The Bladeforge (fiction - reader discretion advised)

[HuManBing]

Sons of Forg

With a crash that roused me from unquiet dreams, Terrek broke into the foetid murk of the stable and hauled me to my feet without preamble.

When I drooped from sleep, he slapped me, hard, across the face. I swore at him, and he put both hands on my hair and pulled me up against the wall. There was a dangerous clarity in his eyes, and the hint of granite in his voice that cut through my winesoaked stink.

"Prasti's in trouble. And that's just for starters."

I looked at him and nodded, serious now. He let me go and I took a few seconds to steady myself - puke-stained shirt, breeches stained in front where I'd relieved myself the night before. I focussed my bleary eyes on the subtle rectangle of grey dawn in the doorway. I'd be swimming in that in just a few seconds.

"What..." My voice was like something that crawled out of a cesspit. I hacked a bit and then recovered myself. "What's he done?"

Terrek gave my arse a sweep-over with his scabbard to get the straw off. "There's been a girl," he said. "A father, too."

I groaned, unable to believe it. He steered me forwards and I lurched, then walked, out of the stables. Prasti had been quiet on the ride back from Flex, musing perhaps on his early elimination from the contest. And although neither of them spoke it, I could feel the silent recrimination from Lotal and especially Lindo, who had remained up and fighting much longer. When we got back to Forg, Prasti turned from us and sought out his celebrations with others among the crowd.

Terrek got me out into the blessedly subdued greys of the pre-dawn creep.

"He fetched up with Filspar's daughter last night," Terrek said.

I found that deep breaths helped me gulp down enough air to steady my stomach.

"Prasti, eh? Who'd have thunk it," I said, half admiringly. The boys who vanished with girls behind garden sheds were usually quite a bit older than us. Prasti had beaten all of us clean on this one.

Terrek turned and waited as I followed him over the fence, teetering on my feet.

"Filspar found them together and Prasti said something regrettable," Terrek said. "Da took a brand to his arsecheeks, and now the bugger can't walk. Speaking of which, neither can you it seems. Keep up, damn you."

I straightened up and broke into a wobbly stride, trying to think. Wait, wasn't Filspar lame? Or was that Filben?

"Prasti? Seriously? What do girls see in him?" I wondered aloud.

Terrek turned around and faced me, suddenly very close, his hooklike nose crinkled in distaste above his moustache. He sniffed long and furious, his nostrils flaring.

"Look at you," he said at length, his voice dripping with contempt. "Yesterday they were cheering you. And what are you today?" His withering gaze swept over the ruined vistas of my festival clothes, once the cleanest set Bela had scrubbed for me.

"You are... a sour... piss-stained... disgrace," Terrek said, clearly voicing each word for me. "You bash a few heads in Flex, and the poor sods here love you for it. For a minim or two." He spat. "And then you go pushing over their cows, rolling in their horse dung, and tumbling their daughters while calling them Twistleg. Next time they cheer you off at the gates they'll be hoping you never return."

Ah, right, I thought. That settled it. I suppose Filspar was the lame one, after all. Terrek, however, wasn't done.

"Your success, now and future, gives you no right to take liberties with their trust." He put two fingers into my chest with his words as he spoke. "Your success, now and future, will instead hold you to higher ideals" -a thump for emphasis- "to a stricter regimen" -thump- "and impeccable conduct. DO YOU UNDERSTAND."

I nodded, unable to speak - partly out of fear. Also out of a growing unease in my stomach that suggested Terrek should not touch my torso again if he valued the current state of his grooming. Terrek turned away from me.

"We will stop by the brook at Casper's vinyard, where you will wash and I will attempt to wake Lotal for the second time," he said, striding ahead. "Then you will both accompany me to Filspar's home where you will apologize for the conduct of your peers and take whatever punishment he awards you."

I began to develop a very dim view of this prospect, but held it unwise to argue.

"Then," continued Terrek, "you and Lotal will carry Prasti back to the training grounds, whereupon the three of you will then proceed to take whatever punishment I will award you."

This did not improve my spirits and for a moment I thought of bolting for it. Shambling across the fields, careening into treeboles, tripping in gopher holes...

Terrek turned around ahead of me and looked back.

"Move it, Cob!"

"Yes, my sergeant," I mumbled, and obeyed.

* ~ * ~ *

Lotal was lying spreadeagled on his back on Casper's slopes where he'd migrated, evidently after tiring of pushing over sleeping cows in Himlak's fields. There was a shallow cut on his forehead and feathers, as from chickens, in his mouth. He had lost his breeches in his adventures and occasionally shivered from the cold, though he did not wake.

Terrek unyoked a bucket and gave it to me to fill as I washed myself in the stream, glancing around nervously. Though full sobriety was still a distant dream on the horizon, I had regained enough of my senses to know that Terrek's tirade hid a very real truth. If people had slaughtered five pigs for a festival in your honor, it simply didn't do to let them find you, stinking drunk, in their vinyards and stables. I hoped nobody saw us. The sunward horizon was growing ever brighter.

I finally emerged, shivering madly, from the brook. Bela's fine clothes were knotted and twisted from the freezing water as I put them back on, but I'd gotten most of the mess out of them.

Terrek accepted the bucket from my shivering hand and slowly tipped it over Lotal's head and then his torso. He came up in a sputtering, jabbering mess.

"Stop them! Stop them!" he shouted. "All of them!" For a moment he cast around wildly, then looked directly at me, his eyes wide but distant. "Cob!" he said hoarsely.

"Lotal?"

He shivered violently and lay back down, muttering to himself, and then rolled over again. Terrek nudged him with his foot, but it made no difference. Lotal was sound asleep again.

Terrek kicked him, hard, in the side. He groaned and opened his eyes to see the sergeant towering over him.

"I won't ask again," Terrek said flatly.

Lotal was up and washed in the short time it took the sunbeams to breach the horizon.

* ~ * ~ *

Prasti was lying on his side, precariously, on the raised side of the stone bridge that led over the creek at Filspar's. The creek was calm but wide and deep enough for cattle and horses to swim in. His breeches were down around his knees, baring his thighs and round bottom to the world... but the humor of the situation faded somewhat when we saw the skin of his buttocks, where two angry red brand-scars showed the Filspar Diamond.

When I tapped his shoulder, he slowly turned his face to me - an eloquent, tearstreaked mask of shame. He turned away from me unceremoniously.

"Get lost," he muttered.

"Prasti, we have to get going," I said. "We've got to get back to camp before the whole town sees us."

He huddled into himself even more. Lotal came up unsteadily and clapped him lightly on the uppermost shoulder.

"Prasti, mate, you look like you could use a hand. We're here to lend one." He looked at me. "Or two."

Prasti thought about this and then rolled back over, nodding. As we lifted him to his feet, he winced as his raw scars chafed him.

"Bastard," he hissed. Then looked at us. "Not you two," he explained.

Terrek stood off to one side, looking at the dawn. He came back to us and motioned for me to follow him.

"Cob," he said, when we were a safe distance away. "Filspar's mad as hell at you boys. Somebody's going to have to take point on this, and he is not going to be allowed to see Lotal and Prasti they way they are."

I nodded, shooting a glance back at Lotal, who was still drunkenly trying to get Prasti's pants back up, over his injuries.

"He'll shout at you. And you will not answer back except to apologize. He'll call you every filthy name he can think of, and you will agree and tell him you take responsibility. He'll try to get past you and to get Prasti. And you won't let him, because these are your boys and you're bearing up this time. Do you see?"

I nodded again, filling with a strange clarity. Terrek's face was framed in the glow of the dawn, and his eyes were earnest. At that moment, he reminded me a little of Wilmar. I looked back and saw Lotal pick Prasti up on his back, buckling heavily under the weight but straightening up again and taking slow, resolute steps down the path to camp.

Fine people, all of them. We'd do all right still. And Filspar an angry old man with a weak left leg.

"Yes, my sergeant," I said simply.

* ~ * ~ *

On his front lawn, Filspar did indeed rant and rail at me. He shook his cane and struck me with it across the thigh. His wife, a workworn woman, hustled their children back into the house when they came out, and I glimpsed Filspar's daughter for a heartbeat - a plain, roundfaced homely girl. Always, I kept repeating that I apologized for my colleague's behavior, that I took responsibility, and that it wouldn't happen again.

Eventually he let me go and Terrek had a quiet word with him. Then we returned to Lotal and Prasti, who had progressed along the path a ways. Prasti was relieved to be let off Lotal's back, and Lotal and I grabbed an arm each and half-walked, half-dragged him back to the training camp.

Prasti winced and Lotal sneered at him half-heartedly. "I guess that's what they mean when they say it."

"What?" asked Prasti.

Lotal grinned. "That you can't hardly walk after your first time with a girl."

Prasti didn't seem to find that funny, but I smiled.

"Have you seen her?" I asked. "She's just like her Ma, only smaller." Lotal made a face of mock horror and Prasti turned a baleful eye towards me.

"I was going to jump in the creek," he said quietly.

Lotal and I stopped laughing. Then Lotal set his jaw firmly and continued walking him along.

"What stopped you?" I asked evenly.

Prasti looked back at me.

"There was enough crap in there already," he said.

We walked on in glum silence, all attempt at levity abandoned. Occasionally, Prasti's gasps slid out when we jostled him. But otherwise it was silent.

Lotal broke it.

"Before you kill yourself, if you don't mind, there's two things I've wanted to ask you," he said.

Prasti grunted.

Lotal stepped in front of him, stopping our progress, and looked at him eye to eye.

"Did you...? You know...? With her?"

Prasti narrowed his eyes, uncertain. Then he nodded, his eyes an indeterminate mix of shame and triumph.

Lotal whooped and clapped his hands to his thighs, then walloped Prasti on the back.

"So don't just stand there, you lucky bastard! Tell us what it's like!" he shouted.

And then Prasti had to grin too.

* ~ * ~ *

Terrek's punishment was far worse than Filspar's crotchety nagging and feeble blows with the stick.

Once back at the camp, he gave us each some unspeakably rancid leather pieces of kit and made us put them on and take them off, on and off again, on and off again. He mixed up the order and clouted us when we made a mistake. We scrambled on the floor after missing pins, sprung straps, and fallen buttons. In the heat of midmorning, the leathers began to reek of sweat and body dirt. At one point, Lotal vomited until he dry-retched on the ground, and then Terrek came to stand over him, and he forced himself back to his feet and continued his drill.

Some time after noon, when we'd been at it for so long that even I was feeling faint from lack of food and tiredness, he called a stop to it and we went to bathe. Only, he didn't let us bathe in the courtyard like we normally did. Instead, he took us quietly to the kitchen and we scrubbed up from buckets of wellwater there.

Going back to the training hall, we saw Terrek and Himlak talking with a few others, including Allin, who had ridden in the lists in Flex. Lindo was there too, and he smiled to see us. Behind them, Old Carrustin arranged several gleaming pieces on the table, and my heart leapt.

Terrek motioned us forwards, and my eyes took in the hungry sight of steel breastplates, greaves, bracers, and helmets. All sure-set on Carrustin's forge and polished to a blinding shine.

"A reward," Terrek said, "for your excellent performance at Flex."

Outside, resplendent in our new armor, and led by Lindo, we greeted the rest of our training troupe as they raised their banners to us. Our parents stood off some ways, and I saw Wilmar throw me a salute. At his side, Bela stood with calm eyes and a dignified smile, clapping methodically in her slow, strong way.

A cry went up among the youths in training first, then to be repeated again by our fathers and mothers, until we roared it back to them. Three times it came, and it echoed off the hills when we were finished.

"Sons Of Forg!"



_

[HuManBing]

Matters progressed

It was about that time that Sootri started singing, her strangely chirping voice with its half-swallowed words still pleasing to the ear. She had gotten much better at hearing people talk, but sometimes she still had to watch peoples' mouths and lips to be sure.

Bela and Wilmar both liked her well, and she tested their patience far less than I did.

Wilmar and I still sparred, though he seemed to take a stonier stance against me following our victory at Forg. More than once, he and I would clinch, and then there would be no mercy. I'd get his knee or scabbard in my gut and crotch, laying me out with convulsions.

But there was no denying I was getting better at fighting and winning. Although other boys might pick up a stick and play at training with their sires, I had a man at my hearth who seemed quite happy to put the hurt of full combat into my hide.

I went to the Temple to talk to Prent about this. The indoors work had given him a paler cast than the rest of us, and dressed in his acolyte's cloak I hardly recognized him. The only thing, in fact, that kept me from mistaking him for a girl was his height.

We walked a while in the courtyard.

"Sootri loves your songs," I said. "She fills the entire house with singing."

Prent nodded. "The Temple is most welcoming for the young."

A lull, then I talked a bit of the lists for the upcoming summer. Prent knew most of them, though he had not seen them for a while. I talked of Lotal, and Prasti, and Lindo. By degrees I noted that he was drifting away.

I mentioned Wilmar in passing. This seemed to bring him back.

"This is probably a difficult time for him," Prent said. "He is not truly your sire, and you are not truly his son. Yet you both come back to the hearth with spoils of war."

"Difficult for him?! He hit me hard in the happysacks!" I complained.

Prent just nodded. It was a growing habit of his these days.

* ~ * ~ *

Things changed. The summer came again, and we took to the lists once more. Although this time we lost men early on, we fought fiercely enough to come second. Lotal even stepped on a Flex boy's foot to root him to the ground and knock him down more easily. The other teams simply found us too much trouble and knocked each other out, until the capital team cleared the field and then wiped us out too.

