His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1)

by Amanda McCrina

  Moien, in the adjoining room, must have heard the struggle. He came in at a run, a torch in one hand, his drawn sword in the other.

  “Bring the light,” said Torien, sharply.

  Moien came quickly over to hold the torch above him. Torien threw down his sword and knelt and took the collar of the man’s tunic in his hands. He pulled the man up to look at his face.

  “Tell me who paid you, bastard,” he said.

  The man looked at him and said nothing. The sword stroke had opened him up crosswise from the bottom of the rib-cage to the hip. He dribbled blood after a moment and was still, his head lolling back, his breath leaving him in a long, gurgling sigh. Torien recognized the face in the flickering torch-light. The man was one of Viere’s own guard. He’d been with them on the hunt earlier.

  He let go the man’s collar. “Tore,” he said harshly to Moien.

  He sat back on his heels and looked at the body while Moien was gone. There was a tightness inside him, a coldness: so this was why Viere had wanted him here.

  Moien returned with Tore behind him. Tore swore through shut teeth when he saw the body. “Bastard. This is his hospitality?”

  There was a sudden rush of footsteps out in the corridor. Viere came into the room with two other of his guardsmen close at his heels. He’d dressed—hurriedly and carelessly, by the look of it—and he carried an unsheathed sword in his hand.

  “Lord Risto,” he said. “They told me—”

  “Explain this, Viere, before you explain anything else,” said Moien, cutting him off. He prodded the body with his right foot, turning it so the face could be seen in the torch-light from the corridor.

  Viere looked down at it. There was a sudden dazed stupidity in his face when he recognized it. Unfeigned, Torien thought, and some of his inward tightness eased away. He picked up his sword and got to his feet. If this had really been Viere’s man, if Viere had arranged the thing, then surely he’d have some excuse prepared, would be able to handle himself better. Instead he was silent, his back suddenly rigid, his fingers tight round the grip of his sword. He looked, white-faced, from the body to Moien, from Moien to Tore. His eyes came to Torien last of all. They looked at each other. Then Viere swallowed, and turned a little, and gave his sword slowly over to the guardsman who stood at his right elbow. When that was done he went down to his knees before Torien, his head bowed, his shoulders stiff, holding himself up with his sword hand spread flat against the floor.

  He spoke quietly.

  “I have no explanation, Lord Risto. It is an unspeakable shame to me that this was done in my house, by one in my pay. I’ll accept whatever punishment you pronounce for that.” He drew a breath and added, “Only—let it be on my own head, lord. Spare my family.”

  There was silence in the room a while.

  Torien looked over to Moien in the torch-light. Moien gave one slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head, but he said nothing. His mouth was pressed tight, his brow creased in a dark scowl.

  Tore spoke first, in a low, harsh voice. “Let him tell you who plotted this with him, Father. He didn’t act alone.”

  Viere didn’t move from his knees, didn’t raise his head, but Torien saw the brief twitch of his mouth, as if he’d started to speak and had decided against it.

  “Give Lord Viere’s sword here and leave us,” Torien said to the guardsmen.

  They did as he said, giving over the weapon to Moien and then going out obediently, wordlessly, though one hesitated in the doorway a moment, casting an uncertain glance back towards the kneeling man.

  Viere spoke again when they’d gone. His voice was dry and gray as ashes now, but quiet as before. “My family, Lord Risto. Please.”

  Tore said, sharply, “Who else, Viere? Who paid you for this? You couldn’t have done it alone. There’d have been an examination, a trial. You’d need Choiro money for that.”

  Viere shook his head. “No. I’d no knowledge of it, lord. My loyalty belongs to you and to our Emperor, none else, I swear it on my life.”

  “You brought my father here so he’d be vulnerable, defenseless.”

  Viere shook his head again, doggedly. “That wasn’t my reason, lord.”

  “Your man happened into this chamber by mistake, I take it?”

  “Tore,” said Torien.

  Tore looked over to him, met his eyes, looked quickly away again, clenching his jaw. There was hot anger in his face but he didn’t say anything else.

