by Helen Gosney
“How did you do that…?”
Rowan looked at him quizzically.
“I opened his mouth, put the bit in, put the other part up over his ears, did up the buckle and… the job’s done,” he said. Fess might as well have asked how he breathed.
“But…”
“The saddle?”
Devil stood like a rock as Rowan held him. Fess quickly put the saddle on and tightened the girth.
“Tighter.”
“What? I’m already cutting the bugger in half,” Fess protested.
Rowan shook his head, stepped forward and kneed Devil in the ribs. The stallion exhaled noisily and looked at him in a reproachful kind of way as he tightened the girth properly.
“Er… thank you. Thank you for helping me,” Fess said, chastened.
“’Tis no trouble. Now, shall we go?” Rowan swung up onto the mare’s back with enviable ease.
“Aye.” Fess put his left foot in the stirrup and found himself hopping frantically as Devil sidled away. The horse turned its head and snapped again; Fess recoiled and landed hard on his backside. Red-faced, he looked up, knowing that the Siannen lad would be laughing himself silly.
He wasn’t, though. He was standing beside him holding out a hand to help him up.
“Up you get. You’re lucky he didn’t drag you… are you all right apart from a sore backside?” he asked quietly. And bloody wounded pride, he thought to himself. These Wirrans are such proud buggers sometimes.
“Aye, I think so…” Fess sighed unhappily, “This cursed horse is impossible. I don’t know why they keep him.”
“Because he’s the best horse in the stables. He’s a bit feisty though… and too clever for his own good.”
“The best…? How can you say that? He bites, he kicks, he’s bloody impossible to ride…”
“No he’s not. You’ve seen me ride him.”
He had, too. The horse had looked magnificent.
“Aye, well, you’re the only one of us who bloody can,” Fess muttered.
“I can’t help that…” Rowan shrugged, “And I did say he’s feisty. Look, will you please let me take him now? There’s no damned shame in falling off, but there’s not much point in keeping on doing it either.”
Fess was sorely tempted. But surely if this Siannen could ride Devil so easily, he could at least… He put his foot in the stirrup again and found himself hopping around again. He sighed as Rowan helped him up from the cobbles a second time.
“What’s the matter with me?” he muttered miserably.
“Well, you’re a bloody awful rider, and that’s the truth of it,” Rowan said, as blunt as every forester ever born, “Maybe I can help you, if you’ll let me…”
“Why would you want to?” Fess asked as Rowan legged him up onto the bay mare and then swung easily into Devil’s saddle himself.
Rowan looked at him carefully.
“Because the horses deserve better, and because you need help and I think I can help you. And, well, you seem to be good at all the other things but you don’t begrudge me being good at things too, not like some of those other buggers,” he said simply. And because I need a friend here and I’d like it to be you, he thought. “But you can’t ride worth a damn. What good is a Guardsman who can’t bloody ride?” he added flatly, unconsciously echoing Horsemaster Trav, “Just swallow your damned Wirran pride and let me help you before they show you out the Gate.”
Fess’s eyes widened in horror. Rowan was the first Siannen forester he’d ever met, he’d never even seen one before he’d caught a glimpse of Rhys riding out of the garrison, but of course it was common knowledge that they were a very plain-spoken folk, and their stubbornness was proverbial. And now Rowan had just said what nobody else had or would. Fess had been worrying about it for a while; he’d seen the way Horsemaster Trav and Sergeant Coll had been looking at him and shaking their heads. He remembered guiltily that he’d tried to give Rowan a black eye one day for no real reason except that he was young, new and Siannen. Fess had unexpectedly found himself on his backside nursing a bloody nose and he’d learnt respect for the quiet young newcomer. He took a deep breath and held out his hand again.
“Thanks, Red. You’re right, I truly do need some bloody help. Let’s start again,” he said, “My name’s Fess Aaronson. I’m sorry I tried to punch you.”
Rowan smiled at him and shook his hand.
