The Rose Sea

by S. M. Stirling

  By late morning, the air was already sweltering and humid. Konzin mopped the sweat off his brow with the back of his sleeve and took a swig from his water jug.

  Lion Abt, the taciturn Olmyan, rode first. The Taghylfa brothers followed, occasionally heckling the sailors who went below in their little river boats. Brunnai Grenlaarin, on loan from a city branch of the family so she could "learn the business," rode next to Pot Foute, who was apparently not in a mood to be spoken to.

  Brunnai, the youngest of the ranch hands, loved to talk, and hated to be ignored. She reined back and waited for Konzin to catch up. "You're sure we canna' get Cousin Karah back?" the lanky brown-haired girl asked.

  "She was pressed. T' army isn't goin' t' give her back to us just 'cause her ma and pa will be unhappy."

  "I know the army would have traded good, battle-ready horses for her. The army always wants good horses."

  "Horses ain't mine t' trade," Konzin snapped "If t' madine wanted to trade her way out, she should have told me. Should have give me a note or somethin'. But she didn't."

  Brunnai nodded. "You know, it's funny, the press gang going to an inn like that. You'd think they'd have come through and pressed all us first. More likely to get good cavalry out of a bunch of working ranch hands than a mess of fat merchants."

  Konzin said nothing.

  "Sure unlucky for Karah," Brunnai continued, oblivious to Konzin's silence. "You know, Uncle Iano was just over to Feugtuld's ranch dickering dowry with the Feugtuld boy. There'd have been banns before the end of summer. Feugtulds offered two gold pirate plates and two matched hackneys and two brood mares…" The girl shook her head, and a wistful smile crossed her face. "Couple years, I'll be gettin' dowry offers. I'd ha' loved that one."

  "Two old families like that…" Els started to say.

  Konzin cut him off. "I don't want to talk about it," he snarled.

  Brunnai looked surprised.

  From ahead, Lion snorted. "Guess not. Her pa wouldn't talk about dowry with Konzin. Hey, Konzin? Ain't that so? Wanted a young boy of family for his one and only child—not a grown man from the back hills."

  Konzin felt familiar rage twist in his belly. "There won't be banns now," he muttered, too low for any of the others to hear. He snapped, "Turn here."

  The others looked at him in surprise. The low-level road along the river was an Imperial highway, cut into the cliffs above the cool tannin-stained, deep brown water of the Olmya; it was twenty-five feet broad and surfaced with pounded crushed stone. The laneway he turned his mount's head toward was a local track, rutted dirt, and much steeper if a little more direct.

  "Easier on the hooves," he said, which was true enough. The others slowed to a walk as they passed him and climbed. Scrub pinyoce overhung the dusty road, providing scant shade. The heat was oppressive. Brunnai kept talking, but Konzin quit listening, and soon enough, the girl rode ahead and chattered at someone else.

  There had been a breeze off the river; on this back lane away from running water, there was none. The air hung still and damp and heavy. Konzin pulled off his tunic; some of the other ranch hands did the same. The quiet, dull thud of horses' hooves on dirt lulled Konzin. He let the reins go slack in his fingers. His head bobbed forward and his eyes drooped. The white glare of the sun shone through his heavy eyelids; the horses kicked up little puffs of chalky dust as they walked. Horse sweat plopped into the dust, making little dark craters. The smell rose heavy around Konzin, as familiar as breath.

  Then one of the horses whinnied, and from somewhere up ahead, another horse replied.

  They'd passed a few traders earlier—and, Konzin thought, there would be plenty more on the road later in the day, but right then the sun beat down oppressively. Few traveled the road in the worst of the heat.

  "Come from the spring up ahead," Pot guessed. "Folks pulled off at the well and waiting 'til dusk."

  "Be good to stop and water t' horses," Brunnai added Her face brightened at the idea of stopping and resting.

  The horses perked up, too. Instead of their leisurely walk, they moved into a brisk trot of their own accord; those on lead lines shouldered and pushed, trying to get past the saddled mounts.

  Konzin was suddenly and completely awake. He dropped back further, and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. He said nothing, and the first of the ranch hands trotted around the bluff.