  “When did he come to you, Viere?” Torien said. He lifted the tip of his blade briefly towards the dead man.

  “He isn’t new to me,” said Viere, after a moment’s hesitation. He raised his head just enough to glance over to where the guardsman’s body lay. “He’s been among my own household guard a while. I—can’t say how long, for sure. Seven, eight years. He was my father’s man before he was mine. I trusted him, Lord Risto, I admit that to you.”

  “I know what it is to be betrayed by those I trust, Viere,” said Torien. “It’s never an easy thing.”

  “I’d no thought of betraying you, Lord Risto,” said Viere.

  “No,” said Torien. “No, I know that.”

  Tore said, through shut teeth, “Father—”

  Torien went over to the bed, to his packs, and found a cloth, and sat down on the bed to clean the blood from his sword. He sheathed the sword afterward and set it back down against the wall. There was a sudden heavy weariness in him.

  “Get up, Viere,” he said. “This wasn’t your doing. I’m not blind.”

  Viere got up slowly to his feet. There was nothing changed in his face, but the tense set of his shoulders had eased a little.

  “You were willing to show honest friendship to me, Viere,” Torien said. He spoke quietly for the weariness. “So I’ll be honest with you. I was to die, you were to be blamed for it. Whoever plotted this thing will certainly not want alliance between us instead. If you give me your loyalty now I can’t promise you they won’t seek retaliation for it, do you understand? Loyalty to me is more unhealthy than it used to be.”

  “I understand you, Lord Risto,” said Viere, calmly. “My loyalty lies with you regardless.”

  “Learn what you can of him, then.” Torien dipped his chin towards the body. “Had he family, that you know?”

  “Not to my knowledge, lord,” said Viere.

  “Well, with luck there’ll be some clues for us among his effects. And ask among the rest of your people. He may have dropped a careless word or two.”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Viere.

  “Take your sword, Viere,” said Torien. “Send your men back for the body.”

  * * *

  “What other evidence are you hoping to find?” Tore asked him, afterward. He was still angry. Torien could see it in the stiff bracing of his back, hear it in the fervent, hastily reasoned rush of his words. “He got you away from Vessy, and it was his own man. What other evidence do you need? There are plenty of men in Choiro who’d have paid him to do it—and paid for his pardon, afterward. We’ve our enemies in the Senate, and the Vieri are an old Senate family.”

  “It wasn’t his work,” said Torien. “If he’d intended to murder me there were better ways he might have done it, ways which didn’t point to him so clearly—a poorly thrown spear during the hunt, hired brigands on the road. No, this was another’s doing, and it was meant not only to accomplish my death, but to ruin Viere. He and I have common enemies, it seems. I’ll give him the chance to prove himself an ally.”

  “Or to laugh at us,” said Tore.

  “You’d rather I kill him?”

  Tore said nothing.

  “And his family?” Torien said. “Sell them, maybe? Or do you recommend their deaths, too?”

  Tore closed his eyes, briefly. “Examine him further, at least,” he said. “You’ve no reason to trust him.”

  “Maybe he swore himself falsely,” said Torien. “Maybe this was his doing after all. Maybe, maybe not. Any of it is possible. I could t
urn against every last one of my allies for that kind of fear, for doubt, and whoever arranged this thing will have succeeded anyway.”

  There was a tinge of mockery to Tore’s voice now. “So you reserve your fear and your doubt for the Marri instead. No doubt you think they were the ones behind this?”

  “The Marri murdered my father and my brother and were let to go unpunished for it, Tore. I know the truth of that, at least. If nothing else I know the truth of that.”

  “You’ve better evidence Viere arranged to murder you here than you have that the Marri murdered your father and your brother. Don’t be a fool, Father. You’ve let this thing distract you, delude you for twenty years now, and your enemies in the Senate have finally taken advantage of that, and you’re blind to it.”

  “What do you know of it?” said Torien. “You’ve heard the telling of it. I was there to bury them. Don’t call me a fool, Tore.”

