In time, Narasan began to realize that their playground in the shadow of the large, white-walled officers’ quarters was not all that much different from the drill fields of the regular soldiers. In a very real sense, army children played at being soldiers until they were old enough to become real soldiers.
That seemed very appropriate to young Narasan.
“My papa didn’t tell me how it happened, Narasan,” Gunda said one frosty morning when they were out on the playground. “All he said was that Padan’s papa got killed during this last war down south. That’s probably why Padan hasn’t been around for the past few days.”
Narasan was stunned. He’d known that soldiers sometimes were killed in wars, but this was the first time anything like that had ever happened to the father of one of his close friends. “What do you think we should say when Padan comes back, Gunda?” he asked.
“How should I know?” Gunda replied.
“Maybe we shouldn’t say anything about it at all,” Narasan said a bit tentatively.
“Talk about the weather, or something?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should talk to one of the sergeants about it. People do get killed during wars, I guess. That’s what wars are all about, aren’t they? I’m sure it’s happened before, so some old-time sergeant could tell us the best way to handle it.”
“You’re probably right. Those old sergeants know just about everything that has to do with wars. After we grow up, though, maybe we’ll be able to come up with some way to pick a fight with the army that just killed Padan’s papa. If we stomp all over them, that might make Padan feel better, don’t you think?”
“You might be right, Gunda,” Narasan agreed. “I’ll find out which army did it, and we’ll get back at them when we’re the ones in command.” He squinted across the playground. “I don’t know that we need to tell anybody about it, though. They might not think it’s very honorable to hold grudges like that.”
“That’s all you ever think about, isn’t it, Narasan?” Gunda said. “I suppose we should be sort of honorable, but when somebody hurts one of our friends, honor goes out the window, and getting even takes over.”
“You’re probably right,” Narasan agreed, “but I don’t think we should come right out and say that’s what we’re doing.”
“You’re going to be the commander, Narasan, so we’ll do it any way you want us to.”
“It was—oh, maybe fifty or sixty years ago—when the armies decided that they didn’t want no more part of workin’ for the emperor or the silly Palvanum—all them earls and barons that spend all their time makin’ speeches,” the wrinkled old Sergeant Wilmer told the boys one rainy afternoon when it was too wet to go outside and play. “It all started, I bin told, when them thick-headed Palvani all put their heads together and decided that us soljers was gettin’ paid way too much. Of course, it was peacetime back then, so the soljers didn’t have nothin’ to do except polish their swords and play dice. The Palvani didn’t like that one little bit, so they ups an’ cut the soljers’ pay in half—and then, as the soljers found out later, the Palvani decided that they warn’t gettin’ near enough pay fer all that speech-makin’, so they got together one night an’ gave theirselves a whoppin’ big pay-raise—which it was as they kept purty much a secret.”
“Can they do that?” young Padan exclaimed. “Can they just reach in and take as much money as they want out of the treasury?”
“Well, it seems as how they thought they could. When the army commanders got wind of it, though, they all got together and decided that workin’ fer the gummint warn’t no fun no more, so they all just upped and quit. They did hang on to the army compounds, though. Well, sir, things was a little tight fer a while, but then some dukes an’ barons in the eastern provinces decided that they didn’t want no more part of the Empire, so they quit payin’ taxes, slammed their borders shut, and hung every tax collector they could lay their hands on.”
“Isn’t that sort of against the law?” Gunda asked.
Sergeant Wilmer laughed. “The gummint didn’t have no armies no more, boy,” he said. “There warn’t nobody around to go to them eastern provinces an’ tell them dukes an’ barons an’ such that they was a-breakin’ the law. Well, now, the Palvani all started a-makin’ speeches an’ scribblin’ out orders tellin’ the armies t’ run over to them eastern provinces an’ whomp on them dukes an’ barons until they started payin’ their taxes again, but the army commanders told them gabby Palvani what they could do with them orders, an’ the armies just sat tight an’ waited.”
Narasan and the other boys all laughed.
“Well,” the sergeant continued, “it didn’t hordly take no time at all fer them dummies in the Palvanum t’ figger out which way the wind was blowin’, so they come here to the army compounds an’ tole the soljers that they’d be more’n happy t’ go back t’ payin’ ’em what they’d been a-payin’ ’em back afore the pay-cut, but the soljers said no. Then they said that it’d take about twice as much t’ make ’em even a little bit interested. Let me tell you, you ain’t never heard so much screamin’ an’ yellin’! Them half-wit Palvani jumped up an’ down makin’ threats an’ tryin’ t’ order the armies t’ obey them there wrote-down commands an’ all sorts of other foolish stuff, but the soljers just slammed the gates shut an’ wouldn’t even answer when the Palvani started a-poundin’ on them.”
“That sounds like a clear win for our side, Sergeant,” Gunda declared.
