His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1)

by Amanda McCrina

  “Better than a night in the mud,” Tyren said. “Thank you.”

  The man and the woman went down to the other end of the room, the woman putting out the lamps on the table as she passed, and there was only the firelight; the rest of the room was in darkness. Tyren sat down against the hearth and unlaced his boots. The Cesino slave sat a little way away, his back against the long wall.

  “So you can speak,” Tyren said.

  The Cesino looked over to him.

  “I can speak,” he said. There was a mocking edge to his voice when he added, belatedly, “My lord.”

  “The prayer angered you.”

  The Cesino turned his face away again. He didn’t say anything.

  Tyren said, “You think they’ve something to fear from me?”

  “It was a foolish thing to do regardless.”

  “You don’t share their beliefs?”

  “Superstition,” the Cesino said. “I find it foolish a man would speak some words over his bread and call it bravery—that he’d risk his family for it.”

  He said it with a shrug, carelessly, but his mouth was tight and his gray eyes had gone dull and flat. Tyren looked at him and said nothing. Began to understand a little. The Cesino had lost his own family in this way, maybe.

  Neither of them spoke again.

  * * *

  In the morning he was up in the gray pre-dawn. He didn’t want to stay here any longer than was necessary; it had been a mistake to come here in the first place. But the Cesino slave was still sleeping and Tyren decided against immediately waking him. He gathered up his things and went out to saddle the horses himself. Risun held out his head over the door of his stall when Tyren went into the stable and Tyren spent some time just running a hand across the smooth dappled coat, stroking the black nose, speaking to him quietly and watching the black-tipped ears swivel forward as he spoke. He saddled him and left him tethered to the thick oak post of the stall door and went to ready the black colt. While he was working with the colt the Cesino slave came in.

  “Are the family awake?” Tyren said, without looking up.

  “Yes, my lord,” the Cesino said.

  He finished with the girth-strap of the colt’s saddle and took a handful of eagles from his wallet and put the money into the Cesino’s hand.

  “Give it to the woman,” he said. “And my thanks. I’ll wait for you at the road.”

  The rain had gone and the dawn was a blood-red smear above the tops of the trees in the east when they set out again. He judged they were maybe twenty miles from Rien: the road was slanting more to the west now and over miles and miles of that same black pine you could see the mountains. They were little more than low green hills at this point; they’d get higher and snow-clad if you went further north or south, away from the wide pass into Varen. So they’d be in Rien by mid-afternoon, provided his estimations were accurate. That would be enough; he didn’t see trying to go any further today. They could get a good night’s rest in the city and start into the mountains tomorrow.

  * * *

  He’d been in Rien before. He’d gone with his father and Tore to the villa of the Marri a few years ago now, when Lucho Marro had given a banquet in Torien Risto’s honor. The banquet had been a symbolic thing only, a display of Marro’s good faith, because Torien Risto was still governor of Cesin province and Marro nothing but a county governor, even if Marro had the Emperor’s favor now in Choiro. It was the year before Tyren had gone to Choiro for his training, and Luchian Marro, Lucho’s younger son, had been in Rien still, because they were of an age, and even then Luchian had been loud-mouthed and insolent and of course the thing had come up between them about Chæla. That was the first time Tyren had ever fought, but not the last, and Luchian had rather soundly beaten him, and that had galled him far more than the other sound beating he’d received later, from his father. His own rivalry with Luchian had begun there. It had continued, of course, in Choiro, and in more serious ways than boyish fistfights. But it had begun in Rien.

  Like the other big cities in Cesin Rien was more Vareno-looking than Cesino-looking. The common buildings, the houses and places of business, were square, storied buildings made of brick-faced concrete. The government buildings and the villas of the patricians were made of smooth white marble, great slabs of stone quarried in the north of Varen and brought painstakingly to Cesin by those rich enough to afford its transport over the pass. The roofs were clay tile and some of the great buildings had domes and the city was set out very neatly along a grid pattern, divided up by straight cobbled streets, rather than thrown together haphazardly along mud streets in the manner of the Cesino farm villages. There was even an aqueduct bringing down spring water from the mountains, and there were baths in the city; that was a luxury in Cesin. A fairly young city, Rien, built after the war was won. It had been nothing but a fort originally, when there was still considerable threat of a unified Cesino uprising, but that threat had dwindled and died long before Tyren’s time and the fort here was more ceremonial now than anything else.