Belkrestar was to present the victors' bands to the Thenol lads this year. In the end, it was his grown son who rode out to the field and gave them their circlets.

Terrek, though normally spare with his praise even during victories, did compliment us on an excellent "slow-burn" battle, as we refused to go under without a fight. From him, we learned that sometimes a certain degree of success comes from simply having the will to do what your opponent will not. And given our underdog status, it was a lesson Forg's boys were prepared to take to heart in their training.

Wilmar also let up on me a little. I wondered if this was because I hadn't won and therefore I was less of a competitor.

That summer, Lotal started sneaking out of training. The first few times, I'd set his spear to one side in the barracks for his return. There was some whispering among the others, but I hardly paid them heed until Lotal eventually brought the girl to see me.

I had been washing up in the courtyard and then noticed him, then her. She was a small thing, even moreso for Lotal's gangly height.

"This is him?" she whispered. Lotal gave me a lazy salute and answered her.

I turned to face them. So this was what he got up to in his spare time. I looked her up and down, taking in the calloused fingers, the slight squint, the pale skin. Maybe she was a sewing girl, studying with Anveran and her circle of seamstresses.

She fidgeted under my gaze, which I knew was rudely direct. "Hi, Ah-Cob. Lotal told me a lot about you."

I held her gaze for a moment longer, then turned to Lotal. I struggled for a moment to put my thoughts into words. That Lotal's tricky left had been keenly missed in the training grounds. That his armor, back in the halls, was in need of a polish, but that none of us felt right about touching his suit. That Prasti had finally mastered the off-hand two-step.

Instead, I said "You're wasting your time, and your spear is getting dull. Next time in the ring, Terrek said he'd give you twelve heartbeats and no more."

The smirk on his face gone, I turned back and went to sweep up.




_

[HuManBing]

Lord's Audience

The following year, Lindo set aside a horse for me to train with, and I entered the individual lists at Flex. I did not care so much for the horsemanship, though. The beasts were mute and skittish, and they took little lead from a good example. I preferred the company of men more, if only because they could be shamed or inspired to great things.

The contest itself was inconclusive too. Several of my opponents were the same as I had faced on the ground, spear to spear, and I immediately sensed the waver in their will when we faced on horseback. Although my steed showed that a rider's confidence did not inspire his horse, I learned very quickly that a faint hearted horseman did clearly shake his steed's resolve. More than once, I found it was not swordplay but a scowl, or a gentle prod with the boot, or a war cry, that spooked the other boy and opened the way for me.

My blunted blade tumbled Hasid, Thenol, and Flex rider alike, and they trotted off gamely when the dust cleared, unwilling to fight further against a mounted man fighting at twice their height and speed.

Then I came to the final round, against a skilled rider, and his horse did not spook, and his sword arm did not waver. He forced my horse into a cramped corner and struck at me until the blood from my forehead flowed into my eyes and obscured my sight. Then he brought his sword down across my cheek, and something hard and unforgiving rose up and slammed me on the back.

There was a moment of distant panic, and then I came to again, scrambling to my feet as my riderless mount circled away without me. The Thenolite champion had returned to the center, obviously awaiting a judgment. I found my feet again and raised my sword, drawing some jeers from the crowd.

No matter. It had its intended effect, and the other boy circled back to charge me again. I parried as best I could, then went down on one knee in a defensive crouch. Blinking away the salt sting in my eyes, I judged my distance and grabbed his arm with both hands on his next sally.

This took him by surprise, but he seemed even more alarmed as I wrapped my arms around his waist and dragged him bodily down. His horse overbalanced and fell, and as he cried out on the green it was easy, with four judicious blows of my blade, to knock him unconscious.

As I staggered back towards the pews, several armed guards bearing Belkrestar's colors came up and took my arms. I did not resist.

Later, in the attendant's chambers, I learned that the fall and the horse's own tumble had snapped the other boy's leg.

* ~ * ~ *

Terrek came to me first. He said I was in the stock pot now and that Lord Belkrestar himself would be seeing me. He did tell me that he had mentioned my youth to the chamberlain, and that at such a young age I might gain some lenience.

After a while, they took me to an audience chamber where five men sat at a long table. The one at the end was Himlak, our village head, his bearded face stern. A cleanshaven young man sat to his right, and I recognized him as Perringen, the son of the lord. His father sat in the center. I did not recognize the other two men, but they glared at me as though they would see me done ill.

"This is Bela-jir Ah-Cob, of Forg," Himlak said by way of introduction. "Twice entered in the lists at Flex, and champion once." He glanced tellingly at the men at the other end of the table. "Not counting today."

Perringen spoke up. His voice was surprisingly fluid, as a singer's voice might be. "We are considering withholding your prize," he said. "You fought with questionable tactics."

One of the men on the other side exploded.

"You fought like a dog!" he shouted, spittle flying from his lips. "Because of your recklessness, a good rider may never walk again!"

Himlak cut in. "...and the boy is sorry for the loss and his town will make suitable reparations." He gave me a significant look.

The other man stirred. "Your town can send all the metal finery it wants, Himlak, and still Thenol will see her bravest boy hobbling around on crutches, thanks to this Forg whelp. We demand amends. From the boy."

I bowed to them.

"My lords..." I began humbly.

"Speak up, boy," said Perringen, not entirely unkindly. "We can't hear you. Acoustically speaking."

I cleared my throat again.

"My lords, my home is poor and my sire is a footman. I cannot set a broken bone. But I will go to your champion and bow before him and give to him the prize, and also my apologies for the injury I have caused him, as a fellow combatant. For all else I must rely on the offers of my lord Himlak, as I have little of my own to present."

They conferred on this. Himlak seemed crestfallen at my offer to surrender the prize, but I could see the impression it made on the two men from the capital. One seemed well pleased with that. The other sulked further but said nothing as he glared at me, except for a hissed "and you call yourself a fellow combatant!".

Belkrestar stirred and coughed. He lent forwards and squinted at me... and then I realized with a start that he had aged alarmingly. His voice, though still refined, came with a strain now as he spoke.

"It is decided. You are to deliver the victor's spoils to the Thenol champion and to make your public apology to him and his trainer." He sat back as the Thenolite took his gaze off me just long enough to whisper to his ear. "... and you will announce your withdrawal from these and all future lists at Flex."

There was a loud snap as Himlak broke his quill. Almost immediately, he leaned back to argue in tense whispers to the Thenolites and Belkrestar.

Perringen was the one to bring order back.

"Bela-jir Ah-Cob, your orders are clear. Do you have any questions?"

I shook my head and bowed. The guards put the worn medal into my hands, so I could surrender it. Perringen waved at me dismissively and turned to shush Himlak.

I turned on my heel and walked to the door. At the lintel, I paused. Then I turned back and resumed my place before the commission.

They slowly fell silent.

"Yes?" Belkrestar asked, fixing me with rheumy eyes.

"Milord, I would like to ask why you hold the lists," I said. Then, as he opened his mouth to answer, I interrupted him. "Because I think if it's just to let people dress up and play games, then the boys should be told."

I looked them each in the face.

"Or else they might mistake this for real fighting."

Perringen raised his voice. "Careful, boy..."

I wasn't listening.

"Real fighting is when you'll do whatever Fate demands of you, to win. It's when a man vaults so high, or stoops so low, that nobody else can follow him," I said. "It's the measure of a man who, serving his lord, does not shrink away from giving his enemy the telling blow."

The angry Thenolite thumped his hand on the table.

"What in the name of Hiteh makes you think you have any idea to talk of real fighting, you pipsqueak whelp? How dare you come and bark at us like an insolent dog?"

Himlak was gesturing wildly but I was too far gone to care.

"I will do as you say. I will give the prize to your champion, because he lacked the skill to win it for himself. And if milord wishes, I will never return to the lists. However, the next time Malarchus salts your fields, slaughters your women, and puts your men to the sword, Lord Belkrestar, you may choose your champion from one who will fight using every tool Fate gives him, or one who wears a pretty metal necklace that he won at a fayreshow."

I turned and strode away from them, but at a command from Belkrestar the guards blocked my way. There were shouts and arguments still ongoing behind me. But finally one voice prevailed and called me to face them.

Perringen now held the floor and fixed me with a look that seemed equal parts amusement and exasperation.

"Go and do as we have ordered," he said. "And know that you will never enter the lists again. But if you are so willing to die for your lord, that too we can accommodate. We will keep an eye on you, young firebrand." He waved the guards back.

I bowed low.

"Milord misunderstands me - I have no intention of dying for my lord," I said. "But I'll do my best to make the other bastard die for his."

The guards did not bar my way as I left.

* ~ * ~ *

The exclusion from the lists reduced my reasons for training somewhat, but Terrek knew a good squire when he saw one and kept me on. He even promoted me to his assistant, talking with me about the other boys' progress and introducing me to other officers in Belkrestar's army when they visited our town.

And they did visit. On one occasion, Perringen himself made a stop in Flex, throwing Himlak and his family into a flurry of welcoming gestures. They inspected the mines and a foreign delegation from Palt arrived the following month, eager to buy arms and armor with which to equip their men and fortify their defences. They had not forgotten the brutalities of Malarchus' campaign.

At about that time, too, Prent said a farewell. Dartoraigh was to take him on a proselytizing tour around the Thenolite kingdom, and Prent was to continue his training in the various Temples around the realm, telling of the many gods of Taladas. We met one last time at Himlak's manse in a private ceremony, I very flattered that Prent had asked me to be there.

He had grown tall and willowy in his sixteenth year, and there was a sharp clearness to his eyes. Though he wore the robes of a novice, he had a quiet authority in his step. I wondered, with a pang, what the future might have held if he'd joined us in the army ranks.

Prent had several visitors and well wishers. Though sons of Forg generally kept apart from the outsiders who lived in the shanties of tents at the edge of town, Prent took his mission to them as he would any other. Here an immigrant mother kissed the hem of his robe for helping her infant, now a shy child hiding behind her skirts. There a red-faced laborer shook Prent's hand earnestly for putting his arm right after a fall, years ago.

It was a while before we had a moment to ourselves. Glancing down at the fields beneath the Himlak manse, we stood on the wooden balcony and enjoyed the late summer breeze.

"I will probably be sent to Hasid," Prent said. "Either that or to Flex."

I nodded. "Our lord doesn't look too well," I said. "You should bring your healing to him."

Prent smiled. "The Temple's best already attend to him. And I would be humble in Flex, barely worthy of even looking after the servants' health."

We stood in silence awhile longer, knowing that the moments were slipping away like smoke between us. Yet with a pleasant feeling that it hardly mattered - somehow we would meet again.

"I heard you gave Belkrestar reason to be agitated," he said. There was a hint of a smile on his face.

I shook my head. "It was a stupid moment. The nobles were ready for me to apologize and make amends. And I had to open my mouth and say one thing too many. Now, I will never ride with Forg again in the lists."

Prent twirled a plucked reed in his fingers.

"There are other ways to be great, than by the sword," he said. "You built that wall as much as any other man. Have you thought of taking up the adze and the burin? You'd make a good craftsman."

I mused that I hadn't thought of it.

"Well, I remember back at Old Parras' gemshop, you had steady hands for cutting, even as a boy. And you can't keep wielding a sword forever, Bela-jir."

I looked down at my hands. Large, crude, calloused things they were. How long ago since I held the tiny chisel and cutter at Parras'? I thought of the stones I'd pocketed to buy the tainted blade that Carrustin gave to me, when I was ten.

That was six years ago. And now I stood, without advancement in the lists, ready to become a quiet gemcutter, hanging that blade up to collect dust?

I looked back at Prent.

"Maybe someday. But not now. The summer campaigns are resuming, and I am old enough to march alongside Wilmar."

We were silent for a while afterwards, and at length an underpriest to Dartoraigh came for Prent. He finished the last of his mead and looked back at me with sharp eyes.

"Remember that there must be a reason for your battles, Bela-jir. Even the enemies on the field have mothers, sisters, and wives who mourn them."

He put on his travelling jacket and turned back.

"And besides, every poor sod you put in a cast will come hobbling to me in the end."


_

[HuManBing]

War Returns to Forg

The preparations for the summer campaigns were made with practiced speed, and I was inducted into the footmen's ranks alongside Wilmar and his peers - the youngest man ever to do so.

I was not the tallest nor the strongest of my age, but Terrek knew I had endurance to see things through. He gave me a spear and a side-sword of my own to use, and we marched off to Hasid again.

This time, Lord Belkrestar's health did not permit him to join us in the march. Instead, his son Perringen paced alongside us atop his charger. He was a change from the regal Belkrestar, Wilmar said, garrulous and spirited where his father was sedate and seemly.

The marching was not harsh, and there was some chanting and singing as we progressed. Our spirits were high when we reached the first villages after two days, and prepared to challenge Hasid's column. On the night before the meeting, we arraigned ourselves in rows, and my heart quickened at the sight. A forest of spears, held steady in arms as sturdy as oak, in a bristling sea of defiance.

Who would face us?

* ~ * ~ *

As it turns out, the best military planners don't have to face a conflict unless they so choose.

Who it was that leaked the information to Malarchus is immaterial. Probably one of the out-of-towners. Or it might have been the beggars at the periphery, hoping for alms. Either way, the same night that we moved out of Forg, Malarchus force-marched an advance army south of Palt and emerged, after leagues of forest, at the edge of Forg.

Their march had not gone unnoticed, but the messenger was a day behind us and trying to catch up. At midnight, he reached us and breathlessly told us that Malarchus was expected to be at the gates of Forg by the time he told us this news.