“It gets better, boy,” the sergeant said, leaning back in his chair and taking a long drink from his beer tankard. “Them high-toned Palvani all went back t’ their fancy meetin’ place an’ made speeches t’ each other for a week or so, an’ then two more of them eastern provinces joined up with the others, an’ the limp-brains in the gummint suddenly woke up. The way things was a-goin’, in about another month or so there wouldn’t be no Empire no more. They all come a-runnin’ back t’ the army compounds an’ tole our commanders that they’d pay as much as the soljers wanted, but the commanders come right back an’ tole ’em, ‘We don’t march until we see the money.’ That started a bunch of new screamin’, but the Palvani knowed by then that our commanders meant exactly what they’d said, so the gummint finally gave in an’ paid the soljers what they had a-comin’ to ’em, an’ that ended that.”
“How did the war turn out, Sergeant?” Narasan asked curiously.
Sergeant Wilmer snorted. “It warn’t no real war, boy,” he replied. “When them dukes an’ barons an’ such off t’ the east saw ten armies a-marchin’ in their direction, they went belly-up right then and there.” The old sergeant took another drink from his beer tankard and looked around at the young boys gathered in front of him in the day-lounge as the gusty wind outside spattered the windows with hard-driven rain. “When you young gentlemen start receiving your formal education, your teachers are likely to tell you an entirely different story,” he told them quite seriously, dropping his colorful dialect, “but what I just told you was what really happened. My sergeant told me the story when I wasn’t much older than you boys are now, and he was here when it actually happened. Every now and then, teachers try to clean up the past, but usually the real events are pretty much down and dirty. The real world out there isn’t nearly as nice as some people would prefer it to be, so don’t swallow everything your high-born teachers tell you without taking a long hard look at it yourselves.”
Narasan stored that notion away for future reference as he pulled on his cape and left the day-lounge to go on home to his family’s quarters.
Narasan had heard that some army commanders lived in palaces and pretended to be members of the nobility, but Narasan’s father disapproved of that, since it wasn’t very honorable.
Narasan’s father was a lean but well-muscled man in his early forties. The burden of command weighed heavily upon him, and his glossy black hair was touched with silver at the temples. There was much work involved in the command of an army, but Narasan’s father a
lways listened when his son came to him with questions.
When Narasan reached home, he went to his father’s book-lined study. Sergeant Wilmer’s story had disturbed him just a bit, since it put a whole new light on his intended career. “Have you got a moment, father?” he asked.
“You seem troubled, son,” his father replied, setting aside the document he’d been reading. “What’s bothering you?”
“Well, when it started raining hard this afternoon, our instructor sent us to the day-lounge to get us in out of the weather, and old Sergeant Wilmer was there. Sometimes he talks real funny, doesn’t he?”
Narasan’s father smiled slightly. “It’s a pose, my boy. He talks that way right at first to get your attention. I take it that he told you the story about the origins of our army.”
“How did you know that, father?”
“He’s been telling that story to army children for a long time now. Sooner or later, every army boy hears Wilmer’s account of where we came from quite a long time ago.”
“I thought he was just making it up.”
“It wasn’t fiction, Narasan. Wilmer’s account comes very close to what really happened back then. The armies of that era were attached to the imperial government, and they did detach themselves during a dispute with the Palvanum about the pay scale of the noncommissioned soldiers. We want our sons to know exactly how it came about, so we turn Wilmer loose on every class of our children.” He leaned back in his chair, and the light from the candle on his desk touched his silvery hair. “Every member of our supposedly noble Palvanum has his own agenda for how the government should spend the money in the treasury, and paying the armies is usually way down at the bottom of the list.”
“That isn’t fair at all, is it?”
“Fairness has always been an alien concept for the Palvanum, Narasan. When there’s a war in the works, the Palvani all make glowing speeches about the bravery of Trogite soldiers, but when peace rolls around again, they’d rather not think about us. Basically, that’s why we went into business for ourselves. That’s the whole point of Sergeant Wilmer’s story.”
On a sudden impulse, Narasan broached a subject that had been bothering him for several months. “I wasn’t going to say anything about this, father, but Gunda and I were talking after Padan’s father was killed in that war last winter, and we sort of thought that maybe someday we might want to pick a fight with the army that killed him to get even with them for what they’d done. It’s been worrying at me ever since we talked about it. Would something like that be honorable? I mean, soldiers do get killed when there’s a war, and it sort of seemed to me at first that holding grudges like that might be kind of improper.”
Narasan’s father shook his head. “A soldier’s first loyalty should always be to his comrades. That’s where honor begins, my boy. Right, now, I’m waiting for the opportunity to kick the daylights out of the army that killed your friend’s father myself.”
“You’re going to whomp them?” Narasan asked eagerly.
“I see that you paid close attention to Sergeant Wilmer, Narasan,” his father said with a broad grin. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I am going to whomp them. I’ll whomp them so hard that their grandchildren will run and hide every time somebody mentions my name. It won’t make me very popular with certain members of the Palvanum, since that particular army’s one of their favorites, but that’s just too bad.”
“Aren’t there any honest men in the government, father?”
