Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy)

by Bell, Hilari

  It wasn’t that they didn’t meet, or that he was angry with her, which had been her first thought. But he didn’t seek her out to offer lessons, and when she did see him, she sensed some sort of tension, almost fear, underlying his usual calm.

  So she wasn’t completely surprised that morning, when he failed to appear at his usual chores. Hennic was missing as well, and when he finally arrived—looking to be in an even worse temper than usual—Ordnancer Reevus was with him. The ordnancer was unshaven and rumpled, which was most unlike him.

  “After breakfast has been served, you will all gather in the yard beyond the ovens,” Reevus told them grimly.

  A ripple of consternation passed through the staff. Soldiers were punished in the main square, where all the troops could gather to witness the consequences of breaking army rules. And even though it hadn’t happened in the months Soraya had been here, she knew that servants were punished in the yard beyond the ovens—smaller, for the servants who were required to watch were a far smaller population, and there was no need to disrupt the lives of the troops and officers with their discipline. And Calfaer was the only one missing!

  What could he have done? She had thought Calfaer was resigned to his lot, if not content with it. He had no quarrel with anyone Soraya knew of, except Barmael, who seemed like a decent man. But did she really know the substrategus?

  Hennic slammed a pot onto the hearth with a crash that made everyone jump. “Back to work! Breakfast won’t make itself, and if three thousand troops go hungry you’ll all feel the lash!”

  The lash? Soraya shivered, and went back to fetching vegetables for the cook who was starting the midmeal stew. What had Calfaer done? Was there some way she could help him? Without giving herself away? No. She had to put Merdas and Sudaba first. She had to! But if there was anything she could do for Calfaer . . . He was her friend. How could she fail to help him, whatever the cost? But even if she was willing to abandon her family—and she couldn’t do that—what could she do?

  At least torture was against Hrum law—they considered it uncivilized. But their military discipline was almost as harsh. Calfaer had told her the difference was that the law prescribed both the types of penalty that were acceptable, and when such penalties could be applied, while a torturer could do anything. Soraya didn’t consider that much of a difference.

  All too soon, breakfast passed. Even before the last of the soldiers had left the meal tent, Hennic was herding the servants out of the kitchen, striking those who lingered with a big, wooden spoon. Soraya, feeling the dread and regret that underlay his anger, hardly blamed him.

  Three deci surrounded the small, grave group that gathered by the big ovens—as if it took thirty armed soldiers to stop the kitchen staff from trying anything. Ordnancer Reevus was there, grim and sorrowful, but he wasn’t the highest-ranking officer present. Barmael’s blunt, bearded face was even more expressionless than usual. Calfaer, standing with his hands bound in front of him, glared at the substrategus with angry defiance.

  Had her comments on sacrifice led to this? Soraya’s heart ached. But what could she do?

  “You have been called here to witness the punishment of the slave Calfaer,” Ordnancer Reevus said firmly. “As you know, respect for officers, in word and deed, is required from all members of this army. This is the rule Calfaer has broken.”

  Lack of respect didn’t sound bad, but Soraya knew that the Hrum regarded it as part of their military discipline and took it seriously. And if she knew that, Calfaer had to have known it too. What could he have said or done—

  “The slave Calfaer has attempted to ‘ill-wish’ Substrategus Barmael, by means of a charm thought to be of great power in the Brasnian culture,” Reevus went on.

  A charm? Calfaer had said nothing to indicate the Brasnians believed in any kind of magic. And she knew he thought the tales she told him of Farsalan djinn were silly, though he’d been too polite to say so.

  “He did this by making this charm, imbuing it with ill will, and placing it under Substrategus Barmael’s bed,” Reevus went on. He pulled a small cluster of leaves from his pocket and held it out for all to see. For just a moment, contempt for Barmael, for his vindictive superstition, flickered across the ordnancer’s face, then he banished it. He handed the bundle of leaves to the nearest servant, who happened to be Casia. “In their culture, this constitutes a personal attack.”

  Soraya’s gasp was lost among the others. Attacking an officer, even plotting to do so, could be punished by death.

