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Sergeant Refdom was our orchard man. This was a new area of endeavour for us. My father saw no reason why fruit trees should not flourish on the hillsides above the grain fields. Neither did I, but flourish they did not. Leaf curl blight had all but killed every one of the plum trees. Some sort of burrowing worm attacked the tiny apples as soon as they formed. But Sergeant Refdom was determined, and this year he had brought in a new variety of cherry that seemed to be establishing well.
Each day we returned to the house by mid-morning. We shared tea and meat rolls and then my father dismissed me to my classes and exercises. He deemed it wise that I learn the basics of husbanding our holdings, for when my soldiering days were over, I would be expected to come home and serve my brother as his overseer in his declining years. Should any untimely illness or mishap befall Rosse before then, he could by law ask the King that his soldier brother be returned to him for the ‘defence of his father’s lands’. It was a fate that I nightly prayed to be spared, and not just out of fondness for my solid older brother. I knew that I had been born for the cavalla. The good god himself had made me a second son, and I do believe that he grants to all such the fibre of character and adventurous spirit that a soldier must possess. I knew that eventually, when my days of riding to battle were over, I must return to our holdings, and probably take up the duties of Corporal Curf or Sergeant Refdom. All my sons would be soldiers and to me would fall the training of my elder brother’s soldier son, but all my daughters would take whatever dower they carried from our family holdings. It behooved me to know the operation of them, so that when my time came to contribute directly to their upkeep, I’d be a useful man.
But my heart was full of dreams of battle and patrol and exploration as our forces pushed ever deeper into the wild lands, winning territory, riches and resources for good King Troven. In the border lands to the east, our troops still skirmished with the former inhabitants of the lands there, trying to make them settle and see that the greater good of all demanded that they accept our civilization. My greatest fear was that we would be able to subdue them before I reached my soldiering age, and that instead of battle, I would spend my years of duty in administrational tasks. I dreamed that I would be there on the day when his King’s Road finally pushed through the Barrier Mountains to the shores of the Far Sea. I wanted to be one of the first to ride triumphantly the length of that long road, and gallop my horse through the surf of an alien ocean on a foreign beach.
The rest of the mornings of my last year at home were spent at book lessons. The afternoons were completely weapons practice now. The two hours that once had been mine for leisure reading or boyish amusements vanished. My childhood fascination with naming and classifying the stones that had ‘killed’ me now had to be set aside for a man’s pursuits. Spending an hour listening to Elisi practise her music, or helping Yaril gather the flowers for the vases in the parlour and dining room were no longer worthy of my time. I missed my sisters, but knew it was time I focused my attention on the world of men.
Some of the lessons were tedious, but I kept a good discipline, aware that both my father and my tutors judged me not only on how well I could repeat my lessons but also on the attitude I displayed. A man who wishes to rise to command must first learn to accept commands. And no matter how high I rose in the ranks, there would always be someone above me to whom I must bow my head and whose authority I must accept. It behooved me to display that I could accept the harness of discipline and wear it willingly. In those days, the sole ambition I possessed was the one that had been with me since birth: I would make my family proud of me. I would force my father to hold me in high esteem.
In the evenings, after dinner, I now joined my father and Rosse in the study for adult conversation about our holdings and politics and the current news of the realm. As I would not be allowed to either smoke or drink during my Academy years, my father advised me not to cultivate an indulgence for tobacco and to limit my liquor to the wine always served with our meals and a single brandy after dinner. I accepted that as a sensible restriction.
The third weeks of every month of my nineteenth year were to my liking. Those days were given over entirely to Sergeant Duril’s ‘finishing school’ as he laughingly called it. Sirlofty had become my daily mount and I strove to make my horsemanship worthy of that excellent steed. Sergeant Duril now made it his business to toughen me as befitted a cavalryman, as well as to perfect my execution of the more demanding drill movements.
Duril had been a drill sergeant for new recruits at his last outpost, and knew his business well. He worked with me on precision drill until I swore I could feel every set of muscles in Sirlofty’s body and knew exactly how to match my body to my horse’s as he moved. We did battle leaps, kicks and spins, high-stepping parade prance and the demanding cadence gaits.
We rode out often over the wide prairie wastelands. Now that I had a man’s years, Duril spoke to me more as an equal. He taught me the plants and creatures of that region as he and my father’s troops had utilized them, for survival sustenance, and gradually reduced my packed supply of water and food until I had learned to go for several days with only what we could scavenge from the land itself. He was a demanding taskmaster, harsher in some ways than Dewara had been, but Duril set the example himself and never let his strictness pass the line into abuse. I knew he carried emergency supplies in his saddlebags, yet he limited himself just as he did me, and proved by example how little a man could survive on if he employed his own resourcefulness. If he required me to learn how to find cactus-borers, he demonstrated looking for their holes in the spiny palms of the flathand cacti, and showed me, also, how to cut my way to the heart of the colony where the fat yellow grubs could provide a nourishing, if squirmy, meal for a desperate soldier. He was a natural storyteller and the veteran of many campaigns. He illustrated his lessons with stories from his own experience. I often wished that my history books were more like his anecdotes, for he made the plains Campaigns the history of his life. He never expected me to do anything he had not proven that he could do also, and for that my respect of my gruff teacher was boundless.