Perringen flew into a rage and wasted a valuable half-hour ranting and raving. Wilmar recalled what Belkrestar had done and commandeered wagons normally used for supply to take us back as fast as possible. Hasid, no longer a foe in a battle that had suddenly become real, threw all her forces behind our own, and marched back to Forg.

Wordless and bloodless, I galloped back in the moonlight, suddenly sick with the transfixed clarity of what I might be returning to.

* ~ * ~ *

We got back to Forg and saw some smoke, but our spirits rose when we saw the wall still held. The black pennant army had razed some of the outlying camps, but most of the citizens were safe behind the wall.

Himlak led the horsemen in a charge to clear resistance at the south gate, and we were back within the wall before the Malarchans could fully react.

Bela was there and seemed to grow visibly younger at the sight of us. She held Wilmar and then me.

But there was much work to do. The Malarchans had come out of the forest two days earlier, giving us enough time to get most of the people behind the wall. They had advanced, and tried to breach the wall with ladders, only to be beaten back.

Now our scouts reported that they had set up camp and had started logging in order to build siege engines. It appeared they had a battering ram and wheeled towers in the making.

"I don't get it," Wilmar said. "Why make them here? We can see them at it."

Himlak waved the question away. "They needed speed and surprise coming through the forest. Faster to do it this way, all told."

"What are we going to do?" Lindo asked. "The wall won't hold up forever."

We looked at the map. The quickest that Perringen could make it back would be a day and a night, and that was assuming he ditched the train. We would have to last a day, two days. Maybe three.

Himlak started arming the women and the youths. Wilmar organized a mortar duty and the miners now hewed blocks.

We were going to make the wall higher.

* ~ * ~ *

The morning dawned bright and welcoming, but the good people of Forg were completely exhausted. For the whole night, unstinting shifts of us had hauled, cut, and mortared blocks into place. The result left much to be desired, and the mortar would take days to set. But the wall was higher by about the height of an adolescent girl. We hoped that alone would be enough to stop them from even trying.

Nothing is that easy, of course. Having come this far, the sable army had no choice, especially now that the Thenolite kingdom had been alerted to their alarming materialization.

They lined up, and lowered, and charged.

Himlak took the defence of the gate, overseeing the boiling pitch there. Allin led the archers in their volleys. And Wilmar kept anxious eyes out for those who approached too close, ready with the javelineers.

Their first charge met the setwards gate, and Wilmar and Himlak both crowded their militia there. At the same time, however, ranks of Malarchans headed straight for the walls, thrusting their slatted ladders upwards and preparing to mount over. Allin and the women under his command began repulsing them.

Meanwhile, I and the boys of the village ran underfoot, carrying arrows, spears, and buckets of mortar as needed. Around us, the air practically frothed with curses and orders and warcries.

Himlak's women and militia had the best success. Their pitch ruined the roof of the battering ram, and the Malarchans underneath abandoned the idea quickly.

The first wave of Malarchans advanced, falling after Arrin's archers peppered them with arrows. Yet their successors followed them up grimly, unnerving the women. Not a few fumbled their arrows for the second volley, or threw off their aim. Near my ear I heard one townswoman hiss: "Ahh, it's over now!"

The second wave of Malarchans made the top of the ladders, and then Wilmar called for the spearmen - all warriors just back from the field, and with no sleep for two nights - to cut them down.

I dropped my mortar and took a spear, ducking around a crenellation and burying it in the neck of a Malarchan. I gasped as the fountain of blood stained my haft and the wall. The enemy flailed at me, then fell out of my sight.

To my right, I heard a scream as a Malarchan grabbed a woman's wrist and dragged her bodily over the void. The soldier stopped to unsheathe his sword, and then he was on the wall with us. Wilmar shouted a desperate command to the archers, but with their situation worsening, the women's resolve faltered. They broke and their line collapsed. Two, four, six men were pouring over the ladder now, and Wilmar met one with his shield and mashed him against the corner.

The impact was too great, and the stones slipped on wet mortar, unbalancing both men. Then I saw what to do.

I skidded back to the section near the ladder and hammered the stones away. The masonry gave way easily, the cement slick. Then I sat down with my back against the new wall, and my feet against the old-section floor, and kicked.

The wall behind me collapsed outwards, cracking the skulls of the climbing Malarchans, and tipping the ladder out into space. With a splintering crash, the ladder folded in on itself, as rubble pounded the hapless soldiers on the ground below. For a ten-foot section of the wall I had just undone the work of last night.

Wilmar was dealing with the handful of suddenly-marooned soldiers, when a blow to the chest staggered him. Without thinking, I hurled my bricking hammer at the enemy, and snatched up a spear and hurled that, too. The distraction was enough for Wilmar to bring his spear up into the other man's groin with terrific force and then topple him off the wall and into the town. He fell three storeys and did not move after that.

"Allin! Climbers here!" shouted Himlak, and Allin tried to regroup his panicked townsmen and get them over to the other side of Himlak. The women by and large were cowering, and after fruitless cajoling, Allin headed off with his own guards.

Wilmar, with no time to rest, dashed away from the gate to repulse yet more climbers, and I stood dazed at the gaping hole in the wall that I had caused.

Then, something struck me in the thigh and I looked down without surprise to see a black-feathered arrow bloom from my leg. I ducked down and crawled for cover, feeling no pain yet, but aware that the leg wobbled alarmingly.

Beside me, Himlak roared and drew his own sword, taking on the Malarchans who had started to swarm his position. Then something happened with the wall, which bulged outwards suddenly and then dissolved in a hail of masonry, collapsing that ladder too.

I made it to the dropped bow and quiver of one of the womenfolk before the pain hit me. It made me grit my teeth - the agony of scraped bone, of ripped muscles against splintery wood. For a moment, my vision swam, then I saw a frightened housewife huddled behind the next crenelation, her bowstring snapped and useless.

Well Cob, I thought, you certainly have no excuse for this sort of cowardice.

I leaned out and sighted down at one of the climbers, several ladders across, and loosed. The arrow buried itself in his arm just above the elbow. He slipped a ways, then teetered over space with just one arm on the ladder.

Then, after heavy heartbeats in my ears, I saw him let go, almost gratefully, and plummet out of sight to the ground below.

On all sides of me, the carnage continued unabated.

* ~ * ~ *

I see this following vision still from time to time, in dreams. I cannot say how real it was, or whether it is just a figment.

I am lying, wracked in pain from my wounds, when I see Himlak spin around with his sword out. Shieldless, he takes on several Malarchans, who gouge him and cut him horribly, like some farmyard slaughterer.

I roll to my side and nock an arrow and bring up my bow, to save my chief. But in front of me there's a ragged figure in my sight. I shout to get out of the way, and she turns around.

It's an older woman, still kitchen-plump, her face streaked with tears. She dangles a bow uselessly from her hand as she chews the nails of the other. I shout again, my vision hazing from the pain.

She does not move. She merely stands there, her face closed and her mouth open in blank impotent shock, as everything goes black and I surrender to the darkness.



_

[HuManBing]

Perringen Comes to Forg

Himlak lay, his lips a ghastly shade of blue, on the bearskin cape, his hands folded across his chest. He had fought bravely against four men, but died of his wounds after dispatching them.

It had been enough. After the collapse of their ladders, the Malarchans called a retreat for now. A ragged cheer went up from Forg... now leaderless.

Himlak had a younger brother, but he was a scribe and refused the chief role. It fell to Terrek, who as Belkrestar's representative was second only to the local chief.

Terrek saw to the training of the archers and the transfer of all arms to Himlak's house, which would be one of two strongholds to defend at all costs. The other was the smelter and forge, containing as they did the entrance to the mining complex.

Terrek also sent out scouts to report on the progress of our relief army, headed by Perringen. They set out at sunset and made their way northward. When they met the army, it was still one day distant.

Terrek made plans to hold the wall as long as possible, then to have an orderly withdrawal back to the two strongholds, fighting house by house if necessary. He said even if the main gates were lost, the size of Perringen's army would easily best the Malarchans. Our main goal was to protect the mine at all costs, and the supplies in Himlak's manse would help do that.

Aside from that, our goal was to stay alive long enough to be relieved.

* ~ * ~ *

The second day dawned cloudy, and the birds did not sing, as though timorous of the slaughter yet to start.

The Malarchans had made yet more ladders and rams during the night, and it was clear that their withdrawal of the previous day owed more to lost materiel, not men.

They charged down to the setwards gate again and battered it, unheeding the arrows and pitch we rained on them. The iron bands that bound the doors held for a long while, and they sent more men over the top while they worked on that.

The climbers that tried the fallen sections of the wall fared better, but we were ready with spear and arrow to repulse them. Others spread out to the higher sections, but may have met with less resistance there once they had navigated the perilous wall.

Either way, after several hours, the gate fell before the wall did. But by that time it was time for a retreat.

We fought as long as we could, then migrated across the roofs. From my archer's nook atop Himlak's manse, I could see Allin and Wilmar moving from chimney to chimney, sniping arrows and javelins at the invaders. Each house they took, they did so with a cost, and our men fell back towards the defensible Himlak manse.

As the fighting raged on outside, I could hear Terrek pacing around inside. At length, a runner made it back to the city and to the Himlak manse. Terrek spoke.

"What in Hiteh's name is he waiting for? We can't hold out much longer! He knows we've lost Himlak."

The scout responded that Perringen had a list of demands for the city.

There was a deadly silence in the moments that followed.

"Perringen demands that Forg recognize Perringen as its chief and that the forge and mines are his. If Terrek will not accede, Perringen will find another Forg leader who will. Or make an offer to the Malarchans once no Forg leader remains."

Terrek said nothing more after that. He may have written something.

* ~ * ~ *

I eventually made my hobbling way down from the roof and into the manse. There, a feeling of hopelessness permeated the air. Terrek had told the townsmen Perringen's terms. He had then announced that, as Belkrestar's representative, he could not authorize the handover of land titles such as this, even to the lord's son. Thus, he had no choice except to order a fight to the death.

Having said that, he offered to step down if the townsmen had a representative who would accept Perringen's offer, as he, Terrek, was prohibited by duty.

As the Malarchans circled outside and vainly tried to assault the manse, the townsmen appointed Wilmar their new chief and asked him to decide. He looked at Bela, Anveran, and Sootri, then sent runners to accept Perringen's offer.

* ~ * ~ *

Perringen's troops entered the town shortly before dark. They outnumbered the Malarchans considerably, and the battle redoubled as the Malarchan commander felt his victory slipping away.

By dawn, Perringen was in control of the town, and Wilmar met him in the courtyard in the Himlak manse to transfer chieftainship to him.

Wilmar held the post for less than a day, making him the briefest chief the town of Forg had ever known. When Perringen became chieftain, he immediately instituted martial law and a curfew.

We returned to what remained of our homes, and did not leave them except to rebuild the walls, mine the ore, and every so often to gather in the square to hear the latest pronouncements of Perringen.

Lindo came to stay with us. The night that Perringen came to town, his entire family disappeared, and he was left with absolutely nothing.



_

[HuManBing]

Orphans of Battle, the Road to Flex

The full extent of Malarchus' treachery took a week to reach us - the attack on Forg had only been an opportunistic strike, done by a small task force separated from the main army. Malarchus himself had marched forth and conquered Roshan with a much larger army, taking down the azure colors and raising the sable standard afterward.

There was talk of war machines, too, but those were confused and muddled.

Meanwhile, we had our own troubles to contend with. Wilmar's move to grant Perringen control of the city had indeed saved our lives, but it dealt a terrible blow to our faith in Belkrestar. The lord was truly growing old, and his own son was out of his control.

Forg became a military camp in a matter of weeks, and Perringen drafted all able-bodied men and women for training. Food was rationed to allow him to feed his army, and the forge pumps bellowed day and night to provide him with arms and armor.

Then the old and infirm began disappearing.

In the Bela household, where we had an infirm woman and her deaf daughter, a hurried meeting was called. Anveran was given custody of me and Sootri, whom we put to sleep with a special draught. They asked Lindo if he wanted to leave, and he crossed his hands over his chest and said he was a son of Forg, and would stay. There was a strange distance in his eyes, as though he no longer cared what happened.

Anveran was to make her way along the road to Flex, there to find lodgings with a distant relative of Bela's. She was given an embroidered scarf to show the relative, who would know it to be Bela's.

Bela said she had loaned this cousin, named Varadis, some money to raise a dowry, and the cousin had not been able to repay it. Instead, she said Bela and her family was always welcome at her hearth. Bela made me remember that history, as I'd be the one talking. Anveran, to this day, had not said a single word since she lost her baby.

I initially railed against the decision to send me away. I wanted to join Perringen's force and to take up arms under a new lord. But Bela reminded me of the words I had exchanged with Perringen, and she said that if I ever found myself under his command, I would be marched into battle without arms or armor, to fulfill the promise he made to me across the table - that I would, indeed, die fighting for my lord.

Besides, Anveran and Sootri had to get out of Forg, or Perringen would make them disappear too. And they needed somebody strong and loyal to protect them, Bela said.

I said a few harsh words to her then and went to stand by myself in the backyard. In the fighting, the house's roof had been damaged. The town wall also blocked the view of the pastures that I had enjoyed as a child. Slowly but surely, the war was coming home to Bela's house.

I went back in, and wordlessly packed a travelling bag for myself and the two women.

* ~ * ~ *

They smuggled us out of the town in one of the carts used to ferry night soil. Although the stench was revolting, it also kept the guards from showing too much interest. Strapped to the bottom of the cart, we hung helplessly like onions until the cart made it out to the farmsteads and hamlets that dotted the roads.

