Forging the Sword (The Farsala Trilogy)

by Bell, Hilari

  There was nothing within reach of his left hand except the blanket and pillow of his own bedroll, and just possibly Jiaan’s. If he tried to smother Jiaan in his sleep with just his left hand … Jiaan found a small, malicious smile tugging at his lips and banished it. It was as wrong for him to want to take out his rage and grief on a helpless prisoner as it was for Fasal—worse, for he hadn’t even the excuse of seeking information. And, he reminded himself, this man had had nothing to do with the attack where Aram died.

  “Are you comfortable?” Jiaan asked shortly.

  “Perfectly,” said Tactimian Patrius even more shortly.

  Jiaan eyed him. He didn’t look comfortable. The thin bronze circles clasping his wrist and ankle probably wouldn’t be too burdensome, if not for the chain linked through them and fastened to the strong, deep-driven poles that supported the hutch. Jiaan himself had once been tied to one of those poles, and he knew how immovable they were.

  Patrius had only one hand free to tuck behind his head, and perhaps six inches of movement for his right wrist and ankle—but the blankets covered him, so at least he’d be warm. Even when the Hrum kept their slaves imprisoned, which they seldom had to, they kept them in iron-barred pens where they had plenty of room to move, to sleep in whatever comfort they could find. On the other hand, if the man said he was comfortable, Jiaan wasn’t inclined to press him further.

  Without another word he unfastened the belt that held his sword and dagger, laying them with his quiver and bow, which Hosah had put behind the stack of chests. Jiaan might have trouble reaching them swiftly—usually he left his weapons right beside his bedroll—but they were well out of the prisoner’s reach.

  Jiaan stripped off his outer clothes, shivering in the chill air, and sought his blankets, which were cold too. But as he lay listening to the soft conversations of the men who lingered by the fire, his blankets slowly warmed.

  He was very aware that another person shared his tent—aware of his breathing, of the small movements that made the chain rattle. As his father’s aide Jiaan had often shared tents with the other aides, many of whom despised him as a peasant-born half-blood, and some of whom he’d disliked in return.

  But he hadn’t caused any of them to be held in chains.

  In a way the distraction was a good thing, for it kept him from thoughts of Aram, which might have made him weep. He was relaxing toward sleep when the Hrum commander said softly, “Your officer was wrong, you know.”

  “He’s wrong about a lot of things,” said Jiaan, and then remembered that he should uphold Fasal’s authority before this man. “I mean … to what are you referring?” His voice became coolly formal on the final words, but the prisoner laughed, a bare puff of breath in the firelit dimness.

  “I meant that I don’t know of any weaknesses in my force. He’d have learned nothing from me, no matter what he did.”

  Jiaan snorted. “Of course you expect me to believe that?”

  “I can prove it,” said Patrius. “At least, after a fashion. Tell me, if you were aware of a weakness in your command that we could exploit to defeat you, what would you do?”

  “Fix it,” said Jiaan. “Immediate … Oh.”

  “Exactly,” said the Hrum officer. “If we have weaknesses, you can be certain that I’m the one person who doesn’t see them. Or they wouldn’t be there anymore.”

  Jiaan fell silent, for the man’s logic was irrefutable. He was wondering if he could get Fasal to see it, when he finally fell asleep.

  He spent the next few days observing the Hrum army with the sullen Fasal at his side. He said nothing to Patrius during the day, and no more than a few words each night. The Hrum officer watched him, without a trace of the reserved contempt that had previously been so marked in his expression.

  By the third day Fasal was bored enough to start complaining. “If we could see anything, then there might be some use in it. But those Ahriman-spawned bushes are so thick, all you can see are men darting in and out of them. They’re beginning to turn brown, but as far as I can tell they haven’t lost a single leaf. Unless the Hrum are doing something obvious, like leading mules to the stream or carrying a basket of clothes to wash, you can’t even guess what they’re doing!”

