Robin Hobb - The Complete Soldier Son Trilogy - Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage, Renegade’s Magic

‘You’re paying for it? How?’ Spink was incensed.

‘Our whole room reeks, that’s how! And Gord isn’t even here to clean it up, so we have to put up with it until he gets back. I don’t even want to go in there.’

‘You could clean it up for him.’

‘It’s his stuff. It’s his mess.’

‘You just made Natred’s and Kort’s bed up. Why is that different?’

Rory grinned good-naturedly, but still could not completely admit his hypocrisy. ‘Well, their stuff isn’t covered in piss, for one thing. And for another, I like them.’

‘And you don’t like Gord?’ I was surprised.

He looked at me in disbelief that I could be so stupid. ‘Not much.’ He sighed. ‘Look, Spink, I know he helps you a lot, and I guess you and Nevare both like him well enough. But you two don’t have to live with him. He smells awful when he comes in from marching, like bacon gone bad. And he’s always sweaty. And he’s noisy; his bed creaks under him at night, and he lies on his back and snores like a pig. He’s so damn big that every time he walks in the door, the room feels crowded. I’ve seen you two stand side by side and shave at the same basin when you have to hurry. Can’t do that with Gord. There’s no room. And he’s just, well, annoying. He’s always trying to be too friendly. He invites the things that happen to him with the way he calls attention to himself. Why does he have to be so huge? The first time I saw him nekkid, I just about got sick. He’s all pale and wobbly and … Well, it was Trist first said it, but I’ll admit I laughed. With the gut he has, we wonder if he even knows he has a cock. He prob’ly hasn’t seen it in a couple of years at least.’

Rory laughed at his own joke. Spink and I didn’t. A week ago, I would have, I realized. But now it seemed a personal affront, as if a rough joke about Gord were mockery of us as well. Why? Not because we were his friends; I still did not feel that great a personal attachment to him. It was because whoever had targeted him had attacked us as well, and somehow made the three of us into a single entity now. Like it or not, when they mocked Gord, it was mockery of us as well. I didn’t like it at all.

Rory threw up his hands at our silent stares and shrugged defensively. ‘Well, take it that way if you want to. It’s not personal, not with me. I like you fellers.’ He took a shallow breath as if daring himself to speak. He lowered his voice. ‘When I was leaving for the Academy, my father said, “Son, choose your friends well. Don’t let them choose you; you be the one who decides who your pals are. The needy and weak ones will always be the first to try to become close friends with those they perceive as strong. In the cavalla, a man needs strong allies who will stand back to back with him, not weaklings who shelter in his shadow.” When I first met you fellers, I knew you were strong, and that I could count on you at my back. And when I first met Gord, I knew that he didn’t have the stamina or strength to be a real officer. He’s a liability to those who befriend him. That’s why he’s always trying to be everyone’s buddy, and doing everyone favours; he knows he’ll need pals to protect him if he ever gets into a tough situation. You know that’s true.’

I put the last book back on my shelf and then stood silent, thinking over what Rory had said. By having Spink as a friend, I’d also chosen to be associated with Gord. And, by default, that cut me off from being friends with Trist. If I had not befriended both Spink and Gord, I could have been one of Trist’s companions. I liked Spink and instinctively knew that in many ways our values were more compatible than if I had followed Trist. Yet I also knew that Trist was more charismatic, more social, and more … I searched for a word, and nearly laughed aloud when I found it. Fashionable. Trist was making connections and winning friends among the older cadets, even those of old nobility blood. He’d eaten at the commander’s table, and even now, when Caulder scorned most of the new nobility, he still greeted Trist warmly. If I had been Trist’s friend, those connections and associations would have been open to me as well. But I had met Spink first, and at my father’s recommendation, had chosen him as a friend. Had my father been wrong?

Even as doubt and guilt for feeling that doubt assailed me, I realized that something was missing. ‘My rock’s gone!’

Rory and Spink looked at me as if I were slightly mad.

‘The rock I brought from home with me. I always kept it on that shelf. It was a, well, an important keepsake.’

‘Your girl gave it to you?’ Rory asked, even as Spink suggested pragmatically, ‘Did you look under your bunk?’

I was on my knees, looking under every bed and in the corners of the room when I heard Gord return. He was greeted with an uproar of voices, some telling him what had befallen him even as others demanded that he immediately clean it up. I reached the door just in time to see peace and relaxation fade from his face to be replaced by his usual expression of resigned caution. It struck me for the first time how much he had changed since the first day of Academy. We all followed him to the door of his room, to gawk at his shock and dismay.

I think the others were disappointed at his reaction. He walked into the room, looked down at the ruined books, soiled clothing, and sodden bedding and made not a sound. He did not curse or stamp or whine. He only drew in a deep breath that swelled his back against the tightness of his coat. It reminded me of a beetle’s carapace as he lowered his head into his shoulders. ‘What a mess,’ he said finally. Then he hung up his greatcoat in his cupboard and set his weekend satchel on the floor beside it. There was a posy pinned to the lapel of his greatcoat, and I wondered if the girl he was promised had put it there. Could she love him, fat and unlovely as he was? Was that where he got the strength to go to the urine-soaked blankets and tug them off his books and notes? As he picked it up, the sodden blanket sprayed yellow drops on the floor. There was a collective chorus of groans of disgust and one or two chuckles of that horrified laughter that comes over men in bad situations.

I stepped forward. ‘Sergeant Rufet said to tell you that he would issue you clean bedding.’

Gord glanced up at me and for a moment the opacity in his eyes melted. I saw the pain this insult had dealt him. But his voice was flat when he spoke. ‘Thanks, Nevare. I guess that is where I’d better start then.’

‘I’ve got to get to my assignments. Spink and I didn’t get our work finished during our time away.’ I was making an excuse not to help him and I knew it. I left him and got my books and went to the study table. Spink came and joined me a while later. When I glanced up at him, he said, ‘There’s not much I can do in there. He’s made up his bed and dried off his books as best as he can.’ He opened his books. Without looking at me, he added, ‘All his drafting notes are ruined. He asked if I thought you’d let him copy yours onto clean paper, and I said you probably would.’

I nodded and bent my head back to my studies. A time later, I heard the swishing of a scrub brush at work.

That incident was a turning point in my first year at the Academy. After that, the division was so plain within our rooms that we might have been wearing different uniforms. Spink, Gord and I were seen as a unit, with Kort and Natred in a separate orbit around us. They spoke to us in our room in the evening, and never shunned us, but neither did they go with us to the library or spend free time with us. Kort and Natred seemed a self-sufficient duo, not needing any other alliance. Trist ruled the roost for the rest of them. Oron was probably closest to him, or gave every sign of wishing to be. He always sat beside Trist, nodding to his every word and laughing the loudest at his jests. Caleb and Rory followed the golden cadet without question. Sometimes, Rory came to our room to visit and talk, but not as often as he had. And when we sat at the study table or at the mess table, we sat divided by our loyalties.