Lawrence Watt-Evans - Relics of War

He described the smell of a battlefield after the fighting was over, the stink of the dead. He talked about the smell of the pyres, and the smoke staining the sky.

Over the years Garander had heard his father tell a few war stories, but never like this.

Finally, during a brief pause in the flood of memories, Garander’s mother asked, “Why are you telling us this all of a sudden?”

“The shatra ,” Grondar replied. “It’s brought the war back.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Ishta said. “The war’s still over. Tesk doesn’t want it back.”

Grondar shook his head. “It’s not like that. It’s…” He took a deep breath and held it for a moment, then let it out. “My life is in two parts,” he said. “There’s the war, and there’s after the war. They’re two different lives, in two different worlds. Shatra are from the war. If there are still shatra out there, then there might be other things I thought were gone-officers and orders and marching and killing, wizards and dragons, magic and monsters, all those things I never want to see again. And the things I thought I would keep forever, maybe I don’t get to keep them-the farm, and my family, and my friends. During the war I never got to stay in one place for very long; we would have to move because the front was moving, or because we were needed somewhere, or because it wasn’t safe anymore where we had been. Whole villages would grow up in a month when an army camped somewhere, when everyone came to support the army, and whole villages would disappear overnight when the Northerners showed up.”

“Father, he’s just one left-over shatra ,” Garander said.

“But what’s it doing there?” Grondar asked angrily.

“Nothing! He’s just living in the woods,” Ishta said.

“Why?”

“He doesn’t have anywhere else to go!” Garander said. “He can’t go home; his home is gone. The whole Northern Empire is gone. And he can’t come live anywhere with ordinary people, because he’s shatra !”

Grondar stared silently at his son for a moment.

“I’m sorry he’s brought back all these bad memories, Father,” Garander said, “but he didn’t do it on purpose. He doesn’t mean any harm.”

“How do you know ?”

“Because he’s had twenty years to do whatever terrible evil thing he might be planning, and he hasn’t done it. Listen to what Ishta said-he didn’t talk to her about war or killing. They talked about trees and sunlight and field mice.”

Garander was surprised at the vehemence in his own words. He had never intended to defend Tesk; he had had his own doubts about the Northerner. Something about his father’s stories, though, had brought this out-he had needed to convince both his father and himself that Tesk was not part of those long-ago horrors, not anymore.

“ You stopped being a soldier,” Ishta said. “So did Tesk.”

“It’s not just a soldier,” Grondar said. “It’s a shatra . It can’t stop being that.”

“But he stopped fighting, just as you did,” Garander said.

“It’s late,” Shella of the Green Eyes said, speaking for the first time since asking what had brought on her husband’s stories. She got to her feet. “I’m going to bed. Ishta, you should be in bed, too.”

With that, the family gathering broke up. Garander banked the fire for the night and made sure the doors and shutters were secure while the others retired to their bedrooms, and then climbed the stairs to his own bed in the attic.

He huddled in his bed, waiting until his body had warmed it enough to sleep comfortably, and thought over the evening’s conversation. He had expected his father to think Tesk was dangerous, but he had not expected the shatra ’s presence to trigger all those wartime memories. He hoped there would be no other surprises. His worries gradually blended into dreams as he fell asleep, and that seemed to sap them of any urgency.

The next day it snowed again, and they were all busy tending to the farm, making sure the stores were full and secure and that the livestock were safe from the weather, but the several days following were clear and cold.

A sixnight after his first sight of Tesk, around midday, Grondar came in from the barn, stamped the snow from his boots, and announced, “I’m going to go see Felder.”

Startled, Garander asked, “Why? Are we short on something?”

Grondar glared at him. “No. Do I need my son’s permission to visit our neighbor?”

Garander glanced around at his mother and sisters, but they were obviously not eager to get involved. “No, of course not, Father,” he said.

Grondar relented slightly. “I want to make sure he’s all right, that he was ready for the snow.”

“Oh.”

“And I’m going to warn him that we’ve seen a shatra in the woods.”

This time it was Garander’s mother who spoke. “He’ll think you’ve gone mad.”

Grondar turned up an empty palm. “Let him.” Then he grabbed his hat and marched out the door.

Over the course of the next sixnight Grondar visited Kolar down by the ford, and old Elkan, and Rulura the Witch, and finally he went into the village of Ezval to spread the news more widely.

Garander also visited some of their neighbors, not to spread any news, but to see how his father’s reports had been received. He talked to Kolar’s son Karn, and Elkan’s granddaughters, and a woman he met at the smith’s forge whose name he didn’t know.

No one actually seemed to be convinced there was really a shatra in the forest, but they didn’t seem to think that Grondar was mad, merely that he had seen something in the woods and had misinterpreted what he saw. He had presented his story in rational terms, and had admitted the possibility he was wrong, while saying he didn’t think he was.

And he had apparently not mentioned that two of his children had befriended the monster. Garander was grateful for that, anyway.

Karn asked him, “So have you seen this half-demon thing?”

Garander turned up a palm. “I did see something in the woods. It looked like a man to me, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“So your father isn’t completely imagining it?”

“No, there was something there. I thought maybe it was a ghost, but I saw it.”

“Huh. I thought it was awfully early in the winter to be going hearth-crazy. If you both saw it, I guess there was something to see.”

“Ishta saw it, too,” Garander said.

“What about Shella?”

Garander shook his head. “She doesn’t go out near the woods if she can help it. My mother wasn’t there, either.” He noticed the look in Karn’s eyes when he said Shella’s name; it might not be that long before Karn would be his brother-in-law, unappealing though that prospect might be.

After the visit to Ezval Grondar seemed to feel he had done his duty, and stopped his expeditions. Two days later the first real blizzard struck, and the question of any further visiting was moot. As the snow piled up and the wind howled in the eaves just keeping the family and livestock alive and healthy was enough to occupy everyone’s time.

It appeared they were in for a hard winter, as this blizzard was a bad one, bad enough that the elder Shella wondered if they had somehow offended the gods, while Grondar suggested there might be magic involved.

Whatever the reasons for the storm’s ferocity, there was nothing they could do but wait it out.

As the storm continued Ishta worried about Tesk, but Garander assured her they had experienced worse in previous years, even if she didn’t remember it, and Tesk had presumably survived those winters well enough.