His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) Page 14

  “Aino,” he said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Let it go. No use wasting any more effort there. All we can do now is make sure it doesn’t spread.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Aino.

  So they let the storehouses burn. He stood against the corner of the infirmary, his arms folded against his ribs, and he watched the burning with the sickness settled deep in his heart, an aching tightness sunk between his shoulder-blades. You might have sent some word, Muryn, he thought, suddenly bitter. You might have sent and given some warning. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask. At the least you might have done that.

  But the bitterness died quickly as it had come. The thing was his own doing—his fault, his responsibility, the weight of the guilt his alone to bear. No good lashing out at the priest. He’d known it would be this way. It was going to be this way from the moment he’d seen Mægo Sarre lying there senseless on the ground and had chosen not to raise a hand against him. Cowardice to disown that now.

  X

  It rained in the early morning, long and steady and soaking, washing away any chance they might have had to track the rebels up into the hills. The dawn came late and it was cold, gray, comfortless. He stood with Verio and Aino, the rest of the men standing in rank, while they buried the three guardsmen in the wet black earth behind the fort—the same ground where, earlier, they’d buried Sælo and the man they’d lost in the Outland. Afterward, while the men got to work under Aino’s supervision clearing away the smoldering ruins of the storehouses and repairing that stretch of the south-facing wall, he sat at his desk and wrote the letters to the families—brief, cold, empty, meaningless letters. They couldn’t know the truth, that he’d let this happen when he might have prevented it, because how are you supposed to explain that? There was no way to explain it sufficiently, no way to justify it to them, even if he could justify it in his own head—and suddenly he wasn’t even sure he could do that. It had seemed simple enough before. With his men dead in the ground it became harder.

  But he’d the practical things to think about now: the food stores, most urgently, and materials for rebuilding. And so, when he’d finished with the letters and his report, and had dispatched a rider to Rien, he went again with Verio to the hall of the Magryni.

  The young Magryn was silent and sullen this day as he’d been the last and Tyren directed his words mainly to the woman.

  “I’ve written out the agreement already, Lady Magryn. You can see you’ll be well-compensated.”

  She toyed with the silver bracelets on her arms, pretending carelessness, while she looked over the papyrus sheet he’d put down on the table in front of her. “Yes, it’s satisfactory,” she said.

  “Does the lord Magryn find it satisfactory?” said Tyren.

  The young Magryn looked up to him quickly, as though startled. Then he looked to his mother. She bowed her head to him, cheeks reddening a little. She took her hands away from the papyrus and leaned back in her chair. He reached for the papyrus slowly, pulling it over with his fingertips until it was directly before him. He read it for himself, his gray eyes moving steadily back and forth as he read, his face blank.

  “It’s satisfactory,” he said, finally. He pushed it away and didn’t look at it again.

  “You’ll sign it, then?” said Tyren.

  The boy made no move for a moment. There was an odd, twisted look in his face suddenly, as if he’d just swallowed something vile. The muscles in his jaw twitched. He lifted his shoulders in a quick, stiff shrug.

  “Your people will take the grain whether I sign your agreement or not, Commander. I don’t see my signature makes a difference.”

  Verio half rose from his chair, looking quickly to Tyren, but Tyren shook his head once, tightly. Lady Magryn said, in a low, urgent voice, “Ryn.”

  The boy stood all at once, pushing back his chair with such force it squealed on the flag-stone floor. He went out from the room without another word, stumbling in his haste, steadying himself with a hand on the wall. There was silence for a little while after he’d gone. Then the woman spoke to Tyren hurriedly, stammering.

  “Forgive him, Commander Risto. I’m sure—if I speak with him—I’m sure he’ll agree to sign it. Let me speak with him.”

  “I’ll wait,” said Tyren. He said it in a bored voice, to show it didn’t much matter to him, but his thoughts were racing. So Magryn’s son wasn’t eager to pledge himself to the Empire. Mægo had made an impression there.

