City of Night (6 page)

“But not the man who commands all of Weyrdon.”

“A man does not exist apart from those who serve him. He is Weyrdon, but those who serve him are also Weyrdon. Those who serve will never be confused with the man who leads—but they will be seen as an extension of that man, more valuable in all ways than even the sword he wields, although the sword might be older. Weyrdon is judged by the strength of those men, and judged, as well, by the strength of their oaths.” He let the words settle around the boy, wondering if Angel understood.

Angel thought about this for a while. “In the Empire, the ruler of the House takes the name. So the ruler of Kalakar is
The
Kalakar, and all those who take the House Name are AKalakar.”

“It is not of the South you must think,” Terrick said, frowning.

Angel’s lips creased in a smile that was startling, if brief. It was unfettered, for a moment, by oaths or worry; it made him look young—or rather, appear as the ideal of youth. There was no caution at all in the expression. “My father—” he began. The smile dimmed, fading into something that was grayer and darker. It was, Terrick thought, very like the smile that Garroc had offered him so many years ago. “My father would have said that.”

“Then I will stand in his stead,” Terrick replied gravely. “I cannot take his place, nor would I be fool enough to try. The South, once you reach the
Ice Wolf
, is not your concern.”

Angel, reaching for a slender rind of cheese, said, “But it is. And it was my father’s as well.”

“Aye,” Terrick replied. “Do not look to me for explanations; I little understood his choice, years ago—and I understand it no better now.”
But now, boy,
he thought,
I fear its weight and its consequences.

“Then tell me about Weyrdon. You met him.”

Terrick nodded.

“Did you meet him before or after you met my father?”

And allowed himself a half smile. He could not see where the boy’s conversation would lead, but he was willing to follow it to its natural conclusion. Garroc’s son, indeed. “Many years after,” Terrick replied.

Angel chewed thoughtfully on the rind, and Terrick almost rose to get more food. But the boy chose to speak as Terrick placed his hands on the table to push himself out of his chair, and the boy’s voice pulled him back down again, as if it were gravity.

“You said you served Garroc.”

“Yes.”

“And my father served Weyrdon.”

“Yes.”

“Did you give him the oath that he gave Weyrdon?”

Silence. The pause of drawn breath and gathered words. All of these words, Terrick rejected. “No,” he said quietly. Just that.

“So you were friends?”

“We were.”

“But he wasn’t your lord?”

Terrick lifted both hands to his face and pressed his fingers against his closed lids. “He was,” he replied at last, as he lowered his hands.

“I don’t understand.”

“No. You don’t.”

“But I need to.”

“Yes.”

“Can you explain it to me before the
Ice Wolf
reaches port?”

“No.” He lifted a hand as Angel’s mouth parted. “I can try,” he said heavily. “But I fear it will make little sense to you.”

“Little is better than none.”

“That would be your mother speaking.”

Angel’s face showed a hint of surprise; it was a subtle shift of brow, a slight widening of the eyes. “It was something she used to say.” His voice was quiet, almost gentle. “How did you know?”

“Because Garroc would never have said it. We hold the opposite to be true: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is like the ice above water that looks solid, but is too thin to support a man’s weight; you break the surface and the water takes you. Better never to trust that ice in warmer weather.” He frowned. “You will excuse me if I attempt to salvage my reputation.”

“Pardon?”

“I am your host, and I have invited you into my home for a meal. You are still hungry. I have therefore failed, and unless I wish to brave the fury of my ancestors’ hearth spirits, I must make amends.” He glared at the boy, and added, “I am getting more food.”

He was rewarded by a flush that, in the dim light, would have been hidden by a darker complexion. But he was also rewarded by a rueful smile.

 

Terrick took his time gathering both food and wine. The lamplight wasn’t necessary to the work, and he worked slowly and methodically, as was his wont. He was at home here, in a way that he could not have foreseen in his youth.

