by Robin Hobb
“I thought perhaps you should have a higher stake in stopping the dance. And in driving the intruders from our territory.”
“You don’t trust me,” Soldier’s Boy said bluntly. “Likari is a hostage. If I don’t do as you say, you’ll see that he dies.”
She ate another slice of the fish with evident relish. “Now there’s a Jhernian concept. A hostage. Yes, you could see it that way. But it isn’t that you must do what I say. Only that you must succeed in doing what you said you’d do. What you have always been meant to do. If you succeed in driving the intruders away, Kinrove’s dance will no longer be needed. The boy will come back to you. But if you do not—” She picked at the fish, and then took a handful of nuts instead. She seemed to feel no need to finish her sentence.
It had been a hard morning. Soldier’s Boy was hungry and the food at my elbow smelled wonderful. He hated that he could even think of eating at a moment like this, and yet my body clamored at him relentlessly. He refused to look at the platter but could not stop smelling the tempting aromas. The magic nagged to be fed. Soldier’s Boy saw Dasie’s gaze move from my face to the platter and back again. She knew. She knew how he resisted the food and it amused her.
This time, when Soldier’s Boy’s wrath rose, he did not contain it. “Leave,” he commanded her. “Leave now.” A sudden cold wind whirled past the lodge and swept in through the open door.
Dasie looked startled. One of the feeders gave a low cry of fear. I felt the sudden depletion of magic from my body but Soldier’s Boy appeared not to care. The wind grew stronger, colder.
Anger and fear mingled in Dasie’s face. Great Ones did not usually threaten one another with magic so openly. “I have my iron bearer!” she warned him.
“Yes,” he agreed. “You do. And who is thinking like a Gernian now, Dasie?” The sweep of wind came inside the lodge, tugging at her garments. “Leave now!” he told her again. The feeders had retreated to the back of the lodge. Dasie’s attendants glanced about uncomfortably. Her iron bearer entered abruptly, carrying his sword as if it were a gun. It was obvious that he judged its power to be in its touch rather than its edge. He advanced on me, his face grim with determination. Soldier’s Boy set his teeth and spent more magic. Despite the iron, the wind still blew, but it cost him dearly.
“We will leave!” Dasie declared abruptly. “I have no reason to remain here.” She rose with a grunt and strode toward the door. Her iron bearer moved hastily out of her path, putting a safe distance between his weapon and his Great One. Dasie swept out of Lisana’s lodge and her feeders flowed after her. The wind seemed to follow her, pushing her along. After she was gone, one of my feeders scuttled to the threshold and closed the door behind her. We were plunged into dimness and silence. It felt breathless.
For a moment, the food still beckoned. Angrily he refused to heed it. How could the magic be so selfish? His heart had a hole torn in it. Likari was gone. Olikea was, I realized, in a state similar to battle shock. Walking wounded, I thought. She gave the appearance of functioning, but was not.
With an almost physical wrench, I felt Soldier’s Boy wrest my attention to him. “I want to think like a Gernian right now.” His thought to me was harsh. “Make me see clearly. What must I do right now?”
I didn’t need to pause to think. The training of years slid into place like a bolt sliding home in its socket. I hastily rummaged his memories of the last few weeks, orienting myself to his situation. Grudgingly, he allowed this. I was a bit surprised to find that, as a military man, I approved of most of what he had done. As a Gernian, it horrified me.
He’d organized his troops just as if they were a cavalla force. He’d established a rudimentary chain of command. He’d made an attempt at teaching basic drill, but had to give it up. His “troops” could not understand the use of it and simply did not cooperate. They had no tradition of military obedience, and little concept of a graduated hierarchy, and he’d had no time to establish one. He’d had to be content with training them to change locations swiftly when he ordered it. Hardest for them to learn was that they themselves did not decide how to place themselves; they had to wait for his commands. It had not been easy. His troops had flocked mostly to Dasie’s call and came from all the kin-clans. They were supposedly three hundred strong. The reality was that they came and went at their own whim. He’d had as few as one hundred turn out when he called. It was a great weakness and would be disastrous if he attempted an attack on Gettys. But I didn’t intend to support him in that. My own fear was closer to home.
