Ghost in the Yew: Volume One of the Vesteal Series

by Blake Hausladen

  “That would be marvelous. A muddy campsite is no place to mend a hem.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “And the work?”

  I handed her a tiny swatch of the gold-brocaded green silk—the finest of what had come from Bessradi. She couldn’t contain a soft expletive.

  “I have an untouched bolt of it at the castle. Could you make an officer’s collar for Gern, a vest for the alsman, and a proper robe and dalmatic for the prince without doing a fitting?”

  “A brocade like this can be tricky, Lady Dia. I would have to plan the patterns very carefully. If you can get your hands on some of their better fitting clothes so I can take some good measurements, I can manage it just fine. What’s the event?”

  “Better to speak of it in the entrance hall this afternoon.” I winked.

  She winked back, and we both got to work.

  That afternoon, with other quiet invitations made, I joined the craftsmen’s wives and the women of Urnedi in the wide hall. Umera’s cart of wares was organized along one wall and my pilfered chairs and benches were enough to seat the large group. The chatty bunch got one look at the bolt of green silk I carried and was rendered mute. Darling little Lilly was there, too, and she trotted over to take hold of my dress.

  Erom’s wife, almost as much a politician as her husband, had been holding court in the center of the Tracians. She had left out of her constituency, however, the Dame and the rest of the Urnedi women, all of whom had taken to wearing the white hats we had made that winter. The separation was worse than I’d feared. I smiled despite the rift, confident I’d found a good way to mend it.

  “Lady Umera tells us you have something up your sleeve.” The mason’s wife smiled. “We are dying to hear about it.”

  “Every spring, Urnedi holds a festival,” I replied. “This year’s was put off by all of our busy work, but I see no reason to let the event slip by us completely. The well will be finished before long, and it will be an event well worth celebrating. Do you know when your husband will be done with it?”

  “What a wonderful idea. I will find out right away. Another twenty days, at least, as proper as they are making it. It should be before the end of spring, though.”

  “Perfect. Get him to set a date if you can, but don’t make him hurry. We will have a lot to do between now and then.”

  “Are we planning it in secret?” the Dame asked.

  “Not at all,” I smiled back at her, “but we all know how badly a party can go if you let the men try to plan it. We’ll tell them it is to be a simple thing and let them plan all of their races and contests. We just need to keep them from spoiling the rest.”

  “That does sound wonderful. How can the girls and I help?”

  “Your job will be the most important. We’ll need a proper feast planned and prepared.”

  “Food for how many?”

  “A difficult question. How many people from the villages do you think would come?”

  “Oh, dear me, milady. My entire village would turn up. I think you’d see every man, woman, and child on the peninsula if you invited them.”

  “Fantastic. How many?”

  “Lady Dia, I think you misjudge the size of Enhedu. The number would be in the thousands. My village boasts 300, and there are thirty-some villages depending on who you ask. You might want to rethink your invitation. Sugar, pepper, and salt enough for so much glazed pork and roast fish would be expensive. Not to mention the wheat we would need for bread or the wine and spirits it would take for everyone to get even a taste.”

  “I intend no half measures. Find out the number and plan on feeding them all.”

  She tapped her fingers together for a moment while she stared up at the timber rafters. Then her eyes teared a bit. “It would be a pleasure, milady.”

  “What else do you have in mind?” Umera asked, eyeing the silk.

  “Well, between this, the undyed wool Barok brought back from Almidi, and all of your colorful linens, we have more than enough material to make proper clothes for the event. I am hoping we could make uniforms for the garrison, vests for all the craftsmen, and dresses for all of us in time.”

  The room gasped.

  “Such expense, Lady Dia,” the mason’s wife said. “Will Barok part with it all?”

  “Not much worry there. He is not like most Yentif, despite his grim looks and quick temper. He can be convinced.”

  “We cannot take from him like this, milady. Our husbands are all pledged to him.”