  It was yet another truth Jiaan couldn’t deny. “They are thick,” he admitted. “Very …” His heart began to pound. They were beginning to turn brown. The green boughs hadn’t burned well, but he hadn’t tried to burn dried ones.

  “Very what?” Fasal asked impatiently.

  It was too soon to talk about it, especially with Fasal. “Very thick. So we’ll just have to watch a bit longer.”

  That evening, after dinner was served but before men started drawing near the heat of the cookfire, Jiaan wandered into the hills. It took some time to find dead branches on live bushes, but eventually he came across a place where a recent rock fall had broken several limbs. It looked like they’d been dead somewhat longer than the ones in the Hrum camp, but it was probably as close as Jiaan was going to get. He built a small fire, laying the dried boughs in the flames with hands that shook with hope.

  Even dry, it took a while to get them started—but once they began to burn, they burned very hot. The bushes in the Hrum camp were still green, of course, but the Hrum had made so many screens and shelters with the branches they had cleared around their perimeter that there might be enough fuel to set even the live bushes alight! Jiaan resolved to gather more dried boughs the next day and do some experiments.

  “I WAS WONDERING about the Hrum,” he said to Patrius that night. “You seem very organized. Prepared.”

  Jiaan knew how lame it sounded, how suspicious after several nights of silence. But he couldn’t think of any way to start a conversation that wouldn’t sound suspicious, and if he could get the tactimian talking about the Hrum’s preparedness in general, he might be led to discuss the preparations they took against fire.

  Chains jingled as Patrius rolled onto his back. “We try to be efficient. It’s the only way to handle armies the size of ours. If you aren’t well organized, in almost every aspect of life, you get bogged down.” The words came easily, but his tone was reserved—wary. He knew Jiaan was fishing for something. But he had answered. Jiaan pressed on.

  “Well, you’re certainly not ‘bogged down.’ How many countries have the Hrum conquered in the last few centuries? Thirty?”

  “Twenty-eight,” said Patrius. “And there are three allied states. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Independent, allied status?”

  “What other choice have we?” Jiaan asked bitterly. “Except to be swallowed whole?”

  “You could be independent and nonallied,” Patrius told him. “Ban our troops from ever crossing your soil, forbid all trade, close your borders to our scholars and engineers. An independent state is free to do that. But none of the countries who’ve proved too strong for us to defeat without spending far more than their conquest was worth has ever chosen to do so. Do you know why?”

  Jiaan kept silent, but he did know why. His own father had spoken of the advantages, the wealth that came from alliance with the Hrum. His father had intended Farsala to become an independent ally from the start.

  “Those same advantages,” Patrius went on, as if Jiaan had spoken his thoughts aloud, “go to the countries we conquer as well. In many of the countries we invade, the people welcome us—even throw off their overlords and fight on our side.”

  “Well, that didn’t happen here!” Jiaan snapped. But he remembered the Kadeshi swordsmith he had spoken to, when he was searching for the secret of that beautiful watersteel—a secret that the Suud and Mazad’s swordsmiths had now mastered. The Kadeshi smith hadn’t known the secret, but he had told Jiaan that if he did, he wouldn’t reveal it—that he would do nothing that might delay the Hrum’s invasion of his own land. The Kadeshi would be far better off under Hrum rule than that of their own warlords—slavery and all. In fact Hrum slaves, protected by law, were treated better than free Kadeshi peasant
s, who had no laws to protect them from their harsh and rapacious rulers. But Farsala wasn’t like that! Even the Farsalan peasants were resisting the Hrum.

  “You would have those advantages,” said Patrius when Jiaan fell silent, “as citizens of the empire. And you could spare all the lives that will be lost if this war continues. Why not give up now, and gain the advantages without losing the lives?”

  “Because your citizens pay a price for their advantages,” Jiaan replied. “We aren’t prepared to send our young men into your army, to die making your empire richer and stronger.”

  “And safer,” said Patrius. “That comes with the wealth and the strength, you know. And if you’re conquered, it would be your empire too, and you would share in the wealth, the strength, and the safety. And many of us choose to go on in the military after our years of service are over. It’s really not that bad.”