“You need to consolidate your own force,” I told him. “You thought your common enemy was the Gernians. Perhaps it is, but neither Kinrove nor Dasie are truly on your side. They both use you, and each has what amounts to a personal guard, a component of your general force that is absolutely true to them. They will care nothing if you are destroyed in the process of serving them. They may even think it to their benefit if you are.
“The majority of the troops you have been training come from Dasie’s kin-clan. In any sort of a pinch, they will look to her for leadership and also to protect her. There are few warriors that belong to you. Even those from Olikea’s kin-clan do not feel a strong loyalty to you; some may still regard you as an outsider, for you have done little to change that perception. You need at least a small body of men who are yours first. You have very little time to establish it. Sempayli seems to put you first. Tell him to stop being one of your feeders and become your lieutenant.”
“But—”
“Quiet. Let me finish.” I had no time for his doubts or objections. His flaw seemed clear to me. “You’ve been thinking like a soldier, or at best a sergeant. You have to become the general, not a lackey for those others. Once you seize command of the full force, neither Dasie nor Kinrove will know how to take it back from you. Taking the loyalty of the troops and making them obey you are necessities if you are to survive and win Likari back.”
He raised a wall of obstinacy between us, then just as swiftly dropped it. “What do you suggest?” he asked stiffly, making it clear that all choices remained with him. Good. He’d have to build on that to develop the honest arrogance of full command.
“I suggest that you look to your own kin-clan first. Care for them, and they’ll care for you. Send Sempayli to the main village to find out who has been summoned. Get a tally of who has been lost to them. Send someone to Firada, to tell her Likari is gone. Ask her to come and comfort her sister. Send word to their father, Kilikurra. He will want to know his grandson has been summoned. Let your concern be known to your kin-clan. Announce your loss of Likari and let them know that you, too, grieve. Shared loss will bond them to you.”
I felt heartless to exploit tragedy this way. When had I become so shallow? It was, I suddenly thought, a tactic my father would have used. I felt Soldier’s Boy seize my suggestion and run off with it. My sole thought had been to guard his back and Olikea’s against the machinations of Dasie and Kinrove. He leapt forward with it and I suddenly realized my deadly error.
“I will let them know that I suffer alongside them. But I must not let that blossom into resentment toward Kinrove. We will sorrow together, but when it starts to fester into hatred for Kinrove’s magic, I will point that hatred toward the intruders instead. I will say to my warriors, as well as my kin-clan, that there is only one way to have our loved ones returned to us, only one path to resuming our lives of peace and safety. To go back to the days when Kinrove’s dance was not needed, we must muster every man who can stand as a warrior, and together fall upon Gettys and annihilate it!”
“No!” I bellowed the word, furious at myself as well as at him, but he suppressed my anger to a sigh. He spoke fiercely at me, arguing over and against my thoughts, trying to mute me with his own desperate logic.
“Care you nothing for the people who took you in when your own tried to kill you and you had to flee? Why do you think you owe the Gernians anything at all? Do you not fear for what will certainly befall
Lisana’s tree? I know you recognized the need to protect our ancestor trees. You even went to Colonel Haren to try to persuade him to stop the road. Have you forgotten his arrogance and disrespect for you? I know it is hard for you, Nevare. In some ways, it is hard for me. But you cannot go back and be a Gernian. Even if I ceded the body to you and you returned to Gettys, they would kill you. Why not let go of your foolish loyalty to a folk who spurned you? Let us live where we are loved. But to do so, we must protect the ones who do accept us and care for us. The People must rise up against the intruders and drive them all out. There is no other way. Many will die, but better that many die and the conflict is finally ended than for the deaths and fighting to linger for generations. I hate what we must do, but there is no other path to peace. I know you want as few to die as possible. My way wins that for both of us. And so you must help me.”
