Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy)

by Bell, Hilari

  Dalad’s eyes, above the cloth that covered his mouth, were wide with shock. He looked from one side to the other, seeking a way around the flames, but the crates the barrel had rolled up against were too close to the burning walls.

  Kavi looked at the fiery track that danced across the floor. It was expanding slowly, but not yet so wide that a determined man couldn’t jump over it, at least if he got a running—

  An ax crashed through the warehouse door.

  If he didn’t jump now, he might not have a chance later—but if they were seen inside the locked warehouse where the fire had started, scarlet cloaks or no, they would all die.

  Kavi darted sideways, between two stacks of crates, and watched Dalad drag his brother into another narrow isle. The crates gave him some welcome protection from the heat, since even his thick cloak was beginning to steam.

  The big doors flew open with a rush of wind, which was greeted by a rumble from the fire. The sudden burst of flames forced Kavi down to the floor, seeking cooler air. He crawled to the corner and peered out.

  If the Hrum who entered shouted, their voices were lost in the fire’s waterfall roar. Trying to fight this was useless—and with a sinking heart, Kavi knew that the Hrum would soon realize it.

  The band of fire on the floor was growing.

  The first soldiers through the door cast the contents of their buckets on the flames and ran out as others came in—in through the left door and out through the right, with perfect Hrum efficiency.

  In the flame-lit, smoke-filled chaos, no one but Kavi saw that two more scarlet-cloaked figures had joined the exiting men. Exactly as planned, Kavi reflected bitterly, except for the blazing section of floor, which was now so wide that even in the chaos a man who tried to jump over it was bound to be noticed.

  He would have to wait, wait till the Hrum gave up trying to put out a volcano by pissing on it, and follow the very last of them out. At least by then Dalad and Tur would have shed their cloaks and vanished into the brush-shrouded fishermen’s trails that lined the riverbank.

  But while the Hrum were fighting their futile fight, and Dalad and Tur were escaping, the river of fire on the floor grew wider and wider. It was too wide now for any sane man to jump, but Kavi was ready to try. Feel free to give up any time now.

  Being Hrum, they continued to dash in and out like suicidal ants. Kavi dug his fingernails into his palms. Soon he would have to choose between death by fire, or death by Hrum torture, and he wasn’t at all certain which would be worse. Quit, you stubborn bastards!

  Finally the stream of men coming through the left door slowed. The last of them cast their water onto the flames, barely glancing at the fire anymore, and ran out, arms raised to shield their faces.

  Kavi was already sprinting from his hiding place when two more Hrum rushed into the inferno.

  Flame take them! It seemed to be a literally likely fate, and Kavi could wait no longer, no matter who saw him.

  But where the last dozen men had cast their buckets at the fire near the doors and exited as fast as possible, these men ran to the center of the warehouse and threw the contents of their buckets onto the burning floor.

  One of them was smaller than the other.

  As a patch of blackness swept through the shimmering flames, Kavi began to run. His folk might not be fighters, like the deghans had been, but they were the bravest and best of comrades. The thought lightened his heart, lightened his heels, so when he leaped he sailed through the flame-striped space, lit firmly on the charred patch the soldiers’ buckets had created, and made for the door without breaking stride.

  He barely had time to whisper a prayer that no one would notice that three had come out where two had gone in, then he was through the door, running away from the fire, into the cool dark.

  The first breath of fresh air raked into his lungs, and he fell to his knees and began to cough. His throat felt as if he’d tried to swallow a pinecone, and it had gotten stuck halfway down. He knew he should rise, and casually wander off before some helpful Hrum surgeon approached, but his lungs had a will of their own and took over the rest of his body. All he could do was try to drag in air between the spasms.

  Then Kavi felt strong, woodworker’s hands grip his arms and lift him away from the fire, away from prying eyes. They all but carried him, for he could offer little help.

