He cleared his throat gently before he spoke. “May we all live in order and peace, and may that order keep chaos and evil at bay. May we always understand the goodness of order and the perils of chaos, and live so that others do also, and may we always strive for the goodness that order brings, both for ourselves and others.”
“That’s a good blessing,” Ma said. “Different, but good.”
“You talk like you’re from the West,” I said.
“I’m from a place called Carpa. It’s in Lornth.” He broke his bread one-handed, with his left hand. I watched him for a moment. He didn’t use his right hand at all.
He looked at me. “You’re very observant. My right hand was hurt years ago. I can do some things with it, but eating’s not one of them.”
Ma gave me a look. So I asked, “Where have you been lately?”
“I was in Passera a while ago.”
“That’s two eightdays’ ride,” Ma said.
“I didn’t ride it. I came downriver to Elparta on a flatboat. It took four days.” He shook his head. “It might have been better to ride.”
“It take you a long time to get here from Carthan?” I asked.
“Carpa.” He laughed, soft-like. “Ten years or so.”
“Lornth is beyond the Westhorns. Did you see the ones they call ‘angels’ when you came east?”
“I have seen them,” the man said.
“Are they six cubits high with silver hair and eyes, the way they say?”
He laughed, again. “Some have silver hair. I saw one who had silver eyes. None was taller than four and a half cubits, perhaps not that.”
“There must be a lot of them.”
“There were only thirty or so who came from the Rational Stars. That’s what they told me, and they don’t lie.”
“All folks lie at times,” Ma said.
“They don’t bother with it. At least, the ones I knew didn’t.”
“They’re all women, aren’t they?” That was what I’d heard.
“Most of them. Not all. One was a black mage, and a smith. His name was Nylan. He could bend the fires of heaven and draw something even hotter from a simple charcoal forge. He hammered out blades there on the Roof of the World that could cleave through the best iron in Candar. He forged other things, too.” The stranger’s eyes got a faraway look in them for a moment.
“What about the women?” I asked.
“Frankyr…” Ma said that in her quiet voice, the one that told me I was being rude.
“I watched the one they called ‘the Marshal,’ Ryba of the Swift Ships of Heaven. She was tall for a woman, almost as tall as I am. With nothing but a pair of short blades she killed three Lornian armsmen and sliced off the sword hand of a fourth in less time than it takes to tell it.” He shook his head. “Folks don’t believe me when I say that, but it’s true.”
“Those short blades the kind you have?”
He looked at me. “They are. They were forged by Nylan.”
“They don’t seem very big, not like the sword Da had.”
“They’re very good, especially for close fighting on horseback. They can also be thrown. Saryn of the black blades could throw one hard enough that it would pierce a breastplate and the point would come out through a man’s back.”
“You saw that?”
“Once.” The stranger nodded, then stood. “I thank you for the supper, and I’ll be headed out to the loft.”
I watched him from the side of the cot, but he did pretty much what he said he’d do. Then I walked back inside and barred the door.
Ma looked at me. She was still sitting on the bench. “He’s a strange man. I think he’s a good one, though.”
“Someone must be chasing him,” I said. “Why would he want to stay here? What he gave you would almost pay for a meal and bed at the inn.”
“He’s not a common armsman,” Ma said.
“With all that black, you think he’s an assassin or a bravo?”
“He might have been … before he hurt his hand.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t swagger.”
“Maybe he was a captain or an undercaptain.”
“He doesn’t want to say … but he’s not common.”
Neither one of us said what we were thinking—that with his weapons and his skills, he could have taken anything he wanted. In the time before I dropped off to sleep, I wondered why he’d avoided the town.
The next morning, once we opened the door, it wasn’t long before the stranger appeared. He’d brushed his clothes clean. He must have found the spring, because he was washed up, and he’d shaved. Cleaned-up, he looked a little younger, but I’d have guessed he was still more than ten years older than me, but not so old as Ma.
She offered him maybe a quarter of a loaf, and he gave her a copper, then stood on the stoop and ate the bread with water from the mug Ma offered.
“You led armsmen, didn’t you?” Ma asked.
He finished eating before he answered. “I did. I have to admit I wasn’t too successful. I haven’t done that in years.”
“What are you doing here in Spidlar?”
“Like I told you last night, I’m passing through on my way to Axalt. There’s no way to get there from Passera without crossing the Easthorns and then crossing them back—except through Spidlar.”
Ma looked at me. “You’d best take the flock before it gets too hot.”
I wanted to hear what the stranger might say, but Ma was right, and I took the iron-tipped staff that had been Da’s and headed out to the shed. I didn’t worry about the stranger. Maybe I should have, but there was something about him. Besides, if he’d meant harm, he’d already have done it, and with those blades of his, I couldn’t have stopped him. I did look back a couple of times, but by the time I’d reached the hilltop with the flock, he was walking back to where his mare was stalled.
We hadn’t grazed the hills to the southwest in a time, and that was where I headed, with the old ram and me leading the way. The grass there wasn’t bad, but it was browning earlier than it usually did, and that meant we’d likely have a dry summer, an early winter, and a long one.