“No.” My refusal was dull and deadened. I could refuse to help him, but I could not stop him.
“I need you, Nevare. Don’t fail the People. You know our war is righteous. Think of Olikea, deprived first of her mother and now of her son. That is the doing of the intruders. Shall we let it happen, over and over, generation after generation? We have to stop it.”
“That was Kinrove’s doing.”
“The intruders created Kinrove. Without their depredations, the magic would not have needed him. It all goes back to the intruders. There is only one way to end all of this. We tried to drive them away with the dance. They would not go. So now we must kill them.”
“Epiny,” I said quietly. “Spink. Sem. Kara. Baby Dia. Ebrooks. Kesey. Tiber.” I pushed my emotions at him. My thought was a whispered plea as I added, “Amzil. What about Amzil? I feel for her what you feel for Lisana. Can you be numb to my feelings for her? Despite all, she said she loved me. Would you wish death on her and her children?”
“Olikea!” he countered. “Likari.” And balancing lives on a scale, as if he were Orandula himself, he said, “We both love Lisana. And she loves us. If the intruders are not stopped, we lose her forever, and we lose forever itself.”
I knew what he meant by losing forever. If the road were not stopped, the Valley of the Ancestor Trees would be destroyed. There would be no tree for him when this body died, and hence no second life with Lisana.
“The price is too high,” I said quietly.
“It is,” he agreed. “No matter which side pays it, the price is too high. But there is no bargaining with fate. Deaths must be paid to buy us peace. Balance it, Nevare. A quick massacre, followed by generations of peace, or the continued erosion of years of gradual killing, the complete destruction of a people and their ancestral wisdom. How can it be difficult to choose? Our attack will be like a surgery, a severing of diseased flesh so that the healthy part can go on living. It is what we must do.”
Then he turned away from me. It was not silencing me so much as it was him refusing to allow himself to hear. There was no point to my speaking. Instead, I was a silent witness to all he did that day. My father would have been proud of him. He was efficient and relentless. The only emotions he allowed to show were the ones that were useful to his cause.
He took my suggestions. In the days that followed, I watched him as he silently implemented his plan. He conferred that day with Sempayli, treating him more like a lieutenant and less like a feeder. At first the young man seemed confused by the change, but before their review of the troops was over, he had begun to offer bits of advice and suggestions. He knew the warriors better than Soldier’s Boy did, and before the day was done, he quietly offered to help sort them into those who truly wished to annihilate the intruders and those who merely hoped to win glory and perhaps plunder. Soldier’s Boy consented to that, and further charged him to select a dozen men to be his personal guard, based solely on skills with weaponry rather than on which kin-clan they belonged to. He also listened to Sempayli when the young man suggested that the troops would respond better to being treated as if they were hunting parties rather than troops marching in formation. I was uncertain of the wisdom of that, for it would create many individual leaders rather than a chain of command, but Soldier’s Boy didn’t consult with me on that and I no longer cared to offer him my thoughts on anything. He might be a traitor but I was not.
When he needed information from me, I refused him, but it was a useless show. I had little success at keeping my barriers raised against him. He could not absorb me, but he raided my memories as he wished for information and military tactics and knowledge. I gained some knowledge of his forces. They were not impressive, but I knew they were not to be dismissed, either. They would not fight us as Gernians fought, nor as the Plainsmen had. As the days passed, Sempayli’s suggestions bore fruit. It was tedious to have a variety of leaders reporting directly to Soldier’s Boy, but he endured it, and began to set small competitions among them, ones that built endurance or emphasized stealth or marksmanship.
