Текст книги "Earth Logic"

Автор книги: Marks Laurie

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The room was crowded, and everyone huddled as close to the fireplace as they could get. It might have been nearly spring, but that didn’t prevent the wind from blowing hard and bitter enough to find a way in through stone and mortar. People had taken off their coats and gloves, but tucked their hands in their armpits and loudly demanded that another log be added to the fire.

“Here’s supper,” the girl called cheerily. “Sizzling hot! Take the cold right out of your bones!”

“Is that the cook?” someone asked. “That was a fine soup.”

The newcomers crowded the trestle table. “Yow!” cried one young woman as she burned her tongue on a piece of potato. It seemed an unlikely group to be taking such a long, fast journey together, Garland thought as he distributed the hot plates. Members of a farm family usually bore a regional resemblance to each other even if they were only related by marriage, but these people did not look much alike. And in any case, it would be unusual for so many members of a single family to travel together like this. Garland had learned a little about farming during his years of wandering: a farmstead that missed spring planting time because its farmers were on a trip was surely heading for disaster.

The way they passed the plates to each other revealed a peculiar hierarchy. Among Shaftali, the hierarchy should be determined by age, but here the man most fussed over was not the oldest. While fetching salt cellars and mustard pots, Garland kept glancing at him surreptitiously, noting how everyone fell silent to listen to his trivial remarks.

Back in the kitchen, Garland cubed the leftover pork and mixed it with parboiled vegetables to make a filling for turnovers. He put together a sturdy dough–a tricky business to make a dough strong without making it tough–and seeded it with dried rosemary before breaking it into fist‑sized balls and rolling them out.

The girl came in, and before she opened her mouth Garland said, “Bring them slices of dried apple pie. There’s clotted cream in the pantry.” He crimped the edges of the first turnover, and sprinkled it with a bit of salt.

“Is that for their dinner tomorrow?” the girl asked as she got the pies out of the warming oven. “Will it taste good cold?”

“Well, I’m spicing it up a little more than I would if it were eaten hot, and if those people have got any sense they’ll keep their dinner inside their coats so it doesn’t freeze.”

Garland flinched as the girl lost control of the pie server and wrecked what would have been a lovely slice of pie. “Who cares what it looks like?” the girl said impatiently.

Garland said, “So what do you think about those people? Are they Paladins?”

“They must be.” The girl frowned with concentration as she served out the dollops of cream. Garland had tried to teach her how to make each spoonful a work of art, but the lesson didn’t seem to have taken hold.

“That looks nice,” he said, to encourage her.

“You’re an odd sort of man,” she replied irritably, and then added, “It’s peculiar to see Paladins traveling at this time of year, don’t you think? Usually they winter with their families, don’t they, like ordinary people?”

This comment may not have been intended as a criticism of Garland’s irregular status, but he didn’t reply, and pretended to be having difficulty with the turnover dough. The girl finally said apologetically, “I guess some people don’t have families.”

A person who lacked a family was assumed to be at fault, and so most vagabonds made some effort to counteract this social disapproval by concocting ornate tales of family tragedy or betrayal that made them look like victims or heroes. However, Garland did not know enough about Shaftali families to be able to conduct such an elaborate pretense, so he always declared that his past was too painful to talk about. For nearly five years, that approach had kept people from prying, but it also had kept them from even considering offering Garland a permanent home. He was lucky to have this temporary position, lucky that the innkeeping family had found themselves unexpectedly short‑handed when Garland happened to be wandering through last summer. But two young people would be marrying into the innkeeping family come spring, and both of them were reported to be competent cooks.

Garland sometimes wondered what would happen if he told someone he was a Sainnite. It seemed to him the truth should earn him sympathy, but he thought it much more likely the truth would get him killed. Those Paladins out there in the public room, for instance, who even now were gobbling up his delectable pie, they would nod with satisfaction, belching as they washed his blood from their hands. “One less monster in Shaftal,” they might say. “Too bad he was such a good cook.”

Later, with the pots washed, the leftovers in the cold cupboard, and the next morning’s bread dough rising in the lingering warmth of the oven, Garland finally got around to serving himself a little supper, and went out into the public room to eat it. Most of the guests had left for home or gone to bed, but the twelve ice travelers remained; some huddled by the good oak fire still trying to get warm, while others took turns sharpening their skate blades. Garland went to sit at an empty table, but someone called, “Hey, cook!”

