by Bunch, Chris
The other shamb was named Kars Ak-Mechat, who, I was quickly informed, came from one of Maisir’s oldest and “best” families. In truth, he reminded me of a certain arrogant fool of a subaltern named Nexo whose skull had thankfully been crushed by a peasant during the Tovieti rising. Ak-Mechat was a few years older than Nexo but no wiser at all. His favorite topic was himself, the second favorite how noble his family was. I tried to ignore him.
We had a caravan of five carriages, sprung on iron leaves. But the constant swaying on the Maisirian — I almost said roads, but rethought the matter — trails, rather, was as exhausting, as if I were on horseback or in a peasant’s wooden cart. I often thought longingly of that huge piggish carriage I’d had designed and built to lug me about the reaches of Numantia in something resembling comfort, a word whose meaning I was gradually forgetting.
The carriages were big, I suspected converted charabancs, drawn by eight horses, and leather-upholstered, with oiled canvas screens at the side windows, to keep out the weather. I’m sure I was thought a lunatic for keeping the screens half-open, even in the worst weather. I know Alegria, though she never complained, must have muttered wryly to herself about her “luck,” huddling in a huge fur robe with nothing but her eyes, the tip of her nose, and the ends of her fingers to be seen, even though we were still in the Time of Rains, and the Time of Change hadn’t even begun.
I explained that when I was a child I’d once been shut in a tiny chamber, and I had suffered for it ever since. What I was really doing was surveying anything and everything an invader might need to know, from the depth of the fords to the provender to be gained from the countryside. Behind me, in the second carriage, my men were doing exactly the same. Every night we gathered, purportedly to pray, so no Maisirians, respectful of anything to do with gods, bothered us. Actually we were telling Captain Lasta everything of military value we’d seen, and he was keeping notes in minuscule script on a long roll he kept inside his shako. The other three carriages held emergency supplies and camping equipment, which we were forced to use too many times.
We ground on, day to day, moving south. I wish that I could say we moved steadily, but that was far from the case. All too often we were forced to wait until a raging river subsided, or blocking trees were cut away, or a severe storm passed. The Maisirian road system was an utter catastrophe. The current joke — and it wasn’t much of one — was that it was easy to tell the road from the muck — the road was the one with the pair of ruts.
The Maisirian highways were alarming, for without good roads, our army, when and if we attacked, would crawl as slowly as in the old days when it was burdened with officers’ mistresses, useless baggage, and camp followers.
We passed through tiny, grim towns, little more than shack villages with perhaps a stray cobble here and there to jolt the wheels — gray, dismal. The only solidly constructed buildings were the stone temples, invariably the most magnificent structure seen. Then we’d return to the suebi — gray sky, gray mud, gray rain, gray brush until the eye cried out for relief. The only color would be our uniforms and Alegria’s bright clothes.
I never thought I would mind being wet, since I grew up in the jungles. But this grayness, this always being soaked, not freezing, but chilled, morning to night, then waking and donning clothes that hadn’t dried — it worked on all of us. I was very proud of Alegria. She might have been born for palaces and luxury, but she was, indeed, a noble companion, always having a joke when we were tired, a tale of the road, or some bit of trivia about the river or hamlet we’d just passed. At night, when we were caught between cities, she’d have a tale for the camp fire, or a song.
When we readied ourselves for sleep, curled in our coach, I tried not to think of her, how close she was, and that she wouldn’t object if I slipped across the foot or two between us. Of course that was like telling a man not to think of a green pig. Alegria was my green pig, and grew greener the farther south we went.
• • •
We were well and truly mired. Our coachman cursed and his whip lashed, and the horses neighed protest, but the carriage merely creaked from side to side. Officers shouted for their men to dismount, put their shoulders to the wheel, and give it everything. I jumped out the side door and joined them, another cursing, heaving, muddy trooper in the dusk.
Men were sitting their horses a few feet away, and I almost shouted to them to get their lazy asses down and work some muscles, but then realized they were officers.