  There was humor in his voice, for the tactimian himself had made that choice. But he had said something else, as well.

  “If,” Jiaan said softly.

  “If what?” Patrius asked.

  “You said, ‘if you’re conquered.’ Not when. You’re not certain you’re going to win, are you?”

  The silence lasted so long that Jiaan thought Patrius was going to stop talking, but then he sighed. “Governor Garren suffers certain … handicaps when it comes to conquering this land.”

  “Like the fact that he can’t send for more troops or his father will be dismissed from the senate?” Jiaan asked. A messenger from Siddas had brought that information just that morning.

  Patrius sat up, the chains rattling as he yanked them. “How do you know that?”

  Jiaan said nothing, for Patrius must have guessed that the Farsalans had spies. One of whom, much as Jiaan hated to acknowledge it, had discovered an incredible amount of information. At considerable risk, from the sound of it.

  Did Patrius know about the committee of senators that was coming to pressure Garren even further? He probably didn’t—the Suud said no messengers from the Hrum had reached Patrius’ forces, and Jiaan thought the Suud would know.

  The tactimian settled back into his bedroll. “All right, I’ll admit it—that’s why I’m not certain you’ll lose. But I should warn you, he may be handicapped by the terms his father accepted, but they also make him desperate—more desperate than any Hrum commander should be. Do you know the story of Perapolis?”

  “You conquered them,” said Jiaan. “In the end. But they fought so hard and so long that they almost beggared your empire and destroyed your army. And by the time you took them, the land was so damaged as to be worthless. That’s why your commanders are only given a year—so that won’t happen again.”

  “Exactly,” said Patrius. “We’ve learned that sometimes you can lose so much in the fighting that in the end victory isn’t worth the price you paid.”

  “So? That’s good for us, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” said Patrius. “But only if you learn from it yourselves, instead of having to learn it the hard way, as we did.” He rolled onto his side, facing the wall of the tent. He couldn’t roll the other way.

  Jiaan lay on his back, staring at the hutch’s leather roof for a long time.

  THE NEXT DAY Jiaan cut a dozen big branches off the bushes and spread them by the stream. If he kept carrying them back to the cookfire, soon there would be questions, and how well they burned in an established fire wasn’t what he needed to know. He would give the first branches three days to dry, he decided, then return with a candle and see how hard it was to set them alight with a small flame.

  He also decided that it would be better to initiate a less direct conversation with Tactimian Patrius. Looking back on their talk, Jiaan realized that the one topic they hadn’t discussed was the specifics of how the Hrum organized or prepared for anything—and he didn’t think that was an accident. He still wanted to know about their standard defenses against fire in a camp, but he knew that Patrius would say nothing if he approached the subject directly. However, if Jiaan got him into the habit of talking, perhaps in a week or so he could steer the conversation, subtly, in the direction he wanted.

  He began that same night, as soon as his blankets started to warm.

  “I thank you,” he told the Hrum tactimian, “for your warning about Governor Garren. You did intend to warn me, didn’t you? As well as trying to talk me into surrendering?”

  For a moment he thought he’d taken the wrong approach, because Patrius hesitated before replying. “It was a warning. But you needn’t thank me. I didn’t do it for you.”

  “Ah.” How odd, that they should have that in common. And how difficult it must be to have the person who sought to sully the honor of your army as your superior instead of a subordinate you could command. “I heard that you were assigned to the thankless task of hunting us down because you argued with Garren.”

  He hoped that was vague enough to conceal the fact that his source of information had been present at the meeting where it was decided—though it sounded like the peddler was doing a pretty good job of wrecking his cover on his own.