  “Not for very long. They and you will be landowners soon—Enhedu nobles in fact. I think we should remind all the men what we’re supposed to look like one day.”

  The Dame shook her head. “Milady, you cannot include us in this. We’re not meant for clothes like those.”

  “You could not be more wrong. Just because Barok chose to rescue so many from Almidi, do not think your families won’t be drawn into his efforts. Many in Enhedu will be offered the same opportunity very soon.”

  My seriousness at last understood, everyone looked to Umera with hope and smiles.

  “Ambitious plan,” she finally said. “We’ll have to dye the wool right away. What colors do we have?”

  I looked to Madam Sedauer. “I’m thinking nettles.”

  “Oh, green for everyone, what a lovely idea. It’ll set in the wool wonderfully,” she replied before she explained to the room, “Stinging nettles, ladies. You mash them up into a good boil and skim off the oil. It makes a wonderful green dye. There is quite a bramble around the fallen tower.”

  The prospect of such rewarding industry made them giddy. We got right to it, and in a quick trio of afternoons, we had the pieces for twelve Hemari-like uniforms and overcoats dyed, cut, and ready for sewing while details of the feast were added to Fana’s accounting of the festival.

  Barok thought to protest when he saw what it would cost him, but I had half of my sewing circle standing around him with wide smiles when Leger, Sahin, and I presented it. He relented, and we left him with Sahin and Leger to work out the details of the craftsmen’s consortium.

  It was a bit of a burden on the town to pull the women away from their labors, but while the men were all too busy building to say more than a hello to the strangers around them, the women could at least spend part of their day getting to know each other around a happy sewing circle. A few men braved the trip up to see what we were doing, but none dared interrupt or question our enterprise. The icy stare of thirty women is beyond most men.

  We decided on the 77th of Spring as the date for the festival, invitations were sent to all of the villages, and the mood of the town at last began to turn.

  37

  Healer Geart Goib

  By the time spring planting was over, I was able to read whole pages by myself and had almost finished the book, thanks be to Bayen. I was as tired of reading about farming as I was of watching it.

  Our window overlooked the prison’s broad courtyard, and above the thick walls that ringed it were the newly cultivated fields of spring wheat that reached to the horizon and beyond. Day and night, the fields were speckled with prisoners and jailors.

  As Avin had predicted, the prison had filled very early in the spring. The new men were debtors mostly. Not that it mattered which crime had cost them their freedom. After half a season, I could not tell the difference between debtors, thieves, and murderers. It was too easy to make a man a slave and have him dig in the dirt.

  “Come away from the window, Geart. It is time for you to get back to your reading.”

  Avin was very patient. He seemed very sad sometimes, though. He prayed a lot but never out loud. I didn’t know any of the prayers well. I sat back down but did not open the book. I wanted to learn something else.

  “Can you teach me other prayers—other prayers that priests use to talk to Bayen?”

  His face was very troubled, and he didn’t answer.

  “Is Bayen so hard to talk to?”

  “Impossible, some m
ight say. Too many people pray for small things, perhaps. It’s only the Sten and the Exaltier he listens to anymore, if he is listening at all.”

  “I heard a man once telling things Bayen said to him.”

  “Serve and obey your lord and master?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Many claim to hear the same message. I’ve never heard it.”

  “You don’t like Bayen’s message?”

  “I find the messengers sometimes wanting,” he said tiredly. I looked at him until he continued with a reluctant sigh, “It is hard to believe men who urge all to obey and serve one man and his sons. The word Exaltier means ‘the Sword of Bayen,’ not the mouth.”

  “Sten means ‘Mouth of Bayen?’”

  “Well-reasoned, my friend. It does.”

  “Sword and mouth. I didn’t know.”

  “You are learning many things,” he replied and tapped the top of my book. “Be careful where you speak them.”