I was surprised to discover he had a small mounted force. I had seen the horses that Dasie had used the night she had taken Kinrove down. Now my suspicions were confirmed. They were cavalla animals, some bartered for but most stolen. Some of them were old animals and none of them were in the best condition. The tack they had was very well worn and often in poor repair. Keeping horses was not a Speck tradition, and the forest did not offer good grazing, especially in winter. Soldier’s Boy took it upon himself to intervene in their care and grooming. That was when I discovered to my shock that Clove was among them. Evidently the day I’d turned him loose in the forest, he had not found his way home. The huge beast knew me immediately and came to Soldier’s Boy for comfort. I was glad he gave it, ordering that all the horses be moved to the coarse meadows near the beaches where they could actually graze rather than being forced to browse on whatever they could reach. When he announced that he would take Clove for his own mount, the current owner offered no resistance. I suspected that very few of the mounted Specks enjoyed their new vocations; the dense forest and often steep paths were not conducive to breeding horsemen. Soldier’s Boy wanted to begin some mounted drills, but the open space required simply didn’t exist near Lisana’s lodge. Finding proper grazing was difficult enough; the salt marshes gave them grass, but only of the coarsest sort. With reluctance, he had to give up his hope of a mounted force that could spearhead a swift attack.
As I had suggested, he showed special attention to those warriors who had come from Olikea’s kin-clan, taking time to meet separately with each one of them and to ask gravely if any of their family or dear ones had been summoned to Kinrove’s dance. Every one of them, of course, had lost someone to the magic. Soldier’s Boy made that pain the mirror of his own, and spoke earnestly to them of how their only hope of regaining their lost kin was to give their utmost to drive the intruders from our territories. He urged them, too, to recruit others from among our kin-clan, brothers and cousins and uncles, in the hope of winning our struggle and being reunited with all our lost kin in peace and joy. He rallied his troops with stirring speeches in which he reminded them of all the wrongs the Gernians had done them, and promised them that they would right those wrongs. Over and over, he reminded them that if they fought well in the upcoming battle, they would drive away the Gernians, save their ancestral trees, and put an end to the need for Kinrove’s dance. Every one of them would be a hero to his people. His efforts at making the struggle against the Gernians even more personal succeeded. The force drawn from our kin-clan doubled and then tripled in less than a week.
Such a drawing off could not escape Jodoli’s notice. “How do I smooth his feathers?” Soldier’s Boy asked of me late one evening as the rest of the lodge slumbered around us. I tried to hold myself aloof from his questions, but at such times, when we were alone in his mind, I felt like a prisoner tormented during questioning. I could not escape him, and if I would not surrender what he wanted, he would resort to picking through my memories. He concentrated most heavily on what my father had taught me. That wrung the most guilt
and pain from me, for it seemed a double defection that I betrayed my father as well as my own people when I used my father’s hard-won knowledge of strategy and tactics against them.
“How do I win Jodoli over to me?” he asked me again. Olikea slept heavy and warm against me. Her sorrow had left her limp and exhausted. She moved once, making a small sound like a baby’s half sob, and was still. She smelled of tears. He sighed heavily. “I don’t like to do this to you.” I felt him begin to plumb our shared past, drilling through my memories in search of advice that might apply. I gave in.
“You have two options,” I told him. “Either you make your cause his. Or you make it appear to him that you have come over to share his concerns. Either one will work, if you do it well.”
I could feel him thinking that through. Threads of a plan started to weave together in his mind. I almost felt him smile. “And if I did it well enough, would that be how I win you over, too?”
“I will never be a traitor to my people,” I told him fervently.
“Perhaps all I need to do is show you which people are truly your own,” he replied mildly. “Perhaps if I think long enough and in enough detail, I will get you to face what the Gernians did to you. How your fiancée mocked you and your father disowned you. How no one wished to let you serve your king. How your ‘own people’ decided not just to hang you, but to slice you to quivering meat before they ended your days. And then I might remind you of who took you in and fed you and cared for you. I might ask you which women treated you as a man, and which people respected you and the magic you held. I might ask you—”
“I could remind you that Spink and Epiny risked all to rescue me. And that Amzil was willing to sacrifice herself however she must to help me get past the guards.”
“She was willing to do that, but not to lie with you,” he pointed out snidely.