  “He doesn’t punish people for disagreeing with him,” Patrius said. “Not yet. But I worry that he might come to that. The Hrum learned long ago that to truly conquer a country, to hold it and make it a working part of your empire, knowing how to use mercy is every bit as important as knowing how to use force—more important, in the long run. Even Garren knows that, but this situation makes him even more likely to favor short-term results … and he wasn’t much for thinking about the long term in the first place. That was why so many questioned his promotion to strategus and governor. He isn’t stupid, or incompetent, or even foolish, but …”

  “We’ve seen that,” said Jiaan dryly. “Though the Hrum didn’t show much mercy …”

  … to the Farsalan army. But that had been Garren’s plan, and perhaps that was the kind of thing Patrius was talking about. Had Garren crossed the line into dishonor? Jiaan knew that his father, as a commander, would have agreed to implement that plan. And the plan slowly forming in Jiaan’s mind wasn’t much kinder, except that he expected to take most of the Hrum forces prisoner. So instead he said, “You didn’t show much mercy to the slaves you chained to the siege towers. Or at least, you were risking a lot on our mercy. If we’d been ruthless enough, we might have burned the lot of them to death. And that ambush was your doing, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Patrius. “But the slaves were only there to disrupt your plans. To force you to reveal yourselves. If they appeared to be in danger, their guards had orders to pass out keys so they could release themselves. And I didn’t know,” his voice was dry, “that the towers had been coated with an accelerant.”

  Jiaan hoped the darkness would hide his grin. Then a thought struck him. “How did you know we were going to attack? You even knew the day, for the slaves weren’t there the day before.”

  “You think you’re the only one with spies?”

  “No, but …” In his forces? Among the peasants who’d helped the peddler, or among their neighbors and friends? Surely not one of his men! Jiaan knew that none of them bore the rank mark the Hrum tattooed onto their spies. On the other hand, surely the peddler’s peasant forces were checking for that mark too.

  “I thought all your spies were marked.” Jiaan touched his own arm. “So they could approach any officer and be identified and believed.”

  “Not since they threw our spies out of Mazad, and we discovered that the mark was known to you,” said Patrius. “We’re proud of our service to the empire, but we’re not stupid. Surely your Commander Sorahb guessed that much.”

  “I’m sure he has,” said Jiaan blankly. There could be spies among his men. In fact, there almost certainly were! The first thing Garren would have done was send men to infiltrate Sorahb’s army. Fear crept through Jiaan’s soul. But at least here, isolated in the Suud’s desert, no spy could send out a report. The Hrum had stopped sending couriers to Patrius�
� force after the Suud had captured the first few. But a clever spy could communicate with the Hrum camp—by the simple expedient Nehar had used to get messages out of Mazad, if by no other means. Jiaan’s mind was so full of the security measures he would have to implement—tomorrow!—that he barely caught Patrius’ next comment.

  “But the mercy your commander showed in Mazad wasn’t a bad thing. The commanders who’ve fought against that city haven’t executed any of the farmers they caught trying to smuggle in food either. If Mazad’s commander had executed the spies … Sieges are the most bitter form of battle, you know. Anger is born on both sides, not only in the hearts of the besieged.”

  “I didn’t know you’d caught anyone,” said Jiaan, his mind still reeling with the implications. His camp could be full of spies!

  “Oh, yes,” said Patrius. “Even before Tactimian Laon replaced that … replaced Substrategus Arus.”

  “What happened to Arus, anyway?” Jiaan asked, more to give himself time to think than because he cared.

  “Demoted in disgrace,” said Patrius. “And sent to chase bandits in the Dugaz swamps—a more thankless task even than mine. Some of his senior centrimasters were demoted with him, but the junior ones who had no say in anything were kept in Setesafon with their centris. Though why you’d take a proven incompetent and set him to a difficult and vital task, no matter how unpleasant it … Never mind.”

  Jiaan smiled. “That’s the kind of thing you meant, isn’t it? The reason your high command didn’t want to promote Garren in the first place.”

  “Exactly,” said Patrius. “In a way that’s why…. It pleased me—for more than one reason!—when you showed that you also understood that without mercy, without honor, an army is just another band of thugs. Garren … he called Sorahb and his army bandits. But when you protected me, you proved that—for all you’re not very … polished—your army is an army that defends a nation. That was a commander’s decision—not a thug’s.”