by Robin Hobb
I gathered my courage and then asked for a meeting with the commander, and was shown into the offices of a very young captain. When I told him I was a second son and interested in becoming a soldier, he looked incredulous. I’ll give him credit for attempting to be tactful. He leaned back in his chair, looked at me, and then said in measured tones, “Sir, despite your birth order, I do not think the life of a military man in our region would suit you. Here, we endeavor to recruit our men at an early age, the better to shape them to the lives they will lead. Perhaps you would fare better in the west.”
“I am still short of my twentieth birthday, sir. And I know I do not look fit or able, yet if you will try me, I’m sure you’ll find me more capable than you might think.” Those words consumed all of my humility. My cheeks burned with shame.
“I see. Well. You look older than your years.” He cleared his throat. “Our resources here are limited, and right now our supplies must stretch to support the road workers the king has lent us for the fortification of this place. Much as I would like to take your oath and find you a place where you could serve both your king and the good god, I must turn you away. I do think you would fare better applying to one of the regiments in the west. In the more settled areas, a man may still serve his king and obey the will of the good god in less strenuous ways than the borderlands demand of a soldier.”
I heard the finality in his words. I knew he was attempting to let me leave with my pride and dignity intact. It was more than most folks had done for me on my journey. So I thanked him, and Clove and I went on. But as always, we rode toward the east and the mountains.
I came to a decision point when we reached the fork where the Mendes River joins the Tefa. I rode north for half a day, following both the road and the river. When I came to a new town with the ambitious name of Kingsbridge, I crossed the Mendes on the town’s namesake, and then halted, considering my options. If I followed the Mendy trail north, I’d have several options for enlistment. There was Mendy itself, a substantial bastion and one of our earliest strongholds on the plains. In its earliest incarnations, before we had come to open strife with them, Mendy had been a place for Gernian merchants to enjoy commerce with the Plainspeople. Traditionally, the Third, Seventh, and Eighth Regiment of foot called Mendy home, as well as Hoskin’s Horse. There was opportunity for me there.
My most sensible choice would have been to follow the river to Trade Post, or cross it and try to enlist at Lakegard or Laston. North offered me more opportunities. And yet, when Clove tossed his head and tugged at his bit in annoyance at standing so long, I did not follow the Mendy Trail. Gettys was the only Gernian outpost in our new direction. With the loss of Cayton’s Horse and Doril’s Foot, Gettys would be severely undermanned. Their misfortune might be to my benefit.
I did not allow myself to think that Gettys was in the foothills before the Barrier Mountains, the home territory of the Specks.
As each day passed, the land slowly changed. Trees began to appear, as scattered thickets and then as a solid forest that covered the hillsides. The quality of the road declined as it climbed higher into the foothills. The Tefa River was to my left now, and half the size it would be when it passed my old home in Widevale. I became resigned to sleeping outside each night and supplementing my rations with wild plants and whatever small game I could hunt as I traveled. The road was an anomaly here, a man-made thing that ran through a land that didn’t seem to recognize humanity’s reign. My journey seemed endless. At intervals I would see derelict wagons and other broken and abandoned equipment at the side of the road, the detritus of the road’s continuing growth. Several times I passed large cleared areas, where rags of canvas and other garbage spoke of a large encampment of men, probably for the penal crews building the road. The few other travelers I encountered were brusque, hurrying past me as if I were a threat. I encountered a train of supply wagons, returning empty from the farthermost road construction camp. The dust they raised was swept away by the endless wind. The quiet that flowed back after their passage seemed final. Winter and the snows it would bring had slowed all trade by road or water to a trickle.
I could scarcely believe my eyes when I topped a rise one afternoon and saw a small town in the distance. The land had been cleared around the settlement; it crouched on a steep hillside dotted with stumps. My heart lifted at the thought of an inn, an opportunity to resupply, to eat a hot meal, to sleep under a roof. But the closer we came, the more my hopes sagged. Chimney smoke rose in only a few places. The first structure I passed might once have been a house. It had slipped to one side and then collapsed. Beyond it there was a rail-fenced area. A double row of depressions in the earth were the only indications that it was a graveyard.
