To the High Redoubt

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Arkady-immai,” Surata whispered as she pressed her palms to the place where his ribs joined, “do not hold back what is there. Release it to me.”

  There had been that big brute of a sorrel in his father’s stable, and he had made a wager he could ride the horse, although most of the men avoided the beast. He had been able to stay on for a while, but he had been terrified the whole time, and when he was finally thrown, he had gone behind the stables to be sick.

  He writhed at what these recollections did to him, afraid that he would be beneath reproach to anyone who learned such dreadful things about him.

  “Arkady-immai,” Surata urged him softly, “you must not be so distressed. There is no reason for it.”

  “Don’t,” he whimpered and was aghast at the sound of his own voice.

  “No, no Arkady-immai, you have nothing to fear. I promise you, there is nothing to fear.” Her hands were sure and so comforting that he did not force them away again. She continued to touch him, her hands strong and certain, never hard, never hurting, offering a kind of solace he had not known before.

  A Turkish warrior, mouth open and foaming, eyes protruding, rushed toward him, scimitar up and ready to strike off his head. Arkady blocked the blow with his sword, but the sword had shattered. One of his soldiers, a boy of no more than fourteen who spent his evenings singing hymns, had got between them and had been killed.

  Arkady’s eyes were wet and his hands could not stop shaking.

  A woman with a brash sort of beauty strolled through the camp, offering to take on the soldiers for a price and a challenge. The Margrave Fadey had been horrified, afraid of pox and Turkish spies, and had ordered Arkady to drive her from the camp. She had taunted him in front of his men, and once outside the camp had tried to attack him with a knife. He had fought with her—the scar on his eyebrow was a token of that encounter—and had left her unconscious. The next day she was found hanging, gutted, from the Turkish fortifications.

  “Do not hide these things, Arkady-immai. I will not hate you or rebuke you or turn away from you, my vow on it.”

  He saw Mira’s face the day she told him that she was pregnant. He had listened to her in silence, then tried to make her believe that it did not matter to him, that he did not care, he would raise her child as his own if she would marry him. Her face had been tragic, for she had told him that the father had forbidden her to marry anyone, and would not or could not marry her himself. In vain Arkady had pleaded with her to change her mind, insisting that if the man treated her thus, he had no rights in the matter. Mira had heard him out, refused him then and later said he was not to visit her anymore. Three days after, they had found her body in the river, and the priest had excoriated her memory in church.

  Surata’s hands continued to work.

  There was a boy in Sól who had been bitten by a mad dog and had taken the madness himself. Several other children had been terrified and had followed the miserable boy with stones. Arkady had been with them, but his thrill of overcoming his dread ended when he saw the boy lying on the ground, jerked and wracked by convulsions, bleeding from the stoning. The largest of his tormentors started to hurl a rock at the rabid child’s head, but Arkady had tried to stop him, and a bitter, useless fight had ensued.

  When he started to double over with shame and grief, Surata gently stretched out upon him, holding him and warming him.

  Arkady saw his father, still young and vigorous, riding off to do the bidding of his Margrave. He had made Arkady promise he would not waste his time, and had specifically warned him that his boy was not to spend more time playing the lira da braccio than practicing with his sword. He had patted Arkady on the shoulder, embraced him and had not come home for more than two years. And when he did return, he was a ruined, surly fellow, given to sudden outbursts of violence and long days of drunken recriminations.

  His sister, so young and so pale, with strength that was easily sapped, every day growing weaker, sat in the door of the cooking house, weeping over a starved puppy.

  The first time he had been wounded it was a pleasant spring day. He had fallen a little way out of the line of battle, an arrow in his thigh. He had lain, stunned, in the new grasses, with three tiny, blue-veined flowers, like stars, not far from his eyes. He had watched the flowers, and the life in the grass, and had wept for the beauty of it.

  It was his turn to serve the priest, and he had come to the church to prepare for the Nativity celebration. In his zeal, he had decided to come early, to show that although he was only eight, he was devout. He had caught the priest with the wife of one of his father’s officers, and for that he had been whipped and told he would never be permitted to serve in his parish church again.

  “Oh, God, Saint Michael, what have I done?” he moaned, thrusting at Surata’s shoulder to move her away. “I can’t…I truly do not—”

  Surata did not move. She appeared to use no might, but she kept him still, and when she spoke, her voice was low and untroubled. “You need not blame yourself, Arkady-immai. You have been alive, that is your only error. See that. Be awake to it.”

  “No. Please, no, no.”

  “Yes,” she told him.

  Deep snows had slowed the hunters, but they kept on, hunting boar. The Margrave was coming the day after tomorrow, and he and his retinue would expect a proper feast and reception. Arkady, the youngest member of the hunt, kept near his father, worried that he might attempt something dangerous, for he had been sipping wine since before dawn. Arkady knew his father was in an angry and capricious mood, reckless and impatient. He was concentrating so much on his father that he did not see the boar until it broke cover, already racing. Arkady’s father had swung his spear around, but not quite quickly enough; he caught the animal, but the point entered the shoulder, not the chest, and by the time Arkady could cover the little distance between them, the hooves and tusks of the boar had done their work, and Arkady’s father was cursing as he died.

