“Let them see the Imperator’s justice done, if it pleases them,” he said.
“They’re whispering about the Siege of Shadow,” the soldier replied. “They say he was a hero once, and a friend of the forest. They say the very trees will not suffer him to be hanged.”
“If the wood pardons him, then steel will serve,” said Castor at last. He stood aside and allowed the soldier to approach the girl and the karach. He surveyed the prisoner’s face, impossibly old and desperate and sad, with an air of detachment. He took count of the Havenari, standing among the soldiers around the green, and wondered if their loyalty would hold, and how his soldiers would fare against them if it came to blows. He was, he knew, a poor judge of such things. After a moment of thought, he summoned both Derec and Robyn to him, both of whom were keenly on edge. He spoke mostly to Robyn, but wanted his words to be heard by his men as well as hers.
“These people are close to panic,” he said. “Close to madness. And this man was a hero, once. If the wind changes and they go off all at once, it will be a massacre.”
“We are charged to protect these people,” Robyn said with measured anger, “not murder them.”
“Precisely, Captain. One vengeful folk hero who incites a riot could cause the death of dozens. I will not have that on my head, and neither will you. At the first sign of interference with the execution, any disturbance at all, you will put down the troublemaker without hesitation. I will instruct my men to do the same. I understand that tensions are high. But better to quench one spark before it sets off the barn.”
“The Havenari do not take their orders from Haukmere,” said Robyn.
“Call it advice, then,” said Castor. “And unless your men want to trade your famous spears for shovels, and spend the next two weeks digging graves, I pray you listen to it.” Almost as an afterthought, he recalled the heirloom sword still in his hands, and passed it on without ceremony to the woman, who looked down on him in stern but defeated silence.
“This is Niurwyn,” he said. “The condemned wanted you to have it. If things go poorly with any of the townsfolk, it will make your job quick and easy.”
“Quick, perhaps,” said Robyn, storming away without further comment.
“If this town turns on us,” advised Derec, “she’ll be no help at all.”
“If this town turns on us,” said Castor, “we put a half-dozen arrows into the old man to ensure the sentence is carried out, and ride for Wescairn. We came to enforce a head tax, not to put down a rebellion. If the whole town turns traitor, Lord Ashimar will come himself.”
“By the Chain,” said Derec, shuddering, “I hope it won’t come to that.”
“So do I,” said Castor Stannon, though he didn’t sound convinced.
In the shade of a red pavilion tent, surrounded by clay pots of Alec’s honey and a few day-old loaves of Alys the Miller’s bread, the Havenari tried their best to look as if they were not calling muster. Robyn sat rather than stood in their midst, and in hushed tones she told them of her talk with the Censor. They listened with discipline and deference, but their anger was clear. Fletch kept looking over his shoulder nervously, as if he expected one of the Travalaithi soldiers to ride up behind him at any moment. Robyn knew him well enough to know he was really counting them, marking their positions and the positions of their horses.
“You will not cross swords with the Grand Army,” she said firmly, though Fletch did not stop his count. “Your first duty is to the people of Haveïl, and heroism will do them no favours. This affair will be ended soon. Do not mistake me; this is a travesty of Imperial justice. But Castor Stannon is a far sight more reasonable than he lets on, and a damned sight more reasonable than those who will come after him, if this town turns on him.”
“Reasonable?” said Hendec, too loudly, and the others hushed him.
“He is a precise man,” she said. “There is a certain logic to all that he does. He has already found more trouble than he wished for, and I think if he meets with no more, he will leave us—leave Widowvale—in peace.”
“Coin-mongers have no business on that end of a rope,” said one of the men. “Though it would not pain me to see him on the noose end.”
“No one draws steel,” she said, more forcefully this time. “I will not suffer a single man, nor a woman, nor a child from the village to be harmed because one of you impetuous bravos could not keep it in your scabbard. If I see a single hand with a sword in it, I’ll pin that hand to your chest with an arrow, and you can wear it there like a medal of shame on your way back to the Capital. Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes, Captain,” they replied. It came out as a muffled grumble, and not only because they were keeping their voices low. She caught Venser’s uncertain gaze. “Are you with me, Venser?”