Toward the end of my training with Duril, in the beating hot days of summer, he took me out to prove myself on a five-day jaunt over the waterless and scrubby terrain of the rough country to the east of Widevale. On the third day, he took my hat from me and made me ride bareheaded under the sun, saying not a word until I finally halted and fashioned myself some head protection by weaving a crude hat from sagebrush twigs. Only then did a smile break his craggy face. I feared he would mock me, but instead he said, ‘Good. You figured out that protecting yourself from sunstroke is more important than saving your dignity. Many a failed officer put his dignity before the need to maintain a clear mind for himself so that he can make good decisions for his troops. It’s even worse when those in command won’t let their troops do what they must to survive. Captain Herken comes to mind. Out on patrol, and a watering spot he’d been relying upon reaching turned out to be a dry hole. His men wanted to use their urine. You can drink it if you have to, or use it to damp your clothes and be cooler. He wouldn’t let them. Said no command of his was going to be piss-breathed. He chose death for a third of them over a little bit of stink. Far better a sage-hat and a sensible leader than a bare-head and ridiculous orders from some fool suffering from heatstroke.’
It wasn’t the first time he’d told me such rough tales of survival. I never asked my father about them, and of course I’d never repeat such stories about the house. I think I understood that by putting me with this man, my father signalled his approval of whatever harshly won knowledge the sergeant chose to pass on to me. Duril might lack a lofty pedigree, but he was a soldier’s soldier, and as such my father respected him.
That night, when we camped around a smoky little fire of resinous branches near a thornbush-ringed water hole, he led the conversation to the history of the cavalla. For him, it was not dates and distant places and the strategy of campaigns. It was the story of his life. He’d joined when he was barely a lad, back in the days when the mounted forces did little more than patrol the existing borders of Gernia and hold the lines against the plainspeople. It had not seemed a promising career choice when he’d joined. I think I alone knew Duril’s deepest secret. He was no true soldier son, only the fourth son born to a shoemaker in Old Thares. His family had given him over to the King’s Cavalla in a sort of fatalistic despair. A city needs only so many cobblers. If he’d remained in the Old Thares, he’d either have starved at home or become a thief on the streets. He’d told me a few tales of Gernia in those days. The Long War with Landsing had ended in our defeat in the days of King Darwell, father of our present king. Generations of fighting had earned us only the loss of our coastal lands and our best coal-mining region. Landsing had taken our ports, leaving us with no access to the Locked Sea. Bereft of our ports and the rich veins of coal that had been our main export, Gernia was weakening like a fasting man. Our defeated navy was shamed, both ships and seaports gone. Our army and cavalla were little better, shunned and mocked when they abandoned their uniforms to become beggars, despised as cowards and incompetents if they chose to remain in the service of the King. Such was Sergeant Duril’s introduction to life as a military man. He began by blacking and polishing boots for cavalla officers who seldom wore them any more, for our former foes were the victors and there were no more battles in which honour might be reclaimed.
Duril had served three years when King Darwell died and King Troven inherited the crown. To hear Duril tell it, the young king had single-handedly stopped Gernia’s slide into despair. He mourned his father for three days, and then, instead of convening his Council of Lords, he summoned his military commanders to him. Even as he gathered that group and offered them what remained of the funds in his depleted treasury to rebuild Gernia’s might, his nobles muttered that they would not again follow a king into battle against Landsing, that four generations of near-constant war had left them beggared as well as defeated.
But it was not west to Landsing and the lost province that young King Troven turned his eyes. No. King Troven was weary of the plainspeople’s incursions against his remote settlements. He had decided that if they would not respect the boundary stones that had been mutually set four score of years ago, then he would not, either. The King sent his cavalla forth with the commands not only to push the plainspeople back, but also to set the boundaries anew and take new territory to replace that lost to the Landsingers.
Some of the King’s lords did not support him in that ambition. The plains were despised as wastelands, not fit for agriculture or grazing, too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. We traded with the peoples of the region, but only for raw goods, such as furs from the northern reaches. They were not farmers and had no industry of their own. Some were nomads, following their herds. Even those who cultivated small fields were migratory, wintering one place and summering another. They themselves admitted that no one owned the land. Why should they or our own nobles dispute our right to settle it and make it productive?
Duril remembered the brief and bloody Nobles’ Revolt. Lord Egery had risen before the Council of Lords, asking them why more sons should shed their blood for sand and stone and sagebrush. The traitor had advocated overthrowing young Troven, and allying themselves with our old enemies for the sake of port concessions. King Troven had put the revolt down decisively and then, instead of punishing the rebels, rewarded those families that had given him their soldier sons to send into that battle against their fellow lords. King Troven altered the emphasis of his military, pouring men and money into the cavalla, the mounted troops descended from old knighthood, for he judged that force could best deal with the ever-mounted plainspeople. He dissolved his navy, for he no longer had a port or ships for them. Some folk mocked the idea of putting sailors on horseback and commodores in command of ground troops, but King Troven simply asserted that he believed his soldier sons and their commanders could fight anywhere that their patriotism demanded. His men responded to his confidence.
In that fashion had the Kingdom of Gernia increased by a third of its size since Sergeant Duril had been a boy.
The Plains War had not been a war at first. It had been a series of skirmishes between the nomads and our folk. The plainspeople had raided us, attacking our military outposts and the new settlements that sprang up around them; we had retaliated against their roving bands. The plainspeople had initially assumed that King Troven was merely reasserting his right to his own territory. It was only when we not only moved our boundary stones but started planning and erecting citadels and then settlements that the plainspeople realized that the King was in earnest. Twenty years of war had followed.