Through the grunting and swearing I clearly heard Shamb Ak-Mechat’s nasal sneer: “If that bathless barbarian and the slut he’s obsessed about would deign to stop their futtering, get off their flabby asses, and dismount from …” I heard no more. I had Ak-Mechat’s booted leg in my hands and yanked him from his saddle. He yelled, flailed at the air, and landed face-first in the mud.
“You … you fucking swine … I’ll …” He rose, met my boot in his chest, and went back down into a puddle with a splash. Ak-Mechat rolled, and came to his feet, then recognized me. “You bastard, how dare you, you baseborn cocksucker, how fucking dare you lay hands on me,” he hissed, out of control, hands yanking at his saber.
I was about to flatten him again when a bow thumped, and an arrow sprouted from the shamb’s stomach. He screamed once, grabbed at the arrow and tried to pull it free, and then three other arrows thudded into his chest, one impaling his hand. Ak-Mechat was very dead when he went into the mire for the third time.
Behind me was a grim Shamb Philaret, archers behind him. He looked at the corpse without pity. “Stupid bastard. Thought his gods-damned family would let him do anything to anybody he …” Philaret broke off. “Calstor,” he shouted.
A warrant waded up. “You order me, sir,” the standard response to any officer’s call.
“Take this bag of shit to the nearest tree and hang him there. Put a notice on him: ‘This Dog Disobeyed His Ruler.’ ”
“You order me, sir,” the man said mechanically, as if he’d just been told to make sure a deva cleaned his equipment before the next inspection.
“That fughpig has shamed us,” Philaret said to me. “My utter apologies. If you care to report this to the king, I would understand.”
“What would happen if I did?”
“The unit would likely be decimated,” he said. “The officers would be the first to die. Most likely Ak-Mechat’s family would be required to pay blood-bond. He has a son and a daughter, so their lives would be forfeit. The king might also decide Ak-Mechat’s father’s life belonged in the balance.” Philaret’s voice was completely calm, as calm as the calstor’s had been.
“I don’t see the need to bring this matter up again, Shamb. A fool’s idiocies should be forgotten as soon as possible.”
“I thank you, sir.” Without further acknowledgment, the officer rode back down the column. I returned to my wheel, and about half an hour later, after we’d gotten the spades out, the carriage was free.
I could have said what I was thinking — how utterly unnecessary that death had been, for his saber would never have been drawn before he would have been hammered back into the mire and given a thorough hiding, which might have taught a lesson — but I didn’t.
• • •
What I’d read was true — the officers of the Maisirian army thought their men no better than barnyard animals, and treated them the same. Shamb Philaret and his junior pydnas were shocked when I insisted on making sure my men were quartered and fed before I ate. For them, enlisted men were servants. I remember one night there was no shelter to be found, and so we pitched tents. Once the officers had their cover up, and servants making dinner for them, it was as if the poor enlisted swine no longer existed. How they cooked their ration of barley and raw bacon, where they slept, was no matter.
But Isa help the soldier who wasn’t turned out smartly in the morning and ready to ride on. It didn’t matter, by the way, if he’d bathed since last year, or if he was soaking wet, so long as his sopping uniform showed
no traces of the previous day’s muddy travel. But the devas and calstors never complained, at least not within my hearing.
One night, we camped next to a group of merchants, and before dinner I wandered over to chat with them. Like most traders, they were careful about what they said in even casual conversation, especially with a soldier. But I learned a bit more about the country, helping to fill out the map I was building in my mind, and I got to spend some time with people not in uniform. When I returned, I had a tiny present for Alegria. It was a pin of a kitten, batting at a butterfly, and was quite cunningly cast and polished. It was made of various alloys of gold, so variations of the precious metal swirled through it — yellow, red, white. Held in the palm, the kitten took on the hues of a real animal, and mewed and swatted, without ever coming close to the playful insect darting about its head. When I gave the pin to Alegria, tears welled in her eyes. I asked her why — it had been fairly inexpensive and was a very minor sorcerous bauble compared to what she must have seen around the rich and mighty.