We found an old barn to sleep in for the night, and we opened our meals. Bela had given us eggs, cold meats, and bread and cheese. Sootri woke up and began looking around, numb. Then with the food she quickly forgot her troubles and ate up.

At about midnight, we slept awhile, though it was hard to sleep in a strange place with the smells of livestock in the hay. Sootri huddled up to me after her mother swatted her away in her sleep.

She started to hum a gentle lullaby to herself, and I held her close until she fell asleep.

* ~ * ~ *

We were awakened by the sound of men entering the barn, I suppose about dawn or so. They seemed to be fellow travellers, looking for a place to stay, and when they saw us they cautiously greeted us.

They asked where we were from. Sootri told them "Forg" before I could shush her. They seemed to nod in sympathy, but all the same we broke camp and left quickly.

On the road, I told Sootri that it was dangerous to talk to strangers, and that Forg was not a safe town.

She nodded at me.

"Are vee leavigh for good?" she asked, in her singsong pidgin. "Did we lose a fhattle?"

I thought that summed it up rather neatly so I said yes, we had lost a battle, against Flex, and now we were going to live there.

"Then vee need a new ungkou," she said, meaning uncle.

I nodded to Anveran. "She knows one."

Sootri seemed to take this in stride. I remembered then that this was not the first time she had moved home at short notice. She had come back as chattel won by Wilmar once before.

Although our chat seemed to raise her spirits, I felt an unaccountable dread whenever hoofbeats sounded, and we would leave the roads until they passed. One time I saw the riders wore the colors of Flex. They were probably bringing a message from Belkrestar to his errant son.

Even fellow travellers met us with mutual suspicion.

We sat down and ate the last of our food by a shady brook, and I whittled a hook and tried to catch some fish. Anveran filled some flasks with water, and we kept on walking. After our first day on the road, I saw a mill with a strange statue on its roof, which awakened a memory of the first tournament I had entered. That journey had brought us this way too, but we had been on horseback. And we had passed this strange roof in far less than a day that time.

I noticed a field of corn, and we passed it and went a few miles up and left the road, and made camp there. Once we had finished our food, I waited until night and then tapped Anveran on the shoulder. I made motions that I would go, but return soon. Her eyes widened, but I left my bedroll and all my things behind and I think that reassured her.

I made my way back down the road and saw the cornfield. I snuck over the fence and nabbed a few ears of corn. They were still small, but you could boil them and eat them all right in a pinch.

Somewhere, I heard a dog barking, and I decided it was time to leave. Wrapping a good half-dozen ears into my cloak, I found my way back to the fence and ran back to the road and back towards Anveran and Sootri.

I lay back down among them, and Anveran stirred and smiled at me.

* ~ * ~ *

There were three men surrounding us, and a dog, when I woke up. They had grabbed me and Anveran, and Sootri had sat up and was blinking in the pre-dawn haze.

"Found you, thieves," they said.

Two of them were big men, farm hands. The third must have been their employer.

I found my voice, knowing I'd have very little time to make my point.

"They're innocent," I said. "I'm the only thief."

The older man came up to me and peered at me. He looked at the others, who nodded. "This one had the corn."

They let Sootri and Anveran go, and then took it in turns to punch and kick me into unconsciousness.

* ~ * ~ *

I woke up thigh deep in water, as the men had left me in a stagnant ditch pool. Mosquitos drank deep of my blood as I struggled to get out. There was the ominous feeling of something cracked in my side, and my mouth was missing a few teeth from the corner.

I looked around with my one open eye and tried to climb back out. My legs weren't too bad, thankfully, but the exertion racked my chest.

I rested, sprawled like a dog on the reedy bank, until Sootri and Anveran got back from the road. They had a priest with them, who saw to my wounds and helped me feel better.

* ~ * ~ *

Another day on the road, hobbling along at an invalid's pace, and we ended near an apple orchard. Anveran saw it and cut a meaningful look my way: we'd had nothing to eat for a day and a night.

After putting Sootri to bed, we waited till she was asleep then went to steal some apples, while I kept watch for her.

She took a long time, and I began to worry for her. Then I climbed a small rise and looked out in the deepening dusk. Something moving in the distance caught my attention and I stared for a while, not knowing quite what it was. I eased myself a few hillocks closer despite the pain, and took another look.

I saw it, then.

Anveran was lying on her back, her face turned to one side, and her skirts hitched up about her waist. A man lay between her thighs with his hand on her mouth, moving urgently. The hooded lantern of a night watchman rested on the grass beside them.

I suddenly shuddered with the urge to tear down there and drag him off her, to shatter his face with a rock. However, even the gasp of shock had burned my feeble ribs. And then I saw how her hands held his nape, and realized that maybe she was holding him in an embrace, not in aversion.

I held my peace.

At length, she came back with an apron full, and we gorged ourselves on them there until my ribs hurt from my gluttony. Then we took a generous armful back to Sootri and woke her up so she could have a midnight snack.

This time we were able to sleep undisturbed till the morning, and I felt much better breathing and turning my torso. We made good progress then.

* ~ * ~ *

The third day we saw many more horsemen going to and from Flex, but still in their scattered twos and threes. There was no army, which struck me as odd. Malarchus' fate at Roshan was still unknown, but last time all the lords sent armies to dislodge him, and did so after a week or so.

This time, there had been none going out from Flex, and none coming back.

We had some trouble on the road. A lean-looking youth fell in with us, and though we tried to brush him off, he proved tenacious. He smiled with a mouth less a few incisors, like me. When Sootri went to relieve herself, he snatched her up and took her apples from her, and set off running.

Remembering what cost Anveran had paid to get them, I set off in pursuit, my legs still good, and scooped up stones to hurl at him, hitting him in the middle of the back with the third one.

Then, unmindful of the pain in my side and chest, I knelt on him and took the apples back. I beat him twice in the temple and robbed his body of an empty poteen, a knife, and a cheap-looking ring with some short word inscribed on it.

I came back around the hillock to Anveran and Sootri and we made enough progress to see us to the outskirts of Flex. We found that the town gate itself was closed.

There was a Temple that would let us stay for a day, and we collapsed, starving and road-weary, into the groaning pallets they set out for us.



_

[HuManBing]

Part Two: Outcasts at Flex

Waiting For Varadis

Flex was a hard town to get into, now that the kingdom was on a war footing. The workers lived in shanty huts outside the walls, and trudged wearily into the center each day. They had been given papers to stamp, though, like me, hardly anybody knew how to read them. There was a large noticeboard for people to write notes for lost relatives inside or outside of the town, and I paid a few coins to a crotchety old man to write out a note for us, telling Varadis that her kinsman Bela of Forg sends her regards, and that Bela's son was here to meet her. I gave the Temple as my address, and said I would be there every noon to see if she came.

The man wrote out the note in his scrawl, and then took my money. I asked him how long it would take to hear a reply.

He peered at me.

"Whenever Varadis checks, if she checks. Then whenever she comes, if she comes. Sometimes it's just a few days if she knew you well and is looking for you. But I won't lie to you. Some people have been here for a while."

I thanked him and left, without much hope.

We slept in the Temple camp for two nights, and each morning we went to the gates to check if Bela's kinsman had left any messages for us. On the third night we moved out of the Temple to make way for more refugees, according to the Temple rules.

Anveran had picked up a cough, and her hacking occasionally woke us. She wouldn't let Sootri sleep with her, in case she caught her cold, so Sootri cuddled alongside me instead. It made me feel strangely powerful to know that I could warm another in my embrace.

Every so often, in her sleep, she would hum or sing a few measures of some music - learned long ago, perhaps, in Pastor Dartoraigh's temple.

* ~ * ~ *

Each day at noon I went to the Temple to see whether anybody had come or had left messages for me. In two weeks, I heard nothing. But the priest there asked me if I wanted to do some work for the Temple, and I said yes.

He put me to work pulling carts around the camps. Sometimes I carried building materials, other times I carried the pots of weak broth that they scraped together for the refugees. In return, I got an extra roll of bread. The first night, I wolfed it down without a thought and went to sleep satisfied on a fuller belly. But hearing Anveran's tormented cough and feeling Sootri's little frame shivering against mine, I soon hoarded the bread I got and brought it back to us.

The Temple was good to us, even though its resources were meager, and amounted in many ways to forestalling the inevitable. They were the only ones to know or care that we suffered, under the vast vault of troubled creation that was our land of Thenol.

* ~ * ~ *

One day, I was carrying a barrowfull of cement to a worksite, when I saw the priests struggling with a scaffold for the brickwork. It wasn't until I drew exactly alongside that I realized the two sides of their frame were unparallel.

I stopped.

"That's going to end up crooked," I said.

They looked at me.

"It's only going to be for a small shelter," one of them said.

I nodded. "If you dropped a line from the top and weight it with a bit of metal, it'll show you the true line to earth. And you can save bricks as you won't need to prop the weak side."

They handed me some tools and I set to work, the lessons of the carvers and stonemasons at the wall of Forg coming slowly back to me.

A few minutes' work and it was fixed. As I turned to go, the elder of the two asked me what I was doing in general. I gestured to the barrow.

He thought awhile and told me to finish my chores, then return.

When I did so, about an hour later, they gave me a new task: to help building the stone chambers of the Temple to minister to the poor and fleeing.

* ~ * ~ *

I did better then. I worked harder alongside fellow diligent men, and they gave me soup and bread to eat. They also gave me some to take back to Anveran and Sootri, who saved it carefully. When my sandals wore out, they rummaged around their stores and gave me a newer pair.

The work was hard, but the Templars were good overseers. They occasionally had to chasten a slacker by reminding him that he only got food for a whole day's work, but on the whole we were aligned in our goals.

I noted that poverty and industry made equals of men.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten this lesson in our hoarded food at our campsite.

It was about a month after we had arrived, and I had headed out to the worksite, helping to raise the nave. After a morning's hard work, I went to the Temple office, more out of habit and a desire to chat with the priests than any real hope of finding Varadis.

I returned to the worksite. There, the men told me that somebody had been looking for me. The priest told me that there had been a fight at the campsite, and my kinswoman was injured.

I ran back to the campsite, and saw the tousled bedwraps, and the hole where Anveran hid the bread in tightly wrapped cloths each night - empty now.

Sootri was nowhere to be found.

My panic rising, I ran back to the Temple and talked with the priests. They kept telling me that Anveran was badly injured and in their care and that I couldn't see her. I kept telling them that there was another kinswoman, a girl much younger, who couldn't hear very well.

They shrugged and said they didn't find anybody like that.

I ran out of the Temple and into the camps, poking my head into tents and searching bedrolls, uncaring of the outraged squawks. I had to find Sootri - without her, everything for which I had striven was in vain.

It finally stopped when they got a priest to come talk to me. He urged me to go back and earn my bread again.

"The bread is worthless," I said. "I brought it back only for her."

He stopped at that and nodded. He said I could see Anveran now. He would ask a few questions of people he knew.

I went and followed him back to the Temple, where Anveran was recovering. They had bandaged her head where the assailant had hit her with a rock, and salved her arms and hands where she had been hit also.

She opened her eyes amid troubled breathing and I realized that she too was suddenly aged, with the travel and the surroundings.

But I learned nothing from her, mute as she was.

* ~ * ~ *

A boy had told a priest that a woman named Bett had gained a new daughter. The woman was alone at the edge of the camp, and was a little crazy. Some said she had lost a daughter in the conflicts that were spreading outwards from Palt.

The priests told me this and lectured me on the importance of forgiveness and pity. They told me the woman was a bearer of countless troubles, and that they had recovered Sootri.

She came back to the Temple and cried in relief to see me. Then she had gone to see her mother, and wept again, though from a different cause.

The priests brought the madwoman to see me, so that I could hear and see for myself and find it in my heart to pity her. She seemed lucid enough, begging for my forgiveness and telling me how Sootri reminded her of her own daughter.

I asked the priest to bring her a piece of bread from the pantry.

When the priest stepped outside, I took the chisel from my tunic and came around the table at her, pinning her head down against the wooden boards and pitting the point behind her jaw with all the force I could summon. Then I struck it home with the hammer, cracking the bone and opening her vein in a stark deluge that erased her from the world.

* ~ * ~ *

Far from the camp, life was dangerous. Whores, beggars, and thieves worked the alleys of houses leading up to the wall. Anveran could barely see through the bandages, and Sootri rode on my back so I could be sure nobody snatched her.

We found a doorway beneath a light, which seemed to discourage the worst of the cutthroats. Wrapping ourselves in fleabitten blankets, we fell asleep. I dreamed that I went back to Bela's house in Forg, and that she had never met Wilmar, and that I was still working at the gemcutter's, where my worst fear was that I might slip and nick a finger in my work.

When I woke, I was terribly disconcerted, and upon realizing where I was, my spirits plummeted so sharply that I closed my eyes and wished I were dead. Then next to me I felt Sootri stirring, and heard her hum to herself.

I begged for food that day and came back with a few apple cores for Sootri. Anveran refused to eat anything. Her cough had seemed to get quieter, which would have been a good thing if she herself wasn't so deathly pale.

That night, I heard her hiss at me, as I was falling asleep. I got up and went to her. She stank, as we all did. But most alarming was her skin: she was growing cold - and not just clammy cold, but cold like a stone in a cave.

There was a slopping noise coming from her face. I realized with a start that she was trying to say something.

"Anveran?" I said. "Yes? What is it, in Mislaxa's name?"