The plainspeople counted themselves as seven different peoples, but our records showed there were clearly more than thirty different clans or tribes. They often travelled in smaller bands. They roved and in their own way, ruled the plains, plateaus and rolling hills to the north. Some herded sheep or goats, others their long-necked dun-coloured cattle that seemed immune to every sort of weather. Three of the lesser tribes were simple hunters and gatherers, regarded by the other nomads as primitives. They tattooed their faces with swirling red patterns and believed that they were kin with the barking rats, the rodents of the prairie that sometimes riddled acres of ground with their burrows and tunnels. The Ratmen likewise dug tunnels into the earth and stored seeds and grains in them. They had made little resistance to our eastward expansion, and had actually enjoyed their new fame as an oddity. A number of artists and writers from Old Thares had visited them to document their strange lives, enriching the rat people with fabric, scissors and other trade items.
The Kidona had been the predators, the raiders who lived by attacking the others. The nomadic tribes had moved in a seasonal migration pattern, following grazing for their animals, and the Kidona had followed them, just as predators followed the migratory antelope of the plains. For generations, Gernian traders ventured out to barter with the plateau and hill folk for furs when the tribes came together for their traditional autumn trade gathering, but for the most part, our peoples had ignored one another.
‘For generations, they had nothing we wanted, and we knew they would fight like devils to keep it. They had their magic, and the few times we’d crossed swords with them, we’d come out the poorer for it. How can you fight a man who can send your horse to his knees by flapping a hand at him, or wave a bullet aside? So we left them alone. We were a seafaring folk. We had our territory, and they had theirs. If the Landsingers hadn’t bottled us up like they did, maybe we would have ignored the plainspeople forever. It was only when we were pressed for territory that we pressed them as well. We’d always known that iron could stop plains magic; the problem was getting close enough to use iron against them. In olden times, one of the Gernian kings had sent knights out to avenge a murdered nobleman’s son. Their magic couldn’t knock down an iron-armoured knight or his shielded horse, but we couldn’t catch up to them to do them any harm! They just fled. We tried archers, but a shaman could warp their bows with one flick of his finger. Lead ball? They’d slow it, catch it, and keep it for a trinket. But once we learned to use iron pellet in our muskets, well, the tide turned then. They couldn’t turn iron shot, and a scatter gun full of round iron pellet shot from ambush could take out one of their raiding parties with one blast. Suddenly we could pick one of their war-shamans out of his saddle at two to three times the distance they expected. You didn’t even have to kill him; just put enough iron shot in him that his magic left him. They couldn’t even get close to us.
‘Yet even then, if ever the tribes had thought to unite and fight us, well, chances were, they could have driven us back. They were nomads, their boys born to the saddle, and horsemen such as we’ll never see again. But that was their weakness, too. When drought or plague or territorial disputes struck, why, if they couldn’t win, they just up and moved into new territory. And that’s what they kept doing, moving away as we advanced, losing cattle and sheep and possessions as they gave ground to us. Some of the smaller bands settled, of course, made peace with us and realized they’d have to live like regular folks now, keeping house in one place. But some just kept on fighting us, until they found the Barrier Mountains at their backs. Forest and mountains are no place for horse troops. That was when the fighting really got ugly. We had crowded the different tribes up against one another. Some of them turned against their own kind. They knew they’d lost almost all their old grazing lands. The best parts of their herds and flocks were forfeit to us or dead behind them. They could look out over the plains from the high plateaus and see our citadels and our towns rising where once their beasts had grazed. The battle at Widevale was one of the worst. They say that every man of fighting age of the Ternu tribe died there. We took in their women and children, of course. It was only the right thing to do. Settled them down and taught them how to live right, how to farm and how to read. That battle was harsh and vicious, but in the end, it worked a kindness for those folks. Your da has done right by them, giving them sheep and seed and teaching them how to make a life in one spot.
‘Not like the Portrens tribe. They chose to die to the last soul, men, women, and children. Not a thing we could do to stop them. When it was plain that the battle tide had turned against them, and they’d either have to bow their heads and become good subjects to King Troven or be driven up into the mountains, why, they just turned tail and rode their horses into the Redfish River. I saw it myself. We were trailing the Portrens with our forces, still skirmishing with them. Most of their powerful magic users had fallen to us days before; they couldn’t do much more than hold their protective charms around them. We thought we could make them stop and surrender. We knew they’d come up against the river soon, and it was in spring flood from the snowmelt in the mountains. Must have been two hundred men mounted, their striped robes and kaffiyeh floating in the wind of their passage, riding guard around their women and children in their pony chariots. We thought they’d stop and surrender, I swear we did. But they just rode and drove straight into the river, and the river swept them away and that was the end of them. It wasn’t our doing. We would have given them quarter if they asked for it. But, no, they chose death and we couldn’t stop them. The men stood guard on the bank until every one of the women and children were swept away. Then they rode in after them. Wasn’t our fault. But many’s the trooper who hung up his spurs after that battle and lost all heart, not just for fighting but for the cavalla life. War was s’posed to be about glory and honour, not drowning babies.’
‘It must have been a hard thing to see,’ I ventured.
