Ghost in the Yew: Volume One of the Vesteal Series

by Blake Hausladen

  The trees crowded closer, the land became uneven, and the trail he followed made no effort to find an easy way around. On the far side of a hill we found the Chaukai. Thirty strong, they stood around a clearing before a tattered birch at the back-end of a wide dell walled on three sides by ragged faces of stone—a place hard to find and hard to stumble into.

  “Father … sergeant?” Gern said with a confused smile toward men in their midst.

  “Quiet,” Furstundish the Senior replied. “I am something more than your father today.”

  The rest of Urnedi’s garrison was also there, their young faces accounting for half the Chaukai’s number. Sons and cousins all, I had always suspected. The reason for Gern and I being added last was no real mystery either. We were both too close to Barok and Dia. The trust of the Chaukai was given very dearly.

  Sahin began it. “You both know enough to understand that we cannot let you live if you are not sworn to our secrets. But please know this is not how we mean for any man to be invited into our brotherhood. Ultimatums are no way to begin such a thing. Will you accept our apology for it?”

  “I do,” we answered in turn.

  “Then take a knee if you come here willingly.”

  We knelt, and he said, “We are Chaukai, a once proud brotherhood sworn to the Kingdom of Edonia, that has been forced into the shadows by the savagery of Zoviya. We call Barok heir to the empty throne and are sworn to his protection and the rebuilding of the kingdom that was. Will you both swear to this cause?”

  “I do,” I replied.

  Gern needed a moment. He stared at his father until finally he said, “Proudly.”

  “We have pledged our lands, our houses, our families, and our blood,” Sahin recited slowly from a seemingly ancient ritual. “Will you pledge the same, without reservation, without pause?”

  “I do,” we both responded.

  “Then know that the Chaukai who stand before you will suffer no falsehood or deceits against our efforts, and that you are expected to keep the same vigil. Rise, Chaukai, and be recognized.”

  The men stepped forward and shook our hands one at a time.

  I suspected there was something more to the brotherhood than what the simple ceremony informed. True Chaukai were something greater than freemen sworn to a throne. I chose not to ask. A man cannot be made sergeant until he is proven as a guardsman.

  Gern’s father was the last forward and handed his son a longbow. Its handle was marked with their family name.

  “Father, you made this?”

  “My first of yew that Sahin judged to be worthy, and a winter in the making.”

  Each man had a new bow and spear of equal quality. Sahin had not spent the winter idle, either. He approached and handed me a heavy purse.

  “What’s this?”

  “Barok made a gift of silver to us before the snow fell. This is the portion due you.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “We must have influence over the commerce of the place the prince means to build. Only with wealth were the Chaukai of old able to stay strong. They maintained their own arms and were beholden to no man. The Chaukai must be the merchant captains of Enhedu once more.”

  “I may only do what Barok bids me.”

  “Chaukai are not bondsman, Leger. You must unlearn the flawed fealty Zoviya taught you.”

  “What then? I am to behave as a nobleman and make my fortunes without Barok’s leave?”

  “Yes. A man living hand to mouth at his lord’s pleasure could never hold true to our cause. ‘Chaukai,’ is a very simple and very old word. To be Chaukai, is to be free. Barok knows this of us and has vowed to see us remade.”

  “And you would see me give preference to the Chaukai and their families in the ventures I pursue and oversee for the prince?”

  “As our abilities allow, but the Chaukai mean to ask more of you still.”

  I did not have to guess at it. The Chaukai wanted me to train them to be soldiers. Sahin would not like my methods. “Gern and his sergeant,” I pointed, “can get you started on Book One.”

  I’d read the man right. His brow furrowed. “You would teach all of us your manuals? Not on my life will you make us like soldiers of the Kaaryon.”

  “Sahin, I was a soldier before you were born. Not one word of the manuals has changed in all that time, and I have never found fault with them. I have kept children alive through years of terrible war with those pages, and if you are asking me to teach you how to be more than men with secrets, teach you how to be soldiers, I will not be second-guessed or countermanded in my methods.”

  Gern said with no little pride, “The manuals are not what you think, Sahin. Book One governs how men are to move and follow orders, how to care for arms and horses. Book Two is the rules and rights of command and combat. Ask any of my men, they will tell you the same.”

  They nodded their agreement, and the sergeant stepped in next to me and said wryly, “Shall we teach them the wheel?”

  “Yes,” Gern nodded, “let’s.”

  I nodded, and the lieutenant’s young garrison gathered behind him while the senior Chaukai eyed us suspiciously. Sahin consented reluctantly.

  “Matched lines,” I ordered and watched Gern organize the group into two lines of equal number, new men facing old with spears held at the ready.

  “What is this, Leger?” Sahin asked warily from his place at the right end of the line.

  I ignored him for the moment, pointed Gern and his sergeant to the left end of our line, and took my place behind it.

  “This is a formation drill,” I told them. “Mind the tips of your spears. Bodies will be moving at speed, but your weapons must not. If you are tapped on the shoulder, you are dead.

  “Stand ready,” I boomed.