  Two jailors walked past then, and I understood. Avin’s words would make terrible trouble. I was surprised I had even started such a dangerous conversation. Avin was a different kind of priest. More honest, I guess. I closed my mouth and left it closed for many days. I didn’t know when the words were good to say. It was probably best that I never spoke at all. Barok had taught me that very well.

  The prison settled down as the planting was close to done, and the jailors started behaving more like they had been. Some new jailors came, too. They interrupted and harassed us more.

  One day a new jailor said to Avin, “Hey skirt? You and your boy set a date yet?”

  I glared at his back. I wanted to break his legs. It was the fourth or fifth time I’d heard them call Avin that name. I didn’t know what the word meant, but I knew it was a worse insult than the rest—worse than churl.

  “Why do they call you skirt?”

  “Hurtful words of simple men,” Avin replied and tapped my book. I still wanted to know why. I couldn’t figure it out. My face revealed my dullness.

  Avin sighed and added, “At the capital I wore the vests of a canon lawyer.”

  “I have never known a vest before,” I replied. “Skirt is a bad thing to call you. I didn’t know the law priests could be healers, too.”

  “Healers, vests, and red hats—yes, they rarely mix well.” He tapped my book again. He didn’t want to talk about it. I did and didn’t look down at my page. Avin sat back in his chair. He was patient like Barok could be sometimes when I was thinking. My teacher was much kinder, though.

  I’d never seen Avin wearing the trim white vest. Had he lost it? Did someone take it away from him? Being at the prison was terrible work. He wasn’t like priests at the capital. They must not have liked him.

  “Did bad priests take your vest?” I asked. Avin seemed pained, so I said quickly, “I am too stupid. Please forgive me.”

  He laughed then, a tear in his eye. “No, my large friend. You have far more intellect than most. Your thoughts are slow but as straight as an arrow. Learn this about yourself, Geart—if you hold your words until your thoughts are clear, what you speak will be truth.”

  I opened my mouth but shut it. No one had ever said such a thing to me. I chewed slowly on my thoughts to see what I’d find in the taste of them.

  Avin was still sitting back in his chair. His face was still a bit pained. My words had hurt him. No. Yes. He had bad memories. I wanted to ask him what happened. I tried to think how I should. If bad priests had taken his vest, they must’ve used a bad reason, like when a guardsman is sent away without his sword. They did something wrong or something someone didn’t want them to do. Like what happened to me. What did lawyers do wrong?

  My thoughts became clear. “Did you lose an important case?”

  Avin began laughing and crying. So happy and so sad at the same time. It was hard to look at.

  “I did worse than that,” he said. His happiness couldn’t be from his memories. He must be happy with me. He was happy because of what my clear thoughts had said. I tried to make more of them.

  I found another and was confident. “You won a case they didn’t want you to.” He looked only happy after I said it, and I smiled back at him. “What fools they are.”

  “Yes. Yes, he is.”

  He? Had I make a mistake? No, Avin was still smiling. Was he challenging me?

  I started to scratch my head. I was sweating. I put my hand down. I didn’t look smart when I did that.

  Who is the ‘he’ for priests? For guardsmen, ‘he’ is always the Exaltier.

  “You won a case against the Sten.”

  “Yes, my brilliant friend. I defeated for the first time in canon history the Chief Prelate of Zoviya. I was chosen to defend a priest whom the Sten wanted burned for sedition. I won the case, and the man went free. This place is my reward, and the man I set free was murdered.”

  Avin’s happiness was for me, and I felt a fire in my head. My triumph was almost sweeter than when I said the healing words or practiced with a sword. I liked it better than both. My finding truth had defeated his bad memories. I thought some more.

  “You will defeat him,” I stated.

  Avin lurched as if I’d hit him very hard. I thought some more but didn’t change my mind. I was very confident.

  “You will,” I stated again.

  My friend’s face twisted until it became hard and fixed. He believed me. He tapped on my book again, and this time, I obeyed him.

