His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) Read online

  Muryn looked over to him, finally. He smiled again, more faintly this time. “So you’ve had word of a priest in Souvin, Lord Risto,” he said.

  “My adjutant suspected it. He didn’t know—still doesn’t know. He wouldn’t have known the accent.”

  “But you knew it, of course.”

  “I’ve spent time enough among Choiro nobility.”

  “You didn’t act on it yesterday.”

  “I wanted to be sure, first.”

  “A rare virtue, forbearance,” said Muryn.

  “Rare among my people?”

  “Among any,” said Muryn.

  Tyren wasn’t sure whether Muryn were speaking in mockery. He lifted his chin.

  “Tell me truthfully about the Church,” he said.

  “What is it you wish to know about the Church, Lord Risto?”

  “Do you answer to it? You native priests?”

  “Some do. They’re well-paid for it. The Church makes great use of Cesino priests.”

  “And you?”

  Muryn had looked away from him again. “For a time,” he said.

  “But no longer?”

  Muryn’s voice was quiet. “I had my fill of Choiro, Lord Risto,” he said.

  “Of answering to Choiro?”

  “Of seeing the Church become just another political weapon in the hands of the Berioni,” said Muryn.

  There was a sudden heaviness in Tyren’s chest, a dryness in his mouth. “You speak treason,” he said.

  “I speak the truth,” said Muryn. “I was in Choiro long enough to see it for myself, Lord Risto.”

  “To see what?”

  He said it through his teeth, more harshly than he’d intended. But if Muryn were daunted by that he didn’t show it. His voice was quiet still.

  “How every priest must swear an oath owning the emperor as head of the Church. How those who refuse are branded agitators, traitors, fomenters of rebellion. How those who do swear it and yet speak out against the injustices being done in the Empire’s name are charged with heresy and removed from the priesthood, sometimes to imprisonment, sometimes to death. That’s what I saw in Choiro, Lord Risto. I might have stayed and sworn the oath and kept my silence. There are Cesini who do. But I couldn’t.”

  It took effort to keep his steps from faltering again. Not from the shock of the words, this time, but from the way they cut him down to nothing. He’d no counterargument. To argue now would be to argue for a lie, he knew that well as Muryn did. He swallowed. It did nothing to ease the tightness in his throat, the weight in his heart, the pain of the memory at the back of his mind—that day in Choiro when he’d seen justice crumble to dust before his eyes and realized, too late, the Empire endured regardless.

  He spoke in the same harsh voice to mask the unsteadiness.

  “So you left twelve years ago to come thresh wheat in Souvin. Or was there some other reason?”

  “To thresh wheat and to raise a family,” Muryn said. “Isn’t that reason enough to be away from Choiro?”

  “Twelve years ago. And ten years ago Rylan Sarre was raising this place in rebellion against the Empire. Explain that to me, Muryn.”

  Muryn seemed taken aback for the first time. “You think I urged Rylan Sarre to rebellion?”

  “I don’t know what part you played in it. But I find it hard to believe you played no part at all. You’d no other reason to come to Souvin—Souvin, out of every farm village in Cesin.”

  “Maybe not,” said Muryn. He’d recovered himself quickly. “Only certain men come to places like Souvin, after all, Lord Risto: rebels, and traitors, and the ones the Empire finds undesirable. Maybe you’re right.”

  Tyren searched for a reply and found none. He looked away so Muryn wouldn’t see the color come into his face.

  Muryn said, in a milder voice, “No, it would be sore neglect of my duty if I took to preaching uprising against the Empire, Lord Risto.”

  “Then tell me what you preach.”

  “The grace and love of God. That suffices for most of it.”

  “If you’d no other thought than preaching the love of God you needn’t have left the Church.”

  Muryn smiled. “Better not to preach at all than to preach without living it,” he said. “To preach the love of God, and then turn a blind eye to injustice—that would be more than hypocrisy, Lord Risto. That would be betrayal.”

  Tyren said nothing.

  By now they’d come down through the village to the common. It wasn’t yet dawn, but the village was beginning to stir round them. There was a cock crowing, woodsmoke drifting on the air.