She reached for me feebly, the skin of her hand as thin as parchment. Her mouth worked gummily for a few seconds, then came the rattle of unmistakable speech.

"Tek... good... care..." she said, and paused to gasp for breath, "...of... my... Sootri." Then a rattling exhalation, and a strange sense of serenity. A moth fluttered at the lamp above us, throwing a weird light.

Her hand found my cheek, and it was like the scrabble of a spider.

I nodded to her and kissed her forehead.

"I will," I said.

She leaned back and closed her eyes. She seemed to rest easier then.

* ~ * ~ *

In the morning, I realized Anveran was never going to wake up.

I got everything ready while Sootri was still asleep, and I found the embroidered scarf we needed to prove our identity to Varadis. Then I saddled Sootri on my back and started walking quickly before she knew what had happened.




_

[HuManBing]

My Sister's Keeper

Sootri woke up eventually and asked where Anveran was. I told her she had gone a different way, which wasn't technically a lie. Then Sootri asked if she had gone to look for Varadis, and I said perhaps.

That quietened her for a while, and I rested and straightened my creaky back as she relieved herself, squatting, in a gutter.

"I'b huggry, Cough," she said sadly.

I knew her feeling. My stomach was growling too. I sat and thought about what to do. We needed food first. I could beg, as I had done last night, soliciting crusts and crumbs from passersby. But that was a chancy thing, and in any case we were only as secure as the latest alms could make us.

I thought about the sword in the hills, and the innumerable fights and competitions I had been through after that. Some of them I had even won here, in Flex - not that anybody would care or believe me.

How could a person make a few metal coins to buy a loaf of bread?

Bela had shifted tables and raised geese in her yard. Wilmar had hauled ore and then taken up the sword to earn his pay. Anveran had arrived as a slave of war and then sewed cloth to make her way.

The sudden vision of Anveran - large, silent, and matronly by the fire, licking a thread or blinking her eyes to find her stitch - brought me back to the reality of her death. She breathed no more, a thin, reeking pauper in the streets of her second and last asylum. No more would her fingers measure out yarn in bights.

We didn't even have time for a proper burial. And now we were two: a starving boy and his sister wandering the streets of a strange town.

The suddenness of this dreadful epiphany was too much for me. I racked into myself as the sobs bubbled up from the pit of my stomach, shaking tears from my eyes like leaves from a windthreshed tree. My mouth twisted so quickly that I could taste blood from my cracked, dry lips.

I huddled into myself, cursing this moment of weakness, even as I knew that there was nothing, nothing I could do. The world had yawned wide beneath me, and everything I had known was gone. What could I do?

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Sootri looking at me, her eyes soft.

"It' all wight, Cough," she said gently. "I'b not huggry anymore."

I dried myself up, and looked at her with renewed determination.

"We'll go back to the Temple," I said.

* ~ * ~ *

We did go back, and I made my humbling before the head priest. I admitted that I had betrayed their trust, and that I had been merciless and brutal. I apologized and begged for their forgiveness, and told them that even if they could not have me, that they must have pity on Sootri, who throughout was blameless and could not survive without their help if they turned me out.

The priests had a discussion and presently told me that I could not stay with them. But if I made full penance and made retribution to their satisfaction, they would take care of Sootri.

I bowed before them and thanked them.

My first task was to give the madwoman I had murdered an honorable burial.

The first few shovelfuls, I cursed the gods that such a wretched, troublemaking creature had been allowed to walk the land. Had this idiotic sack of bones stayed away from Sootri, she would still be alive and we wouldn't be in this mess.

By the end of the day, however, my mind had changed. The fault was clearly mine, though I hated to admit it. The woman's errors had been corrected, and it merely fell to me to forgive her. Instead, I had taken the role of punisher, in my anger and pride.

And it was my pride that had killed Anveran, taking her out of the camp when she needed to rest.

* ~ * ~ *

I worked on the grave for a day and then saw Sootri safely housed in a cot. She watched me wash the grave dirt from my hands and then solemnly said: "Mama died, huh."

I looked back at her. She was remarkably calm as she said it.

"Where did you get that idea?" I said.

She thought. "Mama wuddit leave me," she said. "An we back here, waitig for Varadis. So Mama wud be here too."

I nodded, exhausted by this exchange. There seemed little sense in continuing the charade.

Sootri furrowed her muddy-brown eyebrows awhile.

"You leave me too?" she asked.

I knelt before her.

"Cob did a bad thing, and now the Temple won't let me stay here," I said. "I will be back every noon to look for Varadis, and to see you."

She blinked back tears but nodded at length.

"I love you," she said simply, and turned away from me. Then, quietly she said "Tek care."

I hurried away while I still had the will to do so.

* ~ * ~ *

I found some work at another building site where they were putting up a watchtower and wooden gates. Although I did eat a little bit of bread at the Temple camp, I grew terribly hungry and faint with the lifting and carrying of beams and stones. I took a break at noon, as did many other men, to check at the Temple. No word from Varadis, but Sootri was eating well and safe enough, it seemed. It was an all-too-short glimpse of her I got, a waif-like figure in a relatively clean plain Temple smock.

At the end of the day, they lined the new workers up and fired the least productive of us. Then they gave bread and soup to the remainder, which included me. Blessedly I got to sleep in the shell of the building where I was working. Beside me, other filthy, sweat-stained laborers snored and twitched and murmured in their sleep.

At the end of the week, after three more days of backbreaking work, the tower was finished and they kept me and a handful of men on to start work on the stables. They increased the rations they gave us, and even paid us a few coins. I hoarded these and took them to a wooded area and buried them in a place that I could find, knowing that Sootri could use them.

One day, about two weeks after they finished the stables and started on the perimeter wall, I worked late and forgot to wait at the Temple at noon. Cursing myself, I dashed back before even storing my coins, and asked at the atrium whether anybody had been asking for Bela or her kin. Nobody had.

I then went to go see Sootri, but they told me she was at their evening song. I could watch but could not disturb.

I followed and saw the children singing in a row. Their voices mouthed the same words of praise that I had heard Prent sing, but above it all was a wordless, haunting melody, carried by a single singer whose voice soared and dipped in harmony.

It was Sootri, her voice deftly maneuvering in cadences and in chorus between the plodding words of the others.

I stood and listened awhile, lost in thought and marvelling at this tiny circle of beauty and calm in the wildlands of confusion.




_

[HuManBing]

Sardricor

I worked on construction most of the summer and early fall, and my rations increased. At first it was just housing and guardworks for the city walls. Then we started working on the builder's biggest project: a barbican for the south gate. I watched, rapt, as the crenellations and bulwarks took form under scaffolds and then in stone.

Each day I stopped by the Temple grounds to check on little Sootri to make sure she was well, and also for notices at the messageboard from my mother's kinsman. Sometimes I had to run off with only the most cursory of notice to the foreman, but he knew I was a hard worker and that I would be back with all due speed. Caked in dust, I cut a poor shabby figure for Sootri, and though I saw her avert her face once when I drew near, it was only to sneeze at my attendant dustclouds. She stood up on tiptoes and wiped my face clean with her kerchief, scolding me childishly.

It was a good time. Though we were far from home, I knew she would be all right with the Temple, and that I was keeping out of trouble working at a craft that left me in a satisfied exhaustion every night, too tired to pick a fight. Whatever I earned, I buried in a rotation of three caches so I could save it for an important time.

Though part of me knew this couldn't last forever, I knew enough that it stood us well for the time being. Unable to fathom the world's dark workings, I settled eagerly for the place it gave me.

* ~ * ~ *

One day I got a message from the Temple, telling me a strange man was looking for me at the refugee post. I strained to remember the kinsman's name, as I washed myself and put on my less stained jacket. I left my bunk, and was almost out of the gate when I remembered the embroidered scarf that I needed for proof.

I went back and got it, and caught a glimpse of myself in a crack of glass.

I had seen perhaps sixteen, perhaps seventeen winters, and the manual labor work had filled my limbs. But it had been months since I had taken a knife to my hair or to my chin, and I seemed like a wild man, shaggy maned and with bleary eyes blazing. Underneath this, my jacket - the last of the clothes Bela had given me - seemed like an afterthought... the sort of thing a farmer might wear, ill-fitted, when his thane came to survey the lands.

I grimaced, and saw my bright white teeth in a disquieting smile.

No matter. There was no time to shave. And even so, I couldn't ask my workmates for a razor now. I'd have to go as I was.

I was halfway to the Temple when her name came to me in a flash: Varadis.

* ~ * ~ *

The man was bald, heavyset, and well-dressed, with a tabard of a noble house. He arched a skeptical eyebrow at me as I entered, and his mood did not improve as I drew level. He remained silent, though I waited for him to make the first opening.

"I am Cob, son of Bela," I said at length. "Varadis is my mother's cousin."

The man looked me up and down. When he spoke, his voice was grating and low with menace.

"Walk with me," he said, and took a few steps away.

I hesitated. I'd seen enough treachery in the city to wonder at this, but not in broad daylight. My thoughts went to Sootri, and who would take care of her if I was gone.

"Or stay here," he said dismissively. "I'll tell her you never showed."

I ran to catch up.

"Wait, I'm coming."

We walked in silence until he came to another workplace. Hammers and chisels rang out, the familiar din than I had grown to ignore. He stopped and looked at me.

"The Lady Varadis has no use for parasites and frauds," he said.

I nodded. "I am her kinsman. My mother Bela paid for her dowry years ago, and Varadis said she and her family would always be welcome."

The man shook his head. "Foolish words, and more fool you to believe them. She is a lady of the court now, and such as your mother are beneath her concern. The war has changed everything, and the times of plenty are gone."

I reached into my shirt and pulled out the scarf. "She gave this to my mother."

He laughed dismissively. "So you think she couldn't buy another? Though one such as you might be hard pressed to afford it."

I flashed him a look of pure hatred. I had been working for months, in a halting cycle, and then the message had come back to life again. And this is what I get? Varadis was worse than ordure for this.

He sensed my anger, and laughed.

"They have told me things about you, Cob. They said you're a dangerous one when provoked. You fancy yourself in a fight perhaps?"

I knew it was a jibe. Though it galled me to do it, I recalled the last time I had let a barb sting me. And I let it go this time.

"You have wasted my time and yours. Go back to your mistress and trouble me no more," I said, turning away from him.

He laughed, the taunting tone giving way to malice.

"Maybe I'll take the girl," he said.

I stopped. Then shook my head and continued. The Temple would take care of her, surely. They needed her to sing. But isn't she just another orphan? Wouldn't it be convenient to pass her off to a well heeled patron?

The bolt - presumably from some lifting machine - was hard and compact and it took me completely by surprise as it sank into the space behind my right ear.

The world suddenly became a ringing, agonizing place, and I fell hard on my left side. The man came up and was saying something but in between the shock and the pain I could hear nothing. He raised his foot and kicked me in the side, with enough force to send me sprawling over fallen masonry.

There were shouts now, perhaps from the workers. The man came up to me as I was regaining my feet and planted a fist in my solar plexus, knocking the breath out of me. Then he got on top of me and put his armbone into my neck and started pulling back as my vision swam.

He was reciting some jeer into my ear, about how I could scare the priests by beating up old women, when my scrabbling hands found a rock and I brought it up and over into his face.

Then the world exploded again into action, me falling forwards, and then remembering the bruises and the bleeding and the cracked bones of combat training. And I revelled once again in its surge.

I turned back to face him, and took his wild swing with a crooked elbow and shoulder, only slightly rusty from time. He grabbed my hair and yanked, a trifling distraction that I pushed firmly to the back of my mind as I sank three good blows into his armpit and ribs, then to his neck, and then a final one to his temple.

He reeled backwards and sat down heavily, one hand up for a break. My momentum took him over onto his back and I locked my hands around his neck, choking him as a dog shakes a rat. He brought his knee up into my crotch, but I pushed that to the back of my mind too, along with the pain in my scalp, as I closed my hands inexorably around his neck. His eyes rolled back in his head as his struggles grew weaker.

"Walk with Hiteh..." I found I was shouting, over and over.

Suddenly, I was sprawling sideways, my shoulder burning. I rolled a ways and then regained my directions. The workers were in a circle now, and the one who had hit me came closer, shovel held before him.

"That's enough, you want to kill somebody, do it somewhere else."

The bald man got up to his knees and coughed blood. The foreman ignored him and came up to me.

"I saw him attack you. He was in the wrong. But he's a somebody and you're a nobody. That means you don't get to kill him. Not on my worksite."

I nodded dumbly. I had almost done it again. What would happen to Sootri then?

The other man got up and mopped some of the blood away. He made a shooing gesture when the workers offered him some water. He hobbled over to me, his shoulders hunched. I watched him the whole way.

"The Temple did not exaggerate your temperament," he said. "Lady Varadis may have some work for you."

He coughed and spat blood again.

"I will arrange for you to enter the city. Come to the gate at daybreak in six days and meet me. I am Sardricor."

He gave me a tap on the shoulder.

"Your skills are wasted as a builder," he said, and turned to go.

I grabbed his shoulder with just enough force to let him know I wasn't done.

"Sootri. My sister," I said. "She's coming with me."

He looked at me, then nodded.

* ~ * ~ *

I recovered my pay from the caches where I'd hidden it, and gave some to my fellow builders, and some to the Temple. I bought some better clothes for us, and we put them on the day that we went to the gates. I saw Sootri brought along a piece of paper which she tucked into her smock.