  It wasn’t quite the seventeenth hour when they came to the northern gate of the city; the late-afternoon sun was still hanging above the heads of the mountains to the west. There was a soldiers’ club on the Gate Street, designated by a banner bearing the blazing golden sun on an indigo field, the insignia of the Imperial military. Lodging was free for officers at the clubs, and it would be better than a common inn. He took the colt into the stable-yard.

  It was early yet and the stables were mostly empty. A stable-boy came to take the horses and walk them out and the Cesino slave took Tyren’s saddlebags and came along behind while an orderly showed Tyren up to the rooms. The rooms were plain, serviceable: a small study with a desk and a narrow window overlooking the yard, and the bedchamber adjoining the study through a low doorway—cot and wash basin and a bare wooden shelf on the wall. The Cesino put down Tyren’s bags on the cot and Tyren peeled off his gloves and unfastened his cape and hung it up by the doorway.

  “I can show your slave his lodging, sir,” the orderly said.

  “Thank you,” Tyren said.

  “The meal will be ready shortly, sir,” the orderly said. He stood aside so the Cesino could walk stiffly past him. “I’ll bring you word.”

  “Thank you,” Tyren said again, absently.

  When the orderly and the Cesino had gone he unbuckled his sword and took off the cuirass and cleaned up at the wash basin. Afterward he wandered over to the window and rested his forehead against the cool stone of the window frame and looked out over the city. He watched the traffic-choked streets a while and then he raised his eyes to the mountains climbing up in the west, fifty miles or more beyond the city’s western gate, across the sea of black Cesino pine. Souvin was there, somewhere, deep in that wild timber country. Two days’ ride from Rien in summertime when the weather was good—it didn’t seem so far when you said it like that, when you made detached calculations, but looking at it now, from the comfort and familiarity of the city, it seemed terribly remote, terribly isolated. It was an exile, this commission. Anything might happen out there in that mountain country and it would be four days at the earliest before Rien could react to it, four days at the very earliest. Luchian had done his work well.

  The orderly came back at length to let him know the meal was ready. He went down to the mess. The hall was fairly empty at first and he sat alone at the end of one of the long common trestle tables to eat. Simple food, but good: cheese and olives and smoked pork sausage, thick-crusted bread with oil and herbs, a dark red wine that was pleasantly warm going down. The hall filled up slowly, more men coming in at intervals from the stable-yard. He kept his head down. These were Rien soldiers for the most part, men on their leave from the fort—privileged ones, like him, the younger sons of noble families, in the army because of custom and expectation, nothing else. No doubt some of them would recognize him and he didn’t relish the idea of explaining to them he was headed to a frontier garrison—not to a p
ost in Choiro or here in Rien, as befitted a Risto, but to Souvin. He concentrated on his food.

  “Risto,” someone said, suddenly.

  He didn’t have to turn and look to the doorway to see who’d come in. He knew the voice at once. But he couldn’t ignore it and so he turned anyway, putting down his wine bowl.

  He looked at Luchian Marro and tried not to show his surprise. He didn’t know why Luchian would be here, in this place; surely the villa of the Marri, in the upper city, could afford him better accommodation. But that wasn’t the only reason for surprise. Luchian was wearing the black-lacquered harness of the Imperial Guard, the knee-length black wool cape, the silver Guard commander’s braid glittering proudly on his left shoulder, and the sandy-haired man standing close at his side was an officer of the Guard, too.

  He hadn’t heard Luchian had been picked for the Guard.

  Not that it was really all that remarkable, he supposed. In fact he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t considered the possibility before. Certainly Luchian had all the skill and zeal and ambition to be chosen for the Guard—the elites, the pure-blooded and fiercely loyal arm of the Imperial military, personally sworn, on a blood oath, to the Emperor himself.