  He was just beginning to get his feet under him when they dragged him into the river’s shallows and dropped him. Cool water flowed over scorched skin, easing, steadying. Small sips soothed his roughened throat—and if the water wasn’t clean, Kavi didn’t care.

  In a few moments he was able to wipe his streaming eyes and sit up, looking back at the fire.

  He needn’t have worried about anyone counting who went in and out the doors, for the scene was a fire-lit bedlam of running men. They were trying to clear the brush around the building, and wetting the ground where it would fall. Soon now, for the flames were eating through the walls and beginning to seep through cracks in the roof planks. Nothing could survive in there now, Kavi realized. He shuddered.

  “Thank you.” His voice was a husky rasp. He’d best not be talking to any Hrum for a few days.

  “What, were you thinking we’d leave you to burn?” Dalad’s voice sounded almost normal, which was good, since the Hrum would be questioning the townsfolk.

  Tur, who had no voice to betray him, nodded emphatically.

  “Is your arm bad?” Kavi croaked. “Will they—” He broke off, coughing again, though not as convulsively now.

  “Barely scorched,” said Dalad, and Tur nodded again. “His sleeve will hide it—it won’t even be showing in two days.”

  “No one saw your faces?”

  “You are a proper old woman, aren’t you?” But Dalad’s hands, as he released the clasp on Kavi’s cloak, were gentle. “Everyone in that crowd had scarves tied over their faces. No one looked twice at us. Just like no one’s looking now. Time to go, grandma.”

  He was right, Kavi saw. Even the men lifting buckets out of the water paid no attention to two soldiers helping another who’d been overcome by the smoke.

  Kavi kept alert as they eased into the bushes, but no one was looking their way. No shouts rang out. They were almost a quarter league away when he heard the distant crash as the warehouse finally collapsed, but unlike Tur, he didn’t look back.

  The Hrum were a careful folk, for all their arrogance. They’d be standing well back when it went down. Kavi’s second venture into sabotage hadn’t taken a single life—unlike the first. He greatly preferred this peasant way of fighting.

  Despite the lack of bloodshed, it was effective. They had just destroyed the largest Hrum supply depot in Farsala, and all the goods within. It was Sorahb’s first open move against the enemy, and a worthy one. Kavi couldn’t help but wonder how the Hrum would react to it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SORAYA

  SORAYA’S DAY USUALLY STARTED when someone tripped over her bedroll, beginning the incessant round of wood, water, and wash. But as time passed, muscles already strong from hunting and riding grew stronger and ceased to ache, and her sore hands grew callused and tough.

  As she became more accustomed to the constant round of work, Soraya learned even more about the Hrum—the more she learned, the sooner she’d be able to find out where her mother and Merdas had been taken. She paid particular attention to the security that surrounded the locked record chests, and the small shack—which had originally been a tent—where they were stored. She discovered which clerks had keys, and how the sentries’ shifts changed. But none of that would matter until she learned to read Hrum, so she asked Calfaer to teach her to read it, as well as speak it, “for no one ever taught me reading afore.”

  He cast her an amused glance, though she was better at maintaining her accent these days. And since the time one of the kitchen boys got a good look at her and instantly professed himself smitten—she’d been forced to box his ears to disabuse him of the noti
on—she’d been careful about hiding her face behind her hair. The servants she could deal with, but if one of the soldiers reacted that way . . .

  But they hadn’t. In fact some of the soldiers, and many of the officers, seemed to think that servants had neither ears nor brains. Soraya would have found it insulting, if it hadn’t been so convenient. She wondered what she had said in front of her maids—what had gone on in the minds behind those timid exteriors?

  “I’ll be glad to teach you,” Calfaer told her. “If I’d ever been given a choice, I might have become a teacher. And if you’re literate in Hrum, as well as fluent, you can rise in their service—or perhaps be hired by an officer when he leaves the army. But don’t let the Hrum know you’re learning. They don’t begin teaching their language to conquered folk till they’re certain the country is subdued, and that goes double for writing.”

