Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy) (33 page)

“Well,” Jiaan went on, “I think that they’ll keep sending governors until about two months before their year is up—or maybe a month after Mazad has fallen, and that army is rested. Then they’ll send about five tacti to search the marshes and kill or capture every man here. And when they’re finished with you, they’ll leave a few tacti with the new, strong governor, and then rule all the land, including Dugaz and its marshes, till the end of time. But as a slave, or a corpse, that part won’t bother you.”

“Not bad,” said Shir. “Mind, these swamps
will swallow five thousand men without even belching, but it’s a good prediction and well argued. Might even come true. But consider this version instead. You take my offer—not to trouble any governor who doesn’t trouble us—back to your masters. Then the Hrum can claim the land is subdued without killing thousands of their own men in the marshes. For whoever we don’t get, the fever probably will. Outlanders are particularly susceptible to it, especially if they come from a cold land, which I’m told the empire is.”

Jiaan frowned. “My masters? Do you mean Sorahb? But—”

“I’m assuming that the Hrum have finally had the sense to stop marking their own spies,” said Shir calmly. “At least, I hope you’re a Hrum spy, because if you can’t carry my message back to them, I’ve very little use for you.”

This was probably the point where he ought to say that he was whatever Shir wanted him to be, and get out while he could, but Jiaan’s head was spinning. “I heard about the Hrum marking their spies, but how do you know about it? I thought it was a secret.”

Shir grinned. “Dugaz is a seaport, boy. Sailors
talk about the places they’ve been, and the things they’ve seen. Especially to women. I started learning everything I could about the Hrum, oh, eight years ago I think. I knew they’d get to us eventually, and I wanted to be prepared. And one of the things I learned is that most Hrum governors are too practical to go to war when there’s no need. Particularly when their year is still running. So you take my message back to Governor Garren like a good spy, and we can all go about our business.”

“But I’m . . .” Deny it or not? If he denied it, he might not leave their camp alive, but if he didn’t, he’d lose his only chance to convince this ruffian to continue to resist the Hrum. Five tacti floundering around the swamp, trying to catch these tough bastards, struck Jiaan as a really promising way to end the Hrum’s year with Farsala still unconquered. “I’m . . .”

Shir’s expression changed. “You’re not a Hrum spy.” It wasn’t a question. Jiaan had waited too long.

“What made you think I was?” Jiaan asked. “You know the Hrum mark their spies, and I’m not marked.” He tugged one of his ruined sleeves.

“I thought that because the last ‘Sorahb’ who came here, trying to convince me to resist the Hrum, was one of their spies.” Shir settled back in his chair with a thoughtful scowl. “I figured he was here to scout out our camp, but he . . . departed before I thought to have him carry my counteroffer back to Governor Garren.”

A chill swept over Jiaan, despite the sweaty heat. “Departed. You mean you—”

“No, I mean he departed.” Shir fingered the ruby hanging from his ear. “He created a diversion and slipped off—neat as I’ve ever seen it done. Not bad for a lad no older than you. It worked out to my benefit in the end, and I got a nice buckle out of it, so I bear him no ill will. Well, not much. But when you turned up on the same errand, I assumed you were from the same source.”

“No,” said Jiaan slowly. “I really do want you to help resist the Hrum. It sounds like you’re already doing that, and you’re likely to go on doing it whether you want to or not. Wouldn’t it be better to do it in alliance with the rest of us?” He probably couldn’t trust this man any more than he could the Kadeshi, but at least he wasn’t likely to invade Farsala the moment the Hrum
were gone.
A young man, working for the Hrum. A man very near his own age—

“I wouldn’t have to fight at all, if Garren had the sense to do what every Farsalan gahn has done for the last thousand years! I wish you’d been a spy, my friend.”

Jiaan heard the threat but he was barely paying attention. It had occurred to him that he knew someone, about his own age, who spied for the Hrum.

“A very clever man, no older than me,” he murmured. “This Hrum spy, would you describe him?”