  When they were alone Verio took his seat again very slowly. “You’ll do nothing about that, sir?”

  “He’s been Lord Magryn less than a month, and he saw his father murdered before his eyes, murdered for collaborating with us. I’m willing to show him some patience, Lieutenant.”

  “The woman would be easier to deal with, sir—less of a risk.”

  “She means nothing. She has no real authority here.”

  Verio lifted his shoulders.

  “If the boy were out of the way—” he said.

  “No,” said Tyren.

  “We can’t count on his loyalty, sir.”

  “And if we kill him, Lieutenant, we’ll have the village rising against us. They’ll remember their loyalty to the Magryni quickly enough if we make a martyr of him. We can’t afford that now.”

  Lady Magryn came back into the room with her son behind her. The young Magryn’s face was flushed with anger and humiliation, his gray eyes burning. There were bright red finger-marks on the skin of his left cheek. He took care not to look at Tyren. He sat down wordlessly at the table and pulled the papyrus to him again. Verio set out a quill and an ink jar before him and he took the quill and dipped it in the ink and signed his name at the bottom of the sheet, very stiffly. Beside the signature Lady Magryn poured out a few drops of blood-red wax from the clay bottle that had been warming on the hearth, and Magryn put down the quill and stamped the wax with his seal ring. Then he sat back in his chair, the fingers of his right hand, which had held the quill, curling up and clenching into a fist, his jaw tight.

  Tyren took the papyrus and rolled it up and gave it to Verio.

  “The Empire will remember your loyalty, Lord Magryn,” he said.

  Magryn flinched at the words. He stayed in his chair, staring across the table at nothing, while Tyren and Verio went out from the room, but Lady Magryn came quickly after them and said, “Commander Risto, forget the boy’s foolishness. He’s still troubled by what happened—by my husband’s death, lord. It made him thoughtless a moment, that’s all. The Magryni will always be loyal to the Empire.”

  “I’m sure of that, Lady Magryn,” said Tyren.

  But he didn’t think, in truth, the young Magryn was nearly so weak-minded or thoughtless as the woman thought he was, or said he was. No, he thought—no, the boy had known the meaning of his words well enough, surely had known what the consequences might be, and had spoken anyway. Foolish, maybe. Foolish in the way Mægo Sarre was foolish. But not weak. A grave mistake to think him weak.

  * * *

  He unsaddled Risun himself when they got back to the fort. Afterward he went to his office and sat down at his desk and took out the inventory and the report Aino had made of the damage done to the storehouses, but the surgeon interrupted him almost immediately.

  “Sir, it’s the corporal.”

  “Regaro?”

  “I think the wound’s poisoned, sir.”

  He repeated the word, stupidly. “Poisoned.”

  “It’s an old Cesino practice to poison their blades, their arrowheads—”

  “The wound is poisoned, doctor, and you’re telling me only now?”

  The surgeon made a tight, helpless gesture with his hands. “The poison—it must act only slowly, sir. Makes it harder to treat, that way, maybe—I don’t know. There was no sign of it until this morning.”

  He went out to the infirmary, the surgeon coming quickly behind him. Regaro lay in a feverish delirium on a woven-reed mat on the infirmary floor, his eyes g
lazed, unseeing, his breath rattling in his throat. The skin of the left shoulder, round the wound, was mottled angrily red and white, puffy with infection.

  Tyren looked down at him in silence a while.

  He said, at length, between shut teeth, “It’ll kill him?”

  The surgeon spoke impatiently. “I don’t know the cure, sir. Maybe there is no cure. I don’t know. I’m an army surgeon, Commander, not a physician. This is beyond my knowledge.”

  Tyren said nothing. There was hot, senseless anger inside him all at once, thick in his throat—anger at the surgeon, his stupidity, his helplessness, anger the fool hadn’t seen this earlier, that he’d let Regaro die as he’d let the guardsman die.