  “Muryn,” Tyren said.

  “Yes, Lord Risto?”

  “I don’t mind that you speak plainly to me.” The words felt heavy on his tongue. He spoke slowly, carefully, because it took that effort to speak at all. “To me, do you understand? I won’t be able to protect you if any of my people find you out—if it comes to that. Do you understand?”

  Muryn looked at him. There was something almost quizzical in his look. But his voice was steady.

  “I understand that, Lord Risto,” he said.

  “I’ll speak with you again,” Tyren said.

  He left the Cesino on the common and got back to the fort in time to join Verio and Regaro and Aino in the officer’s mess for the morning meal. He said nothing of what had passed on the road—nodded and said something noncommittal when Verio asked him if the ride had been pleasant.

  * * *

  His life fell into routine. He got up early in the cool mountain mornings, time enough to take Risun out for a short ride on the Rien road before breakfast and the muster. He drilled the men after the muster, out in the yard, though Verio sneered a little the first few times he did this, because Choiro drills were no use out here in the wilderness. But he ignored Verio and drilled the men anyway. After the drills he went over the horses, the stores, listened to the suggestions and requests of Verio and the junior officers and the stable-master, noted any changes that needed to be made, instructed Verio to see to those changes. When the mid-day meal was done he had some time to himself, and he spent it in his office, reading the reports written by the previous commander, who’d died quite suddenly in the early spring. In the evenings he ate supper with his officers in the mess, saying little, trying to listen to what they said, to learn from them. After the meal he reviewed the men, could address them if he felt the need, or else dismiss them to their quarters, and then he and Verio would sit with a skin of wine in his office and he’d listen to Verio talk. He didn’t think Verio respected him; Verio still thought him untested, naïve. But Verio liked to drink, and to talk when he drank, and Tyren, not wanting to give the impression he was all cold aristocratic formality, sat and listened. Verio talked of his childhood home back in Varen, a fishing village on the mouth of great river Breche; talked of a wife who’d died young, and his joining up afterward, and his eventual coming to Souvin—might as well serve the Empire here, as it needed him, since there was nothing left for him in Varen.

  When Verio had gone Tyren would go into his own quarters and lie on his back on the low bed, listening through the open window to the nightingales singing in the pines, smelling the warm, pungent smell of the laurel leaves drifting in from the garden, and he’d think about maybe writing letters—writing to Mureno, back at Vione, and telling him polite lies about the command; writing to Michane, Lady Rano, telling her polite lies about his feelings for her.

  He hadn’t written her in a long while now and he felt guilty about that. In truth she was a beautiful woman now, his betrothed, and his mother had been right; he should be thankful he was bound to marry her, the younger daughter of a powerful Choiro family, certainly better than most soldier sons could ever aspire to. But he didn’t love her and he knew now he’d never love her. He’d been interested in her when he was younger, true, because she’d a pretty face; they’d been betrothed since he was a boy of ten, and he’d been pleased enough with the arrangement then, when he’d
given it any thought. But he was older now and he’d seen too much of the Choiro life, knew what would be expected of him were he to marry into that, knew he and Michane would end up like all the rest: husband and wife in name only, pulled slowly apart, drawn inevitably, inescapably each to their own circles, as the city demanded it. They’d grow distant, bored, have lovers—would barely be able to look at each other after a while. She’d be embarrassed he was a younger son, a soldier, could never amount to much more than that. She’d despise him behind his back. And he’d be like his father: respected publicly, or at least feared, and yet unable to govern his own home.

  He didn’t want to marry Michane. He didn’t want to settle complacently into that sort of life, as Torien had done. He hadn’t been particularly angry, as he should have been, as Mureno had been, when he’d gotten this disgrace of a commission. If not for the fact he was a Risto, that being a Risto came with its own expectations and responsibilities—if not for that, he might even have been happy here in Souvin. At least it was away from the emptiness, the hollow and sickening grandeur of the capital. Torien didn’t understand that. Certainly Mureno hadn’t understood it. He wasn’t sure he understood it fully himself. He couldn’t explain it, anyway. Or he could do so only vaguely, and in a way that sounded trite: he’d come to Souvin because it had been the right thing to do, the honorable thing to do. Maybe that would have been sufficient explanation once. It seemed meaningless now.