It was the Paladin commander, beckoning him over. “No, bring your meal and join us. It’s warmer over here.”

Garland protested to no effect. One of the Paladins had already risen to make room for him, and he found himself seated beside the commander. His appetite evaporated. He knew his Shaftalese was as good as anyone’s; he knew his appearance was nothing extraordinary, both language and appearance having been given him by his Shaftali mother. But he did not particularly trust his ability to tell believable lies.

“You’re awfully thin for a cook,” the commander commented. “Are you just getting a chance to eat?”

“It’s been a busy night,” Garland said. He took a spoonful of the soup, and though he analyzed its construction–the onions were bitter, but that couldn’t be avoided at this time of year–he did not actually enjoy the taste. He glanced sideways at the commander. Older than Garland, probably in his forties, the commander had a rough look about him: a face burned to leather by wind and sun, an untrimmed, grizzled beard, and tangled hair. Garland noticed no piercings in the man’s earlobe. He looked again to make sure, and accidentally caught the man making a similar survey of him.

“I’m Willis,” said the commander, and introduced some of the others nearby.

“I hear you’re skating to the coast,” said Garland.

The others energetically recounted tales of their journey, and in the telling made their chilly, effortful trip seem more adventurous than miserable. Garland managed another sneaking glance at the commander. He did not even have scars on his earlobe from old piercings. Most Paladins were irregulars, recruited into the war after the Fall of the House of Lilterwess some twenty years before, but Garland had often heard that Mabin would promote to commander only those who had taken Paladin vows, as this man apparently had not. So these people were not Paladins after all. But what were they?

Willis turned to Garland, who hastily jammed a chunk of meat into his mouth. “We hear you’re not one of the innkeepers. You’re a wandering man, taken in for the winter.”

Garland nodded, chewing.

“You’ve put some fine food in front of us tonight–” He looked around, and his companions uttered enthusiastic confirmations– excessively enthusiastic, Garland thought.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, and stuffed in another bite.

“So what is it you’re seeking? What would it take to end your wandering?”

It was a shocking question, and not only because Garland realized he was being recruited. He swallowed, and said carefully, “Sir, fact is I’m a coward.”

Garland had surprised Willis in return, he saw, and this was not a man who liked to be surprised. “Cowardice? There’s no such thing! People who believe enough in what they’re doing, that belief overrides fear. That’s what bravery is. You just need something worth believing in.”

The serving girl had gone to bed and wasn’t around to come to Garland’s rescue. If he suddenly declared he had to check something in the kitchen, it would raise suspicions rather than fool anyone. Garland said, “I do believe in something: food. And I’m still a coward.”

Willis apparently decided Garland had to be joking, and uttered a hearty laugh that all his sycophants echoed just as heartily.

“Give me your hand, brother,” said Willis. Helpless to refuse, Garland reluctantly let his hand be clasped. Willis’s hand was warm, rough, his grip strong. “I’m going to tell you something that happened to me,” said Willis. “And when I’m done, you’ll have something to believe in.”

For a single, dreadful moment, Garland felt himself begin to slip. These people wanted him. And wasn’t that, after all, what Garland sought? He wanted it so badly he almost could believe it was possible he could belong with these–but what were they? Garland applied himself desperately to his plate, thinking that the sooner he finished, the sooner he could claim exhaustion and take himself off to bed.

It quickly became apparent he would run out of food before Willis ran out of words. “I was a wandering man like you, once,” Willis began. “You remember all that business in South Hill, five years ago? Well, you must have heard about the Wilton garrison being burned down, at least.”

Garland had heard about it, all right. That had happened in his first months as a deserter, the first summer that Cadmar had been general. Garland hadn’t yet learned to trust his ability to disguise himself as Shaftali. People’s anger at the Sainnites had been running high that year, and with every reported atrocity in South Hill, it had risen even higher. Never mind that the Sainnites had taken as bad a beating as they had given–their garrison practically burned to the ground, and who knows how many seasoned soldiers killed or disabled. Of course Garland could not ask someone to explain to him why, if the violence in Shaftal was such a terrible thing, no one became outraged at, or even mentioned, those dead Sainnites.

