The Talented (11 page)

She watched Jeral process
that information. Finally he nodded, and Adrienne was impressed to
see that, whatever he was feeling about the news, he was containing
himself. She was proud of him for that, and proud of the part she
had played in his growth. “I assume you told Ricco,” Jeral
said.

“
Yes.” Adrienne smiled.
“You’ll need to help him. You know everything I’ve put you through,
and you’re friends with the newer recruits. He’ll need your
support, and the others will need you to set an
example.”

“
Ricco will be in charge
now?” Jeral asked.

“
Yes. I chose him to
continue training the Yearlings while I’m gone.”

“
That’s good. He is a good
teacher. A good soldier.”

Adrienne examined his dark
face, his countenance even and unguarded. “So are you,” she said.
She rarely complimented the men outside of the ring, but she didn’t
know the next time she would see Jeral, or even if she would. He
had already been in Kyrog nine months, and she could not be sure
how much longer he would stay. It was strange, to think Jeral might
be gone back to Roua before she returned. “Keep working hard,
Jeral. I can’t wait to see your progress when I get back.” She
smiled, as if the thought that he might not be there when she got
back had never occurred to her. And she knew that if she never saw
the full soldier he would become, there would always be an
incomplete place inside of her.

Jeral smiled too, but she
could see in his eyes that he was as aware of the possibility that
this might be their last meeting as she. “I’m going to miss you,
Lieutenant. There’s no way I can thank you for everything you’ve
done for me.”

Adrienne reached out and
put a hand on his arm, looking up into his tawny eyes. “There is.
Help Ricco, help the recruits. That is all the thanks I
require.”

“
Then consider it
done.”

••••••

When Adrienne left the
next day with Ilso and Tam, she was as confident as she could be
about the continued training of her Yearlings. Everything she could
do in the short time allotted her had been done.

As much to comfort herself
as her horse, Adrienne patted the neck of the strong chestnut
stallion she rode. Strider was a parting gift from Captain Garrett,
and the magnificent destrier had no trouble keeping up with the
considerably shabbier mounts Ilso and Tam rode. Strider had been
bred and trained for the art of war, and even at rest stood out
from the other horses.

Ilso’s mount, taller than
Strider, had good legs but a shallow chest, and Adrienne thought
the mare’s bad temper was due as much to Ilso’s whip as natural
inclinations. The plodding gelding Tam rode was more suited to
pulling carts than being ridden, but with the haphazard way Tam sat
his horse, Adrienne thought it was probably fortunate that the
animal was not more spirited.

Tam and Ilso were as
disparate as their mounts. Tam seemed nice enough, if distant, but
it was clear to Adrienne that Ilso would never be a friend to her.
She had heard him commenting to Tam that they should have requested
a different soldier, or gone to a different camp, before agreeing
to take Adrienne.

When Adrienne had asked to
hear more about the mission, now that she was committed to it, Ilso
had told her to wait until they reached their destination to ask
any more questions.

If Captain Garrett had
given her a command to wait to find out, she would have obeyed
because she trusted the man’s judgment. Had the captain made such a
decision, it would have been because he had good reason to do so.
She had no such trust in these men. They would not reach their
destination for another three weeks, and Adrienne was not content
to simply wait. Since it was Ilso who had rebuffed her first
request for information, Adrienne heeled Strider up alongside Tam’s
shaggy gelding.

Hopefully the scholar
would be a more receptive audience.

“
I was hoping you would
tell me more about this mission,” Adrienne said in what she hoped
was a reasonable, friendly tone. She tried to keep her face smooth
and friendly as well, void of the snarling lieutenant look she had
perfected even before she had attained the rank that went with
it.

“
You don’t need to worry
about that yet,” Tam told her, blinking his owlish, mud-colored
eyes at her. “We have a lot of ground to cover once we begin, but
it can wait until we reach Kessering.”

Adrienne was not familiar
with any town or city called Kessering, but that meant little. Much
of the countryside was unknown to her. Her interests in geography
were limited. It was Tam’s words, not the place, that caught
Adrienne’s attention. “If you mean that there is work for me to do,
or things to learn, I would like to start as soon as possible,”
Adrienne told the older man.

“
That really isn’t
necessary.” Tam’s smile was kind but distracted. “Three weeks won’t
make a difference, really.”

In Adrienne’s experience
when it came to training, three weeks could mean the difference
between the ability to defend with a sword or the ability to trip
over one. “Please, I would like to begin as soon as
possible.”

Tam sighed, long and
weary. “I suppose there is no harm in beginning your instruction
now,” he told her in a voice completely lacking in enthusiasm. “I
know the history as well as any of the scholars in
Kessering.”

“
History?”

“
Yes. What you will
hopefully become a part of is the result of a commission of
scholars—and men and women of influence—who are trying to find a
way to end the war with Almet. This conflict has been going on for
quite a long time, you know.”

“
I know all of the
pertinent details regarding the conflict between Samaro and Almet,”
Adrienne told Tam. “If that is the history you are referring to, it
isn’t necessary to teach me. Not unless you are going back before
the Fuirons, but that was centuries ago. Nearly a
millennia.”

Tam regarded her with some
surprise. “Not too many people are that knowledgeable about the
long and bloody history between our country and Almet,” Tam said.
“Are you sure you know more than the popular facts? Many people
feel that they know more than they do.”

The ongoing conflict and
on-again off-again war between Samaro and Almet was the main reason
camps like Kyrog existed. Most of the battles Adrienne had studied
had involved Almet, and to understand an enemy’s battle strategy,
one had to understand the enemy. Adrienne had spent considerable
time studying the history and culture of Almet, initially under the
tutelage of Karse, so that she might have a full vision of the
conflict and what influenced Almet’s armies. Someday, she planned
to ride to the Almetian battle lines and fight that evil herself,
and when she did, she wanted to know what her enemy was fighting
for.