"What's that?" I asked her. She pointed at the squiggles and read out loud: FIND THE TEMPLE IN THE NOBLES WARD THEY MAY HELP YOU. There was a map on the other side. Then the legend BE GOOD SOOTRI.

She folded it carefully into her smock and then held my hand as we went to the gate. There, the guards gave us papers, and I saw Sardricor with other men. They opened the gates, and we stepped through - citizens of Flex now.




_

[HuManBing]

The Company of the Scimitar

They took us past the city gate, and there I saw Sardricor nod to the guardsmen, who waved us through. We hauled our way through the throngs of laborers, craftsmen, and soldiers inside the city, the first cobbled road beneath our feet in a long while. They walked on either side of us: Sardricor in front, and two guards beside me and Sootri. I thought of making a break for it, but the thought had obviously occurred to them too. It seemed I had nothing else to do but to go with them.

At the bridge leading to the Nobles' District, I saw a Temple and noted its location. We hastened onwards, and made our way past the many shops and apartments on the bridge, before getting to the splendid domes and arches of the city's finest. I searched among them, looking for another Temple, closer to where Varadis made her abode - and two intersections later, found one, nestled between two government buildings.

"I would like to go pray," I said abruptly.

The men stopped and looked at me. Sootri held my hand, and added her voice.

"Wee shoo fank the Tempow for gooluck," she chirped.

Sardricor checked the clock tower and huffed.

"Make it quick," he said.

* ~ * ~ *

Inside, Sootri and I knelt before the altar, and in the quiet chanting I whispered instructions to her, and made her whisper them back until she had them perfect. It only took her two tries. Then, I gave my collected wages to a priest and asked him to spend them half on her and half on the Temple. The priest, a large ugly man with a scarred nose, took them from me and began to write a receipt, but I thumbed to her and she took it.

I knelt before her and gave her a little kiss on the forehead.

"Be good," I said. "I'll be gone for a while."

* ~ * ~ *

Outside, the men were surprised to see me alone. But I told them she was a ward of the Temple now, and that Lady Varadis need only concern herself with me. Sardricor seemed indifferent to this, and waved us onwards.

Lady Varadis lived in a house fully four floors high, with a veranda from which I saw a shock of blue skirts as I approached.

* ~ * ~ *

"So, you are the mighty Ah-Cob," she said, as I knelt before her.

I nodded mutely. There was something in the plucked arch of her faint blonde brows that I did not care for - something in the pursed curve of her ageing lips that disconcerted me.

Varadis must have been somewhat older than Bela. She sat before me, in a dress with excessively long sleeves that dragged on the floor, and with slippers that made her feet look like a maiden's, but her face was starting to tell wrinkles around the thin painted lips, and lines etched into the cool grey eyes that regarded me without a trace of consequence.

"They say you killed a woman in the refugee camps," she said. "What need would a woman such as myself have of a boy such as yourself?"

I looked at her. Right now, the debt she owed to Bela, and whatever past lay between them before my birth, must have been the last thing on her mind.

"I serve well and fearlessly," I said levelly. "I once told Lord Belkrestar that I would never relinquish my charge." It was true enough, although it seemed a long time ago, and perhaps I said it not in those words.

She laughed - a short, barking sound that seemed more like a cough. I saw her face briefly collapse into a mass of wrinkles, before it smoothed again. Her hands, now that I noted it, were slightly mottled.

"You are a fool and a braggart. How would one such as you say that to our Lord? When would you, of all people, get to meet him?" she demanded.

There was an aggrieved tone in her voice that I recognized. It was the tone of a woman frustrated in her social advancement, who has heard a mere street urchin managed something she had desired for years.

I met her gaze levelly, not caring now if she believed me or not.

"There is a plaque of those who won the Prize at our lord's meet these past ten years. On it you will find my name carved once, perhaps three years ago. It should have been carved again last year, but Belkrestar commanded that I surrender it. The one who did win was from Thenol, and he cannot walk," I said.

I looked at her.

"I am the reason he cannot walk."

There was some whispering among the guards. It seemed that they had heard about this too, when it happened. Varadis shifted in her chair and snapped her fingers to silence them.

"And what does this prove? That you're a hotheaded young man? That you're as dangerous to your friends as to your foes?" she asked. Her tone was sharp, but I sensed a laconic amusement in her eyes.

For the first time, I bowed to her.

"No, milady. It proves that when I am given an order, I do not quit the field until it is completed."

She smiled faintly.

"We can use you. Sardricor will give you a tenement and you may move your sister and possessions in there," she said. "You will retain them as long as you remain in good standing of your service to Sardricor."

I nodded. "The girl is not my sister, and she is not your kinsman. I would not have you providing for her. She is not fit to grace your halls."

Varadis' eyebrows rose at that.

"Oh? She is not Bela-jir too, then?" This time, it meant "of Bela" and not myself.

"No," I said hotly. "Some whoreson whelped her with a serving maid and then left her in my house."

Varadis laughed at that.

"Come then, cool your ire. She is well shot of your duty now."

* ~ * ~ *

And that was the last I saw of Varadis. From then on, I became a servant to Sardricor and the Company of the Scimitar, and I lived from a bunk on the ground floor, and I followed my master to the tenements and farms.

There, we would terrorize and bully citizens who rented their land from Varadis. My first day out, I broke the nose of a man who was kneeling before me, hands secured by another Scimitar. We searched his house and found the sixty-four pieces of steel coins that he owed Varadis on arrears.

Sardricor said I showed talent, but I had to work on my aggression. He didn't like the way I seemed to be a "thinking man's thug", as he put it. I was to strike first and let the impression sink in that I was not a man to be bargained with.

The second day it was a tenement room on the upper floor of a cramped and crowded building. We climbed the steps loudly, to let them know we were coming, and then kicked in the door and took the man to one side. Grubby children watched us like rabbits transfixed in the wolf's glare as we went to task on their father, all the while telling him he owed back rent on the refugees he had brought in during the war. As I bloodied his face, Sardricor went into a back room and returned with a baby in his arms.

The fat bundle filled the air with its shallow keening, as Sardricor held it outside the window.

"We can start by evicting this one," he said simply.

The man paid us, and we took it in turns to kick him in the head until he passed out. We threw him down the stairs and left him, bloodied and bruised, on the landing between floors. Sardricor wrote a big scrawl over his head in blood that even I could read:

PAY YORE RENT




_

[HuManBing]

Bad Company

We rested the third day, and the other men seemed to take to me well enough. We played cards, and smoked, and drank and swore. I retired after most of the merriment was over and went to sleep in my bunk, then woke again as I found another man climbing in next to me.

"Paldras, you have the wrong cot," I said. He swatted me away with a beery hand and laughed.

He climbed in and pulled off his boots and then put his hand on my thigh. I sat up.

"Jus' a kiss," he slurred. "Jus' one."

I turned and put both my feet against his side and kicked him firmly out of my bed.

"Not today," I said, and then turned over and went to sleep again.

* ~ * ~ *

On the fourth day, we met with a stiffer challenge. Word had spread that a band of small time thieves had set up in one of the rowhomes owned by Varadis. Sardricor was to persuade them to pay a higher rent. But these men were robbers, and we would have been fools to expect them to agree without a struggle.

We kitted out in some stinking old leather armor, jerkins stained with blood and sweat from previous wearers, and armed ourselves with clubs. Anything larger was impractical in confined spaces, and might call down some the wrath of the Lord's sentinels if we hurt anybody too badly.

As I wrestled myself into my jerkin, I thought briefly of the brilliant sheen of the armor from Old Carrustin's forge. The memory passed, though not without a pang.

Then we marched down Loafbringer's Street and got to the house, where Sardricor opened the door with his key set and we poured in.

There were three of them in the parlor, playing cards, and we busied ourselves with clobbering them into silence. Then Sardricor and two others went upstairs and found two more, who went after him with daggers. Taking them out took less than three minutes, and they were all bundled downstairs and gathered in the living room.

"Where is your loot?" Sardricor said.

The leader spat at him, and he nodded to me. I stepped forward and smashed the toes at the outer corner of his right foot.

"Where is it?" he asked again, after the screaming died down.

The man murmured an answer, and a Scimitar went upstairs to look. He came back shaking his head, with a small bag of coins with him.

"Cob," Sardricor said.

I brought the club down hard twice on his right foot, to make sure the toes were all good and broken. Then I took out a knife and cut off his left boot. I placed the blade between his last two toes and pricked the skin just enough to draw a thin rivulet of blood.

The man stammered out another response, and Sardricor motioned for me to go and find it upstairs. I put the knife away and grimaced, as one who has been cheated out of his sport.

Upstairs, I moved the bed and prised up the floorboard. Inside was a strongbox, and something that shifted within as though wrapped in cloth. I had just stood up and was going out when the last bandit came out of the closet where he had been hiding, and sank the knife deep into my arm.

I dropped the box, fighting to keep the pain from distracting me, and as he wrenched the knife free, I charged him. My hands tightened around his wrist and I twisted his arm back around his chest, all the way up, until his shoulder opened with a wrenching sensation even I could feel. The knife clattered to the ground and he went down, but I kicked his knee out and he fell on his face, one arm dangling uselessly.

"You bastard!" I shouted. "Who do you think you are to stab me??!"

Sardricor came up, breathless, just as I brought my boot down two, three times on the man's other shoulder, separating the joint and crunching through cartilage. We lifted him by both crippled arms as he sagged, whimpering from the pain, and threw him down the stairs like a rag doll.

They proved far more malleable after that display. It wasn't until after we'd left the house that my arm started to hurt.

We went to the Temple to get me healed. All the Scimitars came by to shake my good hand for my fearsome display.

* ~ * ~ *

As the priest worked on me, I asked him if Sootri - the deaf-mute girl - had moved on. He nodded.

I rested easier after that. She was safe, at least.

* ~ * ~ *

At the end of the week, Sardricor took us to a whorehouse. The girls there looked garish and slightly haggard, and it was with no small amount of feigned enthusiasm that I joined the others in their badinage and ribaldry.

It occurred to me that there was another person who might help me out of this distasteful situation.

"Paldras, you dog!" I shouted. "Come here and help me pick two!"

He straightened up and beamed, a space between his front teeth, and we chose two of the girls and went into a stale smelling room with an exhausted bed. The sound of laughter and shrieks echoed through the walls.

I leaned in close.

"I know," I said simply. "About you."

His reaction was immediate and gratifying.

"You know?" he stammered. I nodded.

"But I also know how to keep a secret. In return for a favor," I said.

One of the girls threw her shift at us, and he took a moment to disentangle himself from it. Sweat stains showed a deep yellow in the armpits of the thing.

"What do you want?" he asked, with an expression of caution.

I tilted my head over to the girls.

"I'm not touching 'em. And somehow, I suspect you won't be either. Let's keep it that way. But the other men can't know, and that's because neither you nor I will tell 'em," I said.

He nodded. "Sure, Cob. But how'll we keep the girls quiet?"

I took out a handful of steel pieces - part of my pay for the week.

"You'd be surprised what a whore would agree to... for the right price."

Behind us, the girls spread themselves in what probably passed for an inviting pose.

"What's yer pleasure?" they kept asking.

I rose to my feet and went back to them, money in hand.

"Ladies, I have an excellent proposal for you."




_

[HuManBing]

Parting Company

I had been working at Sardricor's for three weeks before I was able to sneak out. It was my third visit to the brothel, and my regular girl Leera knew me and my coin well enough to cover for me as I climbed out the rear window and made my way to the Temple by way of back streets.

The irony of the situation was not lost on me.

I hurried to the Temple at the Bridge District and met the priest at the antechamber. He took me to the chorister's wing, and pulled back the little window in the door. I looked in and saw Sootri, sitting at a desk and writing in a book by candlelight.

Her hair had been cut in the meantime, and she looked different. But she stopped writing to click her fingers by her ears, and I knew it was the same dear, deaf little child I had brought to the city.

I pressed some coins into the priest's hands, and then hurried back to the brothel.

"What'll it be this time?" the girl asked me, a smirk on her face as I clambered back in through the window.

"You mean what'll it have been," I said, without rancor. "Why not something violent?"

She shook her head. "That leaves marks, and I ain't gottem."

I shrugged. "I tied you up then. Takes time. I'm not good with knots."

"That'll do," she said. She pocketed the coins and I left her to go back into the stewing falsehoods that had become my life in the city.

* ~ * ~ *

It was after another two weeks that disaster struck.

The job was the last one of the day, and it should have gone smoothly. We had gone to a slum hall where a female tenant of Lady Varadis was operating a brothel in even more desperate conditions than the one Sardricor frequented - if one could imagine that. The woman was apparently making enough to bring in four girls, and that was a violation of the contract with the Lady, which stated that no more than three unrelated adults could live in the house without an increase in rent.

We had not counted on there being some patrons too. When we raided the place, some just cut and ran, while others put up a fight. One fat man even came back for his wallet, and remonstrated with us as we barred his way.

The madam came out, held by the scruff of her neck. Sardricor shook her like a dog and she opened up, babbling freely.

I went in to find the punters gathered in a group. Some were still naked, signs of their recent passion still evident. Others were clothed, and the Scimitars frisked these ones for coin. One of them was hiding a dagger, and this became clear when he whipped it out and sank it into Paldras' cheek with a sickening crunch.

A terrible fracas broke out. Over the scrum, Sardricor motioned for me to secure the strongbox inside, then he turned away from me and bellowed "Let the buyers beware!" My fellow hoods began assaulting the clients here, beating them to the ground and moving on in a frenzy.