  My line came on guard and made sharp cries. Our opponents eyed their sons and nephews, fearful almost of the sudden action. They set spear against spear, but man versus man, there could be no casualties.

  “Order—wheel right by twos.”

  Gern and the sergeant pulled back and ran behind the line to reform on the right side, and the next four sets of two duplicated their movement in quick succession. At the business end of the action, Gern flanked Sahin and pantomimed a thrust that forced his guard aside while the sergeant continued around and tapped him smartly on the shoulder. Gern followed in and tapped the man next to Sahin before he could turn. The rest of our line completed the quick forty-five degree turn, and several more of the senior Chaukai were tapped as they retreated.

  “At ease,” I ordered and walked through the result.

  “You are now flanked, half your number dead. This is what you ask me to teach you—how to turn a mob into an army. There is only one way I know how to do it, not as general to the mission, but as captain of the men who do the fighting and the dying.”

  “Point made,” Sahin said with disdain, “but we are not Zoviyan men of formations and spears. We are horseman, hunters, and archers. Do not think we will so willingly become Hemari.”

  I ground my teeth together and stomped my way toward him. “Be careful in these next few moments, bowyer, not to offend me again. There is not a man among you I would call soldier, and you will not conceit again to speak to me as though you were or knew how to train one. What you ask me to help you become for the cause of Edonia will see most of you dead by the end of it. I have worn that weight before, and it is more terrible than you could ever imagine.”

  To a man, they wilted and backed away.

  “Stand fast,” I barked at them, sickened by their lack of spine. “You will all pray one day to be returned to the time when all that was expected of you was your silence. Your days of stepping back into the darkness are over, and the time will soon come when you will have to hold fast to a bow or spear with blood running into your eyes and down your arms and prove you did not give your oaths cheaply. I have taught a thousand farm boys smaller and prettier than you how to hold their guts in and save the man next to them with
a last thrust of spear. I have stood a line of tens versus thousands and painted a mountain with the blood of a savage foe who thought, like you, that the ways of the Hemari were a thing to be scorned.

  “What say you bowyer? How would you command these men into battle against the thousands who will someday march down that road?”

  Sahin’s spear hung at his side. He set himself down on one knee. The rest followed him down and bowed their heads.

  “Forgive us, Leger,” he said. “I misjudged your intent. You are right. We have much to learn. I despise the asking now that I know the truth of it, but I must out of need, beg this thing of you. Will you teach us to be soldiers?”

  He did not know what he asked. None ever did. The want of a gushing wash of red sucked the words from my mouth. I had turned boys into soldiers more times than I dared remember. But it was also what I was best at. I decided to dare it one more time.

  “This is a good place,” I told them, “to learn a soldier’s business. Sahin, can the livelihoods of the membership survive their being here the rest of the spring?”

  “Barok’s silver has made that possible and more.”

  “Very well. See a camp established here and set a watch upon the mouth of the dell. Gern, you will lead your garrison here each morning. Enjoy the rest of this day, gentlemen. Write farewells to your wives and get some sleep. Enjoy it. Because come the dawn, you belong to me.”

  36

  Matron Dia Esar

  Lady Umera

  As I started out in search of Leger, I began calculating the days until the cabbage would be in. Just nine days left. Was it only the 55th of Spring? Every day of the season had been warmer than Bessradi’s version of summer.

  I shook off the pondering and tried to focus. I had come to find him for a reason.

  I made my way around the fog-shrouded corner of the castle in time to see Leger frown down at a log before he cleaved it in two. It had been too long time since I had seen him.

  “I didn’t know you murdered them,” I said.

  He looked across at me for a very long moment before his expression softened. “Sorry. What has you up so early?”

  “When else would I get a word with you, now that you are spending all your time with Gern and his men?”

  He scoffed and murdered another log. “Proper training takes long and careful hours. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Several somethings, actually,” I replied, despite his mood. “I had been hoping that one event after another would heal the town, but nothing seems to soothe the discontent.”

  “Discontent? Barok tells me all is going well. What do you see that he does not? Something you learned on all your rides through the camp?”

  “Before then, but yes. The locals have been angry ever since you brought that mob to Urnedi instead of their families from the north, and the Tracians are as much strangers to each other as to us. Something must be done to mend it.”

  “That mob, as you call them, is working hard to build new lives, Dia. And no one said the folks in the north could not come. But why tell me instead of Barok?”

  “As you say, he thinks all is going well. He wears out two horses a day trying to be six places at once, but everywhere he is not, the discontent is grim—especially amongst the staff. Barok spent too many years on the Deyalu, as normal as it all seems to him. I was hoping you would not be so Zoviyan.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “No one has invited them, Leger. No word has been sent north, and no one has told Thell or Urs that their families are welcome. It took Barok’s stamp upon a formal proposal from Pemini and her brothers to see the first new Enhedu men here since Gern added to his garrison, and do not think just because Barok has allowed the villagers to finally make use of the land they have lived on for a dozen generations that they are content to be simple peasant farmers. The strangers in our midst are resented, and the staff is taken advantage of for all their politeness. We must make it so that the men of Enhedu are in the majority in the town and stand the most to gain from it. I will not see them remain servants to Tracians—and I dare say they will not tolerate it much longer either.”

