by Tim Stead
“What do your family do, Hol?” he asked.
“My Da’s a tailor. He makes shirts mostly, and cloaks, but the cloth costs more.”
“Well, a shirt’s a useful thing,” Jerac said.
Hol pulled a face. Like all young men he seemed to find his father’s profession mundane if not slightly repellent. Jerac had nothing against tailors. He’d known a few and they seemed a decent, hard working sort.
“What do you think they’ll do with us?” the boy asked.
“How do you mean?” Jerac sipped his ale. It was already half gone, and he thought he might have one more before going about his business. He’d be back here tonight. He had paid for a room upstairs, paid a week in advance after he’d sold his workshop and house. He could afford it.
“Cavalry?” Hol’s eyes were alight at the prospect.
“Doubt it,” Jerac replied. “I can’t ride a horse, and neither can you according to this paper. Infantry’s my guess. Sword or pike.” He looked at the paper again. “Sword,” he said. The circled S made sense. “Sword for certain.”
“I’d like to be cavalry, to ride a horse.”
Jerac understood that, too. Men on horseback were more intimidating. They borrowed a strength from the animal that made them more than what they were, and besides that they were feared by Seth Yarra. But he didn’t think he could trust a horse with his life. He’d had enough trouble trusting apprentices and journeymen in his own workshop.
“I’ll be happy whatever,” he said. “It was infantry held the wall at Fal Verdan.”
Hol drained his ale and fished out a thin purse, signalling to the barman.
“It’s all right,” Jerac said. “I’ll get these. I’m still flush from work.”
Hol gave him a stern look. “I’d not have taken an ale off you if I couldn’t afford to square the round,” he said. “Put your coin away.”
“Fair enough.” He put his fat purse back in his shirt and waited while Hol bought two more ales. He was beginning to like the boy, he decided. He might be young and foolish, but he’d been well raised and he had an honest streak wider than most.
* * * *
The next day dawned bright, but with a chill breeze off the sea. Jerac rolled out of his comfortable bed and dressed quickly. It had been just the two ales the night before and he’d slept well. He felt strong and clear headed. He was excited, too. Today he was going to be a soldier. The adventure was beginning.
He had no illusions. He didn’t think he was going to be a hero. His ambition was simpler than that. He wanted to take risks. He wanted to throw himself among the great events of the age, to see and hear things for himself. It didn’t worry him that he might be killed. He’d lived one full life and this was a second, a god’s gift. How many people could say that?
He hurried downstairs.
The Seventh Friend had transformed during the night. What had been a fairly lively tavern had become a staid breakfasting space. There wasn’t an ale in sight. Food was laid out on the bar – bread and cheese and such for those that had stayed the night in rooms – and there was a large pot of porridge being stirred on the fire. Men sat around, some the worse for the night before, most eating alone. Jerac poured himself a hot tea and gulped it down, grabbing bread and cold bacon and wrapping it in a cloth so that he could eat it on his way to the training fields.
“In a hurry, soldier?”
It was one of the young girls who worked the morning shift, cleaning, serving food and doing what was necessary. There were more women here since the war. She was smiling at him and the thought occurred to him that she was pretty. Jerac grinned.
“First day,” he said. “Can’t be late.”
He was out the door a moment later, striding swiftly down the street. He tore hunks off the bread as he went and bit ends off the bacon to flavour it in his mouth. It was a rough but tasty meal.
It took fifteen minutes to get out of the city and across the bridge to where the regiment of the Seventh Friend trained. Jerac was early. The field was laid out with tents on the north side, sixty or seventy of them, all the off-white tint of undyed canvas. To the east there was a small stream, and to the south a host of horses were picketed on long rope lines. He could not see more than a hundred men.
The west side of the field was populated by posts. They stood about a foot higher than a man and were painted and inscribed.
He walked over to the tents, scanning them for a flash of blue, the colour of the sash he’d been told to look for. He clutched the cryptic note the recruiter had given him tightly, folded a couple of times so that it would fit into his fist.
It took him a few minutes, but eventually he saw the sash draped over the back of a chair. A man was sitting on the chair forking eggs into his mouth, a cup of something hot set on a stool next to him. He approached the man.
“Blue sash?” he asked.
The seated man squinted at him, but didn’t speak. He picked up the cup from the stool and took a swallow.
“You’re early,” he said.
“I can wait, if you like.”
“Early is good,” the man said. “Do you have the paper?”
Jerac passed it over and watched as the man unfolded it, studied it for a moment. “Jerac Fane,” he said the name slowly, as though tasting it. “A novice.” Jerac didn’t comment. Not his place, he guessed. The man picked up a sheaf of papers from the ground and flicked through a couple of pages. “Someone’s got to try to teach you to use a sword,” he said. “Red Seven.” He put the paper down and picked up his eggs again.
“Red Seven?”