  The bishop had told him that ordinarily when a man is the last of his family, it was not expected that he should volunteer for battle, but this case was different. Arkady’s father and his father’s father, and his father before him had all been Marshalls for the local Margrave and were dedicated to preserving Poland and Holy Church. Now that the Turk, surely an instrument of the Devil himself, had come into Europe for conquest, Arkady should uphold the honor and tradition of the family, and fight against the invaders for the glory of God and the safety of the kingdom. For once, Polish and Ukrainian soldiers would fight together, not against one another, to banish the terrible threat to the peace of the world. Arkady had listened, and decided that there was nothing to keep him in Sól if the Margrave appointed another Marshall. On a whim, he had taken the commission offered him.

  When Arkady was seven, his tutor, a frail man in late middle age, had fallen ill. Arkady had asked his father to permit the tutor to stay with them and recover his health, but his father had sent the man to the hospital run by the Benedictines, and the tutor had died there not long after. Arkady had mourned for the man, which had annoyed his father, and led to their first serious quarrel.

  It was harvest time when his mother died, and they buried her quickly, for the weather was very warm. Around the graveyard, the fields gave up their bounty; Arkady had not heard the prayers for the dead, but the songs of the harvesters.

  He had caught a thief: the man carried a tinker’s satchel, and in it were necklaces and bracelets and rings. Arkady had fought with the man and bested him. The thief wanted Arkady to kill him, for the penalty for theft was to have his hands struck off. Arkady had refused, but a year later, seeing the thief huddled in rags near the market square, he wondered if he had been cruel where he intended to be kind.

  Surata placed her hands over his closed eyes. “Arkady-immai, tell me what you see. Let me see it with you.”

  The plain was vast, both fertile and rugged, and isolated. In the distance, enormous mountains rose, blue and far-off. Horses, wild but frie
ndly, roamed the plain.

  “How old were you? Show me how old you were, Arkady-immai.”

  A child, scarcely more than a toddler, scrambled through the fence and ran into the fields, waving his arms and shouting, laughing at the birds that wheeled above him. In the distance one of the horses lifted her head to regard the youngster.

  In the church, the high altar had been draped in mourning for Lent. Arkady had gone there every day to light candles, thinking that the person being mourned must be an important Margrave or the King to receive such distinction from the priest. He hoped that his piety would be noted and reported to the family of the deceased noble.

  Arkady huddled on the riverbank, afraid to dive in as some of the older boys had done. He did not swim well, and a child had drowned in the river during the spring rains. He gnawed his thumb, hugging his arms around his knees. His skin was turning a mottled pink, and he wished he could bring himself to go into the water and cool off. He finally pretended to see a snake near him, which gave him the excuse he needed to run away, and to send several of the other boys rushing for home as well.

  There were gypsies in the village, and they made a camp not far from the Marshall’s tower, where they kept a tawdry sort of carnival for more than a week. Arkady’s father, who spent his days in drinking and self-pity, had warned everyone in the village to stay away, but of course, it was useless. Even Arkady had defied him, going to the gypsy camp at sundown to consult the heavy and moustached old woman who read fortunes. She had cast a knowing eye over Arkady and said that he would have a life filled with adventure and much honor. His destiny, said the woman, would take him into strange climes, and he would see things that were new to him. She cut herself off, hurrying her prediction for him, saying only that there were more foes that he knew of to battle. Her last remark came to him clearly—that there were more ways to see than with the eyes.

  He came awake with a start and found Surata kneeling near his feet, busy massaging his calves and ankles. “What!”

  “You are awake,” she said, unperturbed as she kept at her task.

  “I…I dreamed.” He began to laugh and stopped when he heard the sound he made.

  “You remembered,” she corrected him, not taking her concentration from what she was doing.

  “Perhaps,” he said, feeling dazed. “It was so…” The words trailed off. “Say something to me.”

  “What would you like?” she asked.

  “You’re speaking well,” he said, baffled and sarcastic at once.

  “While I touch you, I can do this. If we are not touching, I have only the words you have taught me.” She moved a bit and began to work on his feet.

  He had to think about this, and finally asked, “Are you a witch?”

  “No. You do not believe in witches, in any case,” she said as serenely as ever.

  “That what are you? How do you do this? What have you done to me?” This last question was the most frightening of all, and his voice rose as the words tumbled out of him.

  “I am…an alchemist, you would call it. My family has followed that teaching and that life for many generations. It is the way of Bogar to do this. Bogar is my family, my…House. What I have done to you is minor. I have asked you for help, and you have given it to me.” She turned her face toward him. “Arkady-immai, until you came upon me, I feared that my life was over and that there would never again be a chance to return to my home and undo the wrongs that have been done to us.”

  “What happens when you aren’t touching me?” he demanded, still fearful of her and what she had done to him.

  She released him and sat back on her heels. “Not good, Arkady-immai. Not many words. Not good talk.”

  “But you understand me?” he prompted her.