‘They chose it,’ Sergeant Duril replied. He leaned back on his bedroll and knocked the ash out of his pipe. ‘Some as rode alongside me saw it as watching death. A few of the lads near went mad. Not at the moment; at the time we just sat on our horses and watched them do it, not fully understanding that they were choosing death, that they knew they couldn’t make it to the other side. We kept thinking there was some trick to what they did, a hidden ford they knew of or some magic of their own that would save them. But there wasn’t. It was afterwards that it bothered some of my mates. They felt like we drove them to it. But I swear, it wasn’t so. I decided I was watching a free people make a choice, probably one that they’d talked about before they came to it. Would we have been more right to try and stop them, and insist they give up their roving ways? I’m not sure. I’m not sure at all about that.’
‘Only a plainsman can understand how a plainsman thinks,’ I said. I was quoting from my father.
Sergeant Duril was packing more tobacco into his pipe and at first he didn’t answer me. Then he said quietly, ‘Sometimes I think being a cavalryman turns you into a plainsman, somewhat. That maybe we were almost coming to understand them too well before the end. There’s a beauty and a freedom to riding over the flatlands, knowing that, in a pinch, you and your horse can find everything you need to get by on. Some folk say that they can’t understand why the plainspeople never settled down and used the land, never made their own towns and farms and tame places. But if you ask a plainsman, and I’ve asked more than a few, they all ask the same question in return. “Why? Why live out your life in one place, looking at the same horizon every morning, sleeping in the same spot every night? Why work to make the land give you food when it’s already out there, growing, and all you have to do is find it?” They think we’re crazy, with our gardens and orchards, our flocks and herds. They don’t understand us any more than we understand them.’ He belched loudly and said, ‘Excuse. Course, now there aren’t many plainspeople left to understand. They’ve settled in their own places, under the surrender terms. They got schools and little stores now, and rows of little houses. They’ll be just like us, in another generation or two.’
‘I’m sorry to have missed them,’ I said sincerely. ‘Once or twice, I’ve heard my father talk about what it was like to visit one of their camps, back in the days when he rode patrol and sometimes they came in close to the boundaries to trade. He said they were beautiful, lean and swift, horses and people alike. He spoke of how the plainspeople tribes would gather, sometimes, to compete in contests of horsemanship, with the daughters of the ruling lords as the prizes. He said it was how they formed their alliances … Do you really think those days are gone?’
He nodded slowly, smoke drifting from his parted lips. For a time, human silence held, but the prairie spoke between us, a whispering wild voice, full of soft wind and rustling brush and little creatures that moved only by night. I relaxed into the familiar sounds and felt them carrying me closer to sleep.
‘They’re gone,’ he confirmed sadly. ‘Gone not just for them, but gone for us old soldiers, too. Gone, never to come again. We began the change; we swept away what had been here for hundreds of years. And now … well, now I fear that we were just the ones at the front of the charge, so to speak. That we may go down with those we defeated, and be trampled under by those who come after us. Once the plainspeople are tamed, what use is an old soldier like me? Change, and more change …’ He fell silent and I cared not to add any words to his. His thoughts had put a chill in my night that had not been there before.
When the sergeant spoke again, he had moved the topic a little aside, as if he shifted to avoid old pain. ‘Sirlofty, he’s plains stock. We soon discovered that to fight mounted plainspeople we had to have horses the equal of theirs. Keslans are fine for fancy carriage teams, and no one can beat Shirs for pulling a plough. But the saddlehorses that you’ll find out west in the cities are creatures bred to carry a merchant about on his errands, creatures you could trust your dainty daughter to when she rides out with her fancy friends. That wasn’t what we needed for the conquest of the prairies. We needed tall and lean, with legs like steel, a horse that could handle uneven ground, a horse with the sense to look after itself. That’s what you’ve got in Sirlofty.’ He nodded at my tall mount drowsing in the shadows at the edge of the campfire’s circle. Almost reluctantly he added, ‘I don’t know how he’ll do as a mountain horse. I don’t know how well our cavalla will do fighting in the forest terrain, if it comes to that. Which I ’spect it shall.’
‘Do you think we’ll have war with the Specks, then?’
If it had been daylight and if we had been mounted and trotting as we spoke, I think he would have turned my question aside. I think he spoke as much to the night and the stars as he did to the wellborn son of his old commander. ‘I think we’re already at war there, from the little I’ve heard of it. We may not know it as war, but I think that’s what the Specks would call it.
‘And I wish I could prepare you for it better, but I can’t. You won’t be riding patrol across rolling prairie like your father and I did. You’ll be serving at the edge of the wild lands, at the foothills of the Barrier Mountains. It’s different there. Cliffs and ravines. Forest so thick that a cat couldn’t walk through it, yet the Specks melt in and out of it, like shadows. All I can teach you is the attitude you’ll need; I don’t know what sort of plants or animals you’ll encounter there, no, nor what type of warfare the Specks wage. But if you can bring yourself to dine on lizard legs and cactus flats here, then I think you’ll have the sand to make it there. I think you’ll make us proud. If circumstances demand that you make a meal of monkey stew, I expect you’ll tuck right into it and ride on as strong as before.’
Such praise from the shaggy old sergeant made me blush even in the darkness. I knew that if he said as much to me, he doubtless said more to my father. They had ridden and fought side by side, and I knew my father cherished the old soldier’s opinions, for he would not have lightly entrusted me to his care.
‘I thank you, Sergeant Duril, for what you’ve taught me. I promise, I’ll never shame you.’