“Garroc was older than you are now when we first met,” Terrick said quietly, feeling the boy’s attention at his back. “He was not yet at his full height, but he was strong and quick—quick to think, quick to speak, but still cautious in action. We had, in our village, some problem with raiders from farther north, and we had seen fighting, and death.

“We did not like each other much when we were introduced; he came from a village some few miles through the snow, and I thought him proud and reckless. I distrusted him; he intended to fight in my village, and not, in the end, in his own. A way to minimize losses,” he added. “His own. As he—and the men who came with him—were outsiders, it was a commonly held opinion—but we were desperate enough to accept aid. And he, although I did not appreciate it at the time, was desperate enough to offer.” His hands had ceased their motions—what had he been doing? Cutting. He returned to the task, seeing snow and ice and the red spill of frozen blood that spoke of battle.

“We are often called a harsh people, for a harsh climate. There is truth in it; those raids were not the first time I had witnessed death, nor would they be the last. We do not—as the Southerners do—dream of peace. But we dream of strength, for there is safety in strength, if safety can be found at all.

“Leading men is not a simple task. Giving orders may appear simple to those who have never given them,” he added, reaching for a plate, “but when you see the cost of those orders in the corpses of the men—and women—who followed them faithfully, you begin to understand the price paid by those who undertake the burden of leadership.

“It is not easy to be a good leader. It is very easy to be a bad one. Most of us, in the end, would become bad leaders,” he added as he turned, carrying the plate back to the table. Angel was watching the fire, but listening to the words as he did. It was a small fire, and the words were Rendish, although throughout the meal they had wandered casually between their two tongues.

“Why?”

“Because it is impossible to be perfect, in this life. And when we make mistakes—and our mistakes are measured in the lives of those who are forced, by circumstance, to trust us—many of us will hide from the cost of our power, without surrendering that power itself.” He frowned at Angel’s expression. “In order to lead effectively, when we know men will die no matter what we do, we protect ourselves from pain by refusing to care or countenance death. We lay blame anywhere else. We hide from the truth of ourselves.

“Eventually, it is power that we are left with—but power unleashed from its moorings. We no longer remember why we took power in the first place, and the reasons we come up with to justify continuing to hold that power? They are all bad.”

“My father never wanted power,” Angel said quietly.

“No. But when we met, he had taken it anyway. I did not trust him, not then. But I was younger then, and he burned, his eyes like dark fire. Things that angered or enraged me, he could accept as simple fact, as if it were snow or ice floe. He did not let his temper rule him—not when lives depended on it. And lives did,” Terrick added.

“We are not afraid of tears, in the North. Grief does not unman us. The women are harsh,” he added, “and often hide grief behind faces no warmer than stone. But we—we know how to grieve. He grieved for our dead as if they were his own, and he would not leave our bodies behind. The men, many older, followed him. I followed him. When we at last found the raiders, and destroyed them, Garroc and his men were no longer outsiders; they were ours. And we, in turn, were theirs. That was his gift, boy.

“I was by his side. He wielded an ax, then; they called him Stormfury, and—” Terrick laughed out loud at the memory, “he was embarrassed by it. Not even frostbite could redden his skin the way embarrassment did, and the old women loved to tease him.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was their way of showing him that he had become—in so short a time—like a son. He would rather, he told me, face the raiders. He did not want our admiration, and he did not want our mute obedience. But he had at least the first, and if we were not mute, we listened more often than not, and it was his lead that we followed.

“And when he left the village, I asked his leave to accompany him to his home, or what was left of it, and he granted it.” He paused, and then added, “I served Garroc, in the North. And when Garroc met Weyrdon, and I saw Garroc take Weyrdon’s measure, I understood what would happen next.” He wanted to stand.

He did not.

“Weyrdon was a man,” he said quietly. “Older than either of us, but younger than I am now, he was unlike Garroc; in Weyrdon, with his honey eyes, it was said that Cartan walked the earth again—and in its fashion, Angel, it was true. I had seen Garroc, among the villagers, and I had left my home to follow him—but Garroc was to Weyrdon what the lamp is to the high sun.