Shir’s brows rose. It probably wasn’t the usual response to a death threat, but at the moment Jiaan didn’t care. “You said he was my age,” he prompted.

“He was. But a bit shorter than you, and stockier. Wide in the shoulders. Peasant hair—light brown and curly—and a peasant accent. And he had—”

“A crippled hand,” Jiaan finished. He had to unlock his jaw to say the words. “His right hand, scarred across the palm. He’ll grasp something with it, and then switch it into his left hand to use it.”

It was that mannerism that had told him that the peddler the commander had bribed, and the Hrum spy who’d betrayed them, were one and the same man. Jiaan closed his eyes. Blood pounded in his ears. He was still working for the Hrum, the bastard. Trying to undermine potential sources of resistance. Trying to ensure Farsala’s defeat.

“It sounds like you know him well,” said Shir. “I don’t suppose this means you’re a Hrum spy after all?”

“No,” said Jiaan. He was too angry to do anything except tell the truth. “We only traveled together for a few weeks. Then he betrayed my . . . my master to the Hrum. You should have killed him when you had the chance. Everything he knows about you, everything he heard or saw, he’ll tell the Hrum about it.”

“Oh, I knew that.” Shir lounged in his chair, but his intent gaze was fixed on Jiaan’s face. “We had to move our lovely town. Quite a nuisance. I take it he’s no friend of yours?”

“He’s the man I’m going to kill,” said Jiaan. “At least . . .”

“If I let you survive to do so?” The amusement was back in Shir’s face. “Hmm. Well, why not?”

“What?”

“Why not let you go? That young spy caused us a certain amount of trouble, and he escaped, which is a bit embarrassing, all things considered.” The bandit rose to his feet and began to pace. “If I let you go, you can avenge us, and we won’t have to lift a finger. If he kills you, well, that’s nothing to me. It’s not like we don’t have everything of value you carried anyway. And if we should ever need help dealing with the Hrum, then you might be grateful. Wouldn’t you, Commander Jiaan?”

Jiaan’s jaw dropped. “How? . . .”

“I told you, sailors know everything.”

“My army is landlocked.”

“Landsmen aren’t as good as sailors, but they know almost everything.”

Jiaan rose to his feet, meeting Shir’s eyes on a level. “I can’t promise you aid. Depending on what the Hrum do, we might be too busy elsewhere to come to your assistance.”

Shir snorted. “But I notice you don’t mind asking for my promise to help you. Oh, don’t blush, boy. I don’t believe in any man’s promises.” For a moment, a lifetime of cynicism showed on
the young face. Then Shir’s expression brightened. “Come to think of it, that’s not true. I do trust the last promise you made.”

Jiaan frowned. Shir’s brown eyes were full of mischief. “What promise? I didn’t promise you anything.”

“You didn’t promise me anything,” Shir agreed. “But you made a promise nonetheless. You promised to kill a man, and you meant it. And after all, who am I to stand in the way of another man’s promise?”

S
PLASHING THROUGH THE MARSH
some marks later, Jiaan slowly became certain that the bandit was also a man of his word—Jiaan hadn’t been followed, and he wasn’t being watched.

It would take him longer to get back to the army without money. He knew that Rakesh would probably return to the place where they’d camped last night, so he would regain the only thing he’d lost that truly mattered, and there was food in Rakesh’s saddlebags, along with Jiaan’s bedroll. But Jiaan would still have to stop and do a few marks’ worth of odd jobs each day, if he didn’t want to starve before he reached his army.

For all the bandit’s reluctance to fight, Jiaan thought there was an even chance that Governor Garren would be forced to send troops to subdue him. In a fight between the Hrum and Dugaz swamp rats, on their own ground, Jiaan would bet on the rats. So it hadn’t been a wholly unprofitable day, despite the loss of his purse and his sword.

And he had learned that the peddler, the
traitor,
was still alive, still spying and lying Farsalans to their deaths. Even using Sorahb’s name to do it!