“I serve without question,” said Venser. “But if you change your mind, Captain, I’ll follow you without question as well.”
“I do not understand it,” she said, “and I do not like it. But we cannot weigh the life of one outsider—and an outsider we are told, at least, is a criminal—against the hundred lives of a village we are charged with protecting.”
“From the Empire that would kill them, or worse,” said Hendec, still red-faced at the affront.
“Even so,” said Robyn. “We swore before the Magistrate of the Outlands, in fairer times, to protect the people of Haveïl from all enemies. I take that to mean from Travalaith herself, if it comes to that.”
“If it comes to that,” said Hendec, “if you choose to stand against Haukmere, you must know I would stand and fight with you.”
“I am her brother,” said Bram, “and even I would not. Protection does not always come at the end of a blade.”
“Since when have you ever—” Hendec began, though he thought better of it as anger flashed in Robyn’s eyes.
“If you wish to join the Uprising,” Robyn said to Hendec, her words carefully measured, “we would be sorry to lose you. But Tsúla will count you out, and we’ll buy back your kit against the price of your horse—or your sword, if you deem it more necessary than your horse on the way to Selik.”
Hendec fumed, but said nothing. Fletch coughed out loud as a Grand Army soldier rode past silently, his horse pacing out the perimeter of the village green.
“I thank you for your words, all the same,” she said when the rider had gone. “It seems there is to be an execution. Our lot is not to carry it out, nor to take up arms in defense of the condemned, nor even to bear witness. Our lot begins and ends with keeping the peace, and stopping any villager who is fool enough to give the Imperial Army an excuse. By sword, if necessary.”
“Will I be needed for this stupidity?” Bram asked her. Some of the men bristled at his rudeness, but she shook her head with nothing more than sorrow.
“I cannot ask this of you.”
“Then I will be at Miller’s Riffle with a flask of Alec’s mead. Any of you who carry too much anger to be trusted at your post, you are welcome to join me there, and drink until your anger has turned to laughter or sleep.”
Tsúla bent his lean body toward the window and peered across the green. “It’s not yet midday,” he noted.
“I accept just the same,” said Hendec. “I object to this whole wretched business. If I am relieved for the day, I want no part of it.”
“Let’s get going, then,” said Bram. “I need to stop by the house on the way.”
“You are relieved,” said Robyn. “Both of you. Anyone else? Fletch? Venser? Tsúla?”
Tsúla stood and shrugged. “It’s nearly time,” he said. “They look ready. Unless we all wish to excuse ourselves, we should return.” He crossed towards the door, touching Robyn’s shoulder as he passed with perhaps collegial affection.
“I predict nothing will come of it,” he told her, half-smiling. “There will be some talk. But these are outsiders’ problems—the problems of bigger folk, maybe. People come to Widowvale to put those woes behind them. None of them w
ill be foolish enough to risk all that for a stranger they have known less than a day—no matter how good his wine. Except for the fairy-girl, they have no particular attachment to him at all.”
Robyn frowned at that. “Where is Aewyn?” she asked.
None of them knew. She had a way of disappearing, after all.
“Get out there,” she ordered. “Find her, if you can. And keep them calm. Don’t look like you’re searching.”
The men began to funnel out of the tent. As Bram passed, she took his arm.
“Go back to the house,” she whispered. “Get your sword. Keep her with you, and don’t stray far from earshot.”
Bram turned pale as he listened, but nodded just the same.
“If he turns on the villagers—on the children,” she asked, “I’ll need her again. I’m so sorry, sweet boy.”
Bram’s mouth was tight. “Tell me.”
“Where will you want them?” she asked.
Bram’s eyes were shut hard. The darkness helped him concentrate.
“The moot-hall,” he decided at last. “The main door. Send someone ahead to bar the others.”
Robyn nodded, and turned to go.
“Robyn?” His voice behind her was so small. She turned back around.
“Hm?”
