by Robin Hobb
But it was not west to Landsing and the lost province that young King Troven turned his eyes. No. King Troven was weary of the plainspeople’s incursions against his remote settlements. He had decided that if they would not respect the boundary stones that had been mutually set four score of years ago, then he would not, either. The king sent his cavalla forth with the commands not only to push the plainspeople back, but also to set the boundaries anew and take new territory to replace that lost to the Landsingers.
Some of the king’s lords did not support him in that ambition. The plains were despised as wastelands, not fit for agriculture or grazing, too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. We traded with the peoples of the region, but only for raw goods, such as furs from the northern reaches. They were not farmers and had no industry of their own. Some were nomads, following their herds. Even those who cultivated small fields were migratory, wintering one place and summering another. They themselves admitted that no one owned the land. Why should they or our own nobles dispute our right to settle it and make it productive?
Duril remembered the brief and bloody Nobles’ Revolt. Lord Egery had risen before the Council of Lords, asking them why more sons should shed their blood for sand and stone and sagebrush. The traitor had advocated overthrowing young Troven, and allying themselves with our old enemies for the sake of port concessions. King Troven had put the revolt down decisively and then, instead of punishing the rebels, rewarded those families that had given him their soldier sons to send into that battle against their fellow lords. King Troven altered the emphasis of his military, pouring men and money into the cavalla, the mounted troops descended from old knighthood, for he judged that force could best deal with the ever-mounted plainspeople. He dissolved his navy, for he no longer had a port or ships for them. Some folk mocked the idea of putting sailors on horseback and commodores in command of ground troops, but King Troven simply asserted that he believed his soldier sons and their commanders could fight anywhere that their patriotism demanded. His men responded to his confidence.
In that fashion had the Kingdom of Gernia increased by a third of its size since Sergeant Duril had been a boy.
The Plains War had not been a war at first. It had been a series of skirmishes between the nomads and our folk. The plainspeople had raided us, attacking our military outposts and the new settlements that sprang up around them; we had retaliated against their roving bands. The plainspeople had initially assumed that King Troven was merely reasserting his right to his own territory. It was only when we not only moved our boundary stones but started planning and erecting citadels and then settlements that the plains-people realized that the king was in earnest. Twenty years of war had followed.
The plainspeople counted themselves as seven different people, but our records showed there were clearly more than thirty different clans or tribes. They often travelled in smaller bands. They roved and in their own way, ruled the plains, plateaus and rolling hills to the north. Some herded sheep or goats, others their long-necked dun-coloured cattle that seemed immune to every sort of weather. Three of the lesser tribes were simple hunters and gatherers, regarded by the other nomads as primitives. They tattooed their faces with swirling red patterns and believed that they were kin with the barking rats, the rodents of the prairie that sometimes riddled acres of ground with their burrows and tunnels. The Ratmen likewise dug tunnels into the earth and stored seeds and grains in them. They had made little resistance to our eastward expansion, and had actually enjoyed their new fame as an oddity. A number of artists and writers from Old Thares had visited them to document their strange lives, enriching the rat people with fabric, scissors and other trade items.
The Kidona had been the predators, the raiders who lived by attacking the others. The nomadic tribes had moved in a seasonal migration pattern, following grazing for their animals, and the Kidona had followed them, just as predators followed the migratory antelope of the plains. For generations, Gernian traders ventured out to barter with the plateau and hill folk for furs when the tribes came together for their traditional autumn trade gathering, but for the most part, our peoples had ignored one another.
“For generations, they had nothing we wanted, and we knew they would fight like devils to keep it. They had their magic, and the few times we’d crossed swords with them, we’d come out the poorer for it. How can you fight a man who can send your horse to his knees by flapping a hand at him, or wave a bullet aside? So we left them alone. We were a seafaring folk. We had our territory, and they had theirs. If the Landsingers hadn’t bottled us up like they did, maybe we would have ignored the plainspeople forever. It was only when we were pressed for territory that we pressed them as well. We’d always known that iron could stop plains magic; the problem was getting close enough to use iron against them. In olden times, one of the Gernian kings had sent knights out to avenge a murdered nobleman’s son. Their magic couldn’t knock down an iron-armoured knight or his shielded horse, but we couldn’t catch up to them to do them any harm! They just fled. We tried archers, but a shaman could warp their bows with one flick of his finger. Lead ball? They’d slow it, catch it, and keep it for a trinket. But once we learned to use iron pellet in our muskets, well, the tide turned then. They couldn’t turn iron shot, and a scatter gun full of round iron pellet shot from ambush could render and take out one of their raiding parties with one blast. Suddenly we could pick one of their war-shamans out of his saddle at two to three times the distance they expected. You didn’t even have to kill him; just put enough iron shot in him that his magic left him. They couldn’t even get close to us.
