The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy (8 page)

I saw no Peace Guardians, which didn’t surprise me, knowing so small a unit must restrict itself to the cities and, possibly, harrying Tenedos’s reforming army to the south. The scattering of warders in the small villages had little interest in anything beyond their own district, especially in regards to a well-armed man who kept to himself.

I stopped when I felt like it, sometimes helping with the planting or with heavy work a farmer’s widow or children could not manage, and little by little remembered my boyhood skills helping my father’s tenants with their plowing, herding, animal husbandry. I’d work an hour, or a day, and then move on, my pack full of the fresh food that’d been all the pay I wanted.

I also reminded myself of other skills, making a sling from tanned hides I found in a desolate village and practicing with it as I traveled, stalking sambur who gloried in the still-fallow, empty farmlands, snaring guinea fowl, chickens, or ducks gone wild for my meals.

I was alone and very content.

• • •

For the most part, my journey was undisturbed and uneventful. But there were some events that stayed with me …

• • •

The cart was overturned, its contents scattered, just beyond where the road had been cut through an embankment, perfect for an ambush.

Three men were sprawled in the road, and a woman’s corpse lay half across the cart, a gaping wound in her chest, a look of horror on her face.

Five children, three boys and two girls, were tied together like ducks for the marketplace. The older ones’ faces held hate, the younger ones’ terror.

Eight men sat across the road from the wreckage, sharing a wineskin.

I approached, sword in hand.

A man stood, came toward me. He was big, bearded, and had a war hammer at his side.

“Greetin’s,” he said.

“Your doing?” I gestured at the shambles.

“ ’A course,” he said. “Damn’ fool of a shitdigger went and stood against us. Hells, we di’n’t mean much damage. Mayhap sort through his goods, have a bit of sport wi’ his woman, no more.

“’Stead, he kills two of us, and his wife afore we took him.

“Fool of a waste, it is,” he said. “We’ll take the young ‘uns, see what the market is these times, ‘though there’s more’n enough spare babes already for the slavers.

“If’n that one was more’n nine, ten, maybe we’d keep her, train her. But we ain’t got th’ time nor me th’ inclination. You innarested in buyin’ any of ‘em?”

I shook my head.

The big man looked me over carefully.

“You look like a fighter. Innarested in joinin’ us? We do fair well, bein’ about th’ only band in the district.”

“I’ve got my own work,” I said flatly. The man grunted.

“I’ll warn you. A single man, these times, can have a hard way, with nobody t’ watch whilst he sleeps, or when his back’s turned.”

“I’m not worried,” I said. “I’ve got a demon guarding me.”

The big man looked worried, and two of his men got to their feet, making strange signs.

“Thanks f’r th’ warning,” he said. “Pass on, then. Pass on quick.”

I didn’t answer but kept moving. That night, I camped fireless, far from the road, but never saw them again.

I tried to push the children’s faces from my mind, but failed. What could I have done? There were eight of them, odds no sane warrior would dream of facing.

But I still had the taste of ashes in my mouth.

• • •

The farm had been prosperous, with three barns for livestock, a chicken run, a duck pond, a paddock, a long barracks for farmhands and a sturdy two-story house for the owners. Now the fields were desolate, the barns empty, and the buildings abandoned.

Scavengers had picked through the debris, taking what they wanted, befouling what they didn’t. But they hadn’t destroyed everything, and I unearthed a man’s blouse that sort of fit, a pair of baggy pants that would do, and thought myself rich, now having a change in addition to the clothes on my back.

I found two cooking pots, one for an unlucky partridge I’d brought down with a stone earlier, the other for a thick wild vegetable soup I’d been planning as I walked, harvesting here and there as I went. There were spices in small jars the looters had scorned, so I’d eat well … and sleep dry, for thunder grumbled outside, and I’d be grateful for shelter this night.

I saw a gleam in the farmhouse’s great room, wondered if the scavengers had missed a coin, and picked up a small cast metal flag of Numantia. I knew what it was, had seen a hundred or more of them.

Knowing myself a fool and what to expect, still I rubbed the flag, and two figures grew from nothingness. They were young men, actually boys, one perhaps nineteen, the other a couple of years younger, obviously his brother. They had close-shaven heads and wore the bare uniform of recruits in the Imperial Army.