  38

  Captain Leger Mertone

  The 76th of Spring, 1195

  The Chaukai were very quiet as we marched back down the steep mountain trail toward the camp. It was the fiftieth morning in a row that they had made the trip up and down with a pack full of rocks on their backs, but they did not waste energy celebrating that it was the last. The day was far from over.

  The men of Enhedu had done well—better than most of the recruits I had put through their fifty. All had passed their exams, and only two failed their drills. Both men were my age with ten generations of woodmen’s knowledge in their veins, so rather than punish them for their shortcomings as spearmen, I promoted them both to sergeant and assigned them Book Two. I also promoted Sahin to lieutenant but could not have done otherwise. He was their natural leader, not I, even though they had taken to calling me captain.

  Sahin called a halt when we arrived at the wide field that had been cleared at the back of the dell, and the sergeants ordered the men to their horses. I watched with an executioner’s eye as they inspected the formation and made them ready for their final drills. Every bow, quiver, spear, shield, stirrup, and shoulder was as it should be, and Sahin led the Chaukai at speed around the field. They rode close and followed each silent order he gave with his spear held high. Even the halt, three-quarter turn, and charge that had plagued so many were done in excellent order. The trick of it was to let the horses do the work and move as a herd following their stallion. Sahin changed up the sequence as I had directed, but even that did not shake their cohesion.

  He delivered them back to the camp, ordered the horses tacked, and Gern barked both troops—the new men and the old—into a solid formation of spears. He put them through their paces, and they almost seemed relaxed as they performed, in step, the turns, quick marches, and pivots I had pounded into them.

  The lengthy exercise done, Sahin started them on what they thought was their last drill. It was one that did not exist in the Hemari manuals. Sahin had put it together, marrying the last of what the Chaukai had preserved of the bow with the martial formations I had taught him. He was utterly merciless in the way he put them to it.

  He ordered them into spaced lines facing targets at close quarters and boomed, “Unshoulder and string up.”

  In unison, the men leaned their spears against their left shoulders, swapped their shields for the unstrung bows hanging on their right shoulders, and pulled from hip pouches the precious bowstrings Sahin’s apprentices had made for them. They hooked the strings to one
end of their longbows, placed the ready end against their left insteps, and with the loose end of the strings held in their right hands, they took hold of the center of their bows with their lefts, the open end facing away. Then they ran their right hands up to the unstrung sides, pulling hard with their left as they did it, so that with a particular turn of their right hands over the end, the bows were strung with no fingers pinched. Then with both bow and spear held in their left hands, they came to attention.

  “Call out the range.”

  “Twenty.”

  “Order—make ready ... take aim ... loose.”

  Arrows stabbed the targets, and he ordered, “Fall back at the quick by lines. Pick it up. Order—halt, about face, and reform. Address it there. Address. Call out the range.”

  “Fifty.”

  “Order—ready ... aim ... and loose. Order—ready ... aim ... loose.”

  Backward and forward, he took them, and their arrows stabbed again and again into the targets with deadly accuracy. Sahin relished each flight of arrows, and he did not have to stop them even once to make a man sprint after a misfired arrow.

  When their quivers were half empty, I swung myself into the saddle and rode up on them.

  “Quick order—attention,” Sahin called.

  They were expecting me to call it done. Only the sergeants knew better.

  “Enemies close,” I called. “Quick order—divide by troops and reform four-deep by the line. Lines forward, make ready spears.”

  Gern and Sahin each began barking their men into shape, while the sergeants stepped up beside me.

  “Order—withdraw by the volley and fire by the line.”

  The men were tired and thirsty. Sahin’s voice was hoarse, and Gern looked challenged for the first time. Sahin ordered a volley and the first careful withdraw, while the sergeants and I threw rocks at them, hollering and taunting.

  “You are but thirty,” I cried. “The Kaaryon can call on levy-militias by the tens of thousands and has a steel core of Hemari 40,000 strong. Five divisions of them, trained to kill, and all prepared to die for their Exaltier.”