  He began a response but paused. His expression warmed. “Sahin told me the same a while back—though in a much different way. You are right about me being too Zoviyan—the way I have discounted the capacity of these people. I should have applied what I’ve seen from Gern and his men to the rest of it. You have something in mind to see it mended?”

  “A few things, yes. The first is easy enough. Where do Thell and the Dame eat their meals?”

  “In the keep with everyone else ...” he started to say and put up his hand before I could contradict him, “... except the Tracians who eat by themselves in the camp. You want us to build a hall.”

  “Yes. If it is still us and them when all of those plots are filled, this wonderful little town will find a hundred things to fight over.”

  “You have been doing things without his leave, haven’t you?”

  “I hate to state the obvious,” I said crossly, “but I do believe the pair of you empowered me to see to our lord’s house, and do not try even once to tell me you have not been doing the same. I know you gave yourself one of those plots and will soon be the sole owner of the town’s only store. How many villagers do you count as suppliers now?”

  “I did not mean it as a slight, Dia,” he said with strange seriousness and scratched his chin again. “He will need all of us acting on our own before long. Urnedi will be well beyond him soon, if it isn’t already.”

  I walked into the wide space between the castle and the first row of imaginary houses.

  “What is the open area going to be for?”

  “A practice field—for when the town has a militia.”

  More sword and spear. I shook my head and continued walking. He hurried to follow. The well was in the middle of the rope squares. I could see roads and buildings if I squinted, but it looked more like a muddy field that men played in.

  “Which ones are taken?”

  “All the ones close to the well.”

  “Show me where Umera’s shop will be.”

  “Who?”

  “The clothier you brought from Almidi.”

  “Right. Sorry,” he apologized. “Barok has not learned everyone’s name yet either, has he?”

  “He names them by their trade.”

  Leger cleared his throat, guilty perhaps of the same, and walked me through the town. “This first row will be for everyone who works at the keep. The blacksmith’s shop, there, my store and apartment on the corner, and that large one will be where the mason—where Erom will build his. On the other side of the well are the four carpenters. Umera’s shop is on the end.”

  I picked a block of four plots north of it all and pulled up ropes until the four were one large square.

  “This will be the meeting hall,” I declared, knocked the dirt from my hands, and pressed him on a second item before he could protest. “How do you think everyone in the north gets their leather tanned and their bread baked?”

  “They do it themselves,” he replied, but his words trailed off and he began to nod. “You think we should organize our own craftsmen’s consortium.”

  “I do. Sahin was forced to go to Almidi to earn his credentials. You should form a consortium and name him its chairman. He knows which men and women in the villages have enough skill at one thing or another. You could probably already have all of these precious spaces filled with productive people if you had gone north instead of south. And the very first plot should have been given to Sahin, if you ask me. We did not help ourselves any, either, by forgetting the local holiday.”

  “Rot,” he cursed. “We trampled right over Urnedi’s spring festival, didn’t we?”

  “Rather terribly, yes. I would not have noticed it either if Thell hadn’t hung the racing pennants in the stable where I could see them. As refined as we think Bessradi made us, we are really rathe
r rude.”

  “I have been rather focused, myself—not that it is any excuse. I am still very much a man from Bessradi, it would appear,” he said with the softest voice I had heard from him. We turned back to the castle to see Gern and his men standing at patient attention beside the chopping block.

  Leger said, “I do not know how I will find the time for it, but if I can organize a consortium, can you plan a festival?”

  “My thought exactly. I’ll have Fana prepare proper proposals for it all.”

  “Well reasoned,” he nodded. “The one thing we can’t do without Barok’s stamp is spend his gold. I will find Fana this evening and add my signature to the recommendation. Is there anything else I can do to see it all started?”

  “Small things, but I won’t trouble you with them now. Perhaps tomorrow morning would be better. I think I have made you late already.”

  “Thank you, yes,” he said with a polite Bessradi bow. “Until then.”

  He rushed to join Gern, and I pressed on with my plan.

  I knew all of the Tracians from my daily ride through the town and camp but was careful this morning to greet all of the craftsmen and inquire of their lives. They smiled and talked of the town’s annoyances but never for too long, so I managed after a time to make it to my destination.

  “Good morning, Lady Umera,” I greeted the clothier as I approached her tent and small cart. She was a delightful woman whose shop in Almidi had not done well after the death of her husband and partner. She had lost a great deal of weight during the long winter, and her thick brown hair had long since gotten away from her. But she always had a smile for the world—even as she waited in the mud for her shop to be built. I liked her a great deal for it.

  “Good morning to you as well,” she beamed back. “What has you here so early?”

  “A bit of mischief and a whole lot of work, if you are game for it.”

  “Sounds priceless,” she smiled. “When do we start?”

  “Just as soon as you get your shop set up in the entrance hall and a sewing circle organized.”