  “Not good; some.” She cocked her head to the side. “Hands, Arkady-immai?” As she asked this, she held out her own.

  Reluctantly, he put his into hers. “All right, Surata, here.”

  “It is better, isn’t it?” She smiled at him.

  He sighed. “I hope so,” he said after a moment. “But if you continue to do…this thing you do, I don’t know how I will feel.”

  “There is only a little more, and then the worst will be behind you.” She sensed his alarm at this and moved closer to him. “No, no, Arkady-immai, do not turn away from this. You will have some discomfort, and then it will be past you. If it were a boil, you would not hesitate to lance it, but because it is a memory, you enshrine it, though it infects your life.” Again she stretched out along his body, not caring that he was naked. “It is not a great thing; you have only made it a great thing by denying it and hiding it.”

  “You know nothing about this,” he said gruffly, twisting to break free of her.

  “Arkady-immai, you bought me because you heard me cry to you. You may think of it any way you like, but that is the truth of it. You have returned my life to me. Let me do what I may to do the same for you.” Her hand again came to rest where his ribs joined.

  “Don’t,” he warned her, feeling the same strange sensation spread through him that had accompanied his memories.

  “If you do not wish it, then I will not. But you do wish it, Arkady-immai.”

  “You are a witch,” he muttered, turning his head away from her.

  “You know I am not,” she said. “I cannot force you, no matter what you fear. If you do not want to be free of this, nothing I do will take it away from you.”

  “From what?” he snapped.

  “From whatever it is that you cling to and is so painful to you.” She began to massage the center of his chest, from the base of his neck to his navel. “It is still there, whatever it is. I can feel it, like a cold current in all the warmth, like a death that strangles life. It has made you unworthy in your own eyes, and that is the saddest of all.”

  “I’m not unworthy,” Arkady said curtly.

  “No, you are not, but there is something within you that believes you are. Nothing exonerates you, or so you believe. You accepted your disgrace not only because there was no direct way to fight it, but because, deep in your heart of hearts, you were certain you deserved it. You are willing to be an exile because that part of yourself blames you, and welcomes your punishment.” She pressed close to him.

  “Those who have nothing of guilt are arrogant and uncaring,” Arkady said defensively.

  “Is that what you have been told: it is a lie.” She touched his forehead. “Your eyes are pressed shut and your features are tightened. Your whole body is distorted. What brings you this pain, Arkady-champion?”

  “Nothing!” he burst out. He shifted so that part of his back was to her. “It’s nothing.”

  “Arkady-champion, it is something because you make it so.” Again she put her hands on his face. “Though it is less than you believe it to be.”

  He laughed in despair. “How do you know?”

  Seemingly without effort, she drew him around to her again. “Because it is always thus. It was with me, when I was brought to myself, four years ago.” Her voice grew wry as she leaned her head against his chest. “I was filled with dread and the certainty that it was not necessary for me to observe those disgusting parts of myself, for as an alchemist, I would put them behind me in any case. I tried to convince my master that there was no purpose in dredging in the midden”—she chuckled—“so you see how frightened I was.”

  “And?” he demanded in spite of himself when she did not go on.

  “Oh, when I found out how I had deceived myself I was very irate, and it was some time before I could pardon myself and accept that I had permitted such things to happen to me.”

  The night around them had turned cold now, and the fire was burning down. The creatures of the dark had begun to emerge from their resting places. As if to signal the others, an owl hooted twice as it glided silently overhead.

  “I’ve got to do something about the fire,” Arkady told her, breaking away from her. He sat up, gooseflesh appearing all over him. R
eluctantly he not deny that most of the aches that had made his day miserable had faded now and were nothing more than occasional twinges. Even the wound on his arm felt better, but he was not in the mood to see if there had been any improvement. He grabbed three branches and rather haphazardly placed them on the dying fire. “We’ll be warmer in a little bit.”

  “Arkady-immai, down again?” She was not actually touching him, and most of her words deserted her.

  “Not right now. I want to put on my tunic before I go to sleep.” He started to get up, but her arm went around his waist.

  “Not yet, Arkady-champion. Let me do this for you, so that the hurt will go away. Otherwise you will come to fear and mistrust me, and that would be…very hard for me.”

  “Because you’re afraid of being a blind beggar?” He knew as he said it that he had struck home; it amazed him that he felt only contempt for himself rather than satisfaction.

  “Or a blind whore,” she said calmly. “As you fear begging or being a criminal.” She continued to touch him. “Arkady-champion, I—”

  “Don’t call me that!” he shouted at her.

  “What?” It was an effort to hold him now, but she did.

  “Champion. It was bad enough using that other word, that ‘immai’ thing you attach to my name, but calling me champion…” He reached back for his blanket to wrap himself in it, away from her.

  “But that is what it means, Arkady-champion. Immai is champion.” There was no argument in her tone or her attitude, but she could feel his desire to lash out at her. “From the time you heard my call and answered it, you have been my champion, and I have said so.”

  “It’s a stupid thing to say,” he sulked, not succeeding in getting away from her.