They grinned shyly, and one said, “What do you think of us, Da? Ma? They wouldn’t let us keep our hair, but they gave us these clothes in trade. Don’t we look like soldiers?”

The other laughed. “He thinks
he
looks like a soldier. I don’t. But they’re trying to teach us how, and we’re working hard, and we haven’t gotten into any trouble.”

The first turned serious. “They say we’ll be going south soon, to the frontiers and then into Maisir, to help the emperor destroy their evil king. Pray for us.”

The second nodded. “Please. But … don’t worry. We’ll come to no harm. We promise.”

They both held their smiles, then vanished.

As I said, I’d seen the little cast flags before. Sorcerers by the dozens, little more than village mountebanks, really, haunted the army camps, in spite of the provosts’ best attempts to chase them away. They’d pose a recruit, cast a spell, and trap the moment in a flag, or a toy dagger or small horse, with a bit of the recruit’s spittle or blood. Naturally, the young soldier would pay well for this, and somehow it would get its way to the ones he loved.

I wondered where in Maisir these boys had died. Penda? On the
suebi
? Irthing? Jarrah? Sidor? Or in some nameless swamp, in a flurried skirmish that left two or three bodies sprawled in the mud or the snow?

And what of their Da and Ma? Why’d they leave everything? Had they word their sons were sore wounded in some hospital, left the land, and been snared in the web of war? No one but Irisu knew, Irisu and Saionji perhaps. I shivered, and the thunder rumbled more loudly.

But I took my pots and spices and left the farm, finding poor shelter in a grove of trees half a mile distant. I don’t believe in ghosts, but that farmhouse was haunted.

• • •

One day I came on an odd sight. Nine or ten boys, perhaps fourteen to seventeen, all wearing the smock of farmers’ lads, were straggling along the road, behind a man wearing the old, banned uniform of the Imperial Army. I puzzled at this imposter as he came closer, and he hailed me cheerfully.

Rather doubtfully I returned the greeting, and introduced myself using some name or other I made up on the moment.

“I’m Color-Sergeant Tagagne, once Third Imperial Guards Corps, now serving the emperor directly,” he boomed.

“And how might that be?”

“Wait a moment, and I’ll tell you.” He turned to the boys. “You men, fall out around me. We’ll take a breather here before we go on.”

The young men gratefully found a bit of shade under the roadside trees, close enough to hear our conversation.

“Color-Sergeant?” I said doubtfully. “But the emperor’s army’s been dissolved and its men sent home.”

“By who? The shit-for-brains who call themselves the Grand Council? By that homicidal fuck behind them who sits the throne in Maisir? Since when does the emperor listen to lickspittles like them?”

I nodded agreement, and perhaps a bit of a smile came.

“You look to have been one who served the emperor,” Tagagne said.

“I was.”

“For how long?”

I could have told him the truth, that I was Laish Tenedos’s first follower. “For a long time.”

“In Maisir?”

I nodded once more.

“Ah, that was terrible, terrible,” he sighed. “But by Saionji, we fought well.”

I noted a couple of the farmboys shuddered at the death-goddess’s name.

“We did,” I said. “But they fought better.”

“The hells they did,” he said, a bit angry. “There were just more of them than we could kill. Otherwise, we’d be in Jarrah, wearing silk uniforms and each of us ruling a province.”

“But we aren’t.”

“But we will be again,” Tagagne said. “That’s why these brave boys have taken the emperor’s coin. We’re heading for … for where I’m not supposed to say, and join the new army. We’re getting ready to fight back, proud again under the Emperor Tenedos’s banner,” he said, “and drive those jerk-off Councilors out of Nicias, and the mongrels who call themselves Peace Guardians into the Latane.

“Those we don’t hang from the nearest tree first.”

A couple of the boys grinned tightly at that idea, and I smiled as well. “Those bastards could do with more than a bit of hanging, I’ll agree.”

“Then come help us,” Tagagne said. “You don’t appear crippled. Come back to the colors, lad, for there’s still fighting to be done, and Numantia to be won back.”

“No,” I said. “I’m my own master now and want to keep it that way.”