“Don’t let them hurt anyone. It’s up to you.”
She smiled sadly at him, then set her jaw firmly. “And to you, if I fall.”
In a larger city, or even in the Imperial barracks at Wescairn, the arrows loosed at the archery butts would likely have been crowned with target points—narrow, short heads cast from junk alloys with hardly any iron, designed to penetrate targets with as little damage as possible, so they could be used year after year. In Widowvale, much of the target shooting was into nothing more than earthen mounds, draped with flimsy panels of packed straw that would be used as thresh or fodder in the months to come. The time of smiths and fletchers was in high demand, and for these reasons and others, the arrows fired in the annual tournament had hunting heads—the same, in general, that farmers, foresters, and the Havenari themselves used for fowl and large game alike. A full day of shooting might have dulled them, Aewyn knew, but they would fly true and stick where they were put.
“What are you doing with those?” Poe asked her, following her out into the field.
“What I must,” she said. “I won’t let Celithrand be hanged.”
“This is folly,” said Poe. “I have seen what the City-men are capable of. If you think you know the Iun because you have dwelt a few years in this place of peace, you are sure to die for your mistake.”
“If Celithrand is right,” she said, “I don’t think I will. I have a destiny—and I can’t fulfill it without him.”
“Destiny,” Poe spat. “I know few man-stories of my people—but I do know of Gorrh the Fated, who lived a prophecy of his own. He was destined to bring peace to the warring tribes. Like you, he was told this at a young age. He grew to be a mighty warrior, fearless in battle, for he believed he was protected by the prophecy. Then, like a fool, he sparked the First Great Fire in his tent, and the devastation of the plains in the dry season brought such famine and disease that the tribes could no longer fight the old war. So he brought peace to all his kind, as was foretold, though he burned to death with his cubs.” He followed her, insistently, as she crossed to the next archery target. “Destiny we may have. But be not proud of it, for it saves none of us, in the end.”
Aewyn tugged hard at an arrow that had buried itself in a stump. It splintered as she pulled it free, and she tossed it away.
“Destiny or no, I am frightened,” she said. “But I cannot sit by and let Celithrand die, whatever he has done. You heard them. You know what is about to happen. The Havenari can do nothing; they are Imperial soldiers too, if it comes to that. There is no one to help him but me! I know you fear them, Poe. I know what they did to your family. But Celithrand is my family, and I will not let them do the same to him. I do not ask you to stand with me. But I mean to free him, at any cost. If we can just get him into the woods, he will escape them, I know it! And if it means I must return to my mother afterward, and hide in the deep wood until all who remember my crimes are long dead, I will. If I can do what others cannot, then I must try.”
“You make up your bed in a grave!” Poe growled.
She smiled at him, then, and it utterly disarmed his temper. Her sweat was thick with fear—he could smell, he thought, her body readying itself for a fight—but her little square teeth beamed in her tiny, too-human smile, and it softened his resolve more completely than anything he had ever known.
“There is always hope,” she said.
Poe snorted in frustration. “Hope there may be.” he replied. “But there would be a good deal more of it, if you faced fewer than twenty-five ironmen—or if you had more than nine arrows.”
“Then either kill some men,” she said, “or help me gather more.” In spite of himself, Poe knelt to pry an arrow gently out of the dirt. His ears twitched on his head as he listened to the distant shouts of the soldiers ordering the crowd back from the tree.
“Hurry,” he told her. “There is almost no time.”
They cleared the targets of arrows in haste—not many people had been out practice-shooting before the soldiers rounded them up—and ransacked two quivers left in a nearby tent. Poe scrounged a few more, following the scent of goose to the fire-pit where some of the Havenari had sat eating and fletching. When he returned, Aewyn was nearly motionless in the field, lost in thought, fastening a tiny blue pendant around her neck.
“Hardly the time to adorn yourself for courtship,” he grunted.
“For good luck,” she said. “Rinnie gave it to me, from the deserter’s house. It didn’t feel—right to wear it, somehow, while we might still have found its owner living.” She tucked it away under her shirt, cold against her skin, as if to prove that she wore it for herself and not for the approval of another.