  “Marro,” he said.

  He recognized the sandy-haired Guardsman now, too: Recho Seian, Luchian’s kin through the marriage of a sister. Tyren remembered him from Vione. He’d never been far from Luchian there, either. Fitting they should have made the Guard together. They were cut of the same cloth.

  Luchian unbuckled the chinstrap of his tall black-crested helmet and lifted the helmet from his head and tucked it in the crook of his left arm. He came over slowly to the end of the table where Tyren sat, loosening his leather gloves one finger at a time, not taking his cold blue eyes from Tyren’s face.

  “I didn’t know you were in Rien, Risto,” he said.

  “Only for tonight,” said Tyren.

  “On your way to your new command?”

  “Yes.”

  “I heard about it,” Luchian said. “Souvin. Quite a disappointment. I’d heard you were hoping for a post in the capital—that your father was, at least.”

  “Unfortunate we can’t choose where our commissions take us,” Tyren said. He looked down into his wine bowl so Luchian wouldn’t see anything in his face.

  Luchian tossed his gloves down onto the board. “Yes, unfortunate. May we join you?”

  “It would be an honor,” Tyren said.

  “I received my own commission a few days ago,” Luchian said, as he sat.

  “Is that so?”

  “I’ve been given command of a Guard column here in Rien.”

  “My congratulations,” said Tyren.

  Luchian shrugged. “No, in truth I envy you, Risto. I get tired of the city. There are enough useless men they can post to Choiro and Rien. I’d rather see action.”

  “You anticipate there’ll be much action in Souvin?”

  Seian spoke up. “I’ve heard there’s still the remnant of a native resistance movement in the Outland. Out-manned and pointless, of course, but these Cesino bastards still can’t learn their lesson. Maybe that’s why they want you there, Risto—a commander who’ll finish the work, put down this rebellion once for all.”

  Tyren looked at Luchian. But Luchian wasn’t looking at him now. He’d put his helmet down and was resting his wrists on the edge of the table, looking down suddenly and intently into his hands, pretending disinterest. Tyren could see the scar of his oath-taking still fresh and dark across his right palm.

  “Who knows, Risto?” Seian went on. He was smiling stupidly. “Maybe this commission is your chance to prove yourself.”

  He said, in a bland voice, “To prove myself?”

  “To prove yourself after Choiro.”

  “I’ve nothing to prove after Choiro.”

  “There are some who feel your loyalty should be called into question. Hasty conclusions, maybe. But that’s the word going around.”

  “Foolish of me to expect a Marro might exercise some self-control, I know that. I wasn’t aware it constituted treachery against the Empire.”

  Luchian looked up from his hands. He was oddly blank-faced. He said nothing.

  Seian said, “He was one of your own kind, wasn’t he? The Cesino? One of your own blood, Risto?”

  “You’re a fool, Seian,” said Tyren.

  “I’m only trying to understand your reasoning. Because if I were you—if I knew my father were having to beg and barter for his friends in the capital—I might have thought twice about demonstrating to every man at Vione that my loyalty to my Cesino kin outweighs my loyalty to the Empire.”

  Anger swept through him all at once—hot, senseless, impulsive anger, the same as it had been that day at Choiro. He stood up and pushed the bench back in one movement, leaning across the table to drag Seian up by the shoulder with his left hand. He landed a blow across Seian’s face with his closed right. Then he shoved him back. Seian flailed, lost his balance, threw out his arms, and Luchian caught him, snaking out a quick hand to steady him. Luchian stood, holding Seian by the shoulders before him. The hall went quiet. Tyren saw Luchian’s eyes travel briefly round, gauging; it was long tradition, the hostility between Guard and regular army, and these were mostly army men here. But the hall remained still. No one would be eager to trade blows with a Marro here in Rien, tradition or no. Tyren’s anger died to ashes inside him. He felt suddenly, keenly alone.

  Luchian seemed well aware of it. He brought his eyes back round and smiled, humorlessly.

