Mary Herbert - Valorian

The sarturian cast a speculative glance at the clansman to see his reaction.

Valorian shrugged, his eyes still downcast. “You could kill me, but then who would you have to light the fire and roast the meat?”

“Good point,” a dark-haired Tarn said. “We’re not having much luck with the fire.”

The circle of soldiers began to break apart as they edged around to stare hungrily at the deer.

“Let him cook it, Sarturian. Then we can kill him,” the short Tarn urged.

Their leader made an irritated sound and slammed his sword back in the scabbard. “Enough! The Twelfth Legion doesn’t deal in treachery. You and your deer may join us, clansman. ”

For just a moment, Valorian lifted his gaze and came eye to eye with the Tarnish sarturian. He despised Tarns with a hatred born of thirty-five years of bitter experience. His common sense told him to look away and maintain his harmless, weak facade, but his pride overrode his sense for just a heartbeat. He let his silent hatred bore into the man’s dark stare. When he saw the Tarn’s eyes begin to narrow, he thought better of his intentions, swallowed his pride, and let his eyes slide away. His jaw clenched, he turned before he could damage his credibility as a harmless clansman any further and went to his horse to unpack his saddlebags.

The sarturian stood for a minute as if deep in thought, a scowl on his face. Finally he gestured to his men. “If you want to eat tonight, help him.”

The four other men obeyed, spurred on by the hunger that gnawed in their bellies. Two hauled the deer carcass to the edge of the clearing while the other two came to help Valorian as he undid the girth of his saddle.

“Fine horse,” remarked the short legionnaire. He reached for Hunnul’s head and cursed as the stallion whipped his nose away from the strange grasp. The horse wore no bridle or halter, so the soldier could not get a good grip on the muzzle.

Valorian was slow to reply. Hunnul was a fine horse, probably the finest in Chadar. Tall at the withers, long legged, and beautifully proportioned, the stallion was a magnificent animal—and Valorian’s pride and joy. The horse had been carefully bred, hand raised, and trained to the clansman’s utmost skill. Oddly enough, he was totally black, without a single white or brown hair. Such a horse would be valued highly by the soldiers of the Black Eagle Legion.

Valorian shrugged nonchalantly at the soldier, thrust several bundles in the man’s arms, and said, “He’s not bad. Rather vicious, though.” Before the soldier could react, the clansman slipped off the saddle and spoke a command.

The big stallion tossed his long mane. With a neigh, he turned on his heels and plunged into the darkness.

The five soldiers looked after the horse in amazement.

“Planning on walking home?” the sarturian asked.

Valorian ignored the remark and picked up his gear. “He’ll be nearby if I need him.”

The men exchanged glances of mingled surprise and doubt, but Valorian gave them no more time to speculate on the magnificent stallion. He set them to work immediately, butchering the deer and gathering more firewood. From his saddlebags, he removed a small pack of dried tinder, his fire starter, and a small hatchet. With the skill gained from over thirty years of practice, Valorian swiftly cleared out a space on the ground for his fire, built a lean-to of woven vines and branches to protect the flames from the rain, and gathered the necessary materials for the blaze.

The soldiers watched as he quickly piled his tinder—a handful of dried fluff, grasses, and tiny twigs—on the cleared ground. Using his knife, he feathered the ends of several larger twigs and added them to his pile, then he brought out his most precious traveling tool: a small, glowing coal, carefully nurtured inside a hollow gourd. In a moment, the hunter had the fire blazing merrily in the dark, wet clearing.

The Tarnish soldiers grinned in a sudden release of tension and frustration.

“As good as magic,” one man said, slapping Valorian on the shoulder.

“Magic,” the sarturian grunted. “You ought to know better than to waste your time with that nonsense! Magic is for self-deluded priests and fools.” The clansman sat back on his heels. “What do you know about magic, Sarturian?” he asked out of interest. Unlike many of the Tarns, the clanspeople didn’t believe in a power of magic, only in the powers of their four deities.

The leader gestured to the fire with a broken length of deadwood. “Magic doesn’t exist, Clansman. Only skill.”

“Don’t tell General Tyrranis that,” the dark-haired soldier said with a smirk. “I’ve heard he’s trying to find the secret of magic.”

“Shut up!” snapped the sarturian.

The mention of General Tyrranis made Valorian grit his teeth. The general was the imperial governor of the huge province that encompassed Chadar and the foothills where Valorian’s clanspeople were forced to live. To say he was hated was putting it mildly. Tyrranis was an ambitious, ruthless combination of astute politician and merciless military man who crushed anyone who tried to thwart him. He ruled his province with enough violence and fear to keep the people firmly under his heel without any thought of rebellion.

Valorian had heard rumors that the general’s ambitions reached as high as the imperial throne, so the mention of Tyrranis’s search for magic didn’t surprise him. Perhaps with luck, Valorian thought to himself, Tyrranis would kill himself in some foolhardy experiment looking for something that didn’t exist.

Seeing the sarturian watching him, Valorian quickly removed any expression from his face and set to work. He didn’t want to stay with these men any longer than necessary. He wanted to feed them and get their tongues talking about more useful information—such as why they were in Chadar, what was the Ab-Chakan garrison doing, and where was a good trail to the Ramtharin Plains.

As rapidly as he could, Valorian built his fire hotter and roasted strips of deer meat over the glowing coals. The soldiers plunged into his cooked offering with the voraciousness of hungry wolves.

By the time they stopped eating, the deer carcass was virtually stripped, and the rain had died to a heavy mist. The soldiers leaned back, laughing and talking and drinking from their last flask of wine. No one offered wine to Valorian or paid him any heed as he sat in the shadows under a tree and gnawed on the last of the venison.

The clansman felt a brief pang of guilt for filling his stomach with meat while his family was probably eating watery soup and the last crusts of old bread. The winter had been hard, and there were very few stock animals left in their herds. The family was counting on him and the other men to bring in meat for the cooking pots. Perhaps, he hoped, one of the other hunters had had some success. He drove the feeling away and concentrated instead on the talking soldiers.

The meat and wine had indeed soothed their tensions, setting their tongues free to air their gripes and worries. Their disregard for the clansman was so complete, they seemed to forget he was there.

For a while, the five men simply conversed about the everyday complaints of soldiers: bad food, hard work, loneliness. Warm in his cloak and weary from the days of hunting, Valorian listened to their conversation with growing drowsiness. His eyelids drooped. He was beginning to wonder how he could turn their talk toward the Ramtharin Plains when the short legionnaire said something that jolted the clansman wide awake.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m glad to be leaving that forsaken pile of rocks.” The man took a long swig from the wine flask and passed it on. “Good riddance to Ab-Chakan!”