I went in the back and saw a face I recognized. There was a tiny cot with an infant sleeping, and a large man in priest's clothing. He was tall, with an ugly face made all the worse by a scar. I saw him, and in the same moment of recognition, I knew he had seen me. He was the one who had taken Sootri in at the Temple, and written me a receipt for her donation.

"You!" I spat. "You've got to get out of here!"

Two Scimitars came to the door.

"Why Fa-a-ther," one said, with mock civility. "Fancy meeting a man of the cloth here!"

"Shut it, you," I said. "This one's for me."

They smirked and went on into the next room. I seized the priest by the arm and brought him out into the antechamber, hissing to him "stick by me, you'll be fine". I marched him to the door, where I was blocked by Sardricor.

"What have we here?" he said merrily. "On a special mission?"

"There was a sick child," the priest said. "I was summoned to help."

I gave him a shove. "Outside, now," I said.

Sardricor let us pass, and gave the priest an impudent tap on the rump with his club. "Put 'im through his paces, Cob!"

We didn't have much time. At the moment, all the Scimitars were inside fighting the clients, save for Paldras, who was standing with his back to the wall holding his face, the knife still buried in his cheek.

"Go. Now," I told the priest. "Keep her safe for me."

The priest didn't need telling twice. He set off at a run. I turned back to Paldras, who regarded me with a manic bloodshot eye.

"Cob?" he asked. I shushed him.

"Let me take a look," I said. He lowered his hands, and I took the blade and jerked it hard into his skull, upwards. He sat down as gently as a man might take a rest. His head lolled to one side as he bled from his brain down the hilt of the blade.

I went back inside, and the ruse would have held if Sardricor hadn't looked back at just the right time and seen the priest running. He also had the sense to say nothing that would arouse my suspicions, waiting till I had turned away before clubbing me hard in the back of the head.

* ~ * ~ *

I woke with my head in a terrible ache and my legs cramped up to my chest. My chest hurt from some labor that I couldn't immediately identify as my breathing. My hearing kept swimming in and out of clarity, and there was some wall, puddling before my idiotic gaze.

It was quiet.

Slowly I realized my hands were invisible because they were anchored in wood above my head. And the wall I was staring at was actually the cobbled floor. And that I was in the stocks, next to the Headman's Stage in the slums of Flex, kneeling before my execution with all the other criminals of the sordid metropolis.

They waited till dawn to start the beheadings. People with nothing better to do came to spit at us and pull our hair and throw buckets of human waste and kitchen scraps at us. The axeman announced the crime of larceny, and then dispatched three criminals in quick succession - to judge from the hard, meaty thwacks of the blade. Being unable to turn my head, I had only that to go on.

It slowly dawned on me that I was going to die. As this realization came to me, it brought a brief surge of fear, quickly supplanted by a curious disappointment. So this was to be it? That I would be born into a family, and fight my blundering way through a short stupid life, and then die like a common criminal?

Things slowed down with an awful clarity.

The air seemed suddenly sweet, and even the dribble of rainwater from the sullen morning seemed to wet my lips in an inexpressible desperation. The salt tang - blood? my own tears, perhaps? - bit deep into my tongue, spreading the dreadful focus of my mind as I knew it was all coming to an end.

I thought of Sootri, and every song she had ever sung in the hearth. I am but a little bird, brother come and hear my song. Sudden memories crowded my flailing mind, of her swinging from the branch of a tree, laughing as she clutched the rope. Tweet tweet, what a lovely bird I'll be! Once, she and I fetched water together, and she found a newt at the well, which she lured out with bugs and watched for hours. Cough, why doesn't it drown? It doesn't look like a fish.

I thought of Wilmar, fierce in the gloaming from the mines that night, and me stale and tired from the training grounds. Watch your vitals, now... How he'd lay me out with a ringing blow to the head, and then force his shin against my throat, choking me into submission. Too slow. How many times, Cob? And then get up, and shake me off, and we'd go at it again, teeth and fists bared like drunks, united in the common cause of punishing the human frame. The vain, petty little thought then that I was dying, or would expire in the yard under his blows - what of them now? What I would have given to be back there, taking his brunted knuckles, but knowing I'd be warm and safe in bed after it all.

The headsman called out the next victims - those accused of robbery. My head rang so much I barely made out his words. It occurred to me that nobody had told me what I was here for, exactly. Presumably not larceny, as they were already dead.

Somebody threw a stone, which cut me on the crown. A guard shouted at them to stop and pushed them back a ways.

I wondered who my lost, forgotten father was. Who was it who had won Bela's strong and proud heart, and built the house with her in Forg, and driven into her the seed that would become me some day? Before the blades of Malarchus claimed him, the only thing I could recall were his hands, covered in dirt from planting our garden crops, yet gentle enough to hold me as I came out to clutch his leg.

The crowd cheered, and another head thumped to the ground wetly, plashing in its own blood.

I thought of the great lords, Malarchus and Belkrestar both. What did it matter to them that lives like mine were made and used and wasted in their vain wars? What quirk of fate was it that I should have been born fatherless, to dodge the kicks and blows of a coarse farmer's hamlet, when someone like Perringen should be born into linens and gilding, as our lord's whelp?

"Please, no! Mercy... mercy... O Mislaxa grant me this... please..." said the man to my immediate right as they lifted him out of his yoke. A halberd butt to the stomach silenced him, and he began to vomit. Unheeding, they dragged him through his own effluvium to the block. He was still retching when the axe fell.

I broke into a cold sweat, my body knowing I had reached the end. My thoughts raced, but I forced myself to calm, and to seek out only the thoughts most dear to me in my last moments. I thought back to Bela, and for a frozen, terrible moment, could not call her face to mind. But then I thought of her strong hands, and the smell of baking bread, and the motion of the whisk in the mixing bowl. And as easily as the dream follows the slumber, I was lost in the vision of her - stray hairs from her bun, eyes piercing, and lips quirked with a wry smile at her wayward son.

The sobs came readily then, half desperation - but also half relief. That I would not have forgotten her, to whom I once meant more than the whole world's riches, in my last few minutes on this cursed world. The crowd began to jeer, and I turned my eyes about, looking for a scrap of sky in my field of vision. I found it to the right, where the vacant stocks of my recently departed neighbor let in some of the horizon. Fixing it with my right eye, I offered up a prayer - not for me, but for her, wherever she was.

"Mislaxa please grant to my poor mother Bela some measure of rest, that she may know but little care, under Your grace, that the world may do unto her better than I have done unto it, and that she may live in ready joy and only fleeting hardships. This I ask humbly, knowing that I have failed you and her alike, and only wishing that you accept my life of wickedness in return for moments of happiness for her. And so be it done, I consign myself to Your mercy."

This done, I heard a growing uproar coming from my right. People began chanting a word, over and over again. When the roar got to me, it was too blurred for me to understand. I craned my head to the right, unable to see anything except the lank body of the next criminal over.

Then I saw it.

A thin man, tall, but with a purposeful stride, made his way along the prisoners, tilting their heads to look at their faces. Then moving on. I didn't recognize him at first, but there was no mistaking his importance. The man was here from the Temple, and he would pay the life bond of a criminal today, to better serve the Church.

I exhaled sharply, exhausted beyond measure. The priest came to me, and tilted my head up with a gentle slim hand. He smiled.

"Cob, today you are a free man," he said.

When they paid my life bond, I closed my eyes and gave thanks to every god I knew for this. They lifted the yoke from my neck and the bonds from my limbs, and I staggered to my feet before everything turned black again.

* ~ * ~ *

When I came to, I was lying in a bed in a Temple hospice. There was a window, and the same young priest from before stood by it. He came away and I saw his face clearly, and my memory returned to me.

"Hello, Prent," I said simply.




_

[HuManBing]

Temple Duties

I rested, and healed, and talked with Prent for the best part of a day. Much had changed since his departure with Pastor Dartoraigh last summer. I told him of the doomed fight against Malarchus' men, and the treachery of Perringen in seizing leadership of Forg. He told me of the desperate straits of Lothgren, Roshan, and Palt, with the armies of Malarchus settling in for a protracted campaign.

He had changed, too. I don't know what he had seen on the roads, in the cities, on his travels with Dartoraigh. But he was no longer the quietly confident boy I'd said goodbye to at Himlak's verandah last year. Something in his eyes and the turn of his mouth hinted at a man bearing a shadow of cynicism on his soul since he first stepped into the world as a boy.

I considered myself. Since that sunny day sipping mead, I had certainly changed too. I thought of the men I had toppled from Forg's walls in the siege. Also of the farmers who cracked my ribs for stolen corn, and of the woman I had murdered for snatching Sootri away from me.

Talk eventually came to specifics.

"How's Bela?" I asked, fearing the answer slightly. After all, I had bargained my life in return for her happiness in my prayer. Now that I had yet to pay my life, what would the deal mean for her?

Prent nodded. "She is in good shape," he said. "She misses you. But all the same, it's best for you that you left."

I looked at him. "How so?"

He sighed. "The new lord Perringen is... changeable. The town is such that you would not recognize it. He keeps the men training, and has brought in refugees as slave labor. The mines are always burning these days."

I realized he had only said Bela was in good shape. I wondered whether to ask about her spirits.

"Oh," he said. "Lindo's family escaped. It turns out Perringen held them for questioning and then sent them into exile. Lindo himself is staying with Wilmar though. Perringen doesn't know about him."

I gave a wry smile. It was probably a social coup of sorts for Wilmar to win Lindo to his hearth. Then I remembered something that made my heart plummet.

Prent saw my sudden change of heart and came over.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

I motioned for water, which I gulped down. I was sweating as I put down the clay cup.

"You know, Bela sent me out to take care of Sootri and..." my voice cracked and I cleared it to say her name "... and Anveran. Sootri should be safe. But Anveran..."

Prent put a hand on my shoulder.

"Sootri is indeed safe. I saw her today. She is doing well, and singing like a songbird in the Temple choir."

He drew up a chair and sat down beside me.

"About Anveran, I have heard some word. But you can probably tell me more."

I looked at him. There was no hint of duplicity in his face. No desire except to hear me out.

"I killed a woman who had hurt Anveran and taken Sootri," I said. "Because of that, we left the Temple camp. And Anveran lay down in a doorway and died. Because of me."

Prent nodded, after a long silence.

"Bela does not know about this," he said. "You will have to find some way to come to terms in your own heart. And then you will have to find some way of telling her."

He got up.

"But the Temple knows men can stray. It also knows men can return. And your deeds have shown you may yet be worth the life-bond we paid for you."

He blew out the candle and waved away the smoke, then paused in the doorway.

"Get some rest. The Temple has some work for you, Bela-jir."

* ~ * ~ *

As it turned out, Temple work was easier the further you got into the city. Although I was hardly the tallest of men, I was apparently substantial enough to serve well as a Temple guard, holding the staff of the order in my hands and staying still and silent.

At first I guarded the main Temple in the Nobles' district. For a few days, I worried about whether Sardricor or Varadis would send anybody after me. But then I relaxed, and it became clear that nobody would trouble me after the Temple had retrieved me from the headsman's block.

The only thing I had to deal with was the routine of standing still for hours, never speaking a word to another. It was a routine I took to surprisingly well. Where I would have fidgeted and griped as a boy, I found quite enough to trouble me in my thoughts as I stood, placid, watching the sky fade to black.

The conflict and desperation of the past months seemed to draw a curtain across my mind. I found myself starting to forget things that I had easily recalled. What was the name of the man who had trained us as boys in Himlak's grounds? Where was it that Prent and I had wrestled, exactly, before he fell and hurt himself? I became taciturn and quiet, even when directly addressed. It was hardly worth the while to talk to another person.

For the first time, I think I began to understand all those years of silence that fell onto Anveran after her grievous injuries.

The one joy in the routine was seeing Sootri. Her muddy brown hair had been cleaned and tied, and now shone with a lustrous dark glow when she sang. Her voice, almost to make up for her poor hearing, was a thing of arching splendor - a pure crystal in the hall when she reached for the high notes.

I saw her standing among other children, no longer the shortest now, holding a book before her and singing. Once, during a lull in the song, she saw me once in the audience and her lips curled and her eyes sparked in happiness. She leaned to another child and whispered to her ear, and nodded at me. I can still see them in my mind's eye - Sootri beaming with pride and the other girl staring, her mouth in a startled "o" to see this coarse, uncouth man in the audience as graceful Sootri's kinsman.

* ~ * ~ *

_

[HuManBing]

Leaderless Flex, Perringen's Gambit

We stayed that way through winter and then spring. Then, as the lords prepared their armies and men polished their proof, we heard distressing news.

Lord Belkrestar - his illness kept a secret from his people - had died. The new rightful lord of Flex was his son, the traitor Perringen.

* ~ * ~ *

The nobles rightly held that this was no solution whatsoever. Perringen had seized his father's steel mines at a time when Flex needed it to prepare for Malarchus. He was clearly self-serving and unsuitable to rule.

They were less clear about who should govern. At first it seemed that they might agree to a power sharing arrangement, but the issue of who would command all the nobles' armies was a deal breaker. The Temple hosted a talk at neutral ground, with a newly-arrived high priest from Hawkbluff officiating, but no verdict was reached.

Then Perringen marched out from Forg and headed towards Flex, with a number of cavalry and siege engines. This galvanized the nobles into an immediate meeting to decide on an interim leader until Perringen's threat passed. They debated for a day and a half, locked in a banquet hall until they had agreed.