  He turned on his heel and went out into the yard without another word to the surgeon. Aino was still in the yard, overseeing the work on the wall. Tyren went to him and took him roughly aside by one elbow.

  “The Nyri, Corporal. Do you know them?”

  Aino didn’t answer right away. Tyren could tell he was taken aback; there was uncertainty in his face, a startled sharpness in his gray eyes. But he said, finally, in a quiet voice, “Yes, sir, I know them.”

  “I want you to bring the girl here. The healer. Maryna. I want you to bring her to me, do you understand?”

  Aino looked him over quickly, carefully. But he asked no questions. He bowed his head, after another moment’s hesitation, and said “Yes, sir,” and went at a run to take a horse from the stable.

  He waited in his office for Aino to return, and the keen edge of his anger dulled a little while he waited. A rash thing to do, sending for her, bringing her here. Too rash, maybe; the men would ask questions, spread rumors. But what else could he do? He couldn’t sit here idly and let Regaro die. It wouldn’t be the surgeon’s fault if Regaro died.

  Aino was back within the hour. He came to the open doorway of the office and saluted and stood wordlessly aside so the girl could come in.

  She stood stiffly just inside the doorway, waiting, saying nothing, watching him with flat eyes, her arms at her sides, her bony chin up, her sun-browned face hard as stone, her lips pale and tight. She’d been in the fields; there were stray stalks of grass still clinging to her skirt, black Cesino earth staining her hands and her slim brown sandaled feet.

  Tyren stood up from his chair and went round the desk to her. “Come with me,” he said.

  Inside the infirmary he ordered the surgeon to leave them and then he crouched down on his heels beside the mat where Regaro lay.

  He said, over his shoulder, “Can you cure him?”

  She came over slowly and he heard her let out her breath in a cold little laugh. “This is what you wanted, Vareno?”

  “You’ve skill with healing. I’m asking for your help.”

  She said, mocking, “My help.”

  “I want to know if you can cure him.”

  “Fool. Have you any idea what you’re asking me to do?”

  He was impatient now. “Do I understand he wears the harness of the Empire and your loyalty lies with Sarre and his rebellion? Yes, I understand that.”

  “And it means nothing to you?”

  “I don’t know what it means to me,” he said, truthfully.

  She looked down at him in silence a while, her lips parted just a little to show her teeth.

  “Tell me why you let Mægo live,” she said, at length.

  “Muryn trusted me, that was one thing.”

  “You did it for the priest?”

  “I did it because I don’t believe in killing wounded men.”

  She was silent again, studying him. Then she turned her face away from him. She knelt, slowly, reached out a hand, pressed the swollen skin of Regaro’s shoulder gently with her fingertips, felt his forehead against her wrist. Regaro made no move, lay still as a dead man. His rasping breath was loud in the silence.

  Maryna sat back on her heels. “I’ll need to bring some things from home,” she said, in a low voice. She was careful to keep her eyes from his.

  “I’ll saddle my horse for you,” Tyren said.

  She shook her head, tightly. “No, I’ll walk, Vareno.”

  He said, “I do understand what I’m asking you to do.”

  She lifted her shoulders a little. “Then our debts are settled after this,” she said.

  * * *

  She came back to the fort before the evening meal, carrying a woven-grass basket under her left arm. She knelt by the infirmary hearth and put down the basket and took out a stone mortar and a pestle and a bundle of long, narrow green leaves folded in a thin flaxen cloth. Then she stirred up the coals for a fire.

  “I can make a poultice for the wound—for the poison,” she said to him, over her shoulder. “I can’t promise you he’ll live, do you understand?”

  “Tell me what I can do,” he said.

  “I can do it well enough,” she said.

  So he sat on his heels beside Regaro and watched while she boiled water in a pot over the fire and crushed the long leaves in the mortar and added a little of the hot water to make a paste. She scraped the paste onto the cloth and brought the cloth over to Regaro and pressed it to his shoulder and wrapped it up tightly with fresh bandages. She didn’t speak again until she’d finished.