“Yet even then, if ever the tribes had thought to unite and fight us, well, chances were, they could have driven us back. They were nomads, their boys born to the saddle, and horsemen such as we’ll never see again. But that was their weakness, too. When drought or plague or territorial disputes struck, why, if they couldn’t win, they just up and moved into new territory. And that’s what they kept doing, moving away as we advanced, losing cattle and sheep and possessions as they gave ground to us. Some of the smaller bands settled, of course, made peace with us and realized they’d have to live like regular folks now, keeping house in one place. But some just kept on fighting us, until they found the Barrier Mountains at their backs. Forest and mountains are no place for horse troops. That was when the fighting really got ugly. We had crowded the different tribes up against one another. Some of them turned against their own kind. They knew they’d lost almost all their old grazing lands. The best parts of their herds and flocks were forfeit to us or dead behind them. They could look out over the plains from the high plateaus and see our citadels and our towns rising where once their beasts had grazed. The battle at Widevale was one of the worst. They say that every man of fighting age of the Ternu tribe died there. We took in their women and children, of course. It was only the right thing to do. Settled them down and taught them how to live right, how to farm and how to read. That battle was harsh and vicious, but in the end, it worked a kindness for those folks. Your da has done right by them, giving them sheep and seed and teaching them how to make a life in one spot.
“Not like the Portrens tribe. They chose to die to the last soul, men, women, and children. Not a thing we could do to stop them. When it was plain that the battle tide had turned against them, and they’d either have to bow their heads and become good subjects to King Troven or be driven up into the mountains, why, they just turned tail and rode their horses into the Redfish River. I saw it myself. We were trailing the Portrens with our forces, still skirmishing with them. Most of their powerful magic users had fallen to us days before; they couldn’t do much more than hold their protective charms around them. We thought we could make them stop and surrender. We knew they’d come up against the river soon, and it was in spring flood from the snowmelt in the mountains. Must have been two hundred men mounted, their striped robes and kaffiyeh floating in the wind of their passage, riding guard around their women and chi
ldren in their pony chariots. We thought they’d stop and surrender, I swear we did. But they just rode and drove straight into the river, and the river swept them away and that was the end of them. It wasn’t our doing. We would have given them quarter if they asked for it. But, no, they chose death and we couldn’t stop them. The men stood guard on the bank until every one of the women and children were swept away. Then they rode in after them. Wasn’t our fault. But many’s the trooper who hung up his spurs after that battle and lost all heart, not just for fighting but for the cavalla life. War was’s’posed to be about glory and honour, not drowning babies.”
“It must have been a hard thing to see,” I ventured.
“They chose it,” Sergeant Duril. He leaned back on his bedroll and knocked the ash out of his pipe. “Some as rode alongside me saw it as watching death. A few of the lads near went mad. Not at the moment; at the time we just sat on our horses and watched them do it, not fully understanding that they were choosing death, that they knew they couldn’t make it to the other side. We kept thinking there was some trick to what they did, a hidden ford they knew of or some magic of their own that would save them. But there wasn’t. It was afterwards that it bothered some of my mates. They felt like we drove them to it. But I swear, it wasn’t so. I decided I was watching a free people make a choice, probably one that they’d talked about before they came to it. Would we have been more right to try and stop them, and insist they give up their roving ways? I’m not sure. I’m not sure at all about that.”
“Only a plainsman can understand how a plainsman thinks,” I said. I was quoting from my father.
Sergeant Duril was packing more tobacco into his pipe and at first he didn’t answer me. Then he said quietly, “Sometimes I think being a cavalryman turns you into a plainsman, somewhat. That maybe we were almost coming to understand them too well before the end. There’s a beauty and a freedom to riding over the flat-lands, knowing that, in a pinch, you and your horse can find everything you need to get by on. Some folk say that they can’t understand why the plainspeople never settled down and used the land, never made their own towns and farms and tame places. But if you ask a plainsman, and I’ve asked more than a few, they all ask the same question in return. ‘Why? Why live out your life in one place, looking at the same horizon every morning, sleeping in the same spot every night? Why work to make the land give you food when it’s already out there, growing, and all you have to do is find it?’ They think we’re crazy, with our gardens and orchards, our flocks and herds. They don’t understand us any more than we understand them.” He belched loudly and said, “Excuse. Course, now there aren’t many plainspeople left to understand. They’ve settled in their own places, under the surrender terms. They got schools and little stores now, and rows of little houses. They’ll be just like us, in another generation or two.”
“I’m sorry to have missed them,” I said sincerely. “Once or twice, I’ve heard my father talk about what it was like to visit one of their camps, back in the days when he rode patrol and sometimes they came in close to the boundaries to trade. He said they were beautiful, lean and swift, horses and people alike. He spoke of how the plainspeople tribes would gather, sometimes, to compete in contests of horsemanship, with the daughters of the ruling lords as the prizes. He said it was how they formed their alliances… Do you really think those days are gone?”
He nodded slowly, smoke drifting from his parted lips. For a time, human silence held, but the prairie spoke between us, a whispering wild voice, full of soft wind and rustling brush and little creatures that moved only by night. I relaxed into the familiar sounds and felt them carrying me closer to sleep.