  “But Substrategus Barmael has been persuaded to content himself with a charge of disrespect, though he insists on punishment for that.”

  Soraya’s throat was tight. The substrategus, with his unshaven face and his strange accent, had seemed a kind man. She reached out and took the small bundle of leaves from Casia, closing her eyes, reaching for the leaves’ shilshadu. Using the ability in her work—to heat water, to coax fire to life—had made her far quicker at it. Dried basil, with prickling thistles mixed in. A shadowy memory of life, of long sunlight and quenching rain. Nothing but leaves.

  She opened her mouth to say so, to tell them there was no magic here . . . but how could she explain her knowledge? Her palms stung, and she realized she had clenched her hands on the thistles and let the bundle drop.

  “Wait,” said Hennic. “How do you know it was Calfaer that did it? It could have been someone else, couldn’t it? I mean, Substrategus Barmael’s not . . . um . . .”

  He meant that Barmael’s criticism of the governor’s policies was earning him enemies among the officers. But they would hardly show their enmity by putting leaves under his bed, and besides—

  “This form of . . . attack is particular to the Brasnian countryside,” Reevus explained. “And Calfaer is the only Brasnian besides the substrategus currently in camp. When we asked him about it, he confessed. Although . . .” He turned to Calfaer, a bit of hope creeping into his expression. “If there is anything you want to say, any explanation you want to give, you may speak now. Ten lashes is the minimum disciplinary penalty, but it may be lessened if there are exculpatory circumstances.”

  All eyes turned to Calfaer, who lifted his head. He turned to Barmael and spoke directly to him. “You are not fit to keep my father’s pigs.” Then he spat on the ground at Barmael’s feet.

  Barmael’s expression didn’t change, but Reevus’ face hardened. “Twelve lashes. Guard.”

  Two husky soldiers stepped forward to pull the slight, middle-aged slave over to the fence rail. Calfaer meant to go without resistance, Soraya saw. To walk with dignity. But as he approached the fence his steps began to slow. The soldiers had to drag him the last few yards, stumbling and slipping as he tried to brace his feet. They looped his wrists over the top of one fence post and tied them there, so that Calfaer stood with his back to the crowd.

  Soraya couldn’t stop it, but perhaps there was another way she could help. Maok had spoken of healers sharing the shilshadu of pain, but Soraya hadn’t paid much attention, since that kind of advanced Speaking was far beyond her ability.

  Now she closed her eyes and steadied her breathing, reaching deep—deeper than she had in months—into the still darkness where her own spirit dwelled. She tried to ignore the sounds of people moving around her. The arms master who was to execute the sentence tested his whip on the air, and the sound made the fine hairs on Soraya’s neck prickle. No, it’s not relevant. Deeper.

  Her grasp on her shilshadu was shakier than it should be, but it would soon be too late to try anything. She summoned up her memory of the warm, wry brightness that was the core of Calfaer’s spirit and opened herself to it—careful not to reach, for she knew that would fail.

  There he was, full of fear, but also . . . satisfaction? Soraya opened her eyes in confusion. No one had rescued him. Calfaer was still tied to the fence. The arms master who trained the soldiers to use a whip was stepping up behind him, cutting open the back of his shirt, pulling it off his shoulders.


  Calfaer was about to be flogged, and he knew it, but shilshadu to shilshadu there were no lies. Under the hammering fear was an intense sense of achievement—almost joy.

  What in Azura’s name was going on here? Soraya opened her sensing further. She had more experience with Calfaer, and she’d always found his shilshadu easy to touch, as if their spirits were well matched. But she also knew the others around her. There was Hennic, his pain already turning into anger. Ludo and Casia’s distress. But they weren’t the ones she was looking for.

  Reevus and Barmael stood watching as the arms master picked up his whip—there was no more time. Soraya closed her eyes again and tried to concentrate, to ignore what was about to happen. It was hard to open herself, instead of trying to grasp at Calfaer’s shilshadu, especially when the need was so urgent. But she’d become more adept at her summoning in the last few months. She was almost—

  The whip whistled down and snapped on flesh, and Soraya jumped, her thoughts scattering. Calfaer made a choked sound of pain.