“Rowan d’Rhys del’Quist at your service. Apology accepted. But it wouldn’t have been the first black eye I’ve ever had, and if some of these idiots here have their way it won’t be the last. Oh, and I’m sorry I bloodied your nose too. Um, Fess… do you think you might call me ‘Rowan’? We used to have a dog called Red, and…” he shrugged.
“Aye, ‘Rowan’ it is, then. But why don’t you…?”
“If I told the others that, I’d only get more of their nonsense. No, ‘tis easier to ignore it. Maybe they’ll get tired of it,” Rowan said, without much hope of it ever happening.
**********
“Rowan, what did you say to Pim the other night? After you’d… you’d disarmed him and um, put him on the ground?” Fess wanted to know. It sounded incredible put like that and he’d like to know how the much younger and smaller lad had managed to do it too. And Rowan had a surprisingly good vocabulary of odd words. Fess wasn’t the only one who didn’t always know what he was on about, but he was one of the few recruits who didn’t try to belittle the youngster. Those who did got little enough joy of it anyway. Rowan wasn’t the sort of lad who started fights, but he certainly knew how to finish them.
“Hmm? Oh, I just said…” he rattled off something in soft, musical Siannen and laughed, “It means more or less ‘may your arms wither and drop off and the fleas of a thousand rabid dogs infest your scrotum, you fraggin useless Wirran bastard’.”
Fess stared at him in silence for a moment, amazed that such an angelic-looking young fellow could come up with such a fiendishly horrible and, he had to admit, admirably apt and comical thought. He could ignore the slur on Wirrans under the circumstances. But surely he hadn’t said… had he? The word Fess thought he’d heard would have earned him a good beating from the very stern aunt who’d raised him after he was orphaned at nine. Mind you, it seemed almost mandatory in the Guard. His carefully nurtured ears were still getting over the delicious shock of the truth of ‘swearing like a trooper’.
“Er, Rowan…” he asked carefully, “Did you say… er… ‘frackin’ just then?”
Rowan looked at his anxious face and managed not to laugh.
“Certainly not!” his air of innocence would have convinced the sternest judge, “’Fraggin’ was what I said.”
“Oh…”
“’Tis a perfectly good Siannen word that means frackin, fricken, feckin, fookin, or freekin, or flippen, foopin, ferkin, or framminen, or friggen, fargin, hargin or humpen, or plain old fuckin and effin, or anything else that folk might come up with to describe the same thing. You know, sex.”
Fess’s eyes became even wider at the younger lad’s casual explanation. Not even Mano could swear like that, and in fact Fess didn’t know the half of it. The foresters had an… unconventional and creative approach to swearing.
Rowan smiled at him and took pity on him.
“Fess, lad, ‘tis just a word, like any other word I might use. The filthiness of it is in people’s minds.” Even his Gran said that a word that described something so beautiful and natural couldn’t be so very wrong. You might as well say ‘sky’ and ‘tree’ were wrong. Mind you, she also said that using it too often showed a poor vocabulary and laziness, and she certainly didn’t encourage either of those. Rowan smiled to himself. He missed his family a lot, though he tried not to show it. “Now if I was to say…. Um, something like…” The sheer blasphemy and sacrilege of the suggestion he made for the Gods’ private recreation was breathtaking, “… then you might have cause to be shocked, but that wasn’t what I said, was it?”
“Er… er, no�
�� no, it wasn’t…” Fess wasn’t even sure if what he’d just heard was physically possible. Probably entertaining to watch though, he thought rather guiltily.
“My Pa always says, if you’re going to swear, then you should learn to do it properly, in the appropriate place and time, and with a good variety of words so as to not be boring. As many languages as you can manage is a good thing too, so that you can either upset everyone within earshot or not, as the situation demands. And of course you don’t do it in front of your Ma or your Gran or your sister or any ladies, even though they can probably swear just as well as you can yourself.” Rowan smiled at Fess happily. It was always good to help with someone’s education, and he thought he’d just done his bit. Mind you, he expected the Guard to broaden his own learning in more ways than the obvious, if Sergeant Coll’s vocabulary when a horse had nearly trampled him in its hurry to be patted by Rowan had been anything to go by. New words learnt were never wasted.
