Juliet McKenna - The Swordsman's Oath

“I hope you have a decent bag of Planir’s coin with you, Shiv, because we need to buy a light carriage,” Viltred spoke up suddenly.

“What for?” asked Shiv doubtfully.

“Because I can’t sit a horse until you get my leg straightened,” Halice spoke with a commendable calmness, given the circumstances.

“I don’t want to be tied to the high road with a vehicle.” Shiv shook his head. “And what about changing horses? No, we need to move fast and—”

“If we need a carriage, we need a carriage,” I said firmly, catching Halice’s set expression. “The Elietimm’ll be having to keep to the high roads themselves as well at this season. Apart from the local routes to the markets, every other track will be thigh deep in mud.”

Shiv’s thin lips betrayed his annoyance. “I don’t see—”

“I can’t ride all the way to Relshaz with my back the way it is.” Viltred waved his hand peremptorily at Shiv. “Do as I tell you, Shivvalan.”

I handed around wine, managing to avoid catching Shiv’s eye. As I did so, I noted how swollen Viltred’s knuckles were with joint-evil and wondered how much pain his back generally gave him.

“Oh all right.” He capitulated with ill grace. “If you think you’ll find anything suitable round here.”

“I know a few people to try, especially if we offer them the pig as part payment,” Halice assured him.

A flare of grease falling into the fire reminded us of the browning chicken and we ate in silence. At one point, Shiv looked as if he wanted to speak to me but Viltred’s narrowed eyes and shake of the head silenced the younger man.

“Thank you for an excellent meal.” Viltred laid his spoon in his plate, wiped his knife clean and stood to make Halice a little formal bow. “Now, if you will excuse us, Shivvalan and I will attempt to scry for our quarry outside.” Viltred’s voice brooked no argument and Shiv shut his mouth on his objections.

Halice turned her attention to the floor, kneeling awkwardly.

I fetched a pail. “What will Livak do if you come with us? Stay with these brothers you were talking about?”

Halice took the cloth out of my hand. “I doubt it. They want to go off after the Draximal paychest. It was all they could talk about, last time they were here. Sorgrad has found out which corps will be collecting it and where to enlist.” Resentment darkened Halice’s voice. “He was saying what a shame it was we couldn’t all go after it with them since no commander would take me on with my leg like this, and the only way Livak would get taken on was as a featherbed, which he couldn’t see her going for. She’ll dress the whore to bluff her way into a camp but she knows it’s too cursed dangerous to play the part for long without being willing to lie down for it.”

I only hoped Halice was right but reminded myself that I had other loyalties to bind me, especially if Livak was going to take such an uncompromising stand. Dast scourge the woman, why did she have to be so cursed contrary? No matter, advance information of this kind of plot would be valuable for Messire, wouldn’t it? “Which corps are collecting the pay-chest?”

“The Ironshod, on their way down to secure the border for the Duke of Triolle.” Halice shook her head. “I don’t want anything to do with it, I had their commander, Khys, serving under me a few years back; I owe him better than that.”

Halice’s mercenary career hadn’t been all foot-slogging in the mud then, not if she had friends like that. Most corps last a couple of seasons before they fall apart over rows about booty or because they’ve been stamped into the gurry once too often. There can’t be more than a handful of troops as good as the Ironshod, who’ve been striking sound coin out of Lescari misery for more than seven years now. “How do these brothers expect to take a pay chest on their own?”

“I don’t know.” Halice rinsed her cloth in the pail, eyes taking my measure. “I can manage here, why don’t you go and do something useful toward getting us on the road?”

I took the hint. “Is there a scribe round here who might have a reasonably up-to-date set of itineraries he’d be willing to sell?”

“Innel, lives next to the Reeve.” I left Halice to prove her independence by cleaning up without assistance.

Finding Innel the scribe easily enough, after a little conversation I decided could trust him with a letter for Messire, to be sent onto Lord Adrin with a request that he forward it through the Imperial Despatch. I double-sealed it but I wasn’t too concerned about anyone reading it since I’d written all the sensitive sections in the southern Formalin dialect of the ocean coast, the everyday tongue of our home city of Zyoutessela. If anyone within a hundred leagues could understand it, I’d eat my sealing wax still hot. I wrote my favorable assessment of Lord Adrin in formal Formalin however, just in case curiosity got the better of his sense of honor. Innel turned out to have several useful volumes to sell which I compared carefully until I was satisfied they agreed well enough. I’m always cautious about charts made outside Formalin; too often the map-maker’s information is out of date or just plain invented. These were almost good enough to be Toremal drawn.

While I was in the village, I made a quick survey of the inn, the shrine, the women selling their produce around the buttercross. Livak was nowhere to be seen, nor had she returned to the longhouse by the time I got back. Shiv went out to buy a horse and vehicle while Viltred showed Halice the auguries. She watched the horrors impassively, the stillness of her face unmoved but a catch of breath here and there betraying her shock. I did not need to watch again, needing no reminder of my duty, whatever attitude Livak might choose to take. Shiv came back some while later with a neat gig and a long-nosed harness horse with a winter-rough, light bay coat, which I helped him stable.

“Did you get a good deal?” I asked him with a faint grin as I spread straw in the byre. “Planir’s not too badly out of pocket?”

“It was a fair price, pigs seem to be a favored currency around here,” Shiv assured me, his good humor apparently restored.

I looked at the horse, which seemed a little overdocile to me and wondered about that. Livak still hadn’t returned by the time we went to bed and this time it was frustration keeping me awake long into the night. What could I do when the one woman we wanted was dead set against joining us, and the one who promised every chance of being dead weight in the water was determined to come?

Taken from the Library of the Caladhrian Parliament,

being a true copy of the letter sent to the Lord of each fiefdom

by Eglin, Baron Shalehall,

later First Preceptor of the Parliament,

generally dated to the 7th year of the Chaos.

I write this appeal in the hope that Caladhria may be saved from the calamities that beset our poor land on every side. Daily I hear the lamentations of the hungry, the despair of the beaten and the grief of the dispossessed; I can bear it no longer. Saedrin sees the woes of the common people and remembers, just as we take their fealty, so we take on an obligation to defend them against such misery; I have no doubt that he will ask some hard questions before some of us are allowed to enter the Otherworld. Yet all I hear from my peers are fruitless hand-wringing and divisive argument about which pattern of governance we should copy from those around us.

There are those who would step back a generation and set up an Emperor or King, but what would that achieve? How is such a man to be chosen? What qualities would we seek in a man to be entrusted with so much power? I for one, fear the shades of my forefathers would petition Arimelin to plague my dreams with demons, were I to deliberately submit to a tyranny that they struggled so long and hard to throw off. Are we perhaps to ape the self-proclaimed Dukes of Lescar and let the strongest seize what they may until no one dare challenge them? Their Graces’ wealth and fine palaces may look very well now the grass has grown over the battlefields, but let us not forget they established themselves in a manner little different from bandits laying claim to a forest hideout. They work hand in bloody hand to carve up the bounty of Lescar like poachers portioning out a stricken doe. I hear you ask me; are we then left only with the prospect of the division and strife that plagues Ensaimin? Will our sons and daughters life only to see our beloved land disintegrate into a patchwork of petty kinglets and greedy cities, squabbling among themselves like a litter of starving mongrels? By Misaen’s hammer, I will not have it so and I call on all honest men to help me.