When I brought the flock back in late afternoon, Ma and the stranger were out by the shed, and there was a pile of coal there piled against the west wall, tall as he was and four times that far across. I don’t know as I’d ever seen that much coal in one place before that.
“Where did all this coal come from?” With all that coal we wouldn’t be hoarding wood and scraps and freezing, the way we had the winter before. That was if we were careful, but it looked like it would last a while.
“I was walking up in the hills, and I saw a few little pieces in the dry wash, and I started following them.” The stranger shrugged. “I showed your mother where the seam comes out. I wouldn’t tell anyone. Someone would just come and take the land and the coal.”
“It’s our land.”
“That may be, but unless you’ve got golds to hire armsmen or you’re armsman trained, you’ll lose it to those who have coin or weapons. Coal that good’s worth a shiny silver.”
“That’s not right.”
“Was it right that your father got conscripted to attack Axalt?”
I didn’t answer for a moment. Ma had been talking. I hadn’t said anything about Da. I looked at her and then at him and wondered what else might have been happening.
“Nothing,” he answered, as if he’d been able to hear my thoughts. “The mare needs another day of rest. I rode her too hard getting here. That was because I thought I could reach Axalt yesterday.”
“He spent all day walking up to where he found the coal, chipping it out, and putting it in bags for the gelding to carry back. It took all day,” Ma said. “Then he washed up.”
I didn’t say anything.
“It’s going to be a long, cold winter,” he said.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I told him.
“The world would be a pretty sorry place if we only did what we
had to, don’t you think?” he replied.
I’d heard words like that before. Seeing him standing there, with the one hand still gloved in gray, and looking at a pile of coal it would have taken me days to lug anywhere, what he said sounded different. He hadn’t just said the words. He’d said them after he’d done something to show that he meant them.
I just stared at him, because I didn’t know what to say and because Ma was looking at me with a disgusted expression on her face.
“Someone’s coming.” He turned toward the lane from town, quicker than a mountain cat. “Get in the cot.”
Ma looked at him.
“Inside.” His words were so powerful that I grabbed Ma by the arm and dragged her back to the stoop. But we didn’t go in. We stood half in and half out of the doorway watching.
Four men on horses trotted up the lane, fast enough that the dust billowed almost to the girths of their saddles. The stranger stood there, halfway between the cot and the sheep shed, waiting, like he knew them.
Two of the riders were big men, maybe not quite so tall as the stranger in black, but broader across the shoulders. The third rider was smaller, and even from where we were, he looked mean, with a slash scar across one cheek, and a lash in his right hand. The last rider waited behind the other. He wasn’t big, and he wasn’t small, and he wore a shoulder harness with two blades in it.
The stranger didn’t say anything. The first three riders reined up some fifteen yards away from where he stood.
“You won’t be getting away this time!” called the big rider in the middle. He had a big blade out, laid across his thighs for the moment.
The one on the right also had a big blade. He just smirked.
“You don’t want to do this,” the stranger replied. “I’m leaving Gallos. You could turn around and leave.”
“After chasing you for hundreds of kays?” The one with the whip laughed. “We’re here to get our golds.” He paused. “Unless you’d like to pay more than the Prefect will.”
He lifted the whip hand, and I could see that the butt of the weapon was fastened around his wrist with leathers. I guessed that was so he didn’t lose it.
The stranger was the one to laugh. “You’re not that honest. If I gave you golds you’d cheerfully take them and then still try to take me.”
“Hear that,” said the one in the middle. “The teacher fellow doesn’t think we’re honest. Teach us something, teacher fellow.”
All four of them laughed.
When the laughs died away, the stranger spoke, and his voice filled the yard. He wasn’t shouting. His words just carried. “No one can teach you. No one can teach another anything unless the listener wants to learn. I can speak, but you cannot learn if you will not find the order within yourselves.”
The three front riders all laughed again.
While they were laughing, the stranger did nothing … except somehow, he seemed blacker, darker, more solid. And he had a blade in his left hand. It looked real small compared to the ones that the two big men on horseback held.
“I guess we’ll be doing the teaching, then,” said the middle rider, looking to the rider with the lash. The four rode forward a way and then stopped.
The man with the whip flicked it in the direction of the stranger, and it cracked just short of him.
The stranger didn’t move.
“The teacher fellow wants us to think he’s brave,” said the big man in the middle. “Roart, see how brave he really is.”
The whip lashed out at the stranger, but it didn’t strike him, but wound around his short blade. Then he jerked and turned or something, and the rider with the whip was pulled right out of the saddle, and one boot caught in the stirrup for a moment, and then he arched into the air and came down on his head. Hard. He didn’t move, and it didn’t look like he would. Ever.
The other three froze for a moment.
Then the lead rider lifted his blade and spurred his horse forward. The horse barely had taken three strides when I saw a black blade sticking out of the man’s chest.
The remaining rider of the front three charged the stranger. My mouth was open as the second black blade buried itself in that bravo’s chest. At that moment the stranger started to move toward the big blade that had dropped from the hands of the man who’d done most of the talking.