Their solution was to place the city in the hands of the Temple, until Perringen was neutralized. The Temple's high priest - Bishop Trandamere - was also conveniently enough affiliated with the king in Aurim and Thenol. They grumbled little as he took nominal lordship of Flex. He allowed the nobles to retain control of all their armies, but sent a diplomatic corps to meet Perringen in the field.

* ~ * ~ *

Prent and I went on this mission with Dartoraigh in the lead - the three of us all having a history with the doomed town of Forg. We came unarmed, save for my sword, and arrived with the other templars at the camp of Perringen. We went through to his grand tent, and he met us with his circle of advisers.

I suppose I had grown, in the year since I'd left Forg. Perringen had not. His eyes still held the same measure of insolence and bluster. He sat, not rising to meet us, in his chair, and opened our meeting with a list of things he planned to do to the populace if they did not open the gates of Flex to welcome him in.

What struck me most was his advisers. There were one or two I did not recognize, but the rest were all Forg's men. Had they turned allegiance so quickly? I wondered. What riches must he have promised them to do so?

Dartoraigh was polite and well-spoken, but it was clear the envoy's mission was hopeless from the start. Perringen toyed with us, sneered at us, and then rose from his chair and dismissed us. His final word was the same as his beginning: that Flex belonged to him, and that anybody who stood in his way would suffer.

We left the camp in low spirits.

On the way out, I saw a young guard and recognized him.

It was Lotal.

I hung back, staying in the wilderness at the edge of the camp as they lit fires and settled in. Some stray children from the outskirts of Flex came to them, begging for food and alms, and were quickly sent on their way by the guards.

I waited and saw Lotal among them. I watched him go to his tent, and then I threw rocks at the tent until he came out.

He jumped a little when I revealed myself.

"Hello, Ah-Lotal," I said.

He held his spear out for a long moment.

"I'm not armed," I said, and it was true. I had left my sword in the crook of a tree's branches, some half a mile away.

He lowered his spear.

"Cob," he said simply.

He had been through some intense training, I could tell. There was a crick in his nose that suggested it had been broken. When he said my name, I saw a gap in his front teeth. Somebody had been hard at work on him.

"How is Forg?" I asked.

He shifted, uncertain. He set his spear by his foot and mopped his brow.

"I thought you were dead!" he said.

I patted myself and smiled at him.

"Clearly not," I said. "Though there were a few times when the chips were in the air. Prent's alive and well too. How's the rest of the team?"

Lotal gulped.

"Lindo's hiding at your place. He's Bela's son now. Prasti's on the front lines with the rest of the spearmen. Perringen made me a camp guard and patrolman as my father's one too."

I nodded. "Is he a good man?" I asked.

Lotal stared at me mutely. That was all the answer I needed.

"If you're on patrol round these parts, I can send word to you," I said.

He nodded dumbly. Then he said "I can't believe you're alive."

I held out my arm. He seized it and handled it roughly - felt the scars he'd given me in training, and the sinews made flat and taut through our melees together.

"Cob, the town's in a bad way," he said. "They have made soldiers into gods and even boys like us into tyrants. There are maybe a dozen men who serve him out of duty, but the rest are all here because they have our women and children in the town under the sword."

I nodded. "Makes sense," I said. "So we'll free the women and children first."

Lotal shook his head. "The wall is twice as high now. Even with siege engines, there would be no taking it. Perringen knows what Flex can do, and he has made sure it will be nothing."

I sighed.

Lotal fidgeted uneasily.

"Cob, I have to go. Don't show yourself around here anymore. You don't know how dangerous it is," he said.

I waved him away. "What's the worst he can do? Torture me to death as a traitor?"

Lotal bit his lip. "You don't see. He has three trusted advisers who would do anything for him. If you're seen here, your sire Wilmar will have you killed on the spot."

I stepped back.

"How's that?" I said.

But he was already turned away, and soon he was gone into the night.

* ~ * ~ *

Pastor Dartoraigh made a few more visits to the camp, each time coming back empty handed from Perringen. However, he carried messages for Lotal, who would hear them whispered as he passed. Lotal drew sketches in paper and then crumpled them, throwing them out among food wrappings as he bought them from the farmers.

The farmer's kid brought them back to us. In it was a sketch of the town of Forg and the walls and armory.

Back inside the city, the nobles had put a plan into action. The largest contingent of fighting men was under the banner of Captain Nanje, and he was well equipped to meet the army. Although the men had inferior equipment to the fine steeled Forg men, they still outnumbered Perringen's army by a considerable margin. They took to the fields in late afternoon and faced off against Perringen in separate formations at a safe distance, neither threatening nor retreating. Apparently they actually engaged Perringen's force after his patience broke and he led a charge.

Nanje, though a stern commander, was unable to hold Perringen forever and he ordered a withdrawal and a regrouping on higher ground. Perringen pursued him, gaining ground closer to the city, until Nanje retreated entirely behind the city walls and secured the gates.

Although Perringen crowed about this, it hardly mattered. The din of battle had obscured our most important offensive.

The second strike force numbered only a few dozen men. They went forth at night under the command of Captain Taric, and I was included. We rode fast and hard to Forg, and got there shortly before morning.

Following the directions on Lotal's map, and my own memories of building the walls, we found an unstable portion near the top of the mined ridge that had not been properly buttressed in the further construction. It took only a few men to scale it and help the others up. Once inside, we went straight to the forge, killed the guards around Old Carrustin, and began distributing spears, armor, and swords to the townsfolk.

The reserve garrison held out at the mines and armory for a day and a night before the townsfolk and our squad of soldiers breached their defenses and cut them down to a man.

And Forg was no longer in the hands of Perringen.

* ~ * ~ *

The news reached their army on the third day, and the fighting spirit of the men turned so sharply against Perringen that he had to order a detail squad to execute anybody found to flee his banner. Nanje sallied forth from the city again with a fresh host of defenders, and pushed Perringen away from the walls, though they hotly contested every foot of ground.

In the night, the men deserted in droves, walking back to Forg where a friendly host of their townsmen greeted them.

By the fourth day, the field was bare - tents lay empty and trenches half-dug, abandoned as the workmen threw down their shovels and joined the exodus.

Of Perringen and his elite circle of advisers, who would once have been Lord, there was no sign. They had simply vanished into the countryside.

* ~ * ~ *

Captain Taric had a warm welcome, as well he might - the deliverer of Forg. But after he left to return to Flex, I found that the townsmen reserved their true measure of gratitude to me, much to my surprise. They seized me and carried me on their shoulders, and chanted "Son of Forg", jostling me back to the Himlak manse.

Lindo emerged and embraced me. Bela - her hair a little looser, her eyes a little less sharp - came to me and put her head on my shoulder. Suddenly I realized how tall I was beside her.

Prent returned, and from the tumble and dust of the deserters, others materialized too: Gela-jir, Lellik-jir, Prasti. Even Sootri came back, brought by Pastor Dartoraigh himself in a Temple convoy a week later.

In the days that followed, there was a rare display of feasting and drinking. Lotal lapped it up, telling the story of how he spread word among the brave men of Forg to rise up against Perringen. Prent saw to the wounded and the ill, and helped Dartoraigh tend to those who had came to know Perringen's lash.

For Sootri, the transition seemed difficult. She had forgotten much about her life here, and the names of other girls her age had faded clean from her memory. Yet she sang at the celebrations - hymns of thanks to the Temple - and the village hushed in awe to hear her.

Yet for all the celebrations, and my joy at seeing Bela again, I noted a void of sadness about her. Although she waited for weeks after the last song died down and the ashes of the bonfire had swept to the winds, her love, Wilmar, never returned to Forg.



_

[HuManBing]

Peace in Forg

Things changed after that. Lindo's relatives ruled the village as a group, with a circle of counsellors from the main families. We kept the forge going, as Perringen had done, but we also allowed the people of the village to carry arms.

It was fast becoming clear that this forge was a curse as well as a blessing. In these times of war, there were desperate men willing to do whatever it took to secure it.

Fortunately for us, the scattered nature of Flex's leadership meant that the Temple had a powerful say. And thanks to Dartoraigh's good name in Forg, the Temple willed it that Forg stay independent. And thus it was that Flex signed an agreement to guarantee that Forg would remain a self-governed tributary.

After the dust settled, they made me a guard sergeant. Terrek, the grizzled man of Belkrestar who had trained me, became the town's captain.

* ~ * ~ *

The townsfolk became free spirited and full of laughter. They had seen off the worst that the war had thrown at them, and the future was something they could meet with confidence. Everywhere I went, Forg's citizens walked in hope, secure in the knowledge that they could survive it all.

Each time I saw it, it infuriated me.

Merely travelling along the road to Flex was now a struggle against starvation and robbery. The countryside was still host to desperate men like Perringen. And Forg's temptation was still strong as ever - though the men waiting to seize it would only grow in their ruthlessness and resolve.

I tried to make this known to the council, but they merely said they sympathized with my travails of the past year.

I took to walking the ramparts at night, both to calm my thoughts, and because nobody else in this damnably complacent town could be trusted to do it. Once, Prent walked with me.

"You are killing yourself over this," he said.

"Then I should fit right in with the rest of this witless town," I shot back. "If we fall, I'll tell you right now it's because of rot from within."

He sighed.

"It is the nature of service as a fixer of broken things," he said. "Your populace calls upon you to save them in times of need, but they forget their worries when danger is passed."

"You can pontificate and philosophize," I retorted. "Meanwhile, I'm the one keeping an eye out in this wretched night."

We stopped awhile.

"These fools take all this-" I swept my arm across the torchlit mines, and the lights in the houses "-for granted. Nary a thought to the strong arms that keep it so for them."

Prent remained wisely silent.

"Would that they would see," I said bitterly.

He turned to me. "Someday you'll have to put your sword down. Perhaps you are right that today is not that day. But you have to look forward to that day and be clear when it comes to pass so you will know it."

I looked at him. "What in Hiteh's name are you talking about?"

"You are skilled in seeing the ways of war. I pray that you do not forget how to see the ways of peace."

He left, and I continued standing alone in the darkness.

* ~ * ~ *

In the meantime, Malarchus had made significant inroads to toppling Lothgren, and had severely weakened Palt. Without relief from Flex, Palt would succumb as Roshan had done in the first weeks of the war.

Flex's squabbling nobles argued the point to tedium and sent a force under Nanje to relieve Palt. But they dallied so long before sending him that Palt fell two days after he left Flex. His army arrived to find Malarchus already entrenched in the city's ruins. As their lines of supply lengthened, Nanje's men lost faith in the enterprise.

He marched flowwards and reinforced Lothgren instead. Malarchus made a feint to Lothgren but retreated after several border skirmishes. A cunning counterattack by Nanje forced Malarchus to pull back from a key highway, reestablishing the supply routes to Lothgren's people.

* ~ * ~ *

I was making my rounds of the wall when I heard whispering ahead. Two boys stood up suddenly as they saw me, throwing something over the side of the wall. I saw the paper flicker in the darkness.

"What's going on?" I demanded. I got to where they were and saw the gates unlocked. The thought flashed into my mind that the only thing to do now was to call an alarm to the gate and try to flush out the enemy agents who were doubtless already inside Forg.

It took me less than ten heartbeats to kill both boys and wipe my sword. Then, bellowing for guards to ring the bells, I ran to secure the gates myself.

* ~ * ~ *

Two days later, with no enemy attack materialized, and no agents found in the village, the council called a meeting.

The parents of the boys testified that they had been known to gamble, and to cheat other boys on the watch out of their money. They said they had tried without avail to get them to stop. They wept and then said even so, it hardly justified cold-blooded execution. They pointed their fingers and called me a murderer.

Despite my explanation that this had been precisely the sort of way an enemy force would win past our gates, the council refused to see sense. In a way, the only thing shielding me from culpability was my past service to the town.

They let me have command of one of the newly-built roadside outposts, outside the town walls. I was to supervise runners who would send an alert if they sighted anything untoward. I would be allowed back in the town when my tours were completed, which would be once every month.

* ~ * ~ *

Prent was the only one to come by to see me, his footsteps surprisingly clear now that I only heard birdsongs and insect chirps for my chatter.

He sensed my state of mind and spoke little. He still brought me treats from Bela's kitchen, and little carvings that Sootri did. But soon afterwards, Dartoraigh went on his travels again, and Prent accompanied him.

And I was left alone with time to think.

It was clearly becoming apparent to me that men were made after two forms. There were those who prevailed in hardships, and those who prevailed in boontimes. And it would forever be the lot of the former to fight and defend the interests of the ungrateful fools who comprised the latter.

Occasionally I would fall into a mood so black that I began to think truly dangerous thoughts against myself. It was as though the world was a story too painful to tell, and the ending too horrid to endure. One day, watching the mottled clouds overhead, I suddenly rose from my desk and shouldered my bedroll. I walked out of the watchpost and into the wilderness, walking with a burgeoning fury that carried me into the depths of the forest.

I stopped walking when it got dark, my legs aching and my feet blistered. I unrolled my bedroll and made a fire.

I lay down, surrounded by the somber creatures of the night, and who knew how far away from the nearest man. I closed my eyes and felt a strange sense of inevitability wash over me.

When I woke in the morning, the ashes of the fire were long cold. I was hungry, and turned over a few fallen logs to get at the fat grubs under them. They quietened the hunger in my stomach, and I lay back down. What if this could last forever? I wondered. Me away from the folly and cruelty of men. Living off the land like a savage, but with no more need to lie or cheat.

I napped a little more, and then reluctantly got to my feet again and began the walk back. They would miss me at the guard post and if I were gone for too long, they'd start to ask questions.



_