Willis had been telling him about his own involvement in the events in South Hill, and Garland didn’t want to care or pay attention. Now Willis was saying, “And that was cowardice. That commander was always holding back. And Mabin, backing him up, that was cowardice too.”

Garland looked up from his nearly empty plate, shocked. Even among the Sainnites, Councilor Mabin was a legend. Someone else at the table said swiftly, “Oh, Mabin is a great leader, no doubt about that! But perhaps she has lost her vision. Thousands of fighters she’s got at her command–maybe not as many as there are soldiers, but close enough–and yet she won’t let them take offensive action. A few decisive blows is all that would be required!”

“She doesn’t believe enough,” someone else murmured. “She doesn’t believe in Shaftal enough.”

These other voices fell immediately silent as Willis took up his tale again. “So I left South Hill. And for a good long while, I confess I was giving in to despair. I don’t know how long you’ve been without a family, but for me a year was nearly enough to kill me. There I was, half frozen in an inn like this one, begging someone to spare me a penny so I could eat a bit of bread. Well, you know, it leaves a person thinking that he really is of no account. And that was when I heard the story of the Lost G’deon.”

Garland looked around himself. Everyone at the table appeared transported by devotion. After all this talk of courage and belief, Garland belatedly realized what these people had actually meant. They believed–he’d never seen anything like it before–and what they believed in was a story. Garland had heard the story, of course, but when he had heard it the first time–that same winter, apparently, that Willis had first heard it–he had given it no importance. He had thought that this wild tale of a big woman piercing Mabin in the heart with a steel spike was just another legend about the Councilor’s astonishing ability to survive. But eventually Garland had figured out why Shaftali people were enthralled by this story, a reason that several people at the table were now repeating in an eager chorus: “Only the G’deon can spike someone’s heart and leave the heart still beating. Only the G’deon can do it, without a trial, to put that person’s life in the G’deon’s hands.”

“And a question came to me,” said Willis, his voice more and more taking on the sonority of speechmaking rather than conversation. “I thought to myself, if there’s a G’deon in Shaftal, then why does she not act to free us of the Sainnite curse? Why does she spike the heart of our brave, much admired general? And then she came to me, the Lost G’deon herself.”

“You’ve met her?” Garland cried.

“A vision,” impatiently muttered the woman at his left. Apparently, this was not the proper time to interrupt Willis.

“She came to me,” continued Willis. “And she said, ‘Don’t you see, you fool? Mabin has failed Shaftal. And so have you,’ she said to me. ‘But I’m giving you one last chance. Act decisively! Rid Shaftal at last of the Sainnites that befoul the blessed land! Eliminate the Sainnites, and I will come at last. Do not make me wait!’” Willis’s voice had risen to a shout; now he lowered it to a murmur. “That’s what she said. And I was pierced by her words, I say, pierced to the heart. And from that day on I’ve lived only to do the G’deon’s will.”

He turned to Garland, no doubt to check the effect of his words before he delivered the final persuasive speech that probably had convinced each of his devoted followers to join the company.

Garland stood up. “Good luck to you!” He fled, even leaving his dirty plate behind. He ran full tilt up the stairs to his bedroom in the chilly attic, and bolted the door for the first time since he had become a resident. They could easily kick down the door, of course, but the innkeeper family would surely not stand for that. Surely not!

His sweat was ice cold. He was shaking so he could hardly stand, but was too terrified to sit. His ears ached with listening, but he heard only the sound of the roof creaking the way it always did on a windy night.

After some hours he finally convinced himself to get into bed, and, some hours after that, to fall asleep. His dreams were full of bloodshed. He ran and ran, but wherever he fled, his mother’s people and his father’s people were in battle with each other. And then Shaftali and Sainnite both turned on him crying out, “No one of your heritage will ever cook for us!” “So what?” he replied, absurdly. “At the rate you’re killing each other, there soon will be no one to cook for!”

He awoke late, with an innkeeper pounding on his door, and by the time he stumbled downstairs, Willis and his people were long gone.

Chapter Three

A soldier’s life swings between boredom and terror. Even though Lieutenant‑General Clement had endured thirty‑five dull winters in Shaftal, she still preferred the boredom. But oh, she yearned for sunshine–though not for the renewal of conflict that would accompany better weather.