  She put her hands over her ears, scuttling deeper into her spirit, like an animal seeking shelter in its burrow. Calfaer, Calfaer’s spirit. She opened to it as fully as she knew how, feeling the jagged spike of pain as the whip hit again. She could feel it but she didn’t know how to share it, to ease it, as the Suud healers did.

  But even as the pain increased, as his will shattered and he began to scream, that strange sense of victory grew. His body might wince but his spirit was content, almost welcoming the blows.

  It was another spirit, grave and soft, but also sharing some part of that odd satisfaction, that flinched at every cut.

  Soraya opened her eyes. For the first time in the months since she’d left the Suud, she had reached the full shilshadu trance. Ordinary objects—the rough-woven cloth of Casia’s tunic, the drab clay of the hot ovens—were distinct in Soraya’s vision, as if illuminated by some inner light. The splattering drops of Calfaer’s blood glowed with color, with life, like sun-drenched, crimson glass. Soraya looked at the faces around her: horrified, avid, sickened, smug. It was easy to read them, to sense the emotions behind the masks of flesh.

  She looked for the other spirit she had touched, searching only with her eyes, her spirit held carefully quiescent.

  There. Him. Barmael. His face was expressionless, but his spirit leaked pain and regret more freely than Calfaer’s back was bleeding. And the same satisfaction that cradled Calfaer’s spirit was there too—softer and less urgent in Barmael, but still the same feeling that everything was going according to plan.

  What plan? It was almost as if—

  “Are you all right, Sani? Come on, it’s all . . . It’s over.”

  A firm hand, Casia’s hand, shook Soraya’s shoulder, pulling her up through the warm layers of the trance. Objects lost their strange luster. The faces around her became ordinary, the emotions behind them decently hidden.

  Soraya gasped and shook herself free of the last of the trance. A surgeon was cutting down Calfaer’s limp body, easing him onto the waiting litter.

  The beating had ended, and she hadn’t even noticed.

  “Are you all right?” The sharp concern in Casia’s voice wasn’t only for Calfaer. Soraya summoned up a smile.

  “Don’t worry, I’m just . . . I’m fine.”

  Soraya took another breath and approached the surgeon. He had Calfaer on the litter now, almost ready to go.

  “Sir,” said Soraya humbly. “May I be tending to him? Calfaer’s a friend of mine.” She meant it too, though the sight of the ragged cuts, still oozing blood, made her stomach turn. But she couldn’t let Calfaer lie unattended.

  “Don’t worry, girl.” The surgeon’s voice was cool, but not unkind. “We’ll take good care of him.”

  “Yes, but after he’s been bandaged he’ll still need—”

  “We’re to nurse him,” said the surgeon. “Substrategus Barmael’s orders. He’ll have to have nursing, if he’s to travel in just three days.”

  “Travel? Travel where?” It came out more sharply than humble servant girls were supposed to speak, and Soraya bit her lip. The surgeon didn’t seem to notice.

  “That’s right. Bar—the substrategus doesn’t want to share camp with someone who can ill-wish him.”

  The surgeon’s neutral voice held the same contempt for barbarian superstition that Soraya had sensed from Reevus. But surely . . .

  “Travel where?” she demanded, no longer caring how she sounded.

  “Back to his old master,” said the surgeon. “I told them it was a long trip for a man who’s just been flogged. But his master left him to this unit of the army for as long as they needed his services, and if we didn’t want him he was to be returned to the man’s family, along with the rest of his personal belongings. We evidently needed him at the time, but if he’s being kicked out . . .” The surgeon shrugged.

  Two soldiers stepped forward to lift the litter. Calfaer moaned softly. The surgeon shrugged again and strode off after them, clearly having no more time to waste on servant girls. No time for slaves, when they weren’t injured. No time to know that “back to his old master” meant back to his wife and children.

  Calfaer was going home.

  SORAYA DIDN’T GO to see him during the days Calfaer lay in the surgeon’s building. She didn’t need to, and she knew he didn’t need her, or anyone here any longer.