I rode on, passing other empty houses. The houses, both fallen and standing, had been built of logs rather than plank. The town was abandoned, or nearly so. When I finally sighted a house with a trickle of smoke rising from its chimney, I halted and dismounted. I approached the door cautiously, knocked, and then stood back from it. Some moments passed, then a very old man opened the door slowly. Before I could offer any greeting or even ask to buy food and a night’s lodging, a woman’s voice shrieked from inside. “Close it! Close that door, you old fool! Why do you think I barred it? He’s here to murder us and rob us. Shut the door!”
“I’ve money to pay for a meal!” I shouted hastily, but the old man only looked at me with pale, rheumy eyes and then obediently but gently shut the door in my face. “I can pay!” I shouted at the closed door. There was no response. I shook my head in frustration and walked on, leading Clove.
I passed five shells of houses and then stopped outside a fenced area where a man was digging potatoes. His cottage looked well-tended, as did the little garden that surrounded him. At sight of me, he stopped his digging. He switched his grip on the shovel, holding it as if it were a pike.
“Good day, sir,” I offered him.
“Keep on your way,” he advised me gruffly.
“I’d like to buy a meal and a night’s lodging from you. I can pay. I can show you the coin.”
He shook his head. “I’ve no use for coins. What would I do with them? Make soup?” He looked at me more sharply, and then, perhaps deciding a fat man was not much of a threat, asked shrewdly, “Got anything to barter?”
I shook my head slowly. I had nothing I could afford to part with, nothing I could give up that would not leave me in worse need.
“Well, we’ve nothing to spare for beggars. Be on your way.”
I opened my mouth to say that I had not begged. I could feel my resentment rising in me. I thought of the soldiers and how the magic had boiled with my anger. No. I would not do that again. I would not loose that which I did not understand. I turned away from him and led Clove on.
I was hungry, cold, and weary. Thick clouds had been gathering all day and were starting to darken, promising rain by nightfall. If it had been otherwise, I think I would have mounted up and ridden off. The rising wind tugged at my cloak. If all I could buy myself was a dry night’s sleep, I was resolved to have it. At the next cottage with chimney smoke rising from its stack, I gathered up my courage and knocked at a rough wooden door.
It was slow to open. I stood still before it, smiling, for I suspected that someone was peering out at me through one of the numerous chinks in the wall. The small woman who finally opened the door held a large pistol in both her hands. I stepped back. The muzzle of it pointed squarely at my midsection. She could not possibly miss me at this range. I lifted my hands to show they were empty. “I’d just like to buy a night’s lodging and food, ma’am,” I said with great respect.
A small towheaded boy suddenly shoved his head out past his mother’s skirts. “Who’s that?” he demanded. And then, almost with admiration, “He’s really fat!”
“Hush, Sem. Get back inside.” She looked at me speculatively. I could almost see her decide that I wasn’t much of a threat. She was small but stocky. She had to use both hands to s
teady the pistol. She lowered the heavy gun, but now the barrel menaced my legs. “I don’t have much to spare.”
“I’d be content with anything hot, and a dry place to spend the night,” I said humbly. “I can pay.”
She laughed in a sour way. “And where would I spend it? I’ve got no use for money. Can’t eat it. Can’t burn it.” Her blue eyes were hard. I didn’t doubt the truth of her words. She looked as worn as her clothing. Her dark hair was knotted back in a no-nonsense way that spoke only of practicality, not attractiveness or even neatness. The skin of her hands was rough. The boy’s eyes looked too large in his thin face.
I could think of nothing else to offer. “Please,” I begged.
She tightened her mouth and narrowed her eyes. It made her look like a thoughtful cat. I stood humbly before her, hoping. Two more children peeped out around the door frame. One was an older girl of about five, the other a curly-headed toddler. The woman shooed them back, then looked me up and down skeptically. “Can you work?” she asked me coldly.