Surely I am old enoughto know that there’s no point in wanting anything,she thought.

As she stepped into the spare quarters that housed the General of Sainnites in Shaftal, she could hear the hollow clangor of the midday bell. Cadmar, though he had even less to do at this time of year than Clement did, was just getting around to shaving. Peering into a tiny round mirror, he deftly turned his face this way and that to follow the track of the razor. His chin glimmered with a white frost of stubble where he had not yet shaved, and he had to stretch his sagging skin for the razor. “Well?” he said, without looking at Clement.

“Nothing to report, General.”

He grunted and gestured with his razor in the direction of his table, on which sat a dented, soot‑smeared tea kettle. Clement crossed the chilly room to the even chillier bay window, where one shutter hung open to let in what passed for light. Soldiers desperate for something to do had recently refinished Cadmar’s battered table, and its surface now shone like ice and was just about as slick. As Clement poured herself tea, the heavy pottery mug nearly slid over the table’s edge. The tea did not steam as it poured, and no warmth seeped from the mug into Clement’s cold‑numbed hand.

“Do you want some tea, Gilly?” she asked the general’s lucky man, who sat like a blasted crow on his stool.

“Not if the tea is cold,” Gilly said, without looking up. He turned a page, squinting in the dim light.

“You need spectacles.”

Cadmar, still peering into his tiny mirror, uttered a snort. “Spectacles wouldn’t help his appearance any!”

“They couldn’t hurt,” said Gilly absently.

Gilly was a hideous man. His face and form might have been put through the wringers in a laundry and then frozen in that twisted, crumpled state. His face was crooked, his eyes uneven, his ears out of level, his shoulders hunched in a position of permanent furtive‑ness, his spine so contorted it seemed amazing he could stand, even with the support of a sturdy cane. However, Clement was oblivious to Gilly’s ugliness except when Cadmar amused himself by pointing it out. Cadmar had plucked the ugly beggar boy out of a Hanishport gutter thirty years ago, but it was Clement who, by defending him from the soldiers’ abuse, had won his lifelong friendship.

The Sainnites had still believed then that every winter in Shaftal would be their last. Any day now, they believed, they would conquer this land of stubborn farmers, and offer the subjected country to one of the lords of Sainna as a bribe to let the exiled soldiers come home. In the early years, none of them could have imagined that they would die of old age in a still‑unconquered land.

Clement drank the cold tea and half listened to Cadmar’s tedious account of the various bouts he had fought in the training ring that morning. Fortunately, Clement’s smaller size had always excused her from being the big man’s training partner. Though she often wished to pummel him, it was more likely to be the reverse: no one admired Cadmar’s acumen, but his prowess as a fighter was beyond doubt.

Cadmar began telling old, often repeated jokes that he had heard in the men’s bathhouse. Gilly finally looked up from his book and rescued Clement with a comment about the storm that was approaching. They argued amicably about whether or not this winter was lingering longer than the last, until Cadmar, impatient with any conversation that was not about him, dismissed her.

“Gods be thanked,” muttered Clement after the door was shut behind her.

However, she had nothing else to do. She had tended the flower bulbs that bloomed on her windowsill; her quarters were pristine, her uniforms clean and mended, and she had bathed herself and changed her bed linens only yesterday. That morning she had attended the gathering of the garrison’s senior officers, who were themselves desperate to create new projects to divert the soldiers from picking fights with each other.

They were all half mad with cold and confinement and the bad humors that move like evil spirits from one barracks to the next. But Clement doubted that anyone had more cause for wretchedness than she had. For five years, she and Gilly had conspired to keep a dreadful truth secret from everyone but Cadmar. And Cadmar sustained his own equanimity by listening selectively or, when that failed, by reshaping the inconvenient facts into a comforting new form.

The man was a marvel, really.

Clement started down the hall. She would take a walk before the storm confined her indoors again. At the front door, she found that the soldiers on watch duty had already taken shelter in the anteroom. “It’s gotten awfully cold out there, Lieutenant‑General,” one warned. Clement set her teeth and stepped out the door into the rising wind. By the gods, it was a bitter day! Surely, if the Sainnites had arrived at Shaftal in winter rather than in summer, they would have simply expired of cold.