  He heard a man call out, "Hail, travelers. What is the news from Derkintown?" Lion answered, "War and more war. The army is pressing in the taverns—I'd not go to Derkin again without good reason."

  "Thanks for the warning, then," the man's voice said "Care to join me for some bread and cheese while I wait out the heat?"

  "Oh, sure," Brunnai's voice chirped.

  Konzin stopped completely, waiting.

  "Where's Konzin?" Pot asked.

  "Scouting the area, I reckon. You know Konzin."

  Konzin heard the creak of saddle leather, the thud of boots into dust, travelers milling around a well and being social beneath the shade of the well tree. A windlass creaked, drawing water. He drew his sword, and walked his horse quietly to the point behind the bluff, just out of sight of the clearing. He sat still, his heart racing, his palms beginning to sweat.

  He heard laughter.

  Now, he thought.

  He heard movement on the top of the bluff above him, and the sounds of men running. Then he heard cries of fright, and the clash of steel against steel. Horses whinnied. He heard someone land in a saddle, heard the hooves pound, and "Konzin, help!" shouted by one or the other of his men. The voice was so distorted by fear he could not identify it.

  Then young Brunnai, bleeding, came tearing around the corner toward Konzin on one of the horses. The girl's eyes were white-rimmed. "Konzin," she shrieked, "it was a trap! Help them!"

  Konzin dug heels into his mounts flanks, and man and beast charged forward. Konzin's sword, already in hand, seemed to leap of its own accord. Die, little bitch, he thought, and felt the satisfying jolt in his arm as metal split bone. The hated Grenlaarin sat in her saddle a moment after her head left her shoulders. Then her body slithered from the saddle and fell with a thud to the dirt.

  Konzin had never killed like that before—a single stroke, at close quarters. He was surprised at the ease of the deed, and surprised at his pleasure in it. He listened to the fighting going on around the well, and looked down at the body of the dead Grenlaarin, and at the horse which stood trembling beside him, waiting to be remounted—and he smiled. He had done this thing. He could do the things that came after.

  The screams died down. He heard laughter, and Derkinoi pidgin loudly chattered, and the sounds of bodies being stripped of their valuables. Still smiling, he trotted around the corner.

  A dozen tattered men with rag-wrapped faces looked up at him, then went back to stripping bodies. One man, better dressed, his face masked instead of wrapped in rags, walked over to Konzin and looked up at him.

  "We got all but the youngker."

  "I got her. Body's out on the road. You have my silver, Ugin?"

  "You have the draft?"

  Konzin nodded. "I have it. You'll take the horses with you, save one I'll claim I managed to capture. Follow a week behind me to show up at Grenlaarin Five Points. Not the Jawain ranch—that's Grenlaarin On The River. And not Grenlaarin Beechgrove. When you get there, I'll hire you all on. I figure a month, two months beyond that and I'll own the place. We'll divvy then."

  "And meantimes, we get wages?"

  "Wages and board."

  Konzin fished the bankdraft out of his bedroll, while Grey River Weasel Ugin pulled two heavy bags of silver from his waist pouch.

  "Silver for half the written value of the draft, as we agreed," the man said.

  "That was the agreement," Konzin said. "When y' sell the note, make sure it can't be traced back t' me."

  "We've no wish t' see our own heads roll. The draft won't be traced."

  The men exchanged, spit and slapped palms. Konz
in took his choice of second horse—the fine bay mare Brunnai Grenlaarin had ridden. Then he stripped, and exchanged his clothes for dead Pot's which were bloody and rent and filthy. He stood patiently while one of Ugin's men beat him. When he felt the coming bruises, and tasted the blood running down the back of his throat, he said "Enough."

  He would look convincing. He would take to the Grenlaarins his tale of woe. And he would win the ranch they did not think him good enough to marry into.

  Amourgin woke on a bunk with the uncomfortable feeling he was being watched, and with the itch of a thin, lumpy corn-shuck mattress beneath him. He kept his eyes closed and his breathing regular until he could get past the headache and the foggy certainty something unpleasant had happened the night before. He tried to remember where he was, and how he had come to be there. There had been, he thought, soldiers. And a fight.

  Was he in lockup for drunkenness, then?