‘I don’t need your promise, lad. I’ve your intention, which is good enough for me. I’ve taught you what I could. Just see you don’t forget it when your papa sends you off to that fancy cavalla school back west. You’ll be schooled alongside those lords’ sons who think that leading a charge is something you do after you’ve waxed your moustache and had your trousies pressed. Don’t let them pull you aside into their Fancy Dan ways. You grow up to be a real officer, like your papa. Remember. You can delegate authority—’
‘But not responsibility.’ I finished my father’s old saw for him, and then added, ‘I’ll try, Sergeant,’ I said humbly.
‘I know you will, sir. Look up there. Shooting star. God’s your witness.’
SEVEN (#ulink_b75c8702-5aa5-59c2-8784-1b8a922c2aa1)
Journey (#ulink_b75c8702-5aa5-59c2-8784-1b8a922c2aa1)
My father never had the good fortune to attend the King’s Cavalla Academy in Old Thares. In his youth, it did not exist. He had received a more generalized military education in the old Arms Institute and had expected to command artillery, defending our fortified seacoast towns from foreign ships. That was before Carson Helsey designed the Helsied Cannon for the Landsing Navy. In one shocking summer, this single change to the cannons on their ships reduced our fortifications to rubble while their ships remained safely out of range of our weapons. What exactly Helsey had done to the Landsing cannons to extend their range and accuracy was a military secret the Landsingers jealously guarded to this day. Their sudden and shocking advantage had ended our decades of war with the Landsingers. We had been soundly and humiliatingly defeated.
With the ceding of the coastal territories to Landsing, my father’s brief assignment as a cliff-top artilleryman ended, and he had been reassigned to the cavalla. Flung into the foreign environment, he had proved himself a true soldier son, for he learned what he must know by doing it, and ignored the disdain of some of his fellows that he had come to the cavalla but was not descended from the old knighthood. His first few years had been spent in the discouraging task of escorting refugee trains from our captured seaports into the resettlement areas along our borders with the plainsmen. The plainspeople had not welcomed the shantytowns that sprang up along their borders, but our people had to go somewhere. Skirmishes fought with mounted plains warriors formed my father’s first experience of fighting from a horse’s back. Despite the ‘hard-knocks’ nature of his cavalla education, he was a staunch supporter of the Academy. He always told me that he had no desire to see any young man learn by trial and error as he had done. He favoured a systematic approach to military education. Some said he was instrumental in the creation of the Academy. I know that on five separate occasions he was invited to travel there to speak to graduating young officers. Such an honour was a sign of the King’s and the Academy’s respect for my father.
Before the Academy was founded, our cavalla consisted of the remnants of Gernia’s old knighthood. During our long sea-war with Landsing, the cavalla had been seen as a decorative branch of our military, displaying the buffed and polished family armour and riding their plumed horses for ceremonial occasions, but doing little more. Footsoldiers manned the Long Wall that marked our land boundary with Landsing, and held it well. On the few occasions when we had attempted to invade Landsing by land, our heavy horses and armoured fighters were less than useless against the Landsing cavaliers with their fleet steeds and muskets. Even so, we had skirmished with the plainsmen for more than two years before the King’s advisors recognized that specialized training was required to create a cavalla that could deal with the plainspeople’s unconventional fighting style. Our heavily armoured horse could do little against warriors that flung magic at them, and then fled out of range of lance and sword. Our cavalla had to be forced to embrace the musketry and marksmanship that flouted the traditions of old knighthood. Only then did we begin to prevail against a foe that saw no shame in fleeing whenever the battle went against them.
I would be the first member of my family to be educated at the King’s Academy. I would be the first student to show our spond tree crest at the school. I knew there would be other first generation new nobility sons, but I was also aware there would also be cadets descended from the old knighthood. I must show well and never disgrace my father or the Burvelles of the West, my Uncle Sefert’s family. I was heart-thuddingly aware of this, for my entire family took care that I should not forget it. Uncle Sefert, my father’s heir brother, sent me a magnificent gift prior to my departure. It was a saddle, made especially to fit Sirlofty, with the new family crest embellished on the flaps. There were travelling panniers to go with it, such as any good cavalla horse might bear, likewise decorated. I had to copy over my note of thanks four times before my father was satisfied with both my courtesy and my penmanship. It was more than that the note would go to my father’s elder brother; it was that my father was now his peer, and I the equal of any noble’s soldier son, and so I must conduct myself and be seen by all, but most especially by the members of my own family.
In early summer, the fabric for my uniforms was ordered from Old Thares. The fat fold of cloth in the rich green of a cavalla cadet came wrapped in thick brown paper. In a separate packet were brass buttons in two sizes, embossed with the crossed sabres of a cavalla man. My mother and her women had always sewed all my clothing before then, as they did for the entire household. But for the task of creating my academy uniform, my father sent for a wizened little tailor. He came all the way from Old Thares, riding a sturdy dun horse and leading a mule laden with two great wooden chests. Inside them were the tools of his trade, shears and measuring tapes, pattern books and needles, and threads of every weight and colour imaginable. He stayed the summer with us, creating for me four sets of clothing, two uniforms of winter weight and two of summer, and of course my cavalla man’s cloak. He inspected the work of the local cobbler who made my boots and said they were passable but that I should have a ‘good’ pair made as soon as I could upon my arrival in Old Thares. My sword belt had been my father’s. New bridles were ordered for Sirlofty to match the new saddle. Even my small clothes and stockings were all new, and every bit of it was packed away in a heavy trunk that smelled of cedar.