  But he said it without conviction, with the same dull weariness sinking into him, blunting the anger, because he knew Tore was right. He’d poured himself utterly into this fight, and he’d nothing left now but his own stubbornness, his own blindness—nothing else left to him, after all these years, but to go on fighting proudly, doggedly, stupidly, while his world fell to ruin round him.

  VI

  The days passed in the routine he’d established and suddenly Tyren had been in Souvin more than a month. It was full summer now, the fields ripening for harvest, the farmers busy with the wheat-threshing and sheep-shearing, their women with the spinning. Verio came into his office one afternoon to remind him of something.

  “Tomorrow’s the twenty-sixth, sir,” he said, sitting down in the cross-legged chair before the desk.

  “I was aware of that,” Tyren said.

  “You’re aware of what the day is to the Cesini?”

  He looked up to Verio and said nothing. Verio said, “It’s a day of remembrance for them—the day they had their victory against Varen.”

  “Under Anien Varro,” Tyren said. He remembered now. “So they celebrate it?”

  “They celebrate it. Some use it as an excuse to work some mischief, some of the hotheaded ones. It’s one of the more interesting days we get.”

  “There’ll be trouble?”

  Verio shrugged. “There’s been violence before,” he said.

  “Serious?”

  “Nothing that can’t be contained, of course—no, sir. But better, maybe, if they know from the start any gestures they make will be useless.”

  “What are you suggesting I do?”

  “In the past,” Verio said, carelessly, “the commander would hang a man. That was always an effective deterrent.”

  Tyren stared at him. “Hang an innocent man? That’s what you’re asking me to do?”

  “None of these people are innocent, sir. They swear their loyalty to the Empire and support the rebellion anyway.”

  “You’ve no real evidence any of these people support a resistance movement.”

  “The very fact there’s still a resistance movement after all this time is proof they support it. Not just on principle, either. Not just in their heads. Have you ever seen a mountain winter, Commander Risto?”

  He said, “No.”

  “You couldn’t last a winter in these mountains without food, without medicine. There isn’t enough game—you couldn’t hunt enough to feed five men, much less twenty, thirty. But these rebels survive. They get their food and medicine somehow. Maybe you’ve not yet caught these people in the act, sir, but logically—”

  “I’m not prepared to execute a man for treason until he’s been caught in the act, Lieutenant,” Tyren said, tightly.

  Verio’s face hardened.

  “You have to show yourself strong in this place, sir,” he said. “If you do nothing you’re only inviting violence, inviting them to test us. And they’ll test us, sir.”

  “I didn’t say I’d do nothing. Post men in pairs across the village to stand guard, change out the shifts every three hours. Have Aino ride patrols along the western rim. Make a show of force. But I will not allow any mistreatment of these people and I will not execute an innocent man. You told me about Rylan Sarre yourself, what his death did here.”

  “Rylan Sarre wasn’t an innocent man,” Verio said, sharply. “Sir.”

  “Then the death of an innocent man will turn these people against us even more. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand you,” Verio said. This time he neglected the ‘sir’ entirely.

  “Inform Aino,” Tyren said.

  He was angry, when Verio had gone, and he just sat at the desk with his jaw clenched, cursing Verio and Vareno stupidity in his head. It surprised him a little, the anger. He hadn’t felt this way before—hadn’t felt so strongly about it. But little wonder these people hate us. It wasn’t the concept of empire, not the concept itself. The Cesini had had their own kings, after all, and when you got down to the principles of the thing the Varri had been no different than the Berioni—had come of the same stock, even. No, it was the way the concept was realized in this place. We lash out with violence and they retaliate with violence, or the other way round, all in an endless cycle. No chance for the building-up of trust, for real peace. There were those who couldn’t understand that and there were those who understood it well enough and didn’t care.

  He knew Verio thought him weak, soft; knew it would be difficult to earn the man’s respect after this. But in the morning Verio saw to the posting of the guards, and sent Aino out on patrol, and said nothing of what had happened in the office yesterday.