Winters in their homeland, Sainna, had been little more than interruptions in the growing season. In Sainna there had been lush croplands, vineyards, fat cows in green fields. And there had been soldiers, fighting in the service of one or another bloodthirsty lord, killing each other over possession of one or another tract of land. In Sainna, Clement had been born in a child‑crowded hovel outside a garrison, and had never been certain which of the four constantly pregnant women had given birth to her. She regularly saw her siblings sold to soldiers, then one day was herself sold to a new mother, Gabian, who took her into the garrison to become a soldier. A couple of years later, their entire battalion was forced to sea, and they became refugees.

Clement remembered riding on her mother’s back as they ran for the docks with an army at their heels. She had been eight, or maybe nine years old. She did not know she was screaming with fear until her mother put her down on the ship’s deck and slapped her to make her be quiet. After that, a blur of seasickness, bad water and worse food, and a single clear memory of being brought above deck to see some gigantic fishes, bigger than the ship. Their ship had run aground on the rocky, inhospitable coast of Shaftal, and Clement arrived in her new land by being heaved out of a longboat and dumped onto the sand, along with several other children and a great pile of armor, weaponry, and supplies. One of the soldiers who rowed that boat repeatedly through treacherous waters so as to unload the wrecked ship of its supplies and passengers had been as a god to her: a big, golden‑haired young man whose great muscles gleamed with freezing spray, whose blue eyes glinted with joy when a jagged rock or towering breaker challenged his strength. That man had been Cadmar.

It had been high summer then, but the Sainnites had soon learned the bitter facts about Shaftal’s weather. Today, the wind felt sharp enough to trim the skin off Clement’s face. She pulled the muffler up to her eyes, jammed her hat down over her ears, and set out across the sand‑strewn ice. She walked briskly, giving every appearance of having a destination, exchanging greetings with the few soldiers unfortunate enough to have outdoor business. Most of the five hundred here in Watfield Garrison would be in the barracks, huddled together under blankets rather than using their day’s ration of fuel, grumbling, arguing, gambling, and telling each other the same worn‑out stories over and over again.

Clement walked a half‑circuit of the garrison. At the edge of a wasteland of snow, she perched on an ice‑encased stone bench and tried to imagine the garden that would emerge here in the spring. The flower bulbs she had inherited from her soldier mother were planted under this snow. That they would soon bloom seemed unbelievable.

The cold had taken hold of her very bones when the gray sky blithely began scattering stars of snow across her lap. She broke her own torpor by cursing the weather, and then, because it made her feel better, continued to curse as she walked, starting with her enemies, but not neglecting her friends and herself. She cursed everyone in Shaftal while she was at it, and everyone who had ever been born, and only stopped short of cursing the gods because her angry, snow‑kicking perambulation had finally brought her near enough to the gate that one of the guards might have noticed and been perplexed by her behavior.

The gate, just then being shoved open to admit a new arrival, contained the city beyond in an illusory cage composed of its heavy iron bars: the narrow street, the high, steep‑roofed buildings that seemed ghostly and restless in the falling snow. In those buildings, the people of Watfield did whatever they did–tirelessly busy, indifferent to weather, oblivious to the threatening presence of the garrison. Artisans, shopkeepers, builders, brokers–they worked hard, ate well, lived comfortably, and followed rules or laws that Clement simply could not comprehend, no matter how often Gilly explained them to her.

Clement walked over to the gate captain and pulled aside her muffler so he could see her face in case snow had obscured the insignia on her hat. He saluted casually–after five years it was generally known that Clement didn’t share Cadmar’s obsession with protocol–and said, “It’s a messenger from Han.”

“Han? That’s a journey of a good twelve days.”

“In good weather,” said the captain, “on a clear road. But it took this soldier some twenty days, she says. She sure walks like she has a case of frostbite. Here, you, soldier!”

The limping messenger blundered her way to the captain and made a vague gesture that might have been a salute. The captain said, “This is Lieutenant‑General Clement. You can give your message to her.”

The messenger peered at Clement, apparently snow‑blind, and asked hoarsely, “You’re Clement?”

Clement had once known every soldier in Han Garrison, but she did not recognize this woman. “I’m afraid I am. Have you got a packet somewhere inside all those clothes? Let’s get you out of this weather, eh?”