  That didn't seem right, but Three knew he had the hangover. Amourgin hated waking spent and sick. Things took so long to make sense.

  Lockup? No. This was not a lockup. He'd had no childish brawl with men over a mere difference of opinion—over the horse races or the qualities of a champion verdal player. This had been much worse than that.

  Memory returned to him with the force of the foul taste in his mouth, and his eyes flew open.

  "Pressed," Amourgin said, and groaned. And then he saw, blearily and through a haze, that he was indeed being watched. The occupant of the bunk above him hung over the edge and stared at him. He rubbed his eyes, hoping that the picture would improve when he could see clearly.

  It didn't.

  "Ah—" he said, looking into fierce yellow eyes. "You're here, too. In with me?" Amourgin looked around the tiny confines of the cell, and discovered that only he and the whore called Eowlie shared the tiny room. "Oh." There is no situation so bad, Amourgin thought, that it cannot be made worse by a creative bastard with a sick sense of humor.

  "I got thrown in vecause I was going to kill that fig of a man, Zeemos," Eowlie said, and grinned at him. "Vut I did't. I let the vastard live."

  "That was, ah… good of you."

  She chuckled a throaty, deep chuckle. "No, it wasn't. I didn't want the caf-tain to hang me. I think the war will kill Zeemos without my help, yes?"

  "Probably." Amourgin studied the gleaming teeth and the wicked smile, and wished deeply and passionately that he had not tried to bribe the sergeant the night before. "How long are we going to be in here?" he asked.

  "I'm here two nights. I don't know about you. The caf-tain may decide to hang you. Vri-very is a crime."

  "Thanks," Amourgin said, and rolled over facing the wall. He tried hard to remember which of the Three he had offended, and how. An appropriate sacrifice might not get him out of the army, but at least it could save him from whatever horrors the outraged god had planned next.

  Tramping boots echoed in the hall outside the cell, and metal screeched across metal. "Up and out, both of y'. Y'll spend yer nights in the stockade, but First Captain says your butts are gonna work all day."

  Amourgin jumped out of the hard bunk before the guard could change his mind. Anything, he thought, would be preferable to spending day and night locked into a tiny cell with the ferocious Eowlie. Even if the First Captain intended him to scrub floors or shell wettelnuts, he would do it gladly.

  Beside, he thought, out of this cell, I might find a way to escape.

  Somewhere away from the camp, Amourgin's mission waited. His contact would come looking for him sooner or later, and when the man came looking, Amourgin needed to be there. Not in the XIXth's camp, and not shipped across the sea to fight an idiot war on foreign soil at the behest of the Imperial government the Reform fought.

  Karah couldn't believe that jackass of a First Captain was still testing the new recruits in the midday heat. First it had been running. Then lifting big rocks. Then they'd shown what they could—or in Karah's case, couldn't—do with pikes. First Captain Morkaarin hadn't been satisfied with that. Now he had them climbing over and under fences and crawling through the dust on their bellies.

  The absolute worst of it was that he seemed able to do anything he told the recruits to do, only much better. Right now he was wiping down his torso with a towel while his orderly held his shirt and jacket. He bore a surprising number of scars for a man so young: bullet marks, and the long white lines made by edged weapons. He looked less bulky out of the armor and clothing—heavy shoulders and arms and the enlarged wrists of a swordsman, but he tapered to the waist and his belly was flat.

  Damn, Karah thought, crawling harder. So he's pretty. I still hate him.

  "I'd like to—vite the v'alls off that—stinking First Captain," the yellow-eyed whore next to Karah snarled.

  Karah dragged herself along on her elbows while red dust coated her skin and worked inside her clothes. "I'll hold him down," she muttered, "and you—do the biting."

  The whore grinned.

  They were at another fence. The whore gathered herself as a dog or a horse would, and sprang over it on all fours.

  Karah was envious. She had to climb, got hung once, and dropped to the ground on the other side, panting.

  "Keep your heads down!" the First Captain shouted. "Down, down, DOWN! Or somebody will shoot them off!"