  “You haven’t changed much, Risto. I’d have thought this commission might change some things.”

  “Nothing’s changed between us since Choiro, Marro,” said Tyren.

  “Settle it, Luchian,” said Seian, in a thick voice. He spat blood onto the table and wiped it away from his mouth with the back of one hand. “Cesino-blood son of a bitch.”

  Luchian didn’t take his eyes from Tyren.

  “No,” he said. “No, Risto’s outnumbered here, and I don’t care to add cowardice to the list of vices he attributes to me. Another time, maybe—when the odds are matched.”

  He let go Seian’s shoulders, adjusted his sword-belt, and sat down again.

  Tyren left the table and went back up to his rooms. He got together his bags on the bed, pulled the leather cuirass back on, buckled his sword-belt on his hip and threw his cape over his shoulders. He wouldn’t spend the night here. In all likelihood Seian would come looking for a fight later—when the odds were better matched—and he couldn’t afford that now. He carried his bags down the corridor and the steps and went out into the stable-yard quickly, before he could be seen from the mess. In the stable he called sharply to the boy, who was sitting in his own quarters with his supper, and told him to go summon the Cesino from the slaves’ quarters. He went down the row to find the horses. He could pick out Risun’s head peering out at him from one of the stalls, but he couldn’t see the black colt right away, and they’d been stabled alongside one another. He dropped the bags to go look more closely and saw, with a sudden clenching-up in his chest, the colt was gone, the stall door standing open to the row. The colt’s saddle, the military-issue saddle, had been left. Risun’s had been taken instead, along with the bridle and halter and one of the muzzle feed-bags.

  He just stood there a moment, staring stupidly. The stable-boy came back at a run.

  “I couldn’t find him, lord,” he said.

  He didn’t say anything right away. He couldn’t bring his thoughts together. Then he said, stammering a little, “Never mind it, then. You can go.”

  The boy bowed and ducked quickly away, not wanting to give him the time to reconsider, maybe. Tyren himself went back out into the yard and walked over to the gate. He beckoned for the guard to come down and the man came, hurriedly, raising his right hand in a hasty salute.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “My slave took the black colt out?”

  “Yes, sir. Not quarter of an h
our ago. He said he had his orders from you. I let him go.”

  Tyren said nothing. His heart was pounding, thoughts running through his head too quickly. He had the absurd urge to laugh.

  The guard said, with anxiousness in his voice, “Is everything all right, sir?”

  “No—yes. Yes, of course. Everything’s all right. When he returns tell him to—tell him to put the colt up and wait for me in the stable. I’ll be back presently.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He saddled Risun a little unsteadily, his thoughts drifting. He could search for him, of course. The Cesino couldn’t have gotten far, and people would remember the black colt. You didn’t see a horse such as that any day. Surely the Cesino must have known he wouldn’t get far. He turned the idea over in his mind, considering. Easy enough to mount pursuit. Embarrassing, especially with Luchian here—Risto couldn’t even keep his own body-slave in order. But easy enough, and then the thing would be forgotten, as if it hadn’t happened.

  But deep inside he knew he wasn’t going to mount a search. The thing was his own fault. He should have set the Cesino free back in Vessy, let him go then. Let him take the horse, even. It wasn’t that the horse mattered so much. It was just that the horse had been a gift from his father—for once it had been almost a loving gesture. Well, it wasn’t the horse itself that mattered. His own fault. (And, damn it all, why had Luchian even been here? Almost as if he’d known. Maybe he had known—or he might have guessed. He’d have known you’d be coming through Rien. But, damn it all to Hell, why’d he have to be here?)

  He’d no intention of coming back to the club. He left the stable-yard and rode out again onto the Gate Street. At least, he thought, at least the Cesino hadn’t taken Risun. It was good to be on his own horse again. Let the Cesino have the black colt; he still had Risun, and that was how it should be. The Cesino had the greater need for a fast horse anyway: there was the slave-ring round his throat, and the penalty for runaways was steep. If only the colt hadn’t been a gift from his father.