“Take her in the barracks,” said the captain, gesturing so Clement would know which barracks he meant. “They’re having a birthday party on the men’s side, if you don’t mind a bit of noise.”

“Whose wretched luck was it to be born in this dreadful month?”

The captain grinned. “Eliminate all the dreadful months and you wouldn’t have many left for people to be born in.”

Clement took the messenger by the elbow and led her to shelter. In the cold trap it was not much warmer than it was outside, but further inside, the coals in the fireplace still gave off a little heat. f he room was plain, low ceilinged for warmth, with its windows caulked shut and insulated with straw and burlap. The neat room, crowded with beds, smelled as bad as might be expected, of dirty linens, unwashed chamber pots, and used blood rags. The messenger took a deep breath of the stink and said hoarsely, “Home.”

“Knock some of that snow off your clothes, will you, and I’ll get these coals to flame a bit.”

On the other side of the dividing wall, the company was enthusiastically, if tunelessly, thumping and shouting their way through the last verse of a particularly raunchy birthday song. The cake they ate would be gluey at best, since Cadmar had driven away Watfield Garrison’s talented cook some five years ago.

When Clement commanded Han Garrison during the three years she had managed to get herself out from behind Cadmar, the entire garrison had turned out to sing to her on her birthday every year. Then the old general died, Cadmar was elected to replace him, and he gave Clement her unwelcome promotion. Now, no one cared when it was her birthday.

“I’m glad to see you,” Clement said to the exhaustion‑addled messenger, now the fire was burning. “You’ve distracted me from poisoning myself with pity.”

“Eh?” the messenger said. “It’s dark in here, isn’t it?”

Clement brought the messenger to the fire, unbuttoned her coat, and sat her down on a stool. “Can you see my insignias now? So you believe who I am?”

The messenger peered blurrily at Clement’s hat. “All right.” She plucked a packet from the inner pocket of her coat, releasing with her movements a stink of sweat and another smell that reminded Clement unpleasantly of rotten meat. The woman handed Clement the packet, then toppled messily off the stool.

Startled, Clement felt the woman’s greasy skull to make certain she hadn’t cracked her head open. Her head felt scalding hot. She left the woman collapsed on the hearth, head pillowed on stone and one leg still tangled in the stool, and shouted out the door at a passing soldier to fetch a medic. Then, she broke open the packet and read its contents by the dim, glittering light of the snowstorm.

Commander Taran had written with the unapologetic terseness of extreme duress. “An epidemic has overcome the garrison, a hideous illness so swift and vicious I fear for all our lives.”

“Gods of hell!” Clement cried. She dropped the letter, slammed her fist through the thick skin of ice over the water in the bucket, and plunged in both her hands. A yellow bar of soap lay nearby; she whacked it on the floor to break it loose from its dish, and began vigorously scrubbing her hands. But she could not think how to scrub the woman’s contaminated breath out of her lungs.

“An epidemic could do us in,” she muttered. “Bloody hell!”

The stricken woman uttered some ugly, choking sounds and flailed her arms vaguely. The fetor of the room was overlaid by the appalling stink of vomit.

“Did you have to be such a hero?” Clement asked her. “Couldn’t you have died on the road?”

The woman’s aimless movements stilled. Clement slammed open the barracks door and again shouted for help. The snow, falling heavily now, swallowed her voice, but eventually a shape approached out of the white curtain, and she told the soldier to fetch the guard captain.

“The entire gate watch goes into immediate isolation,” she told the captain. “Send someone who had no contact with the messenger to inform Commander Ellid.”

“You’ll have to be isolated too, Lieutenant‑General.”

“Aye,” she said glumly. “Better inform the general of that fact.”

The stricken messenger died before the day was out. When the dead woman was undressed, the medic found a horror: a gruesome sore in the armpit that seeped pus and stank of rot, and black marks like the footprints of a fell creature that had marched across her belly and thighs. They burned the body, the clothing, and everything the messenger had touched, and the entire contents of the barracks in which she had collapsed. The company that had lived there was relocated, and Clement and her unlucky fellows were locked in, without even a window through which to watch the world melt its way from depressing snow to appalling mud. For twenty days they endured each other’s company, playing cards or listening to Clement read out loud Gilly’s wry and witty daily letter, which he illustrated with unflattering caricatures of people they all knew.