  V

  It took more time than Torien had anticipated for word to come back from Mureno. A fortnight passed, then a month. The cool, wet Cesino spring had turned fully to summer by then and the post-ride to Choiro shouldn’t have taken so long.

  They were already starting the wheat threshing on the farmland outside the city when the letter finally came. It came without explanation or apology for the delay, and it was worded stiffly and coldly, so that if not for the signature at the bottom of the papyrus, and the seal on the scroll’s scarlet cord, he wouldn’t have recognized it as Mureno’s work at all.

  Governor Risto, it read—Your son proved himself a capable commander, and so was posted to a garrison which had need of a capable commander. As a former officer yourself you will appreciate that commissions in the Imperial military are awarded not on the basis of a man’s name but on the basis of the Empire’s need.

  He read the thing and gave it without a word to Moien, who’d delivered it to him in the study and who stood now by the corner of the desk, patiently waiting. Moien took it and read it for himself. He tossed it down onto the desk when he was done.

  “So Mureno will be no help to us,” he said.

  Torien stood up from the desk and paced the floor of the study from the desk to the eastward window, back again.

  “The Marri have bought him,” he said.

  “It certainly appears that way.”

  He spoke unsteadily—was shaken and couldn’t hide it completely.

  “I didn’t think, Sere—I didn’t think Mureno would be the one.”

  “No, I wouldn’t have thought it,” said Moien.

  “If Mureno could be bought there are few enough left for us to trust. I’m beginning to think I’ve finally lost this fight, Sere. After twenty years—I’m beginning to think I have lost, the Marri have won.”

  “They’ve not yet been willing to make a direct move against you.”

  “Not yet,” said Torien.

  The anger cooled a little when Moien had gone, but the unsteadiness remained, the dazed stumbling of his thoughts. It wasn’t only that Chion Mureno was an army man, and a good one, and should have been above this bribing—of all of them in Choiro, in Vione, Mureno should have been above this bribing. No, but he’d been a friend, too. That was the hardest part. That had always been the hardest part of this life, the hardest thing to get used to. He’d never been able to get used to it. He’d been on too many battlefields. He couldn’t get used to a war in which friendships were the casualties—friendships, family.

  He’d kept a distance between himself and Tore ever since that exchange in the garden-room the morning Tyren had left for Souvin. He was suddenly desperate to heal the break, to have Tore close by his side. An idea came into his head almost at once: he’d take Tore with him when he went north to Chalen. The invitation had come recently from Viere, Chalen’s new-installed governor: a boar hunt, a few days of northern hospitality. It would be good to go, and to take Tore, and to forget the cares of Vessy for a while. It would be good for both of them.

  * * *

  Chalen was a full day’s ride north and east of Vessy, on the edge of the great black-pine forest spreading across northern Cesin all the way up to the border of Sevarre. They came to the governor’s villa in the twilight, he and Tore and Moien and one of Moien’s guardsmen. There were torches already lit on the gate-wall and in the garden, a mist rising over the trees beyond the villa’s cleared land. Viere was present at the gate to meet them. Torien had met him before, of course; Viere had come to Vessy to give his obeisance nearly two months ago now, before making his way north. He was young to be a governor, even to be a county governor in a backwater of the province. But he came of good Choiro family; the name was an old one, a respected one. Torien didn’t know him well, was glad for this opportunity to know him better—the opportunity, perhaps, to gauge his loyalties.

  Viere had waited the evening meal for them. It was simple fare: pheasant snared in the forest, olives and green herbs, a sweet wine made from wild berries, so dark it was almost black. The table crowd was small. Viere had no other retainers than a white-haired old steward, and there were few servants; Viere’s wife served the meal alongside them.

  “I apologize for the meagerness of our hospitality, Lord Risto,” Viere said to Torien. “It’s nothing to Vessy, I’m sure.”