  Soraya had blinked in surprise. Farsala wasn’t sufficiently subdued? More and more merchants were selling freely to the Hrum. They’d even made a deal with the local farmers to haul off the kitchen midden and waste from the latrines and the stock pens and use it to fertilize the local fields—just like any peasant village.

  Calfaer’s gaze was ironic, and Soraya sensed that he suspected her motives, but he asked no questions, then or ever. At first Soraya supposed that ignorance was safer for a slave, that he would seek it instinctively. But as she spoke with Calfaer, in Farsalan when others were nearby, and in Hrum when no one listened, she learned he hadn’t been born a slave. He’d been the son of a family of wealth and power before his country, a place called Brasnia, had been conquered. He was twelve at the time, he told her, and his father, along with the rest of Brasnia’s nobility, had fought the Hrum.

  “We might have won too,” said Calfaer, “if our own serfs hadn’t joined with them, fighting against us.” It was the first time Soraya had heard bitterness in his voice.

  “Serfs? I don’t know that word.”

  “Like your peasants, only obliged to till the land, or perform other tasks their masters assign to them.”

  “So serf is another word for slave?”

  “No, no! We never kept slaves.” Though as he proceeded to talk about serfdom, the only difference Soraya could see was that to buy a serf you had to purchase the land they farmed as well, and that serfs were—usually—allowed to keep a small portion of the fruits of their labor. But Calfaer’s father had owned serfs, and Calfaer had been a slave most of his life, so he doubtless knew more about it than Soraya did.

  And there was another important difference: A serf couldn’t be separated from his family. Calfaer had a wife and children, back on his old master’s estate. But that master had chosen Calfaer to accompany his son into the army, and the son had willed Calfaer to the army when he died. He would probably never see his family again, though he wrote to them all the time, and sometimes received their letters in return. He hadn’t seen them for over twelve years.

  The reminder that families could be sold apart chilled Soraya to the bone, though by this time she knew that by Hrum law no child under thirteen could be separated from its mother. Merdas was only three, she reminded herself. Ten years would be far longer than she needed to find and free them, no matter where in the vast Hrum Empire they’d been sent. But as Calfaer spoke to her of land after land, she began to realize just how vast the empire was, and she had to admit that it might take years.

  Merdas had loved her as much as a two-year-old could love anyone. Would he even remember her by the time she found him? No matter—her love for him was motivation enough. Whatever it took she would do it, one step at a time. And the first step was to learn to speak and read Hrum. Under Calfaer’s competent tutoring, she was making good progress in reading, and excellent progress in understanding the language. She couldn’t speak it well, but she already understood most of what was said. It was as if that strange sense she’d developed for people’s emotions lent her an edge in guessing the meaning of words she didn’t know.

  Soraya also learned the history of other servants in the camp besides Calfaer. There was big Ludo, who was supposed to have been dropped on his head as an infant, though Soraya thought he’d probably been born simple. But he could lift a huge kettle of boiling soup without spilling a drop, carry two flour bags on his shoulders at the same time, and he always smiled. He was the only one to whom Soraya dared to show her face.

  Another servant she liked was Casia, a strong, middle-aged woman, who had married young, raised her children, and lived all her life in the same small village. When her husband was trampled by an ox and died, she’d scandalized her whole family by taking up with the army for the adventure of it.

  Most of the servants, Soraya had been surprised to learn, had freely chosen to work for the army. The pay was good, they told her, and they got to travel and see other lands. And if the people there were a bit hostile at first, well, they usually got over it quick enough.

  Soraya, seeing the small signs of acceptance among the people of Setesafon, feared they were right. But that didn’t matter anymore. Farsala was taken, and she couldn’t change that no matter how much it hurt. Merdas and Sudaba were what mattered. The only difference those treacherous peasants’ acceptance made was that sooner or later one of them would approach the army for work, and that would increase her risk.