  “I’ll need some time to gather more of the herb,” she said. “I’ll come again when I can. See that he’s given plenty of water.”

  “Let me take you back,” said Tyren.

  “No.”

  “At least I can do that. You needn’t walk in the dark.”

  “No,” she said again, more forcefully.

  He said nothing. A heavy silence settled between them. He sat beside Regaro’s mat without moving, his jaw tight, humiliation burning on his skin, while she went back to the hearth and knelt and gathered up her things into the basket. She got to her feet again and went past him to the doorway. She paused there, looking back to him.

  “I’ll come again, Vareno,” she said. Then she went out into the yard.

  He went to the officers’ mess for the meal when she’d gone. There was a bitterness inside him, a sick regret it had to be this way between them, the sudden cold certainty it was useless to wish it were different, no matter what Muryn might say. Verio and Aino were waiting at the table when he came in. They stood and saluted, waiting for him to take his seat before they sat down again. He sat down at the head of the table. Verio’s eyes stayed on him as he sat.

  “How’s Regaro, sir?”

  “Too soon to know if he’ll live,” Tyren said, with irritation.

  Verio said, “I see.”

  There was something odd in the way he said it and Tyren looked up questioningly to him from the bowl of stewed lamb and beans and green herbs an orderly had set before him.

  Verio said, “You don’t think it’s a risk to have her tending him, sir?”

  “You think one farm girl’s a risk here, Lieutenant?” said Tyren.

  Verio said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “I’m concerned you’re allowing her to come and go freely, sir.”

  Aino had looked up now, his gray eyes going back and forth from Tyren to Verio, but he said nothing.

  “It’s my concern, not yours,” said Tyren.

  “It’s the concern of every man in this garrison,” said Verio. “Sir.”

  There was silence in the room a little while.

  “I’m trying to save Regaro’s life,” Tyren said, at length, very quietly. “I’m willing to take some risks for that. Maybe you’re not, and if this were your command it would be your decision. But this is my command, my decision, and your questioning of that constitutes insubordination, Lieutenant. If it continues I’ll have no choice but to punish you for it, do you understand me?”

  Verio’s face was hard, his mouth tight. “I understand you perfectly, sir,” he said.

  “I don’t want the matter spoken of again,” said Tyren.

  But he couldn’t be angry with Verio, not in truth. He couldn’t fault him for think
ing of the men, of his duty. At least Verio could still think of duty without irony. At least Verio still had that luxury. How much easier to live like that, with duty as the only consideration—if duty were still the uncomplicated thing he’d believed it was at Vione. How much easier if he could still think of it like that.

  * * *

  Regaro improved in the night, the fever coming down, the delirium clearing away. In the morning he was able to respond when Tyren spoke to him, to lift his head and eat a little of the barley porridge the surgeon brought him from the mess, to curse the fierce pain in his shoulder.

  Lady Magryn came to the fort after the morning muster.

  She rode with four men of her household guard, she riding proudly ahead, they in pairs behind her. She dismounted in the middle of the yard and stood with her head held high, waiting for Tyren and Verio to come down to her from the headquarters steps. She bowed stiffly when they were come close. Tyren could see she’d been crying: her eyelids, under the paint, were swollen, her eyes glistening. Her face was white and hard as marble. But her voice was steady.

  “Forgive me, Commander Risto, for coming to you like this,” she said. “The matter’s urgent.”

  In his office she sat down in the cross-legged chair before the desk, smoothing out the skirt of her stola with slim, pale fingers, straightening the palla of thin gray silk on her left shoulder. Then she looked at him directly.

  “I’ve disowned my son,” she said.

  He stared at her a moment without saying anything. He hadn’t expected that and he wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “The lord Magryn?” he said, finally, stupidly, stammering a little.