  “It’s a welcome relief from Vessy,” said Torien.

  They set out early in the morning for the hunt, riding north into the pine forest. He hadn’t hunted in a long while, not since before his own taking of the governorship. His father and brother had still lived then. He’d hunted with them through the wooded land along the river, east of Vessy. That thought made his fingers tighten involuntarily on the haft of his hunting spear, made the horse skitter sideways under him as it sensed his tension. Moien looked over to him with a question in his eyes. He shook his head tightly and pressed the horse on.

  Viere’s hounds flushed a quarry from the underbrush soon enough. The boar led them on for the better part of an hour before they encircled it; then it was Moien’s spear to earn the kill. They started the southward ride back to the villa a little before noon. When noon came they rested on the bank of a deep, quiet stream and ate a meal from their packs. Afterward Viere poured them wine in leather cups and they sat in the shade of the trees along the bank to drink and to talk. Torien sat with his back against the bole of a tree, the cup in his right hand.

  “It’s not a bad life you lead here, Viere,” he said.

  Viere smiled. “No. I prefer it to Choiro, in truth, Lord Risto. I was never made for the city. It’s a quiet life here, at least.”

  “I envy you that,” said Torien.

  Tore said, “You’ve no trouble from the native people, Viere? I’ve heard these backwater regions are the likeliest place for uprisings, rebellions.”

  “No, they’ve treated me well,” said Viere. “I’ve made efforts to get to know them—to visit their farms, to accept their hospitality and show them mine. I hope to earn their real respect, eventually. They’re good people.”

  Later, back in their own quarters at the villa, Tore said, “The Senate got him away to these northern wilds for a reason. He’d be an embarrassment in Choiro.”

  Moien, leaning against the jamb with his arms folded across his chest, said, “He’s honest, at least, Lord Risto.”

  He only ever addressed Tore in that formal way, as ‘Lord Risto.’ He called Torien by name, or else he called him ‘sir’ when occasion required it—old habit left over from their army
days.

  Tore said, “He’ll be little enough use to us.”

  Torien was amused. “You’re saying there’s no use for an honest man in the Empire? Or only that I’ve no use for an honest man?”

  “That isn’t what I meant,” said Tore, defensively.

  “Of course not,” said Torien.

  Afterward he lay awake on the bed in the cool darkness and reflected, with bitterness, this whole thing had been in vain. Tore couldn’t see, couldn’t understand, was too much caught up in the Choiro life to know the full cost of it yet. Whereas he, himself—he’d give anything to live as Viere lived, to be unconcerned with Choiro and the rest of it. If only there weren’t this war to fight. But there’d always be this war. Until his own death, anyway—he’d come to expect that was how it would end. The Marri would win, eventually, would finish the work they’d started all those years ago, and he’d join his father and his brother in the earth before it was done, because he knew no other way than that of the sword. He wished, above all else, it might be different, but he’d too much stubbornness for that, too much pride, had carried this weight and this anger too long. And he’d let Tore fall away, in the meantime. He’d let all of them fall away from him—Tore, Tyren, Chæla. Challe would be the last. And the Marri had won anyway.

  The window in his room was set in the villa’s outer wall, the rear wall, which faced north to the pine forest and the mountains. He heard the intruder before he could see him—heard the quick, quiet scuffling of feet across stone. He sat up from the bed, tensed, listening. His sword was leaning upright against the wall, close by the head of the bed, and he stood up and took the sword and unsheathed it and pressed himself against the wall on the near side of the window. The intruder came slowly, carefully into the room. There was a steel-bladed knife in his right hand. Otherwise he was unarmed, dressed in tunic and leggings only, barefoot for the climbing. Torien waited until he’d come two, three steps in. Then he fell in behind him, preparing to reach with his free hand and take the man by the shoulder and jerk him round. But the man turned as soon as Torien moved, ducking the wide arc of Torien’s sword blow. He slashed quickly through the air with the knife. Torien dodged the stroke, brought his blade back in a counterstroke as the man recovered. The man crumpled to the floor before him, curling up as he landed, making no other sound than a low, thick groan.