  Had they planned it together, he and Barmael, that first night Calfaer approached him? How convenient it was, that there were no other Brasnians in the camp to say that there was no such thing as ‘ill-wishing’ in their culture. Still, Calfaer had paid a high price for his homecoming. Soraya was happy for him, though she knew she would miss his company.

  On the morning when the cart train in which Calfaer would travel was ready to set off, Soraya went to bid him farewell.

  It was already a breathlessly hot day, with a brassy taste in the air that Soraya knew meant clouds were gathering over the sea. The first of the summer thunderstorms would arrive late today. Soraya hoped the cart train would have reached shelter by then, for Calfaer was in no condition for a drenching.

  He hobbled out of the surgeon’s building, walking on his own, though he moved as slowly and stiffly as an old man, and the carter had to help him into the cart.

  Soraya waited till his breathing eased before she approached. “I came to wish you well,” she said. “Though I know you’ll be well, where you’re going.”

  “I will indeed,” said Calfaer. His face was tight and pale with pain, but the satisfaction had changed to an incandescent joy, as clear to Soraya’s senses as a shout of triumph. “Though I’ll miss you, my girl. Be . . . Take care.”

  Be careful. How much of Soraya’s story had he guessed? It didn’t matter, for she knew he would never tell anyone.

  A clerk hauled a chest of documents up to the cart. “Io, it’s hot already! What’s it going to be like this afternoon, if it’s this hot now?”

  It might well be raining, at least by evening.

  The carter snorted. “It’d be less hot if you just brought the scrolls I need, instead of lugging the whole chest around.”

  “Think I don’t know that? But it’s even hotter in the record room. The candles are melting! Well, they’re getting squishy. And the windows there are so cursed small you can barely see to read, even in broad daylight. Besides, most of these are yours anyway. I hope you’ve got a document box.”

  The carter had to move several bundles to extract the document box from under his seat, but eventually he got it out and the clerk unlocked the chest and started sorting scrolls—dispatches, supply requests, accounts. Soraya would have spoken with Calfaer, but he was watching the clerk with a curious intensity.

  “And travel orders for the slave,” the clerk finished. “He’s going all the way to L’dron, so you’ll have to pass him off to another cart train in the capital, but it’s all here, with proper authorization.” He handed over a final scroll, and some of the tension
eased out of Calfaer’s shoulders.

  “Did you doubt?” a soft voice behind Soraya rumbled. She jumped, then stepped aside. How could a man as big as Barmael move so quietly?

  Calfaer, perched on the cart, looked down at the man he considered a traitor. “No. I didn’t doubt.”

  “Then good Sunhigh to you,” said Barmael. His voice was placid, his face expressionless as usual. The carter, knowing nothing of the story that lay between them, paid no attention—and the clerk, who did, probably took it for irony, or some barbarian insult. But Soraya, remembering that Sunhigh was a time of gift giving as well as sacrifice, held her breath. Barmael had sacrificed the respect of men like Reevus and the surgeon, to give this gift.

  “A good Sunhigh to you too . . . sir.” Calfaer’s voice was soft, and ironic. It might be taken for either a final defiance, or an admission of defeat. Soraya knew that he had called a man not fit to keep his father’s pigs “sir,” and he had meant it. Her eyes were wet.

  The carter, caring less about good-byes than his schedule, goaded the ox into motion. The cart lurched away, making Calfaer wince. It would be a long journey, Soraya thought, and painful at first, but he would make it. She stood and waved until buildings hid the cart from sight. When she looked around, Barmael had gone, and the clerk was reloading his chest.

  “Can I be helping carry that, sir?” Soraya asked, as a humble kitchen girl should. Especially a kitchen girl who never passed up a chance to peek into the small building where the records were stored.

  She had never been allowed inside—no one was, except for authorized personnel, which didn’t include curious servants. But it seemed that the heat melted rules as well as tallow candles. When she and the clerk puffed up to the small, covered porch that sheltered the door, each carrying one end of the heavy chest, the guard simply unlocked the door to let them pass.