“This is the first thing that’s ever been mine,” she said. “Truly mine.”
“What about your clothes, all the jewels in your chest?”
“The king’s. Or they belong to my order. They’re only mine so long as I’m with you.” She snuffled. “I’m sorry, my lord. I don’t mean to be always leaking tears like a rain cloud. But …” She let her voice trail off.
“I think this is as good a time as any to also forget about the ‘my lord,’ ” I said briskly. “Shall we make it Damastes?”
“Very well. Damastes.” She started to say something further, then stopped and concentrated on the tiny kitten frolicking in her hand.
• • •
We stayed in village inns when we could, which gave me a chance to wander the streets and meet people. There weren’t many tradesmen, artisans, or people of the middle class. Or many rich, either. The peasants were dirty, cheerful, friendly, and exceedingly religious. Cheerful, but with little use for soldiers, even though the enlisted men were of their own class.
Two examples of why, which came from the same incident: We’d been forced to shelter in a farmer’s yard, pitching our tents from the eaves of his ramshackle barn. The farmer grudged us fresh, warm milk from one of his two cows, and two chickens plus a smattering of wizened vegetables for a very thin soup. The next morning he watched as we got ready to move. I realized no one had offered to pay the farmer for his favors. They were rude, but the best he could have done. I hastily got out of our coach, went to the man, and gave him three gold coins. He was incoherent in his gratitude, which embarrassed me to excess.
We set out. I don’t know what made me do it — perhaps I’d seen something out of the corner of my eye to make me suspicious — but a mile down the road I shouted for a halt, and asked Shamb Philaret to loan me a horse. I had to ride back to the farm, where I’d forgotten something. He said he’d have a pydna go, but I refused. Karjan was looking at me skeptically, knowing me full well by now, probably angry that I was going to do some piece of idiocy without an escort. I rode back, pulling my horse down to a walk before the gates. Then I heard screams. I slid from my horse, sword in hand, and ran forward.
Three of our soldiers, one calstor and two devas, had the farmer trussed to one of his wagon’s huge wheels, and the calstor had improvised a whip out of an unwoven rope with knotted ends. “Y’ll tell us where th’ rest of y’r gold an’ silver is, or y’ll show us your bones,” he shouted, and the whip slashed down once more. I guess the three were outriders, and thought they’d be able to accomplish their villainy and rejoin us before they were missed. I was across the yard and behind the warden before he heard me. I smashed the pommel of my sword into the back of his head, and he gurgled and fell into the muck. The two devas saw my ready blade and screamed in fear.
“Cut him loose.” They hastened to obey, then one of them, knife in hand, looked calculatingly at me. I put four inches of steel through his forearm before his thoughts became action.
“Find the rest of that rope,” I ordered, and when they brought it, a length of about fifty feet, I had the three tie loops, five feet apart, at one end and then put their heads through. The farmer was blubbering something about “great lord,” “great father,” but he owed me nothing. I gave him more gold. I took the far end of the rope and started back toward the caravan. I kept the pace just below a trot, so the men had to run, stumbling along the muddy track. All fell more than once, and I’d ride for another few yards, dragging them, kicking, flailing, before pulling up long enough to let them regain their feet. By the time we caught up with the others, the three were no more than mud-men.
Philaret demanded to know what had happened, only I made no reply, but tossed him the end of the rope, gave the pydna back his horse, and reentered the carriage. I don’t know what happened to the three would-be thieves, but I don’t remember seeing them on the rest of our journey.
• • •
The Maisirian soldiery weren’t all idiots and thugs. Crossing one swollen river, a man was swept off his horse and carried downstream. Without thinking, without hesitating for an instant, four devas dove after him. We never recovered the first man, and three of his four would-be rescuers drowned as well.
Noble, but Shamb Philaret would have ridden on without ever acknowledging the bravery of those three men.
