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

‘Have you?’ Trist’s reply was lazy, and he let it hang a moment before he asked, ‘Ever tasted it?’

The boy said nothing, but only stared at him.

‘A demonstration,’ Trist offered affably. ‘Like so, lad.’ He made a show of breaking a corner off the plug. ‘Now, it doesn’t go into your mouth on your tongue. Rather, it tucks into the lower lip. Like this.’ Snugged into place, the plug barely showed as a lump in Trist’s lip. He nodded his head sagely. ‘A man’s pleasure. Rory?’

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Rory replied enthusiastically. I had known that he chewed, also that he had been too short of coin to bribe a second-year to buy him snoose in town. He stepped forward to receive the offered plug, broke off a share, and tucked it into his lip. ‘Aw, that’s the stuff!’ he exclaimed when he had it in place.

‘Caulder?’ Trist asked, extending the bar of pressed tobacco.

All eyes were on him. Except for Spink’s, of course. His pencil had not paused in its scratching. His diligence was a rebuke to the rest of us, but even Gord seemed transfixed by Trist’s seduction of the boy. Trist was so golden, so relaxed as he leaned an elbow on the mantel of the fireplace. He was one of those rare men on whom a uniform looks unique. Every one of us in the room was dressed in the same green jacket and trousers and white shirt, but Trist looked as if he had chosen the garb rather than donned it by default. His shoulders were wide, his waist trim, and his gleaming black boots hugged the calves of his long legs. Our severe haircuts made most of us look like shorn sheep, or, as Rory had aptly put it, ‘bald as scalded pigs’. But Trist’s dense blond curls hugged his skull in a golden cap rather than, as my own hair did, standing up in a forest of coarse bristle. If ever a young man exemplified a cavalla cadet, it was Trist. How could any lad who longed to distinguish himself turn away from such an offer of camaraderie?

Caulder couldn’t. A hushed silence held as the boy advanced, saying with bravado, ‘I don’t mind saying that I’ll try it.’

‘There’s a lad!’ Trist exclaimed with approval. He broke off an overly generous chunk of the harsh stuff and handed it to the boy. Caulder tucked the whole wad into his lower lip, and then tried to smile bravely around the bullfrog bulge of it.

‘Well, let’s outside for a stroll about before curfew shuts us in, shall we?’ Trist invited him and Rory. Caulder was already turning pinkish about his eyes as they walked out of the room. Rory and Trist, well experienced in the way of chew, were chatting about the day as their boots clattered down the stairs. For a time, the silence held in the room. Then suddenly Oron, and a couple of other cadets were suddenly inspired to rise and tiptoe down the stairs after the trio, barely managing to contain their mirth as they went.

‘Bet he don’t even make it to the second landing,’ Nate said quietly. Kort lifted one dark eyebrow sceptically, then drifted across the room and moved silently to where he could watch the descent.

Someone chuckled, and then silence filled the room again. We listened to the regular cadence of boots descending the stairs. Then suddenly we heard a desperate rush of footsteps down the stairs. A truly impressive bellow of retching reached our ears, echoed almost instantly by Sergeant Rufet’s roar of outrage, and drowned in the hoots of laughter and cruel applause of Caulder’s audience. Kort reappeared and announced solemnly. ‘Vomited down two flights of stairs. I’ve never seen one plug of tobacco go quite so far.’ We all burst out laughing. Spink lifted his eyes from his books and slowly shook his head at us. ‘Picking on a lad,’ he shamed us solemnly.

‘Oh, and you were so kind to him earlier,’ Gord rebuked him good-naturedly.

A smile crimped one corner of Spink’s mouth. ‘I wasn’t so harsh. I spoke to him just as I would my own little brother. No, actually, a bit gentler. If Devlin had come in here as Caulder did, mincing about and showing off to try to win our attention, I’d have loosened his head a notch on his shoulders. It’s a brother’s duty to teach his younger brother humility.’ He allowed himself a grin. ‘And I learned lots of humility from my eldest brother, so I have a great deal of it to pass along.’

‘Well, from the sounds of it, he’s had more than an ample lesson from Trist. Imagine a lad of his age not knowing better than to swallow snoose.’

Rory re-entered the room. ‘Sergeant Rufet told him to clean up after himself. Caulder refused and ran out of the hall crying. Rufet’s not so hard a stone. He sent Trist after him to see to him. He gave mops and buckets to the others. I was behind, and played innocent.’ He was smirking, well pleased with the prank and his evasion of punishment.

‘It should have fallen on Trist,’ Spink said quietly, and I found myself agreeing with him silently. I thought Trist had taken things a shade too far, and despite feeling that Caulder was insufferable, I felt a twinge of sympathy for him as well. I’d had my own harsh experience with chewing tobacco when I was only seven. The memory had never dimmed. Caulder might have fled Carneston House, but I doubted he’d gone home. Probably he’d found a quiet place to be horribly sick.

Several hours passed before Trist returned. Most of the other cadets had cleared out of the common room, but Spink and Gord were just finishing up his maths, while Rory and I lounged back in our chairs, talking of our homes and the girls who waited for us there. Trist came in whistling just before lights-out, and looked so pleased with himself that I could not help but ask him what he’d been up to.

‘I’ve been invited to dinner at the commander’s house,’ he said cheerily.

‘What?’ Rory demanded, outraged and grinning. ‘How’d you pull that off, after poisoning his son with plug tobacco?’

‘Me? Poison Caulder?’ Trist struck an aggrieved pose, his hand to his breast. Then he flung himself in a chair and thrusting his long legs out before him, stacked his boots one on top of the other. He grinned. ‘Who went after the poor lad and wiped his mouth and cleaned him up? Who was astonished at his reaction to the tobacco, and said it must be an allergy he had, for I’d never seen anyone else puking after chewing tobacco? Who sympathized with him for all those rotters who laughed and mocked him when he retched? And who gave him peppermints to settle his stomach and take the nasty taste away, and then walked him safe to his daddy’s door? Trist Wissom, that’s who. And that is who young Master Caulder has invited to his father’s table, next Sevday.’ He stood and stretched gracefully, well pleased with himself.

‘And you don’t think the boy will ever discover that almost everyone vomits the first time they chew tobacco? Don’t you think he’ll eventually realize that you set him up for that humiliation and hate you for it?’ Spink’s voice was cold.

‘Who would he ask? And who would tell him?’ Trist asked calmly. ‘Good night, fellows. Pleasant dreams!’ He sauntered from the room.

‘Some day, that will come back to haunt him. See if it doesn’t,’ Spink said angrily.

But, as with all risks that Trist took, it never seemed to take a toll on him. Trist remained a favourite with the lad in the early months of our schooling, often inviting him to our rooms and making time for him, for all that the boy irritated the rest of us. I soon came to share Sergeant Rufet’s attitude toward him; I found Caulder annoying and presumptuous. He seemed to think himself a small extension of his father, for whenever he encountered a first-year he was very outspoken in giving his opinion of him. Even when Corporal Dent was marching us in formation to one of our classes, if we encountered Caulder on the way, the lad felt free to tell Rory that his uniform shirt needed tucking in, or criticize the shine on Caleb’s shoes. Spink, with his ill-fitting garb, was often a target of the boy’s snide criticism. Spink did not take kindly to it, and often righteously seethed that Dent never told the lad to be off about his own business and leave us alone. Caulder always had a cheery and comradely greeting for Trist, almost as if he wished to be sure that we knew he favoured the fair cadet.