If that were not enough newness, two evenings before my departure I was seated on a tall stool and my father himself sheared off every bit of my hair that could be removed with scissors, until only a fine bristly cap remained on my scalp. My entire head was now almost as bald as my scar. I looked into the mirror when he was finished and was shocked at the contrast between my sun-browned skin and the paleness that his scissors had exposed. The stubble of blond hair was almost invisible against my naked pink scalp, and my blue eyes suddenly looked as large as a fish’s to me. But my father seemed pleased. ‘You’ll do,’ he said gruffly. ‘No one will be able to say that we’ve sent a shaggy little prairie boy to learn a man’s trade.’
The next evening I donned my green cadet’s uniform for the first time since my fittings. I wore it to the farewell dinner gathering that my parents held for me.
I had not seen my mother turn out the house so thoroughly since the formal announcement of Rosse’s engagement to Cecile Poronte. When the manor house was built, shortly after my father’s elevation to lordship, my mother had argued passionately for a dining room and adjacent ballroom. We had all been small children, but she had spoken then of the necessity of her daughters being shown to advantage when they entertained other nobles in our home, and had fretted much that the dance floor must be of polished wood rather than the gleaming marble she had known in her girlhood home in Old Thares. The cost of bringing such stone up river from the distant quarries to our home was prohibitive. She had been flattered when she discovered that western visitors often exclaimed in amazement at the soft glow of the waxed wood, and proclaimed it a wonderful surface for slippered feet to tread. She was fond of recounting that when Lady Currens, her childhood friend, had returned to her grand home in Old Thares, she had insisted that her husband order the creation of just such a dance floor for her own home.
The guest list for my farewell gathering included the country gentry for miles around. The wealthy ranchers and herdsmen and their stout wives might have been disdained in Old Thares society, but my father said that here in the Wildlands it behooved a man to know who his allies and friends were, regardless of their social rank. Perhaps this sometimes distressed my mother; I know she wished her daughters to marry sons of nobility, new nobility if she could not find matches for them amongst the older families. And so she extended invitations to those of our own rank, despite the distance they must cross. Lord and Lady Remwar and their two sons travelled for a day and a half to accept my mother’s invitation, as did widowed Lord Keesing and his son. Privately, I thought my mother was taking this opportunity to see how these noble sons were turning out and to display them to my father as possible matches for Elisi and Yaril. I did not begrudge it to her, for the guest list also included Lord and Lady Grenalter and Carsina. As I thought of Carsina and looked into the mirror, I decided that my shorn head looked oddly small above my dashing cavalla cadet’s uniform. But there was nothing I could do to change it, and I could only hope that Carsina would remember me as she had last seen me and not find the change ridiculous or embarrassing
I had seen Carsina perhaps a dozen times since my father had told me that Lord Grenalter had agreed to our match. Theoretically, all of our meetings were carefully chaperoned. Carsina was my sister’s friend. It was natural that she would come to visit my sister, natural that sometimes the visit might last a week. Although our engagement had not been formally announced and would not be until I graduated from the Academy, she and I were both aware that we were now destined for each other. There were moments when our eyes met at the dinner table, and my heart would take a leap into my throat. During her visits, she and Yaril and Elisi would play their harps together in the music room, singing the romantic old ballads that the girls seemed to love the best. I knew they did it for their own pleasure, but as I passed the room and saw Carsina the warm wood frame of her harp leaning against the softness of her breast while her plump little hands floated gracefully from the strings at the end of each chord, her words seemed pitched to me as she sang of ‘my brave horseman, in his coat of green, who rides to serve his king and queen.’ Nor could I help but know, when I saw her walking in the garden or sewing in the women’s room with my sisters, that there was the girl who would some day be my wife. I tried not to let it show in my glance when our eyes met across the room. I tried not to hope that she had the same half-formed dreams of a home and children together.
That farewell evening, for the first time, I was allowed to escort Carsina into the dining room. Carsina and my sisters had been sequestered upstairs for the better part of the day, as servants hurried up and down the steps with seemingly endless armloads of freshly pressed linens and lace. When they descended the stairs just before dinner, the transformation was stunning. I scarcely recognized my sisters, let alone Carsina. Often I had heard my mother counsel my sisters that bright colours would suit their pale complexions and fair hair best, and so it was that Yaril wore a blue gown, with a neck ribbon of a darker blue, and Elisi chose a rich dark gold for her attire. But Carsina was dressed in a gown of some material that seemed to float about her, in a pale pink that reminded me of the interior of the conch shells in my father’s study. It was barely a shade darker than her skin. The rounding of her breasts was just visible through the frothy lace that edged the neckline of her dress, and made me catch my breath at my first sight of her. The girl promised to me was displayed as a woman before the eyes of every man in the room. It made me feel more protective of her than ever. Whenever I lifted my eyes during dinner, I saw her looking directly at me, and feeling rude to stare at her beauty, I looked aside. As we left the table, I heard her say something softly to Yaril, and their soft laughter made my cheeks burn. I turned aside from both of them, and was unusually grateful when the wife of retired Colonel Haddon greeted me and asked me a dozen questions about my anticipation of the Academy.
Later that evening, when we both moved through the interchange dances thought suitable for young unmarried folk, I tried to hold Carsina’s hand or touch her waist as courteously as I did that of any of the other girls in the dance. Yet I could not help thinking, as she came so briefly into my arms, that here was the girl who would share my life. I dared not look down at her, for she kept smiling up at me. The smell of the gardenias in her hair filled my lungs and her eyes sparkled more than the tiny diamond pins that ornamented her hair. Such a tightness came to my chest and a flush to my cheeks that I feared I might unman myself by fainting. I suspect that all who saw us together must have guessed that already the feelings I held for her were ones of pride and tenderness and protectiveness. When, our brief turn completed, I had to pass her on to another fellow, the girl I trod the next measure with undoubtedly found me a clumsy partner.