“Garroc did not understand why men were willing to serve him. His humility was part of the reason they did, but he was not falsely modest, and as likely to issue a challenge at a perceived slight as any other man. He had had no desire to found a clan of his own, although he could have.

“But he understood, when he met Weyrdon, some part of what we saw in him.”

“But you said Weyrdon wasn’t like my father.”

“He wasn’t. What your father struggled to do, Weyrdon did as if it were simply a matter of breathing; he led. He walked among the dead, and he grieved for them, but their deaths—in our eyes—were ennobled by his grief and his gratitude. He came to the women to help wash the corpses of the fallen and clean them before they were placed on the funeral pyres.

“He could make himself heard—and felt—across the tented camps of a large army. His men did not worship him, but they revered him. He was like the warriors of legend,” Terrick added. “And born to us in a time of need.”

“There were wars?”

Terrick was silent.

“Terrick?”

But Terrick did not answer the question. Instead he said, watching the lamp fire and wishing that it were larger and louder, with a voice of crackling wood and timbre, “Garroc came to me after our campaign at the borders of Arrend. Five great clans were united behind Weyrdon’s shield, and the eldest sons of many smaller clans bore spears in his vanguard.

“He told me he intended to offer his ax to Weyrdon. I knew,” Terrick continued. “I knew, but I had avoided the knowledge for as long as I could. He was my lord,” Terrick added, “in the Southern use of the word. I was his liege.

“He asked me to serve Weyrdon; he felt that Weyrdon would also honor my service. I refused.”

“But why?”

“Garroc was the only man that I wished to serve.”

“You thought that Weyrdon was worthy of his service.”

“Yes. He was worthy of the service of any.”

“But not yours.” It wasn’t a question. And it was. So many years, Terrick thought, since he had heard those words. So many years since he had refused to answer them. He might have refused now, without shame and without demur on the part of his guest.

Garroc’s son.

“Perhaps,” Terrick said quietly, “I felt I was not worthy to serve him.”

Angel tilted his head to one side. He opened his mouth to speak—or possibly eat, as he seemed to never stop—but food didn’t enter that mouth, and words did not leave it. Which was good; he was exercising some caution. Not even a guest called his host a liar with impunity.

Terrick rose, muttering about oil for the lamp. It was feeble, but he wanted to be free of the confines of the table. The boy would not press him for an answer, and he did not wish to surrender it. But the answer lay there in the silence, and the spaces between the words he had been willing to share.

Weyrdon was revered.

Garroc? No. Respected, yes, and followed. What he achieved, he achieved with struggle and work, and the dream of the achievement was always brighter, and more perfect, than the achievement itself.

Quick to anger, slow to awe, slower still to love. But the shadows he cast were the length of a man, no more and no less. He knew doubt and he knew despair, and he mastered them both with effort.

Terrick understood that man.

“So . . . he left you.”

“No.” Terrick shook himself with an effort that Garroc would also have understood. He returned to his chair, with oil. “I went with him. I was Garroc’s man, and this was understood—Weyrdon was secure enough in his power that it was not seen as an insult to Weyrdon.”

Angel was silent for a long moment. “And when he left Weyrdon?”

The silence was thicker and heavier now.

“You left with him.”

“I could. I was not of Weyrdon.” Terrick’s breath was sharp. “Boy,” he added, thickly, “I would have followed him into exile and I would have died at his side or his back.”

“He would never have asked that of you.”

Terrick’s laugh was bitter and deep. “He asked it a hundred times.”

Angel watched Terrick’s face as his laughter faded; the bitterness remained. Terrick could mask his expression, but chose, at that moment, not to do so. He waited instead, wondering what the boy would say. Or if, in the end, he would say anything at all.

Angel’s eyes were the color of winter sky in the lamplight when he at last shook his head. It was a slight motion, a contained one; he would speak, then.