“‘Honest’ and ‘government’ probably shouldn’t show up in the same sentence, Narasan. They’re contradictory terms.”
“I’m glad that I’ll be in the army when I grow up, then,” Narasan declared. “From what I’ve been hearing here lately, we’re the only honest people in the whole Empire.”
“That pretty much sums it up, yes,” his father agreed with a wry smile.
It was perhaps a year or so later when Narasan, Gunda, and Padan began their more formalized education, and, of course, their teachers were all professional soldiers, and “We don’t march until we see the money” seemed to turn up in every class they attended. Padan, whose sense of humor was perhaps a bit warped, frequently suggested that it might very well be an excellent motto to be added to the army banner. Narasan was a little startled when their instructors appeared to give Padan’s silly proposal some very serious thought.
The studies associated with their classroom education were extremely tedious, and the boys in Narasan’s class much preferred their training on the drill field. Steel swords were heavier than the wooden toy swords of their childhood had been, and it took the boys a while to toughen up their muscles. The phalanx was the central part of Trogite tactics at that particular time, and the boys spent endless hours growing accustomed to marching in unison with their shields overlapping and their long spears locked in place. Unification lies at the core of the phalanx formation, and the drill sergeants kept shouting “Unification! Unification!” at the boys until Narasan got tired of hearing it. He soon came to realize that if he held his shield no more than an inch out of line, the drill sergeant would start screaming at the top of his lungs.
It was shortly after Narasan’s eighth birthday when his father’s army was hired to put down a slave rebellion off in one of the provinces in the western part of the empire. Narasan’s father had never actually said as much, but Narasan rather suspected that his father disapproved of slavery. Narasan himself had never even seen a slave, but rumor had it that a fair number of the soldiers in his father’s army were former slaves. When a young man appeared at the gate of the army compound and announced that he was interested in a military career, nobody asked him too many questions. There were also rumors that a goodly number of the soldiers in the compound had spent their early years involved in various criminal activities, but nobody asked those men any embarrassing questions either.
When the army returned from the campaign in the west, Narasan’s uncle Kalan was marching at the head of the column, and that sent a sudden chill through Narasan.
“It was one of those ridiculous things that should never happen,” Kalan sorrowfully told Narasan and his mother later that day. “A runaway slave had somehow found a broken spear that only had about half of its shaft. We didn’t even know that he was hiding in the bushes when we marched up that hill. When he saw us coming, he jumped up, threw the spear in our general direction, and then ran off like a scared rabbit. I don’t think he’d ever so much as had his hands on a spear before, but the cursed thing took my brother right in the throat, and he died almost immediately. I’d venture to say that rascal could have thrown that broken spear a thousand times and never duplicated that first cast.”
“Did you chase the slave down?” Narasan’s mother demanded in a bleak-sounding voice.
“Oh, yes,” Kalan replied grimly, “and it took him a long, long time to die.”
“That’s something, I guess,” Narasan’s mother said.
“It’s not much, dear,” Kalan apologized, “but it’s about all I can give you. We put down that stupid rebellion in short order after that. The men were very unhappy about what’d happened to your husband, so they made examples of every runaway slave they got their hands on. I’m fairly sure that the slave-owners will have to do their own farming for the next few years, because we didn’t return very many live slaves to them when it was all over.”
“That’s just too bad,” Narasan’s mother replied. Then she rushed from the room, and Narasan could hear her wails of grief coming from the adjoining chamber.
During the next days and weeks, Narasan’s mother grew increasingly distraught. Narasan was trying, without much success, to deal with his own grief, but in time his uncle Kalan helped him through the worst of it. As his mind returned to some degree of normalcy, he came to realize that his mother was no longer rational. It was quite obvious that her grief had unhinged her mind. Narasan decided at that point that he should never marry. A soldier’s life could end quite abruptly, but the
grief of a soldier’s wife could obviously go on forever. Narasan saw quite clearly that a real soldier was married to the army anyway.
Narasan’s uncle Kalan had filled his brother’s shoes as the commander of the army, and he kept a close eye on his nephew.
When Narasan reached his twelfth birthday, army custom placed him in the ranks of the cadets—the boys with army backgrounds who were extensively trained so that they’d be ready to receive commissions when they reached a certain age. Narasan excelled as a cadet, and when he turned fifteen, he was offered a commission as a very junior officer in his uncle’s army.
He went through several wars before he turned twenty, and it was quite obvious that he was going to go far and fast—assuming, of course, that he lived long enough to move up through the ranks.
He’d reached the rank of subcommander by the time he turned thirty-five, and his boyhood friends, Gunda and Padan, were not far behind him. The three of them served very well, much to the satisfaction of Commander Kalan. Narasan was fully aware of the fact that his uncle was keeping a close eye on his progress, so it came as no great surprise when, as the climax to the celebration of Narasan’s fortieth birthday in the officers’ lounge, his uncle rose to announce that he was retiring, and that Narasan would replace him as army commander.
The Treasured One: Book Two of The Dreamers Page 14