The gathering was in my honour, and I did my best to fulfil my every duty as a son of the household. I danced with the matrons who had known me since my baby days. I made conversation, and thanked them for their congratulations and good wishes. I had just fetched wine punch for Mrs Grazel, the wife of the stockman who owned a large acreage to the south of Widevale, when I observed both Yaril and Carsina slip out through the fluttering curtains and into the lantern-lit garden beyond them. The evening was warm and we were all flushed with dancing. Suddenly it seemed to me as if a brief stroll through the garden away from the music and chatter of guests might be a welcome rest from the party. As soon as I graciously could, I excused myself from Mrs Grazel’s conversation about the blood-purifying benefits of adding parsley to her young sons’ meals and made my way out onto the terrace that overlooked the gardens.
Lanterns with tinted glass had been spaced along the walks. The last flowers of summer were still in bloom and the evening milder than this time of year usually offered. I saw my brother Rosse seated with his fiancée on a bench in the living arbour of a weeping willow. He was within his rights to steal this time alone with her for their engagement had been announced months ago. I expected to come home from the Academy in the spring to witness their marriage. Roger Holdthrow was strolling the paths by himself. I suspected he was looking for Sara Mallor. The announcement of their engagement had not been made, but as their families possessed neighbouring estates, it had been expected since their childhood that they would be paired.
I saw Yaril and Carsina seated on a bench near the pond. They were fanning themselves and talking softly. I longed to approach them, but could not summon the courage until I saw Kase Remwar emerge from the shadows. He bowed gracefully to both of them, and I heard him bid them good evening. My sister sat up very straight and returned him some pleasantry that made him laugh out loud. Carsina joined in their laughter. It was not completely correct for Remwar to be alone with the two young women, and taking a rightful interest in my sister’s welfare, I ventured down the steps to join them.
Remwar greeted me jovially and offered me good wishes for my journey on the morrow and for my studies at the Academy. He was a first son of his family and the heir to his father’s title, so I thought it a bit condescending when he said that he wished he were free to go off, as I was, and have great adventures in the wide world rather than have to stay at home and assume the burdens of his rank.
‘The good god places us as he wishes us to be,’ I told him. ‘I would not wish my brother’s inheritance, or my younger brother’s priesthood. I believe I will be what was destined for me.’
‘Oh, the birth order destiny is fixed, of course. But why cannot a man be more than one thing? Think on it. Your own father has been soldier, and now he is lord. Why cannot an heir be also a poet, or a musician? Soldier-sons of nobles keep journals and sketchbooks, do they not? So, are you not also a writer and a naturalist as well as a soldier?’
His words opened a window in my future, one that I had never even considered. I had always wanted to know more about rocks and minerals, yet I had always regarded that as an unworthy thought sent by the great distracter. Could a man be both, without offence to the good god? I pushed the thought away, already knowing the true answer in my heart. ‘I am a soldier,’ I said aloud. ‘I only observe and write what is needed to aid the soldiers who may come after me. I do not hunger for the destinies the good god has granted to my brothers.’
I think Remwar heard my disapproval of his attitude, for he started to frown and began to say, ‘I only meant—’ when Yaril suddenly interrupted him.
‘Angel’s breath!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve lost an earring! One of the new lapis ones that Papa gave me especially for this evening. Oh, what will he think of me, to be so careless with his gift. I must go look for it!’
‘I’ll help you,’ Remwar immediately offered. ‘Where might it have fallen?’
‘Probably along the walk to the greenhouse,’ Carsina offered. ‘Remember, you stepped from the path and your hair tangled for a moment against the climbing rose on the trellis there. I suspect that is when you lost it.’
Yaril smiled at her gratefully. ‘I’m sure you are right. We’ll look for it there.’
‘I’ll come with you.’ I volunteered, giving Remwar a measuring glance.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Yaril rebuked me. ‘Carsina came out here to rest a moment from the dancing. She doesn’t want to go down to the hot houses again, and we certainly can’t leave her sitting here alone. Besides, with your great feet, you’d probably tread my earring into the sod before you saw it. Two of us are plenty to go looking for one little earring. Wait here. We won’t be long.’
She had risen as she spoke. I knew I should not let her go off down the shadowy path with Remwar unchaperoned, but Carsina gently patted the bench beside her, suggesting I sit there, and I could scarcely leave her sitting in the garden alone. ‘Don’t be long,’ I cautioned Yaril.
‘I shan’t be. The earring will either be there or it won’t,’ she replied. Remwar dared to offer her his arm, but she shook her head in a pretty rebuke, and led him off into the dimness. I looked after them. After a moment, Carsina asked quietly, ‘Don’t you wish to sit down? I would think your feet would be tired after all that dancing. I know mine are.’ She pushed her dainty little foot out from the hem of her dress, as if to show me how weary it was, and then exclaimed, ‘Oh, my slipper’s come unfastened. I shall have to go inside and fix it, for if I stoop here, I’ll surely muddy the hem of my gown.’
‘Allow me,’ I asked her breathlessly. I went down on one knee fearlessly, for the weather had been dry and the paving stones of the garden path were always kept well swept.