Jiaan realized that his breath was hissing through clenched teeth, and deliberately relaxed his jaw, his shoulders, his back. But he couldn’t control the hatred that boiled in his heart—he didn’t try. Revenge would have to wait. Jiaan had an army to run, and a war to win, before he’d have time to hunt the bastard down. But once Jiaan was free, he would find him. And nothing would stand in his way then. Nothing.

S
ORAYA’S FIRST MONTH
as a slave hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared when she was first escorted to the place where Calfaer had slept. She had known that Calfaer lodged apart from the servants. There were nights, covering her ears to block out their snores, that she thought he had a better situation than the servants did. She had assumed that he had a small room, with a door that could be locked at night to keep him from escaping. The door that led to the narrow slot between the shed’s outer wall and the back wall of the goat pen did have a bolt outside, but aside from that . . .

“You’re joking,” she had said to the soldier
who escorted her to the place where Calfaer had slept. “That’s not as wide as a corridor. There’s barely room to lay down a pallet!”

The soldier didn’t appear to care. “Here’s a slave’s tunic and britches,” he said, handing her a bundle of rough cloth that one of Reevus’ clerks had given him. “Put this on and bring your clothes out to me.”

Soraya tried to give the bundle back to him. “I’d rather keep my clothes.” In truth, her patched skirt and blouse were so worn at this point, that an army slave’s tunic might be better. And it wasn’t as if she’d never worn britches before—to her father’s amusement, and her mother’s dismay. But the too-large clothes were soft, worn to accommodate the contours of her body, and they were hers. Or at least, they had been.

“You don’t have any clothes,” the soldier said. “A slave owns nothing.”

Garren had meant it to hurt—watching her clothes and her other small possessions burn in one of the bake ovens. And in truth, losing the carvings Ludo had given her, the hair ribbon Casia had braided, did hurt. When you owned little it became precious. But the confiscation of her
meager funds, hoarded desperately for the day she would be able to set out in search of her family—that stung even worse. Three iron mares per week had seemed like so little at first, but she had worked for that money. Her breath had hissed with anger as Reevus passed the pathetically small pile of coins to one of the clerks, to be added to the tally of Hrum loot and then to the camp’s general fund. Their equivalent would eventually be sent back to the empire, but all Soraya’s worldly wealth was so little that the ledger entry was barely worth their time.

She was also tattooed as a slave. The physical pain of the proceeding made her grit her teeth and blink back tears, but she minded that much less.

FARS—the Hrum abbreviated the name in their square script, and added a horseshoe arcing over it, in memory of the deghans’ horses charging toward them at the Sendar Wall. Soraya considered the tattoo a badge of honor—the mark of a Farsalan brave and loyal enough to have resisted the Hrum’s invasion. Someday, she vowed, she would earn the right to wear it.

She tried to think of ways to use her position in the Hrum camp against them, but now that she
wanted to spy she was too closely watched. Was there some way to fight them with magic? The Hrum’s disbelief in any kind of magic was surely a weakness that could be exploited, for Soraya knew that Suud magic existed, even though Brasnian and djinn magic might not. But what could she do with it? Suddenly make Garren’s shaving water scalding hot? Even if she dared try to summon another storm, it would be superfluous—the normal, late-summer rains drenched the Hrum camp with dreary regularity.

The only use she could see for her magic was to work on the wood of the enclosure where she was locked at night. No matter how tired she was, she spent some time before she slept seeking out the shilshadu of the wood, persuading it to let damp creep in, to let the rot take it faster. It was uphill work, for the wood’s nature was to stay strong, but Soraya kept at it. In time, perhaps she could steal some tool to help her, but for the first few weeks, she had enough trouble simply coping with her new status.

She thought that she had already performed every menial task the camp required, but she soon learned otherwise. As a kitchen maid, she hadn’t
been required to carry the officers’ slop pots to the privies, or to shovel dung from the animals’ pens into the reeking midden cart every morning.

She didn’t think Calfaer had been required to do these things either—it was part of the animal handlers’ jobs, or the officers’ own servants. Garren was piling every disgusting task in camp onto her, assuming she would either break under the shame and “confess,” or rebel and refuse so he could beat her.