“It is no more right to steal from the dead,” suggested Poe.
“It was a gift—” she began to protest. She stopped when Poe raised a hand and flattened his ears in warning. He dropped low in the grass and was silent, and finally she heard the footsteps across the field. She followed suit, and lay hidden among the last of the spring wheat until the figures had passed. Looking up, she spied with relief two of the Havenari making their way west, and came up from the earth to meet them.
“Hello,” she said, awkwardly clutching her bundle of arrows as she rose. Both men looked at her load with some alarm.
“What you are you doing out here?” asked Bram.
“Gathering arrows,” she said. “You?”
Bram’s face fell. There was no mistaking what was about to happen.
“We’re off to put this wretched day behind us,” said Hendec. “We joined the Havenari to protect the Outlands, not to work lethal crowd control for some damned tyrant. Bram and I are more alike than I thought—a coward and a radical. Neither one of us will lift a sword to help Castor Stannon—and call that what you like, but in my mind it makes us the best of the bunch.”
“Won’t you come with us?” she asked. “We can’t just let Celithrand die. We have to do something.”
Hendec frowned. “Not so long as I wear the Leaf,” he said. “The Havenari do not answer to the Grand Army, and I wouldn’t wet my boots to save a drowning Travalaithi, but we’re bound by honour not to turn on them. And I care for Robyn’s honour a lot more than my own.”
“An innocent aeril could die,” she said. “Please…”
Both men shook their heads. Hendec was visibly fuming at being forced by oath to pass up the prospect. Bram simply looked sad.
“Come on, Poe,” Aewyn spat, without taking her eyes off them. “They won’t help us.” The girl’s look of disdain was so severe that it stopped Bram in his tracks for a moment. He leaned in close and motioned for Hendec to wait. He fought for his words a long time—not like a drunkard trying to f
ind them, but like a man sick at heart with saying them.
“You’re both unarmoured,” he said. “If the soldiers close, it’ll be with the sword, not with maces. They probably come from Wescairn—the master-at-arms there is a man named Gibson. They’ll be well-trained, even by Grand Army standards. He’s the successor of his school.”
“I recognize those words,” said Poe, “but they mean nothing to me.”
Bram’s battered old sword was suddenly resting against Poe’s neck—he must have drawn it—and the cold weight of its clean blade was like ice on the back of the karach’s broad shoulder. Poe jerked with alarm, but did not retreat.
“Look to my sword,” said Bram, “and look at the size of you. See my arm down here. I can’t cut you to the heart. You tower over me. You have no collarbone to speak of—karach have not much of one—but your shoulder blades are like temple flagstones. Unless I’m half-swording, and that’s another school altogether, my blade’s too long for how fast you can come in. I’d hit bone, and couldn’t cut through it, not if I were strong as three men. But they will look as if they mean to.” Here he dropped his weight and his sword low, as if he had missed his swing wildly.
“They’ll swing into this. It’s the fool’s guard. You’ll rush in—”—he dropped his wrist and the point sprang up—“and they come up here, through the false ribs, into the heart from below. They push up from the earth with their legs. Here, at the shoulder, even Venser couldn’t cleave you to the heart, not with both hands. But here, if you’re coming in with all your weight, a girl Aewyn’s size could stick you clean through with just one.”
“How do you know this?” Poe asked. Bram sheathed his sword and motioned toward the village.
“Go, if you’re going,” he said. “But watch for it. They’ll get you from below, every time.”
“Come on,” called Aewyn, already making her way across the field. Poe turned and followed, racing to catch up, his own battle-scent rising. The sounds of swaying grasses and the distant crowd gave way, then, to the sharp knock of wood, followed by an interminable suspended silence. Aewyn took off at a sprint, and Poe kept pace even as his heart plummeted inside him. There was a curse on his tongue, a particularly foul one, but as he lowered himself to all fours and charged like a beast, there was no wind for it.
The Season of the Plough Page 21
