Exile's Challenge

by Angus Wells

  And as the year aged, Tomas Var returned to Grostheim to face a problem he believed might destroy him.

  “He’s crazy.” Abram Jaymes leaned sideways to expel a stream of tobacco-darkened spittle into the cuspidor. “A winter campaign?”

  Var glanced around, more nervous of disapproval, of listening ears that might carry such criticism back to the Inquisitor. Jaymes seemed entirely unconcerned, and not without reason: they sat alone, as if some invisible perimeter separated them from the tavern’s other patrons. It was a further reminder of the hostility most felt toward Talle and, by association, his lieutenant.

  Var said, “It’s what he talks about; and for God’s sake keep your voice down. Do you want to end up on the gallows?”

  The first snow had fallen; not much, but enough to remind folk that the long months of winter descended. The harvests had been poor for the neglect of the preceding year, and the farmers and the vintners and the millers were not yet convinced the land was secure, so some fled back to the city.

  Where Jared Talle hanged them.

  The gallows was a permanent fixture of the central square now, its last victim left dangling until the next appeared in grim reminder of the new order, and Spelt’s red-coated soldiers patrolled the streets to drive out those who would hide with friends or argue the Inquisitor’s diktat. Under Inquisitorial rule, Grostheim lived in fear.

  Talle himself was ensconced in Wyme’s mansion, the governor banished to lesser rooms, and Var—to his intense embarrassment—was settled on Talle’s order in the chambers of the governor’s wife. He had sooner found quarters in the Militia barracks or gone out to the forts, but Talle would have his military commander close to hand—mostly, it seemed to Var, that the Inquisitor might insist on a campaign that seemed to him insane.

  “He’s convinced they must be easier to find and attack in winter,” Var said. “He claims they withdraw with the snows; that they don’t fight in winter. That they retreat back into the forests.”

  Jaymes shrugged and lifted his tankard; drank deep before replying: “Sure they do—into the wilderness forest. Snow’s deep there, an’ they know the trails. Unlike you. More likely your boys’ll be slaughtered if you try to follow them in there.”

  “Even so, he wants you to scout for us,” Var said. “Lead us to them.”

  Jaymes sniffed loudly. “An’ if I say no?”

  Var said, “He’ll hex you. That, or hang you.”

  “An’ lose himself a scout?” Jaymes grinned across his mug, exposing stained teeth. “You know there’s not a man knows the wilderness like I do.”

  “I know that,” Var said, wondering the while why he spoke to this draggle-haired tramp so honestly, “but does he? Or does he care?”

  Jaymes shrugged again, emptying his mug. Var beckoned that it be refilled and waited until the indentured woman who brought their ale was gone before speaking again. A tavern servant, her flounced blouse hung down over her plump shoulders, exposing the brand there.

  “He’ll go out anyway,” he said, “if he’s decided on it. And I’ll have to take my men with him. I’ve no other choice.”

  “You’ll get lost,” Jaymes said. “You’ll wander around through the trees an’ the snow an’ likely never find ’em. Or they’ll hear you coming an’ slaughter you like they did Fallyn.”

  “I know.” Var winced at the memory of his friend’s torn body. “But even so the Inquisitor shall not leave me much choice. I must do what he orders.”

  “Why?”

  Var frowned, taken aback by the unusual question. “Because I am an officer of the God’s Militia, and Talle is an Inquisitor, and therefore my commanding officer—I must obey him.”

  Jaymes repeated himself: “Why?”

  The question was so direct and so bluntly put that Var was momentarily at a loss to find an answer. Old tropes came to mind, the ritual responses, but Jaymes’s stare held him and fixed him to honesty, and so he said, “Because that is what I do.”

  “Obey orders?”

  “Yes.” Var nodded. “What else holds this world together?”

  Jaymes shrugged and emptied his mug, belched loudly, and said, “Comradeship; friendship. Belief in what you’re doin’.”

  Var said, “I do believe in what I’m doing. And I’ve comrades …”

  Jaymes chuckled, shaking his grizzled head as he interrupted. “And that’s why you’re drinkin’ with me? You’d sooner be with me than your comrades?”