“The post,” the man pointed. “It’s red and it says seven on it. It says here you can read.”
Jerac nodded. “Thank you, sir,” he said.
Blue Sash shook his head. “Not sir,” he tapped the insignia on his arm – two stripes of white cloth sewn onto his brown tunic. “Corporal. Sir is officers.”
“How do I tell an officer?” Jerac asked. He didn’t know the ranks, which was embarrassing. The corporal laughed.
“I like you, Jerac Fane,” he said. “An officer looks like an officer. If I say more than that someone’ll put me on report.”
Jerac left the corporal to his eggs and made his way over to the posts. He found a red one with the number seven carved into both sides and stood beside it. There was nobody else there. After a while he sat and picked the last few crumbs of bread out of the cloth, scraped a bit of bacon fat off it with his fingernail and ate it.
The others arrived in dribs and drabs. They all looked unsure of themselves. Some of them nodded to Jerac and he nodded back, but after a while he just closed his eyes and waited for the sun to warm him.
A boot kicked his feet, and he had to put an arm down to stop himself tipping over.
“Get up,” a voice said.
Jerac was on his feet in a moment, ready to punch whoever had kicked him. He found himself facing a man half a head shorter, but broad and wearing a dented breastplate polished like a mirror. The man had a sword strapped to his right side, a dagger in his belt, and three white stripes on his tunic. The soldier’s face could never have been pretty, but was made far worse by a scar running across the chin and the look of naked contempt it was wearing.
“Not sleeping, sergeant,” he said, guessing the rank.
“If I say you were sleeping, you were sleeping. Understand?”
Jerac glanced around him. There were a dozen other men here now, all watching him to see what was going to happen.
“Yes, sergeant,” he said.
The sergeant looked him in the eye for a few more seconds, as if satisfying himself that there was no spark of rebellion there, then he turned to the others.
“You don’t know me,” he said to the other men. “That means you’ve had a lucky life so far.” He glowered for a moment. “My name is Sergeant Indirac. My job, gods and demons help me, is to teach you green apples how to fight with a sword.” He pulled his sword from its sheath and held it up bef
ore them. “This is a sword,” he said. “It’s got a sharp end and an end you hold. It’s also got a sharp edge, of maybe two if you’re lucky. We use it to kill our enemies.”
Jerac understood that he was mocking them, putting them in their place, showing his contempt. Every man there knew everything he was telling them. They might not have fought with a sword before, but he’d wager they’d all seen one and knew which end was which. Nobody laughed, though. Nobody protested.
The sergeant put his blade away, dropping it neatly into its sheath with a solid click. He picked up something that looked like a sword, but was made of wood. “It’ll be a month before any of you get your hands on anything sharp,” he said. “This is what you’ll use until then. It’s a training sword, wood with a lead core to make up the weight. When you can use this without being a danger to yourself or your comrades then we’ll give you a real one.”
Jerac looked around the group. He could see other groups coalescing around other posts and wondered what they were being taught, and if their instructors were as unpleasant as Sergeant Indirac.
“Dozy!” He turned at the sound of the sergeant’s voice, and flushed when he realised that the man was speaking to him. “Catch.” The sword was hurled at him, spinning through the air – he was not supposed to be able to catch it, he realised. He was supposed to humiliate himself by dropping it and maybe collecting a bruise or two for his efforts. But Jerac could watch the spinning wooden blade, could see the handle clear as day, and he reached out and plucked it from the air as easily as if it had been tossed gently to him. He grinned. The sergeant raised an eyebrow.
“Right,” he said. “Exercises. The rest of you watch. Me and Dozy here, we’re going to show you a few things to practice.” Jerac had to give the man credit. Apart from the raised eyebrow he’d betrayed no surprise at all.
He watched as the sergeant took up a stance opposite him, legs set wide and at an angle, knees slightly bent, sword held up with the point raised so that he looked down its length. He copied it.
“Rule one,” the sergeant said. “Balance. Never lose it. If you do, you’re probably dead.” His arm flashed out and the tip of his wooden blade touched Jerac’s tunic. Jerac stepped back, surprised.
“That was a thrust – a basic killing blow – but not the only one. Remember that if you injure your enemy he’s as good as dead. Lots of good places to hit. The neck, the arm below the shoulder,” he tapped Jerac where he meant, “The side above the hip, the leg just below it. Any lower than that and your crouching, which isn’t good.”
He stepped back and pointed to a pile of wooden weapons. “Pick one of those and line up opposite me. I want you to practice balance while swinging a sword.”
“Do we get shields?”
The sergeant turned on the man who’d spoken. “You’ll bloody need a shield if you speak out of turn again. If I want you to speak, I’ll ask you to. Until then I talk and you do what I say. Understand?”
The man nodded mutely and hurried after the others to fetch a wooden sword. That left the sergeant and Jerac alone for a moment. The man turned his back to the men so they couldn’t hear him speak.