“That I can,” I promised her. “What do you need done?”
Her smile was tight. “What don’t I need done? Winter’s coming. Look at this place! I’ll be lucky if it stands through the first storm.” She sighed and then said, “You can put your horse in that house over there. We use it for a shed. The roof doesn’t leak much.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She almost winced. “I’m not ma’am. I’m not that old. I’m Amzil.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening chopping wood. She had an old ax with a splintery handle. I put an edge on it with a stone. She had been turning the adjacent buildings into firewood, but the ax was big for her and the house timbers too heavy. She’d been limited by the size of log she could chop through. “The little ones burn up too fast. I can’t build a fire that lasts the night,” she told me.
I worked steadily in the chill wind. I selected a small house that was mostly collapsed, and worked at turning it into firewood, cutting the timbers into chunks and then splitting them. One at a time, her scattered neighbors made excuses to drop by. I felt their eyes on me, but as none of them spoke to me, I ignored them and labored on. Their attempts at conversation with Amzil were brief. I heard one man say to her, “I only come to see if he had something to trade. It’s nothing to do with you at all, woman!” I sensed no community there, only a sour rivalry for the diminishing resources of the failed settlement. The old woman did not come to Amzil’s door but grimly eyed me from a distance, scowling as I pulled logs free and then chopped them into firewood.
I had been aware of Amzil’s children spying on me all day. The muffled giggles of the older two had betrayed them as they hid around the corner of her house and took turns peeking at me. Only the smallest child, a tiny girl, was honest in her complete curiosity. She stood squarely in the open doorway to gawk at me. I had not thought I remembered much of Yaril’s babyhood. But looking at the child, I found I did. Yaril had stood like that, her babyish tummy thrust out before her. Yaril had turned her head and smiled shyly like that. When I stopped to wipe sweat from my neck, I smiled back at her. She squeaked and darted out of sight around the door. A moment later, she emerged again. I waved at her, winning a high-pitched giggle. As the sun was setting, the first threatened drops of rain came pelting down. Amzil emerged suddenly from her house, scooping the baby up in passing. She called out stiffly to me, “The food is ready.”
It was the first time I’d been inside her home. There wasn’t much to it. It was a single room, with log walls and a dirt floor. The hearth was rock plastered together with river clay. Their bed was a shelf across one side of the room. Other than the door, there was a single window with a crude wooden shutter. No glass. The only freestanding furniture was a bench by the hearth. The only table was a shelf in the corner with a washbasin on top of it and a water pitcher beside it. Clothing hung from pegs in the wall. Sacks on hooks and a few rough shelves held the food stores. There wasn’t much.
I ate standing. The children sat on the floor, and Amzil sat on the bench. She ladled thin soup from a kettle hung over the fire. She served me first, the thin broth off the top and a single scoop of vegetables from the depths of the pot. She served herself the same, and then measured out a scoop for each child that left the ladle scraping the bottom of the kettle. The children got most of the bits of food; I didn’t complain. She had a single mound of hearth bread. She broke it into five equal pieces and handed me one. We ate.
I savored the first spoonful of the warm broth. I tasted potatoes, cabbage, onion, and little else. As I had schooled myself to do, I ate slowly and enjoyed what I had. The bread was coarse, but good, for the flavor of the badly ground grain was stronger than if it had been made from fine flour. The texture was a good contrast to the thin soup. I saved the last bit of bread to wipe the final trace of soup from my bowl. Empty. I sighed and looked up to find Amzil regarding me curiously.
“Is something wrong?” I asked her. I was not unaware that her pistol rested on the bench beside her hip.
Her brow furrowed. “You’re smiling.”
I gave a small shrug. “Good food.”
She scowled at me as if I were mocking her. “It wasn’t good soup before I added enough water to stretch it for five.” Little spots of anger danced in her brown eyes.
“Any food is better than none. And any food tastes good after a time of privation.”
“Privation?”
“Hard times,” I clarified.
Her eyes narrowed again. “You don’t look like you’ve ever known ‘privation.’”