Tagagne shook his head. “I’ll not wave a white feather at you nor curse a man who served in Maisir. But there’s a hard wind abroad, and there’ll be no man permitted to sit the fence or plow his own furrow ‘til Numantia’s ruled by its own.

“Come on, friend,” he cajoled. “Forget the hard times and the lost comrades, and remember the good times, the comradeship, the pride of your uniform, and the glory of marching under the emperor’s banners. These boys haven’t known that, haven’t had their share of glory yet, but they’re for it, they’re true Numantians all.”

Honestly, in spite of the horror I knew war to be, I felt a bit of truth in Tagagne’s words, and remembered the fierce joy of being Tenedos’s warrior. But I also remembered … other things.

“No, Sergeant,” I said. “But I’ll think well of you for offering.”

“I’ll not press my cause,” Tagagne said. “There’ll be others who come to you, in other times, and maybe you’ll remember my words, and then join us, join us in making Numantia free.”

He didn’t wait for a response but turned to his charges. “Come on now, you men, for we’ve a long road to go before night.”

Obediently, they tramped off. I watched them over the hill. At its crest the last boy looked back and waved. I waved back, then went on my course.

No, Numantia was not free, and sooner or later there must be a fight.

But that must no longer matter to me.

• • •

The village, unlike some others, was neat, and smoke curled from some chimneys. Its fields were plowed, fat cows grazed in them, and I saw women tending a fishpond on its outskirts.

I’d just happened to spot the settlement, about a sixth of a league from the road, almost hidden behind a rise, and, tired of my own cooking, decided to ask for a night’s shelter for a day’s work.

The track to the village was somewhat overgrown, as if few travelers came. Then I saw the village had been skillfully fenced with bamboo stakes, and the path was closed off with a log spiked with bamboo spears.

“Halloo the village,” I hailed, and two women trotted out of a building. One carried a bow and quiver, the other a spear.

“Stand where you are.”

I obeyed, knowing what would come next — they’d see my sword and the remnants of my uniform, and order me away, fearing me as a marauder.

A third woman came from another hut as the two stood to either side of the log, weapons ready. She was a bit older than I, slender, and carried herself like a noblewoman.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“A traveler,” I said. “Call me … Nurri. I would like a meal and will work for it.”

She stared hard, and I felt her gaze pierce as the emperor’s had and knew her to be a seer of some power.

The other two women waited for her decision.

“He means no harm,” she said. “Let him enter.”

Without argument, they uncoiled ropes, dragged the log out of the way.

“Thank you …”

“I am Gunett,” she said. “I have been chosen village elder.”

“Thank you, Gunett. What jobs do you have?”

“We could do with some wood hewed,” she said.

“Gladly.”

“And after that … there might be other tasks.”

She smiled mysteriously, and one woman giggled.

• • •

I enjoy a simple chore like cutting wood, although when you’ve been away from the woodpile for years, it’s not quite as simple as it appears. But each time the ax comes down, you remember a bit of your old skills, and in time you’re able to put the blade precisely where you want it, with exactly the right amount of force — and not cut off your foot.

There was a lot of wood, but what of it? I stripped to the waist, shut off my mind, and became mechanical. I prided myself that I seldom needed the maul to split a log, and, as time passed, remembered the knack of splitting a log with a single blow.

Near the end of the pile, I became aware I had an audience. Two girls in their late teens were watching. I now had a duty to perform well and sent the last piece of wood spinning high to land atop the pile of chopped wood.

I bowed, they laughed, and one tossed me a clean towel.

“I’m Steffi,” she said, “and I was sent to tell you it’s almost time to eat. My friend here is Mala.” Steffi had long black hair tied in a queue, very red lips, and eyes matching her hair. She wore a homespun frock, decorated with sewn flowers and sandals and was very cute. Her friend, Mala, was a little heavy-set, but with a flashing smile and an easy blush.

I wiped sweat and asked if there was a place I might clean up. The two girls escorted me to a small cottage that was the village washhouse. Wine casks had been cut in two and filled with water, and there was a great cauldron of heated water over a low fire. I dipped hot water into a cask until it was warm enough, found lye soap, stripped and washed thoroughly standing outside, then climbed into the cask to soak for a time.