I ran from the door because I could see that the stranger wouldn’t get to the blade before the last rider did. The rider looked to be a Kyphran nomad. The staff wasn’t much against a big blade, but it was the only thing I had. Ma tried to grab me, but she was too slow.
The Kyphran was already swinging one of those hand-and-a-half swords when he rode toward the stranger, who was still crouching, because he’d had to dig the fallen blade out of a rut in the yard. The rider was already by me, but I took the staff and lunged, and I swung it at the back of his sword arm and hit him as hard as I could. The blade flew clear, and he turned the horse and pulled out another blade almost as big as the first.
“You’re going to be sorry for that, boy.” The bravo cut down at me.
I got the old staff up in time to keep that blade from going through me, and it stopped the blade and held. My legs didn’t, and I sprawled on the ground, and when I hit, I lost hold of the staff. Then I tried to scramble out of the way.
The bravo came back and was bringing his sword down when he got this funny look on his face, and then slumped forward in the saddle. His head lolled a funny way, and then the horse stopped, and he fell face-first out of the saddle and into the dirt.
The stranger was standing on the other side of the horse, and he already had the reins in his left hand, and the big blade of the other bravo—that was the one he must have used—was lying in the dirt.
It took me a moment to climb to my feet. When I did, the stranger handed me the reins. “Can you tie this horse up in the pen by the shed?”
“Yes, ser.” I don’t know why I called him “ser,” but it seemed right.
I started to walk the big courser toward the pen, but I looked back to see where the other three horses were. The one that was the farthest away—he was almost a hundred yards south—had this wild look that I saw even from where I was.
The stranger turned toward the wild-eyed horse. Then he called, “Here, fellow.” Demon-flame if the big horse didn’t stop and sort of snort and snuffle before he began to walk toward the stranger. He did that with all three of the other mounts, and before long, we had them all four tied up in the pen beside the sheep shed.
Ma had been out in the yard for a time, looking at the four dead men, then at the horses tied in the pen, then at the stranger, and finally at me. “You shouldn’t have done it with the staff, Frankyr. You could have been killed.”
“No, if you’d done the careful thing, you shouldn’t have,” said the stranger as he fastened the gate to the pen, “but careful isn’t always right. I’m glad you did the right thing. Otherwise, things might have turned out differently, for all of us.” He turned to Ma. “I’m sorry about all this. I didn’t think they’d be able to track me here.”
“That why you took the flatboat downriver?” asked Ma.
“I hoped they’d leave me alone.” He shrugged. “I should have known better, but I tried not to have things turn out this way.”
“This way?” Ma’s voice wasn’t cutting, but it had a touch of the edge she put on the words when she didn’t believe me.
“The killing. I don’t like killing, for all that I once tried to gain a holding by it. It didn’t work out. That taught me something, and I’ve tried to avoid it ever since.” He took a deep breath. “The problem is that, sometimes, when you try to avoid something too much, it’s like you draw it to you.”
“So how did not wanting to kill draw these fellows after you?” Ma gestured at the bodies, but she didn’t look at them.
“I’ve been in Gallos for a while, telling people about order and how it works.” He stopped and looked hard at me. “Most young people don’t
understand. I didn’t, not until I ran into the angels. But that’s another story. Anyway … it’s like this. Rulers all tell a story, and it’s usually a story that makes them look good. If they know people won’t believe that story, then they talk about how evil someone else is and how everything they do causes the problems folks have. Once I was one of those who believed the stories. That was before the angels came, and I watched and listened to the great mage Nylan. He showed me how the world really is. So I’ve been traveling and telling people what little I’ve learned from the angels. The new prefect of Gallos didn’t care for my teaching, because he’s been trying to tell the story that all the problems in Gallos, maybe everywhere in Candar, have been caused by the angels. The angels live in a tower—one tower on the Roof of the World. It’s high and cold, where no one ever lived before. They never left the Westhorns until they were attacked, both by Lornth and Gallos. So how can they have caused all these problems? A handful of people on top of the Westhorns?” The stranger laughed, sort of ruefully. “The new prefect didn’t like my telling people that. His armsmen came and burned the temple I’d built in Passera. It wasn’t very big, but it was where I was telling people about order. I wasn’t there at the time. That made him so mad that he put a price on my head.”
“For telling folks what was really happening?”
“Well…” The stranger smiled sheepishly. “I did fight off a couple of armsmen who tried to capture me and take me to Fenard so that I could be drawn and quartered. One of them died, I think, but I didn’t stay to find out. I thought that, if I left Passera, there wouldn’t be any need for them to kill me or me to kill them in order to stay alive. The Prefect didn’t like that. I was charged with treason for pointing out that the way of the angels brought down great Cyador and defeated the forces of both Gallos and Lornth. So I thought I’d best leave Gallos. But they sent a whole squad of armsmen to block the road east of Passera. It seemed like a better idea to take the river north and head for Axalt this way. Otherwise I’d have to go through Certis, and the ruler there is friendly to the Prefect, while Axalt has no love of him.”
Ma and I knew that.
Recluce Tales Page 18