“Would you really have cut Pim’s hand off the other night?” Fess wanted to know as they finally headed off to the Parade Ground.
Rowan smiled his charming smile again.
“Probably not. I was pretty angry, but not quite that angry.”
Fess stared at him. He hadn’t seen much in the darkness of the barracks, but he’d heard most of it. He was sorry now that he hadn’t tried to help a bit, but Rowan had seemed to have the situation under control by the time Fess had woken up properly and realised what was happening.
“You didn’t sound angry. You weren’t shouting or anything… you sounded really calm…” he said slowly.
“It doesn’t mean that I wasn’t very bloody annoyed though. We… we don’t shout in the forest, unless it’s an emergency of course. There’s no need to.”
“You don’t shout at all? That’s… um…”
“Strange? Maybe. ‘Tis just our way. I’m sure some folk probably do at times, but my family…? No. Well, not unless I’m at the top of a tree and I need to tell Pa something and I can’t be bothered climbing down again,” Rowan smiled again.
“I saw your Pa going out the Gate…” Fess said thoughtfully.
“Did you?”
“Aye. He’s the first forester I’ve ever seen. Gods, he’s a big man.”
At well over six and a half feet tall, broadshouldered and heavily muscled, Rhys was the biggest man Fess had ever seen. His own Pa had been six feet two, but Rhys would dwarf him.
“Mmm, I suppose so,” Rowan said slowly, “Most foresters are more or less his size, except for some of the northern clans.”
“Bloody Hells, they’re not bigger, are they?”
“No,” Rowan laughed, “My Ma was from a northern clan and Pa always says I look more like her clan than his, apart from my eyes. Most of my northern kin are redheads like me and most of them are only six feet or so tall and not as heavily built as Pa.” He shrugged. “I’ll probably be the same… maybe a bit taller, with a bit of luck.”
Fess nodded. Rowan was nearly as tall as he was himself, and taller than several of the other recruits in spite of his age.
“I’ve never seen red hair like that. Redheaded Wirrans are mostly carrot-tops, or that sort of dirty, sandy red colour.”
Rowan glanced at the glossy deep auburn braid that had slipped over his shoulder.
“Gods! Imagine if I was a carrot-top. I’d never hear the bloody end of it from Mano and his stupid friends. And I’d probably choke myself trying not to lose my temper.”
“Rowan… what would you have done if they had cut off your braid?”
Rowan bit his lip as he slowly shook his head. He looked at Fess very soberly.
“I truly don’t know, Fess,” he said softly, “I still can’t believe anyone would even want to… why would they…?” He shook his head again and took a deep breath. “ No, I don’t know, and I truly hope that I never have to find out.”
**********
The lads trotted their horses into the Parade Ground side by side, just as Trav was thinking perhaps he should go and see if they were all right. They apologised for their tardiness and moved off to join the others. Trav laughed to himself as he heard Rowan say very softly, “Don’t try and stand on your toes, Fess. You’re not bloody dancing. Keep your damned heels down, lad… like when you squash a big spider.”
He doubted the forester lad had ever squashed a spider in his life, would probably no more do so than fly in the air, but Fess nodded in sudden understanding. Good, Trav thought, maybe he really can help you. Now to introduce his new assistant to the other lads. It was obvious that Rowan had said nothing to them, but then it was equally obvious that he wasn’t a braggart either.
**********
5. “There’s no taking it back…”
[some two and a half years have passed]
Rowan received the summons to Captain Telli’s office as he came out of the infirmary. He sighed to himself, straightened his jacket as best he could and headed off. He knew what it was about, and really, it’d been his own fault. He was certainly no saint, and he had a fiery temper if he wasn’t careful, but all the same he did his best not to show his irritation with folk. He’d had his arguments and disagreements with the other recruits, but he hadn’t lost his temper until now … and this time the provocation had simply been too great. And truly, he’d do exactly the same again in the same circumstances.