“They’re gone,” he confirmed sadly. “Gone not just for them, but gone for us old soldiers, too. Gone, never to come again. We began the change; we swept away what had been here for hundreds of years. And now… well, now I fear that we were just the ones at the front of the charge, so to speak. That we may go down with those we defeated, and be trampled under by those who come after us. Once the plainspeople are tamed, what use is an old soldier like me? Change, and more change…” He fell silent and I cared not to add any words to his. His thoughts had put a chill in my night that had not been there before.
When the sergeant spoke again, he had moved the topic a little aside, as if he shifted to avoid old pain. “Sirlofty, he’s plains stock. We soon discovered that to fight mounted plainspeople we had to have horses the equal of theirs. Keslans are fine for fancy carriage teams, and no one can beat Shirs for pulling a plough. But the saddlehorses that you’ll find out west in the cities are creatures bred to carry a merchant about on his errands, creatures you could trust your dainty daughter to when she rides out with her fancy friends. That wasn’t what we needed for the conquest of the prairies. We needed tall and lean, with legs like steel, a horse that could handle uneven ground, a horse with the sense to look after itself. That’s what you’ve got in Sirlofty.” He nodded at my tall mount drowsing in the shadows at the edge of the campfire’s circle. Almost reluctantly he added, “I don’t know how he’ll do as a mountain horse. I don’t know how well our cavalla will do fighting in the forest terrain, if it comes to that. Which I ’spect it shall.”
“Do you think we’ll have war with the Specks, then?”
If it had been daylight and if we had been mounted and trotting as we spoke, I think he would have turned my question aside. I think he spoke as much to the night and the stars as he did to the wellborn son of his old commander. “I think we’re already at war there, from the little I’ve heard of it. We may not know it as war, but I think that’s what the Specks would call it.”
“And I wish I could prepare you for it better, but I can’t. You won’t be riding patrol across rolling prairie like your father and I did. You’ll be serving at the edge of the wild lands, at the foothills of the Barrier Mountains. It’s different there. Cliffs and ravines. Forest so thick that a cat couldn’t walk through it, yet the Specks melt in and out of it, like shadows. All I can teach you is the attitude you’ll need; I don’t know what sort of plants or animals you’ll encounter there, no, nor what type of warfare the Specks wage. But if you can bring yourself to dine on lizard legs and cactus flats here, then I think you’ll have the sand to make it there. I think you’ll make us proud. If circumstances demand that you make a meal of monkey stew, I expect you’ll tuck right into it and ride on as strong as before.”
Such praise from the shaggy old sergeant made me blush even in the darkness. I knew that if he said as much to me, he doubtless said more to my father. They had ridden and fought side by side, and I knew my father cherished the old soldier’s opinions, for he would not have lightly entrusted me to his care.
“I thank you, Sergeant Duril, for what you’ve taught me. I promise, I’ll never shame you.”
“I don’t need your promise, lad. I’ve your intention, which is good enough for me. I’ve taught you what I could. Just see you don’t forget it when your papa sends you off to that fancy cavalla school back west. You’ll be schooled alongside those lords’ sons who think that leading a charge is something you do after you’ve waxed your moustache and had your trousies pressed. Don’t let them pull you aside into their Fancy Dan ways. You grow up to be a real officer, like your papa. Remember. You can delegate authority—”
“But not responsibility.” I finished my father’s old saw for him, and then added, “I’ll try, sergeant,” I said humbly.
“I know you will, sir. Look up there. Shooting star. God’s your witness.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Journey
My father never had the good fortune to attend the King’s Cavalla Academy in Old Thares. In his youth, it did not exist. He had received a more generalized military education in the old Arms Institute and had expected to command artillery, defending our fortified seacoast towns from foreign ships. That was before Carson Helsey designed the Helsied Cannon for the Landsing Navy. In one shocking summer, this single change to the ca
nnons on their ships reduced our fortifications to rubble while their ships remained safely out of range of our weapons. What exactly Helsey had done to the Landsing cannons to extend their range and accuracy was a military secret the Landsingers jealously guarded to this day. Their sudden and shocking advantage had ended our decades of war with the Landsingers. We had been soundly and humiliatingly defeated.
With the ceding of the coastal territories to Landsing, my father’s brief assignment as a cliff-top artilleryman ended, and he had been reassigned to the cavalla. Flung into the foreign environment, he had proved himself a true soldier son, for he learned what he must know by doing it, and ignored the disdain of some of his fellows that he had come to the cavalla but was not descended from the old knighthood. His first few years had been spent in the discouraging task of escorting refugee trains from our captured seaports into the resettlement areas along our borders with the plainsmen. The plainspeople had not welcomed the shantytowns that sprang up along their borders, but our people had to go somewhere. Skirmishes fought with mounted plains warriors formed my father’s first experience of fighting from a horse’s back. Despite the ‘hard-knocks’ nature of his cavalla education, he was a staunch supporter of the Academy. He always told me that he had no desire to see any young man learn by trial and error as he had done. He favoured a systematic approach to military education. Some said he was instrumental in the creation of the Academy. I know that on five separate occasions he was invited to travel there to speak to graduating young officers. Such an honour was a sign of the king’s and the Academy’s respect for my father.