‘Oh, but you should not,’ she exclaimed as I took up the silk laces of her slipper. ‘You’ll soil the knee of your fine new uniform. And you look so brave in it.’
‘A little dust on my knee will not mar it,’ I said. She had said I looked brave. ‘I’ve been tying my sister’s slippers since she was a tiny thing. Her knots always come undone. There. How is that? Too tight? Too loose?’
She leaned down to inspect my work. Her neck was graceful and pale as a swan’s and a waft of her gardenias enveloped me again. She turned her gaze to mine and our faces were inches apart. ‘It’s perfect,’ she said softly.
I could not move or speak. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She leaned forward and her lips barely brushed my cheek, a kiss as chaste as a sister’s that still caused my heart to hammer in my ears. Then she leaned back suddenly, lifting her fingertips to her lips in surprise. ‘Oh! Whiskers!’
I lifted a hand to my cheek in horror. ‘I did shave!’ I exclaimed, and she laughed, a sound that reminded me of skylarks soaring into a morning sky.
‘Of course! I did not mean your face was rough. Only that there is a trace of them, still. You are so fair, that I did not think you would be shaving yet.’
‘I’ve been shaving for almost a year now,’ I said, and suddenly it was easy to talk to her. I rose, brushing at my knee and sat down on the bench beside her.
She smiled at me and asked, ‘Will you grow a moustache at the Academy? I’ve heard that many cadets do.’
I ran my hand ruefully over my nearly bald head. ‘Not in my first year. It isn’t allowed. Perhaps when I’m in my third year.’
‘I think you should,’ she said quietly, and I suddenly resolved that I would.
A little silence fell as she looked out over the night garden. ‘I dread your leaving tomorrow. I suppose I won’t see you for a long time,’ she said sadly.
‘I’ll be home for Rosse’s wedding in late spring. Surely you and your family will be there.’
‘Of course. But that is months and months away.’
‘It won’t be so long,’ I assured her, but suddenly it seemed like a very long time to me, also.
She looked aside from me. ‘I’ve heard that the girls of Old Thares are very beautiful, and dress in all the latest fashions from the coast. My mother says that they wear musk and paint their eyelids and that their riding skirts are almost trousers, for they don’t care at all that men may see their legs.’ Worriedly she added, ‘I’ve heard they are very forward, too.’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Such things may be true. But I’ll be at the Academy. I doubt I’ll catch so much as a glimpse of a woman there.’
‘Oh, I’m glad!’ she exclaimed, and then looked aside from me. I had to smile as her tiny flame of jealousy warmed me.
I glanced at the dim path that led toward the greenhouses. I could not see my sister. I did not want to leave, but I knew my responsibility. ‘I’d best go look for Yaril. Finding an earring should not take her this long.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Carsina offered. As she stood, she took my arm, her hand light as a little bird perched there.
‘You should go back inside while I find Yaril,’ I said dutifully.
‘Should I?’ she asked me, looking up at me with wide blue eyes.
I could not bring myself to answer that, and so we ventured down the path together. It was narrow and so she had to walk close to me. I went slowly, for fear she would stumble in the dark. Then we came to the turn in the path, and as I feared, I saw Yaril standing very close to Remwar and looking up at him. As I watched, he stooped and kissed her.
I froze in horror. ‘He has no right!’ I gasped in disbelief.
Carsina’s grip on my arm had tightened. ‘No right at all!’ she whispered in shocked agreement. ‘Unlike us, there is no understanding between the families. They have not been promised to one another, as we have.’
I looked down at her. Her eyes were very big, her breathing rapid through her slightly parted lips.
And then, without quite knowing how, I had taken her in my arms. The top of her brow came just to my nose, so that I had to stoop and turn my head to kiss her mouth. Her little hands gripped the front of my new uniform coat, and when she broke the kiss, she hid her face against my shirtfront as if overcome by what we had done. ‘It’s all right,’ I whispered into the curls and pins of her soft hair. ‘We are promised to one another. We’ve done nothing shameful, save steal a taste of what our lives will bring.’
She lifted her face from my shirt and leaned back from me. Her eyes were shining and I could not resist her. I kissed her again.
‘Carsina!’ A voice hissed in rebuke. We sprang apart guiltily. Yaril seized her friend by the elbow and looked at me in sisterly rebuke. ‘Oh, Nevare, I never would have thought it of you! Carsina, come with me!’ Then, like petals blown on a sudden wind, the two girls swept away from us. At the turn in the path, one of them laughed suddenly, the other joined in and then they were lost to my sight. I stared after them for a moment, and then turned to confront Remwar. My eyes narrowed and I took breath to speak, but he laughed lightly and punched me in the shoulder.
‘Relax, old man. My father is speaking to yours tonight.’ Then he met my gaze as an honest fellow should and said, ‘I’ve loved her for two years. I think our mothers both know. I promise you, Nevare, I’ll never let harm come to her.’
I could think of no reply to that, and he suddenly said, ‘I hear the music starting again. To the chase, lads!’ And he set off down the path in a long-legged stride in pursuit of the girls. I was left shaking my head, dizzied by the kiss and the perfume that Carsina had left clinging to me. I tugged my coat straight and brushed a bit of her powder from the front of it. Only then did I discover that she had tucked her tiny handkerchief into the front of my coat. It was all lace, delicate as a snowflake and scented with gardenia. I folded it carefully into my pocket and hastened back toward the lights and music. Suddenly, the thought of departing on the morrow was nearly unbearable. I would not waste a single moment of the time left to me.