  Var thought a moment, staring into his mug. Then he raised his eyes to Jaymes’s and said, “I’m drinking with you because you’re honest. Because you tell me the truth about Salvation.”

  “And I drink with you,” Jaymes returned, “because you’re willin’ to listen. Not like that damn Inquisitor.”

  “Careful!” Var let go of his tankard that he might gesture the scout to silence, to caution. “Are you hungry for the gallows?”

  “No more than any other man he’s hung.” He snorted cynical laughter, then his face grew serious. “You don’t like what the Inquisitor’s doin’ any more than I do.”

  “No.” Var shook his head, wondering again why he opened his mind to this truculent, sweat-stinking scout. “But even so, I’m under orders, and he wants a winter campaign.”

  “Then I suppose,” Jaymes said, “that I better come with you. You’ll need a guide, eh?”

  Var was surprised how grateful he felt. He began to express his thanks, but Jaymes waved him silent. “You’ll get yourself lost otherwise. An’ besides,” the scout chuckled, “I got no stomach to hang around Grostheim all winter—I’d just get drunk an’ fat an’ bored. Better I take the Autarchy’s pay. But,” his grin disappeared, “understand that I’m not doin’ this for Talle or the Autarchy. I’m doin’ it for you.”

  Var nodded, meeting the man’s level gaze, then gave Jaymes back the scout’s own earlier question: “Why?”

  It was Jaymes’s turn to hesitate, to frown in … Var was not sure … confusion, perhaps, or embarrassment. He pressed the point, asking again, “Why?”

  Jaymes hid awhile behind his tankard, then wiped foam from mustache and beard before replying. “Like I said—there’s money in it, an’ I got no stomach to winter over in the city.” He no longer met Var’s eyes.

  “Those are reasons to obey the Inquisitor.” Var shook his head. “Tell me the truth.”

  Jaymes scratched under his shirt, found something there that he cracked between his dirty fingernails, flicked it away, and raised his head to face the marine. “You’re different, Major.” He said it slowly, as if anxious to find the exact words, the precise expression of his sentiment. “You’re not like Talle, nor Major Spelt or the governor. You’re not quite like any officer I’ve met.”

  Var held an expression of bland friendship, wondering where this conversation led and if he should not curtail it now. He felt an odd presentiment, as if they trod the border of some forbidden country, each sentence a step farther toward … He was not sure what. He shaped a casual smile and asked, “You’ve met so many?”

  “Enough.” Jaymes waved his mug over his head, eliciting the attention of the serving wench. “Most were bastards; a few were decent men. You’re …” He shrugged. “Decent, an’ more.”

  Now Var felt embarrassed. He was, he believed, a good officer; he treated his men decently because he knew he must rely on them in battle. They were as much his comrades as gun-fodder for the Autarchy’s imperial ambitions. Nor did he consider any man’s life a casual thing to be spent carelessly. But he knew other officers who felt the same, and did not consider himself special—only sensible. How ask a man to fight for you, to perhaps give up his life on your command, if you were not prepared to do the same? But there was something more in the scout’s words, something behind them, that he was not sure he wished to investigate.

  He endeavored to gather his thoughts as the branded woman fetched them fresh mugs. He realized that Jaymes had not spat in a while, nor cut a fresh plug from his wad of t
obacco, and that impressed on him the seriousness of the scout’s observations. It was, he thought, as if Jaymes tested him, tried him for some purpose he could not yet discern precisely; only guess at, and shy away.

  He was, after all, an officer in the God’s Militia, as much representative of the Autarchy as Spelt or Wyme, even Talle.

  So he looked the scout square in the eye and demanded, “Explain.”

  Jaymes shrugged and shook his head at the same time. “I mean you care about folk. You don’t much like seein’ them hanged, nor hexed into doin’ what they don’t want to do. You don’t like to see lives wasted needlessly.”

  Var drank, feeling his footing shift loose beneath his convictions. “I obey my orders,” he said.