I asked for a moment and said a prayer, a speech more to the other Maisirian enlisted men than an invocation to any gods. We went on, and the sound of a nameless river that had just killed four men died away gradually.
• • •
We reached the Anker River, about two-thirds of the way from the border to Jarrah. This east-west tributary was wide, almost two miles from shore to shore. But it ran the wrong way for commerce, and was heavily silted, so only small boats could navigate it. Here, at the village of Sidor, it broke into many courses, with sandbars and small islands between each of them. Some of the islands had a few ragged fishermen living on them.
There were two long bridges across the Anker, about twenty yards apart. Each was about thirty feet wide, made of wood, with low railings, like long causeways from islet to islet. Philaret said it was quite common for one or more sections to be destroyed in the spring melt, and for traffic to be held up for weeks or people forced to use boats to reach the next, intact, section.
Sidor, mostly built of stone, was a bit more solid than other villages we’d passed through. We admired the tall, six-sided stone granary that was the local landmark, bought smoked, salted, and sorcery-preserved fish to improve our impossibly dull rations, crossed the bridge, and went on up the low hill on the far side.
• • •
There was something even worse than the suebi — the marshlands. The swamps weren’t as deep on our route as they were to the east — the enormous Kiot Marshes, actually a closely connected series of swamps, with thin peninsulas running through them. But the world was still gray, and it wasn’t from the now-hidden sky, but gray moss hanging from colorless, rain-dripping, twisting trees that looked as if they never lived, never died. And there were few hamlets — Philaret said only the hardiest Maisirian ventured through these lands, although there were tales of mysterious people who lived in the swamps, paying no heed to King Bairan or anyone else of the government.
The road was, simultaneously, better and worse. It was no longer a rut, but rather corduroyed with logs — trimmed, laid beside each other, and lashed in place — and crude bridges over the many streamlets. We didn’t mire the carriages as often, but our way was a constant jolting from log to log to log. I asked Philaret about how many men it took to keep this road up, and he told me the king’s magicians helped, laying spells of preservation on the green wood and rawhide lashings, but it was still necessary to send soldiers through with axes and shovels every year, after the ice melted in the Time of Births.
There were creatures out there in the dimness. Karjan and I spotted, about a hundred yards from the road, what appeared t
o be an ape, but with two pairs of arms and legs and an elongated, nearly headless body, so it resembled a spider larger than a man more than any monkey. It gibbered angrily, then was gone. I was told no one knew, or wanted to know, much about these creatures. Supposedly they were intelligent, almost as intelligent as a man, lived in rude communities, and stole the children of the peasants living on the fringes of the marsh. “Either stole them,” Captain Lasta reported, since he was the one who’d heard the tale, “or had them for dinner. There’re two ways of thinking.”
At least there were few insects in this late season. But I would rather have dealt with a thousand buzzing bloodsuckers than the terrible fear that hung over us, a dread of something unknown, unseen. I felt as if something, or somethings, was watching us, perhaps hidden in this hummock or cleverly concealed behind that gnarled, tortured tree trunk. Sometimes we heard noises, but no one saw anything.
We reached a section where the corduroyed logs were rotting, dismounted, and went on afoot, drivers leading their teams. We put dismounted scouts ahead of the column, to give warning if the road had been washed out from beneath. I was wondering where we’d find a place to camp when a terror-stricken scream rang. Swords snicked from scabbards, and arrows were fumbled onto bowstrings.
Running toward the caravan was one of the scouts, howling in complete, mindless panic. But no one could call him craven, for rushing toward him, moving parallel with the road, was an impossible nightmare. Conceive of a slug, speckled, slime-yellow, shit-brown, a slug with no eyes, but a score or more gaping mouths along its slime-bubbling snout, a slug thirty or more feet long. It moved soundlessly, faster than the scout could run. It was almost on him, and the man looked over his shoulder once, shrieked again, and darted off the road, toward a clump of trees. Perhaps he thought he could outclimb the nightmare.