  It was the risk she thought about when Casia, who usually served in the governor’s quarters, slipped on a piece of fallen peach and twisted her ankle, and Hennic looked around the kitchen and picked up the big tray filled with small cups and handed it to Soraya.

  “You will go serve. Farsalan girls know how to carry a tray, don’t you?”

  “Of course I can carry a tray,” said Soraya tartly. For all his quick temper, Hennic didn’t care who talked back to him, as long as they worked quickly and well. Soraya hadn’t suddenly made his tea scalding hot for several weeks now. And she’d never done it too often—only when he really deserved it.

  “But I’ve never served the officers before,” she went on. “How do I know who’ll want what?”

  The tray was heavy. Soraya braced it against her stomach to keep it from tipping.

  “You know because you ask them.” Hennic spoke with exaggerated patience, as if he was talking to Ludo. Except Hennic was genuinely patient with Ludo. “Beer, sir, or mint tea? You know how to say that?”

  “Yes, but . . .” But what if some officer has seen enough deghans to recognize one? What if one of them sees my face and wants me to bring something to his quarters late one night and stay till dawn? What if one of these men is responsible for my father’s death?

  But she knew that one of the Hrum officers had killed her father.

  Whatever it takes.

  “Yes, Kitchen Master Hennic,” said Soraya.

  She shifted the tray and walked toward the door. Casia had been helped onto a bench, where she sat clutching her ankle and waiting for the surgeon. The lines on her face had deepened with pain, but when Soraya passed she summoned a smile and winked.

  “Nothing to it, girl. It’s just like serving a table in the meal tent, and you’ve done that dozens of times.”

  In fact, having spent years watching her mother direct their maids in the art of gracious and invisible service, table service was one of the few things Soraya did well. She knew the small tricks, like always standing so the person served could take what you offered with their right hand. Her father had taught her to move silently for the hunt, and making herself invisible in plain sight was a skill she’d perfected over the last few weeks. She sometimes wondered if she was using the strange sense she’d developed for people to make them overlook her. Could she possibly be using shilshadu magic without knowing it? Surely not.

  At least she had nothing to fear in serving in the governor’s quarters, Soraya reassured herself as she threaded the busy traffic of the central square. After all these weeks, proper service was something she could do without even thinking about it. But in Garren’s quarters she’d have
to keep her wits about her. If she did that, she’d have no trouble at . . .

  Soraya came to a stop, staring at the governor’s quarters closed door. She had no hand free to open it and if she kicked it, to approximate a knock, she’d interrupt whatever was going on inside. She could have set the tray on the ground and opened the door, but one of Hennic’s rules was that nothing that held uncovered food was to be placed on the ground. And it was no use thinking he wouldn’t know—Hennic always found out about things like that.

  Three officers came up the path where she was standing, and Soraya stepped aside. Since the summer’s heat had set in, the Hrum had started wearing sleeveless tunics that showed off their rank tattoos. The markings these men bore indicated two substrategi and a tactimian—high officers. They paid Soraya no attention as they passed, but as they went through the door one of the substrategi, a huge man with a bushy red beard, held the door open and looked back at her inquiringly.

  “Thank you, sir.” Soraya scuttled through, like a beetle darting into a crack.

  Governor Garren was the only officer who’d had his quarters built bigger than his old tent had been, but the front room, where business was conducted, was still crowded. The governor and a handful of substrategi sat around the table, and everyone else stood.

  Soraya went to serve the governor first. She had seen Garren often enough, in the meal tent, which they still called a tent, though it was now completely framed in wood. Like most of the high officers, the governor ate in his quarters, but he sometimes came to the meal tent to address the troops. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, she supposed, though his face was too sharp for her taste—when she first saw him, she thought he looked like a shopkeeper. It wasn’t until he spoke that his total lack of warmth, humor, and compassion made itself felt.