  Just to add some realism, a squad of musketeers were firing over their heads occasionally. The thumb-sized bullets whistled spitefully overhead, just a fraction of a second after the thump of discharge and the long sulphur-smelling jet of dirty-white powder smoke. That would have been less nerve-wracking if the musketeers hadn't been novices, too, doing their basic drill. She could hear their corporal bellowing in a rhythmic chant:

  "Load. Load in nine times. Present your firelocks. Prepare to—no, no, no, you pig-futtering farmer, take the shit-stirring ramrod OUT before—"

  Karah and the whore shoved their faces close to the dirt and moved in a fast belly-on-the-ground elbow crawl toward the trench that meant the conclusion of the dirt-gathering test. At that moment, Karah thought she envied the whore her small breasts even more than her jumping skills.

  "You can—call me Eowlie," the whore said.

  The two women dragged along in the dirt, breathing hard.

  "Karah," Karah answered when she had the wind. "Grenlaarin." She gave the last considerable emphasis, but the whore didn't notice. Or else, Karah thought, the name means nothing to her. If that's the case, she must be from way out in the hinterlands.

  "You know," Eowlie continued, "the testicles are—very tasty." Karah looked over to see if she were joking. The whore had a thoughtful expression on her face. "Either cooked—or sometimes, if the—conditions are right, raw. Right now, I think—the conditions would be verrry good for raw—yes?"

  "Yes," Karah said. A pebble had just ground itself into her right hipbone, and she thought Eowlie could do the holding, and she would do the biting. "I'll bet—your customers loved it when—you whispered that—in their ears."

  "I keft those thoughts—to myself, and was haffy to—think avout it. I—did not choose to ve a—whore."

  They were at the trench. Karah tried to hang on to the dirt edge while she swung herself over, but it crumbled beneath her fingers. She fell into the bottom of the trench, landed hard, and lay there swearing.

  Eowlie dropped lightly into the trench, again alighting on all fours.

  I could get very tired of her, Karah thought. She tried to brush the dust off. The effort was futile. It was embedded in her skin—she would die coated in this very dust, she decided. The whole camp was alive with it; twenty or so regiments, sprawling out around what had been a fairly modest provincial garrison fort, kicked up a lot of dust. The air was humid with the nearness of the sea, too: sweat stuck to the skin, and so did the dirt it picked up, like an oily abrasive.

  Eowlie brushed at herself, too, and said, "I am not a whore in my country. I do other things. I am a hunter, and a hunter on sea. Vut that fatherless devil Zee
mos caught me when I was sick, so he traffed me with his collar. It made me weak, so that I could not fight" She laughed; a deep, growling laugh at the back of her throat. "I will get Zeemos."

  Karah leaned against the wall of the trench, appreciating the tiny line of shade it offered. "I don't blame you," she said. "Tell you what. We'll cut the balls off Zeemos and that pig First Captain, and you can show me your favorite recipes for testicles."

  "I like you," Eowlie said. She, too, leaned in the shade. "You are like me—vut with not-so-good teeth."

  The First Captain walked over and looked down into their trench. Karah noted that the sound of nearby shooting had stopped "Either of you use the sword before?" he asked.

  Both women looked up at him.

  "We don't use the sword in my country." Eowlie said. She grinned at the captain, and her long teeth gleamed.

  Karah studied that ferocious smile and thought Eowlie's people wouldn't need swords. She, however, had used them in practice many a time, and in competitions at the county fairs. "I've trained with the sword," she said. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared, daring the First Captain to make something of it.

  He ignored her hostility. "Good. You and the law-speaker are going to take practice blades, and lead off in the fight circle."

  The practice blades were split bamboo, the tips and grips leather-wrapped, with a heavy cord from one end to the other that marked the edge of the blade. It was the training version of the long straight-bladed, single-edged saber most Imperial horsemen carried. Karah had worked with such practice weapons before. Used properly, they hurt almost as much as the real thing.

  She slipped on the padded jacket and hat that would be her only armor, and stepped into the fighting circle. The law-speaker across the ring from her had done the same. His city-folk finery looked less gaudy for his having crawled in the dirt all morning.

  Karah felt better.

  "I'll call the fights," the First Captain yelled "Stay in the circle and don't hit anyone but your opponent. Begin."