“You’d be surprised,” I said gently.
“Maybe. Here, we’ve eaten the same thing for so long, I don’t even taste it anymore.” She rose abruptly, picking up the pistol as she did so. “Children, stack your bowls. You, you can sleep in the shed with your horse. The roof doesn’t leak much.” It was a clear request that I now leave her house.
I cast my thoughts desperately for an excuse to stay a bit longer in the light and warmth of the small home. “I’ve no real food to share. But I still have tea left in my panniers.”
“Tea?” Her eyes were distant. “I haven’t tasted tea since…well, since we left Old Thares to follow Rig’s coffle.”
“I’ll get it,” I offered instantly. I rose, moving my bulk carefully through the flimsy furnishings of the small room and out the rattly door into the chill night.
I’d left Clove picketed in an alley to get whatever graze he could on the coarse grass and weeds there. Now I moved him into what had once been someone’s home. He barely fit through the door, but he seemed grateful to be out of the wind and rain. I’d stowed my panniers and tack there earlier. Now, considering the desperate poverty of Amzil’s neighbors, I decided to take my panniers with me into the house.
I set them on the floor in the middle of her room, and knelt down beside them. Her children crowded close as I opened them and rummaged inside. Amzil stood back but looked no less curious. I found the block of black tea. As I opened its wrapper, Amzil caught her breath as if I were unveiling treasure. She had already put a kettle of water to heat, and it seemed a year before the water bubbled to a boil. She had no teapot, so we used my own small kettle to brew the tea. The children huddled around it as if they were worshipping it as Amzil poured the boiling water over the shriveled leaves. The delightful aroma of brewing tea blossomed with the steam. “The leaves are unrolling!” her son, Sem, exclaimed in wonder. We waited in silent anticipation for the tea to brew. Then Amzil ladled out bowls for each of us. I lowered myself carefully to the dirt floor, to join the children in their half-circle around the fire. I cupped the bowl in my hands, feeling the warmth of the liquid though the rough pottery.
Even the baby, Dia, had a small bowl of tea. She sampled it, scowled at its dark taste, and then watched the rest of us sipping. She sipped again, pursing pink baby lips over its bitterness. I smiled at her solemn expression as she imitated us. The child wore a si
mple robe, obviously sewn from the remnants of an adult’s garment. It was well made, but the rough cloth looked more suited to a man’s trousers than a little girl’s robe. Amzil cleared her throat. I looked away from her baby to find Amzil frowning at me warily.
“So. You came here from Old Thares,” I said, when the silence began to feel awkward.
“That we did.” She didn’t sound inclined to talk.
“You’re a long way from home, then. It must be very different for you here.” I prodded her with words, trying to start a conversation. She turned the tactic against me.
“Have you ever been to Old Thares?”
“I have. I went to school there for a season.” I would not mention the academy. I had no desire to tell the long tale of why I was no longer there.
“School. Ah. Never been myself. And if you were in a school, you never saw my city.” She was adamant.
“I didn’t?” I asked cautiously.
“Do you know the part of town down by the river docks? Some folk call it the Rats’ Nests?”
I shook my head, inviting her to go on.
“Well, that’s where I come from. I lived all my life there, until I come here. My father was a ragpicker. My mother sewed. She could take old rags my father gathered, wash and press them, and turn them into the best things you ever saw. She taught me. A lot of folks throw away stuff that just needs a good washing and a bit of mending to be fine again. Some will throw out a whole shirt for a stain down the sleeve, as if you couldn’t make something nice out of the part that was good. Rich people waste a lot of things.” She said it self-righteously, as if challenging me to disagree. I said nothing.
She sipped from her tea, then admitted, “My husband was a thief.” Her mouth twisted on the word. “He was a thief like his father and grandfather before him. He used to laugh and say that it was the good god’s will that he follow in his father’s footsteps. When our boy was born, he even talked about how he would teach him to cut purses when he was older. But then Rig was caught and the choice was put to him—lose his hand or come east to work on the King’s Road.”
