orders had been to pair up for any activity outside of formation. Shitting in teams of three was highly recommended after one sentry was found speared to death with his hosen about his ankles. The irony in the dead sentry having been the company’s Drillmaster didn’t escape Joth, especially since the man had always ended weapons drills by saying, “Be ever ready for a fight, men.” One of the wits had done a rousing impression of the dead man, grasping his ankles and hunkering down, shouting loudly, “Be ever ready for a shite, men!” They had all laughed, but it was Joth and Wat who had to string that lad up on the mage’s orders. Now he was getting grave looks at mess, and more than once he heard men stop talking at his approach. The lad had been well-liked by the men.

  Morale had dipped since the attack in the pass, but the hanging had dragged it down even lower. Now here they are again, waiting in the pissing rain on the bloody mage’s pleasure. Joth stood at attention as he heard the mage’s horse pick its way through the ranks behind him, the familiar sound of weapons and men shuffling aside with the whispered calls, “On your left” or “Right behind.” Men in formation talked to each other out of habit every time they moved. But the calls sounded half-hearted and worn down to Joth’s ears, as though uttered by a company that had only known defeat. If Lord Uhlmet had any sense of command, he’d know it too, he thought, as he was shouldered aside by the man on his left. He missed the man’s call. The rain had picked up and its spattering on his helm had drowned out the man’s whisper. As Lord Uhlmet rode past him, he felt the tension in the ranks behind him subside and indeed he felt much better just knowing that the mage was where he could see him. Now that he could see the mage, Joth knew that Lord Uhlmet was most displeased by what he saw before him.

  The village was larger than any they had come upon before, but the array of its residents was the smallest that Joth had seen. Three old men stood leaning on staves near the timber-framed entrance of the largest hovel, two old women sat on a rug beside the open door, sheltered from the rain by an overhang. They were well adorned with gold, all of them, and their hair was richly dressed and arrayed in thick braids that chimed as they moved, for many of these savages wore bells and trinkets of metal in their hair as a sort of national costume. Pity they don’t build their houses to impress, Joth mused, as he took a look about the village at the thatch and timber structures, all of them round and low to the ground. He could smell the animal dung through the downpour and thought if the sun were to ever shine there and dry the place up, that it would only smell worse.

  As Lord Uhlmet cleared the first rank, the translator jogged up and adjusted his cloak, which he had been using to cover his balding head. “Ask these old fools why they’ve not gathered the other villagers,” Lord Uhlmet spat at the translator, his eyes never leaving the assembly. The translator did as he was commanded and rolled some savage words off of his tongue and awaited an answer, his eyes swiveling back and forth from the old men and women to the mage like some wild-eyed horse. One of the old women said something and spat just beyond the border of the rug on which she sat. Lord Uhlmet’s head snapped toward her, his eyes narrowing. “Archers, feather the bitch if she speaks another word out of turn!” He turned his scowl to his translator, saying, “You can tell them that too, you dullard!”

  The thin balding man reddened and bobbed up and down a few times in supplication to the mage, muttering pardons and apologies all the while. Lord Uhlmet shook his boot free from his stirrup and kicked the man forward, attempted to elicit a laugh perhaps, but Joth wasn’t about to laugh. I’d be dancing at the end of a rope in bloody Tribe territory. The only sounds were those of the wind and the animals, and the tense mo
ment passed through the men, but no one laughed. It was good that he abstained, because everyone else seemed to have the same idea about humor and Lord Uhlmet since the wit got hanged. Lord Uhlmet was fond of hangings.

  As the translator began to address the savages, Joth saw the foremost elder hold his hand out and wave the man into silence. Then, surprising everyone, he spoke directly to Lord Uhlmet in perfect, barely accented Oestersh, stepping forward and leaning on his staff. “Thus is the way of Uhlmet? To threaten old women and murder children in the lands of the People?” His voice was mellifluous and clear, and when he spoke people were listening. “You are not invited to our lands for plunder, Mage, nor are you invited to subject our peoples to cruelties!”

  Uhlmet was seething. “You shall address me as lord or I shall have you killed where you stand!”

  Then Joth heard laughter, but it wasn’t coming from the ranks; it was the old savages. Could they all speak Oestersh? That seemed impossible to him, but here they were, all of them having a laugh at Lord Uhlmet’s expense. “Have the Oestern mages mastered death now? You can just call it down on anyone at your whim, O great lord mage?” There was mirth in his voice, but steel in his old gray eyes.

  Lord Uhlmet’s mouth hung open in disbelief for the blink of an eye. “You shall pay for that with your lives.” He turned back to the company of Oestermen standing in formation and lifted his hand. Joth could see the arrogant and cruel grin tugging at the corners of the mage’s mouth as he began to speak. “Burn this bloody place to the—”

  Suddenly Lord Uhlmet’s horse reared and fell over, and chaos ensued.

  The men around Joth surged forward and drew their weapons. Uhlmet was screaming as he was dragged into the large roundhouse by the village elders. Suddenly, armed tribesmen rushed from within the house and slammed into the archers before they could draw. He saw the archers trying to get back to the middle ranks but the spearmen were too tightly massed for them to pass through easily and the formation began to break up as rank and file were jostled between the low huts and pig stys in the village center. He could feel a sense of panic as several horns were sounded and he thought it was Wat he heard saying, “Fall back! Fall back to the trees!”