  He rode out on Risun through the village at mid-day. The place was quiet, nothing out of the ordinary, though there was a tight-faced, wordless hostility among the village folk because of the presence of so many garrison troops, uneasiness hanging heavy on the air. But the day passed without event. When evening came the villagers were in their houses; it was a night for feasting, and the uneasiness gave way a little, and there was laughter again, Cesino voices, native songs. Aino returned from a last patrol of the circuit at the twentieth hour and they had their own quiet supper in the officers’ mess. When it was done Tyren went out to stand at the gate, leaning against the post, looking out across the firelit village and the common. The smoke of the cook-fires was drifting on the night air, and with it the pungent, bitter smell of roasted chestnuts, and he wished very briefly there were no division here, no tension between garrison and village folk—that you might have a night like this without deep-seated hatred and mistrust and fear on both their parts. Verio stood with him, a little way back, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

  A red light sprang up across the village to the north. Verio started, unfolding his arms.

  “Bonfire,” said Tyren, lazily.

  “We should take a look, sir,” Verio said, trying to be off-handed.

  “All right,” Tyren said. He wouldn’t mind taking a look. It was something to do besides stand here pensively at the fort.

  A stable-boy brought out their horses and they mounted and rode out from the gate and through the village to where the fire had come up, one of the fallow fields that hadn’t been used for planting this year. They sat back on the road, out of the ring of firelight, and watched the Cesini pile kindling on the flames, catching bits and pieces of the words that drifted on the air with the smoke and ash. Youngsters, most of these.

  Verio said, “What are they saying?”

  Tyren glanced over to him. “You don’t speak Cesino, Lieutenant?”

  “Not much, sir,” Verio admitted.

  Tyren didn’t say anything else right away. So Verio had been four years in this place and couldn’t speak the native tongue. No real need, perhaps—certainly there were Cesini enough who could speak Vareno, the language of the Empire. But surprising, just the same.

  He said, “They intend this for the fort one of these days.”

  Verio looked to him quickly. “You’re saying—”

  He smiled. �
��No, it was in jest.”

  “What are they really saying?”

  “The girl thinks they’ve let it grow too big, thinks her brother should put it out before it carries to the trees. The little one wonders whether they see it in Carent. They will if it catches the wood afire, the taller one says—they’ll think we’ve lit a beacon as the mountain forts used to do in times of war. The other—”

  Verio had turned his face away again. “I understand, sir,” he said.

  “I’m going back,” said Tyren.

  They rode back to the fort in silence; Verio seemed too embarrassed to say anything. Regaro and Aino, the junior officers, were waiting for them in the torch-lit yard, a mounted regular with them. They saluted and Regaro said, “Commander Risto, we’ve men missing.”

  He said, “Missing?”

  “Yes, sir. Our two men posted at the western end of the valley—Sælo and Rian. They weren’t at their post when the shift changed just now. No sign of their horses. We were preparing to send out searchers, sir.”

  “You’ve men at the post now?”

  The regular spoke up. “Yes, sir. I came back to bring the word, sir, but Nevare is still there.”

  “I’ll go,” Tyren said. “And Verio, and Aino. Regaro, you’re in command here.”

  “Yes, sir,” Regaro said.

  “Bring a light,” Tyren said to Aino.

  When Aino had mounted up they rode out from the gate and turned to go west, riding uphill towards the patrol path, following the water channel, the flickering light from Aino’s torch painting the dark water red. They came eventually to the little seam where the valley floor and the southern hillside met to become level footing. They dismounted and the regular, Nevare, came out from the dark trees to meet them, resting the palm of his right hand on the pommel of his sword, shaking his head when Verio asked him if he’d found any sign of the missing men. Aino lit another torch and gave one to Tyren and took the other and they spread out to look, Nevare going with Aino, Verio coming behind Tyren, calling the names, getting no answer. Tyren knelt down to have a look at the ground, holding the torch in one hand. Verio stood behind him, looking round, his mouth tight.