Rowan was almost halfway through his third and final recruit year by now: a Cadet, as they were known at that stage. Still only sixteen, he was of an age with most of the first-year recruits and looked younger in the face, but he was taller, stronger and fitter than any of them, and though some had initially found it difficult to accept that he was in fact a Cadet they’d quickly learned the respect that was expected of them. Rowan had proved to be an outstanding recruit and he’d undoubtedly be an outstanding Guardsman when he was promoted to Trooper in a few more months, just a week before his seventeenth birthday. Telli’s boldness in recruiting him had been more than vindicated.
Sergeant Blacken smiled at him as he came through the door.
“Cheer up, laddie! It might never happen!” he said as he saw Rowan’s unhappy face. The lad was usually sunny-natured, he knew, and he wondered what he was so upset about.
“It already has, Sergeant.”
“Can’t be that bad. Captain’s in a good mood. In you go, lad, he’s not going to bloody bite you,” Blacken said.
No? Rowan thought. I wouldn’t bet on it.
Telli greeted him cordially, much to Rowan’s surprise.
“A good day to you too, Sir,” he said carefully.
“Well, Rowan lad, I’ve got some good news for you…” Telli said cheerfully.
“Good news, Sir?” No, surely the poor man had gone daft.
“Aye, of course,” Telli looked at him more closely, “What’s wrong, Rowan? You look like you think I’m going to chew your head off.”
“I certainly thought you were going to, Sir. Aren’t you?”
Telli frowned at him thoughtfully. Why the hell would he be thinking that, he wondered. He put his pleasure at the news he’d been about to impart aside and thought a bit more. Ah. Of course. He knew what the problem was.
“Are you thinking about Bon Cherrelson, Rowan?”
“Aye, Sir. I thought you would be too, Sir,” Rowan replied, bewildered and thinking he must be missing something.
“Aye, I am, but not insofar as you come into it. Horsemaster Trav has already said his piece to you, hasn’t he?”
“Aye, Sir.”
“And you’ll start the extra stable work when your hands are better. How are they, by the way?”
Rowan looked down at his bandaged hands and tried to get a metaphorical grip on things. Maybe he’d gone daft himself, he thought. Maybe it was something to do with the potions and things the healer had given him as he’d dug the firethorn shards out of his hands.
“They’re… they’re bloody sore, Sir, to be truthful, but… but I don’t understand
, Sir…”
“Well, we’ll need to look after them, Rowan. Don’t want anything going wrong now,” Telli smiled at him, “What don’t you understand, lad?”
“Sir, I…” he shook his head slowly, “You know what happened today with Bon, Sir. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but… truly, Sir, I’d do it again in the same circumstances…”
“Aye, well… we all would, Rowan. Lieutenant Trav’s dealt with it, as you said, and that’s the end of it as far as you’re concerned. After your hands heal, and everything, of course,” Telli said firmly, “I’m still thinking about what we’ll do with Bon, but that’s not your problem.”
“No, Sir. I… I’m sorry, Sir, but I thought…”
“Then you thought wrong, laddie. Don’t fret yourself. Now sit down, please. As I was about to say, I’ve got some good news for you.”
**********
Horsemaster Trav had come into the Common Room that afternoon, shaking with laughter. It took him some time to collect himself long enough to tell the others what was so damned funny.
He’d been concerned about the lameness of his own stallion that morning and so, as he had so often before, Rowan took the first-year recruits for their riding class. They could all ride quite well by now, but of course they still needed practice. A little after they’d been due back, the group had returned to the stables, very subdued indeed. Rowan was stony-faced, leading two horses; he was shirtless too, his shirt soaking wet and draped over the back of the bay mare walking worriedly beside him. Trav took a quick head count: two lads seemed to be missing.
“Rowan, what’s going on? Where are the other lads?” he asked, puzzled.
“Sir, they… they’re all right, or will be. Can I speak with you privately please Sir, when I’ve seen to the horses?” Rowan said softly.