“You sure you’ve never used a blade before?” he asked.
“No,” Jerac said. “I’m a carpenter.”
The sergeant nodded. “When the others go at the end of the day, you stay.”
“Yes, sergeant.” He wondered why.
* * * *
It was an exhausting day. Sergeant Indirac worked them hard, worked them till they sweated and bled, bruised and sore. Jerac seemed tireless. He did the same tasks as the others, tried his hardest at everything he was ordered to do, but at the end of the day he merely felt warm and loose. He still felt strong and alert. He was aware that the sergeant had been watching him for most of the afternoon.
When Indirac dismissed them he went and sat down by the red post and picked up a water skin, pouring some of it over his head and some into his mouth. The water was warm, but it still felt good. The sea breeze that had brightened the morning had faded during the day, but it was back again now, bringing sea smells, fish and tar, and it cooled him, drying the water from his skin.
“You’ve got quick hands.” The sergeant was standing over him. He began to scramble to his feet, but Indirac waved him back down and sat opposite, relieving him of the water skin and drinking deeply. “You’re fitter than the rest and stronger,” Indirac added.
Jerac shrugged. He knew it was true, but he could hardly tell this man his story, that he was over sixty and owed his youth to magic. Besides, he couldn’t even explain it to himself.
“Yes, Sergeant,” he said.
“How is old Alos these days?”
Jerac was surprised again. He didn’t recognise the sergeant at all. “He’s well, surprisingly good for his age. Did you know him?”
“Oh, I knew him, but he wouldn’t tell me from a wood shaving,” the sergeant said. “We never spoke, but he was always in the Friend of an evening. The colonel liked him.”
“Did he?”
“Aye. He built half the place, you know.” It was an outrageous exaggeration, but Jerac just nodded. He done the bar, built the pulley system, fixed a few floorboards and a couple of lintels, but it was his apprentices who’d done most of the actual work. “So is this what you want?”
“I don’t understand. I volunteered.”
“The regiment has different squads,” Indirac said. “Most men fight in general units, just numbers against numbers, you know? Maybe one in fifty, one in a hundred has your natural gifts. You could be in an elite unit.”
Jerac had never heard of elite units. He thought that soldiers were soldiers. “What do you mean?”
“The regiment puts its better fighters into elite units. It means you get tougher battles, more glory, faster promotion.”
“More chance of getting killed,” Jerac cursed the words as soon as he spoke them. That was Alos speaking, cautious old Alos who’d never taken a risk in his life.
“That’s true. Interested?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.” He wasn’t Alos any more, and he was determined to prove it.
“Well, then, I’ll talk to someone. You were here early today, be early tomorrow.” He stood up and walked away, just like that, and the conversation was over. Jerac retrieved the water skin and took another swallow, but realised that he was hungry, and what he really wanted was an ale. He set off at once for the welcoming perpetual twilight of the Seventh Friend.
Four – The Prisoner
Arish Marik son of Aseth sat in his room and stared at the wall. He could not summon up a word that adequately described how he felt. His mind was in turmoil. For a start he was afraid. He was afraid of his captors, afraid of the Wolf, afraid of the war that swirled all about the land, and even more afraid of the uncertainty in his mind about who he really wanted to win.
He was ashamed, too. All his adult life he had secretly held himself to be a man of reason, a man who picked threads from the fabric of The Book, knowing in his heart that there were better ways of doing things than those laid down in its pages. In spite of that he had reacted like a faith addled novice to the Wolf’s request that he translate some papers. He was ashamed that he had not been more rational, and he was ashamed again that he had wanted to help.
More than anything, however, he wanted to see those papers again. The brief time he’d looked at them had been enough to form an impression only. Words and pictures stuck in his head, and those fragments that had stuck hinted at a very dark truth. If he was right it was a deceiver’s manual. The Wolf had hinted as much, and he’d reacted like a child. How could he have been so… ordinary?
The implications piled up like heads of corn at harvest time. The greatest, the most monstrous of all, was that they might be fighting and dying on behalf of an impostor. That was the end of the path down which his reasoning had led him.
Marik sat in his cell, his room – he could not deny that they had treated him well – and though
t of the thousands who might be dying for nothing, for a sacrilegious lie. He heard the news. It was difficult for him to swallow, but they came and told him the outcome of each battle, and from the gloating tone in their voices he guessed that they were not lying. At times he cursed his ability to speak their heathen tongue. If he did not understand them he could still believe that the war was going well.
Anyone he had known in the sacred army would be dead, except by some miracle such as had befallen him. Only those left across the water would be safe, and there were precious few there who could even put a name to his face, let alone cared for him. His faith had always been a thin, reedy thing, swayed by even the smallest facts that contradicted doctrine. Unlike many of the others he’d studied with it was the real world that mattered to Marik. He couldn’t see it any other way.