“
I am aware that in the
distant past, Samaro and Almet were allied by a mutually beneficial
and lucrative trade agreement. Almet was considerably smaller at
the time, more of a size with Samaro. Then the Fuirons rose to
power in Samaro and abolished slavery. When Almet refused to do the
same, the trade agreement with Almet was ended.”

Tam seemed impressed, and
Adrienne continued with what she remembered from what Karse had
told her. “The Fuirons were the ruling family for several centuries
after that, and are still regarded as perhaps the best monarchal
family Samaro has ever had,” Adrienne continued. “However, even
after the trade agreement ended, Almet continued to grow in size
and power by spreading its influence into the countries surrounding
it, and the relationship between Samaro and Almet grew more
antagonistic, in part due to the fact that Almet, for all of its
size, is landlocked.” Adrienne quirked an eyebrow. “Need I continue
up to the conflict under King Burin’s current rule?”

The doubt that had covered
the scholar’s face was gone, replaced by a beaming smile than even
seemed to brighten his muddy eyes. “I am surprised by your
knowledge of the subject. Many people find history boring, though
it has always interested me. It is quite impressive that you would
know so much.”

Adrienne felt it was
unnecessary to point out that she was especially knowledgeable due
to an old mentor’s proclivity for dead languages. Most known texts
written in Old Samaroan were from the time when the Fuirons were
still in power, and Adrienne had read many of those
texts.

“
What is the ‘commission’?”
she asked instead. “You’ve mentioned it before. Who started
it?”

“
Why, King Burin started
the commission, of course,” Tam answered, seemingly delighted to
impart that bit of information.

Adrienne wanted to roll
her eyes. Since the death of the last Fuiron two centuries ago, no
royal family had kept the throne for more than a single generation.
Most of the kings and queens since then had ruled for only a
handful of years before losing the throne, and often their lives
along with it.

King Burin was only the
latest in a line of poor or unlucky rulers who paid for a personal
guard while all but forgetting the encampments like Kyrog that kept
the countryside safe. Were it not for private backers and wealthy
lords like Lord Neecham, places like Kyrog would not exist, and
Samaro would be overrun by the bandits and rogues roaming the
plains long before Almet came to enslave the survivors.

Adrienne remembered again
the young girl buried in a grave outside of Pelarion, and wondered
if her life might have been saved had King Burin not neglected the
armies so.

Tam, however, did not seem
to share Adrienne’s poor opinion of their current ruler. He was
practically glowing with the importance of being a part of King
Burin’s plan.

“
King Burin has decided
that, since the old ways have proven unsuccessful when dealing with
Almet, it is time to look for an alternative solution.”

Adrienne was fairly
certain that the king’s hope for a successful ‘alternative
solution’ to dealing with Almet had more to do with wanting to keep
his head on his shoulders than concern over the conflict itself.
“So he put together a commission to find a solution?” Adrienne
asked skeptically. “What exactly do you do?”

“
I am not a member of the
commission, per se,” Tam admitted. “The commission asked me to go
on this errand for them, as they are all much too busy with their
work to leave the city themselves. However, I have been privy to a
great many of their discussions and know as much as anyone who is
not a commissioner himself.”

Adrienne nodded, wondering
if the scholar was really as important as he thought himself to be,
or if was no more than a gofer to the rich and
privileged.

“
You see, after it was
decided that a peaceable agreement with Almet is not likely at this
point, it became apparent that what needed to change was the means
of warfare.” Tam looked uncomfortable, as if the subject of warfare
was distasteful to him, but Adrienne became keenly
interested.

Many different strategies
had been used in an attempt to finally put an end to the fighting,
with the implementation of new technology and strategy being
foremost among the changes. Still, the basic means of fighting had
always been the same: soldiers armed with weapons versus soldiers
armed with weapons.

“
Go on,” Adrienne
urged.

“
It was decided that
scholars would begin looking through the histories to see if there
was an alternative to the current means of warfare employed by the
armies.”

Adrienne’s excitement
leached out of her, and Strider tossed his head as if sensing his
rider’s disappointment. Changes in warfare evolved and improved.
There was little use in looking back in the histories to find
different means. What use could history be here? Adrienne had
studied battle history almost her whole life, and some of what she
had studied had involved battles before bows and arrows—and even
cavalry were implemented. Battles where spears were the main
weapons, before the invention of swords. Such battles offered great
insight into military strategy, but there was nothing there that
would change the way that Samaro should fight Almet. Strategies
could be learned from studying history, but there was nothing new
in the old books and stories.

“
I don’t know what you
could have found,” Adrienne said. “War is war.”

Tam waved away her comment
as if it was of no importance. “It isn’t research into war that
yielded metaphoric gold,” Tam said, his tone a clear dismissal of
the importance of the soldiering profession and Adrienne’s beliefs.
“It is the
tales
that were so important.”

“
Tales?” Adrienne asked at
the same time Ilso called out that it was time to stop for lunch,
temporarily halting their conversation.

Adrienne was surprised and
a bit disconcerted when Ilso began laying out a fire. “How long are
we staying here?” she asked, looking around the open meadow beside
the road.

Tam shrugged, apparently
unconcerned by the stop. “A couple of hours, I expect. Ilso will
probably make a stew. It gives the horses a chance to
rest.”

Since the horses had been
kept at a walk all morning, Adrienne doubted even Tam’s gelding
needed more than fifteen minutes of grazing and watering, and maybe
as much time again to rest. She had discovered in the few hours she
had been with them that, despite what they had told Captain
Garrett, they did not seem to be in a hurry to return to Kessering.
It was more or less that they had wanted to leave Kyrog as soon as
possible.