  Jaymes chuckled. “Sure you do: so arrest me.”

  “Why?”

  “God!” Jaymes shook his head again, only now his eyes remained steadily fixed on Var’s. “I’ve disrespected Inquisitor Talle an’ every other authority in Grostheim. I don’t go to church, an’ I think it’s a lousy deal that Evander puts a hot iron on folk an’ ships ’em out here like they was branded cattle an’ nothin’ better. Is that enough? Now you going to arrest me like you should an’ give me to Talle for hangin’?”

  Var emptied his tankard and smiled. “No,” he said.

  Jaymes grinned. “Why not?”

  “Because I need you to lead me and my men into the forests,” Var answered. “Because you know the hostiles better than most. And you’ve said you’ll do that.”

  Jaymes nodded. “Sure. But what else?”

  “I don’t know,” Var said, biting back the “yet” that gnawed on his suspicions, “only that the Inquisitor wants a winter campaign, and you’re the only scout I trust.”

  “I’m honored.” Jaymes aped a mocking bow. “When do we go?”

  “I don’t know for sure.” Var drained his mug and rose. “I’ll speak with Talle and let you know.”

  “You do that, Major,” Jaymes replied. “You speak with him an’ let me know. I’ll be waitin’ on his word.”

  Var nodded and pulled on his greatcoat, settled the tricorne hat in place, and quit the tavern wondering at the conversation. It was surely not such as an officer of the God’s Militia should have with a commoner, and there was something he could not quite recognize hidden behind Jaymes’s casual disregard of authority. He should, he knew, report it to Talle, and knew he would not. God, he thought as he stepped out from the tavern’s warmth into the night’s cold, this is no easy duty.

  The evening was chill, rime shining bright on moonlit rooftops, the mud of Grostheim’s streets crunching frost-hardened under his boots, ice glittering over puddles. The sky swept wide and starlit above the ragged city, the moon a cocked and judgmental eye observing Evander’s foothold in the New World. Var buttoned his coat and tugged the wide collar up around his ears. Barely October, he thought, and winter already coming on. What chance of a winter campaign if the months follow this pattern? How soon before the deep snow comes? Shall Talle listen to sense?

  He thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat and trudged on, toward the governor’s mansion. A thin-ribbed dog darted from an alley, saw him, and snarled, spinning around to find the shelter of a raised walkway as if afraid he might offer harm. Var smiled bitterly; he had heard of dogs being eaten as food ran shorter. He was not sure: Governor Wyme said that all were fed who deserved to be, but he did not trust Wyme. Inquisitor Talle demanded that the outland farmers bring in their crops and that was done, but still food was not plentiful and Var could not like Talle or agree with his methods. There were—despite Talle’s gallows—still hungry beggars inside the city, more lurking beyond the walls, inhabiting a settlement of ragged tents boundaried by the earthworks Var’s men had thrown up. Talle had hexed some few, and twice ordered Spelt’s redcoats out to clear the camp, but still the penurious and the homeless crept back like beaten dogs seeking the only refuge they knew. Finally, Talle had given up his efforts to drive them away, settling for the promulgation of new laws that forbade the donation of food to the refugees and forbidding vagrants within the city walls. Neither edict worked very well, save to fuel discontent and resentment of the Inquisitor and his new regime, of which Var was considered a part. There were folk legally inside the walls sympathetic to the beggars, and they contrived to circumvent Talle’s measures. Save the Inquisitor risk igniting a civil war, he could not punish all those who succored the hungry.

  Grostheim, Var thought as he trudged the frosty streets, was a powder keg ready to blow. And he was no longer sure where his own sympathies lay. As he had told Jaymes, he had his orders, his duty to obey, but when he saw folk stripped of hope, their faces planed stark by hunger, he found it hard to accept Talle’s diktats. But still he was committed by duty, by his orders to support the Inquisitor. He was an officer of the God’s Militia, dedicated to that service. It was a dilemma he could not resolve as he strode on, unhappy.

  He remembered a town of lights and laughter, and glanced around at shuttered windows and silent people. They seemed—the silent, unsmiling folk he passed, the steaming windows, the smoking braziers, the skulking dogs—all hostile, as if he were not come as a savior, but as another threat. It was as if his blue marine’s greatcoat marked him as Talle’s man, and set his hand on the gallows’ spring, and that the forts bounding the wilderness edge meant nothing. It seemed, as he looked toward faces that turned from him, as if the inhabitants of Grostheim had sooner faced the hostiles than welcome the Inquisitor and his lieutenant.

  He passed an alley mouth where a dull fire burned, small and shrouded by what scanty shelter the occupants of the rude shack he saw had built there: mostly random planks and timbers charred from the last hostile attack and discarded, and lengths of torn tarpaulin. A man sat there, huddled close beside a woman, a child between them whose sex he could not determine. It happened that the moon struck down there so that he saw their faces clear, cheeked hollow and dark-eyed. Accusing, he thought, as he hesitated and met their gaze. He fumbled in his pockets for some coin—Talle be damned!—and then saw what he thought was the most amazing and inexplicable thing.

  A tavern flanked the alley, and from its back a man came out with a wrapped bundle clutched in his hands. In the moonlight Var saw the E branded on his cheek. The man looked warily around and Var pretended to walk on—halted and doubled back, so that he might watch.

  He saw the branded man deliver the bundle to the refugees, stripping off the cloth to reveal a loaf of bread and a part-eaten joint of meat. The indentured man glanced around and beckoned at the shadows, and a woman came out—a tavern girl, Var guessed, and that she’d wear a brand on her shoulder—who carried a pitcher and three clay cups. He could not tell what the pitcher contained; only that the refugees drank eagerly as they ate, and he watched in amazement.

  He slid back into the wall’s shadow, embarrassed and surprised; mightily disturbed.

  The branded folk fed freemen? Servants fed those who had once been masters? Their owners?

  Why?

  The starvelings in the alley wore no marks of indenture, so they were surely free settlers who had likely possessed such folk as now gave them sustenance—in defiance of Inquisitor Talle’s laws.

  Var wondered why, and why—he knew—he would not report it.

  He walked on, into the square where the gallows stood before the church.

  The gibbet occupied the center of the square. It was built well—the carpenters would not argue with Inquisitor Talle—of solid oak, a platform raised up a full man’s height above the ground, the scaffold over that, so that it dominated the center of Grostheim. Var was reminded of his childhood, of gamekeepers who hung ravens and crows and foxes in warning to others: it seemed to him like that as the sorry body dangled limp, the wood beneath its feet stained with its last, sad effluences. Its boots were gone, doubtless taken by the hangman, and that seemed to Var most sad, a last indignity. He looked at the blank-eyed face as he came closer, wondering
what hopes the corpse had brought to Salvation, what wife or children the man might leave behind. Unthinking, he crossed his fingers and spat.

  “He’ll do you no harm, Major. Not now.”

  Var cursed his squeamishness. Four of Spelt’s Militiamen stood guard around the scaffold, bored and cold, a corporal grinning at his own sally. There was no need for a guard—Talle’s hexes decorated the platform and the gibbet—and the presence of the redcoats was only a further ceremonial reminder of authority. Almost, Var answered sharply, but caught himself—these fellows did no more than he, only obeying orders—and softened his tone. “No, I doubt he will.”

  Save, he thought, every body Talle hangs there is like another small spark heating this dismal city, and how many shall it take before the fire burns hot enough to ignite it? He paused, wanting to say something to the soldiers and not knowing quite what.

  He settled for, “A cold night, eh?”

  “Chilly, sir.” The corporal shrugged. “But you wait until winter. It gets truly cold then.”

  Var nodded. “Snow?”

  “Usually.” The corporal took a pace toward Var, thought better of such presumption, and halted. “Gets real deep outside the walls, but the branded folk keep our streets clear.”

  Var said, “Of course,” and then: “How long does the snow last?”

  “In a bad winter,” the corporal shrugged again, “from around the midpart of Novembre right through to Marche, maybe.”