Love And War (38 page)

In Hospital, Palanthas April, 353 Athelard to his brother Bayard, greetings I hear in a letter from our mother that you, too, have chosen the path of a father you do
not remember, of the older brother who sends you this. That you have chosen, if indeed it
was ever a choice, to take up the calling, to enter, as Mother has written, THE ANCIENT
AND HOLY SOLAMNIC ORDERS, NOW THAT THE SIEGE HAS BEEN LIFTED, THE ARMIES OF THE ENEMY
DRIVEN BACK ONCE AGAIN FROM OUR LAND AND FROM THOSE THINGS WE ARE HONOR BOUND TO DEFEND BY
THE MEASURE AND THE CODE.

As always, Mother's words are graceful, high-sounding. I hear them as I sit by a window
that must face west, for I can feel the warmth on my face most deeply when the loudest
bird song is passing, when the first crickets of what must be early spring begin that
scrape and rattle that brings night to the ear. And since the handwriting in my letter no
doubt will surprise you, I must tell you one thing more, that in this room sits a nurse,
attentive and kind, who writes down the long words, the longer thoughts from brother to
brother. Her voice is soft, muffled. Harder to hear than the sound of the birds or the crickets. I can
only imagine she has turned away from me as she writes down what I have to say to you.

She asks me to continue, her voice louder now. As I have said, she is kind. She is
attentive.

I wish that when I was younger I had paid more attention to bird song. My nurse has told
me that the birds in the evening sing the names of those who will die in the night. I have
no itch for prophecy, but I suppose that the song is subtle, that perhaps different birds
sing at different times of the day, or that perhaps there is even a language among them -
a sort of call and response, some quarrels I might understand had I listened earlier and
more intently. It would be good to eavesdrop - something to pass the time in what the
surgeons insist on calling THIS HOUSE OF PEACE AND HEALING. But it is the land now that is
peaceful and healed, the hospital haunted with battle and pain and uneven memory.

Because that story you have heard about the blind is only true in part, that when sight
goes, the other senses ... sharpen? Intensify? Bayard, if this world were all poetry and
justice and balance, and beauty no accident - if things took place because they were more
beautiful or poetic or just - then the myths regarding the blind would be physical law:
what war hath taken away, nature restoreth, or a similar poetry. But it is not like that.
What you do in the blackness is pay more attention, and if cardinals and finches and larks
all sound the same to you, it reminds you only that long ago there were some things you
neglected.

But you cannot blame yourself for the oversights of childhood and of study, because any
tale that is entirely and unarguably true, whether of blindness or of birds or of battle,
or of something purely noble in any of these things, is the wildest tale of all, for none
of these are purely understood until we sink into darkness, until we rise on thin and
delicate wings, or until we carry a lance while the fire descends.

Our mother says you are “eager” for news of the siege, for accounts of heroism and high
adventure, that you practice your swordplay in the parlor, much to her ill ease and at the
mortal peril of her heirloom vases and silver. That you sing of “returning souls to Huma's
breast” as your sword dances carelessly near cabinet or candle.

The words of the chant are “Return THIS soul to Huma's breast,” Bayard. To be spoken over
the fallen body of a comrade, not over the phantom draconians you fight amidst Mother's porcelain. The
chant is more individual, more personal than you have imagined. But you were not there at
the siege.

Do you know that sometimes the darkness seems more penetrable? That it shifts from a
uniform blackness to a muddy or even rust-colored brown? Or it seems to shift to those
colors I believe I still remember. Then, perhaps, it is only from the monotony of dark
that I imagine the colors arising. Perhaps even dead eyes play tricks, as the living eye
plays over the white on white of a blizzard and begins out of boredom or dazzlement to see
impossible reds and greens in a snowfall.

For the snow, pure white on white and over white, began to fall as we were on the road to
the tower, as we heard the footmen grumble about Now SNOW ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE, Sir
Heros grumbling back to me, NOW GRUMBLING ON TOP OF SNOW, as I set his helmet and sword in
front of me on the saddle so that the blanket I had wrapped about my shoulders would cover
them, too, would keep them spotless and dry for the battle we knew was coming, inevitable
as weather.

It was a mist at first, undecided between snow or rain, though you could guess it would
decide as soon as the temperature dropped, the steam rising like mist from the horses,
from the breath of the soldiers, until we rode through a fog and I could see no farther
than Sir Heros in front of me. I followed his horse and assumed he followed the man in
front of him, and he the man in front of him, and somehow I reasoned that whoever led our
column had ridden out of the mist by now or at least had the wisdom to know where he was
going. And the ground turned to mud beneath us - not that you could see it, but you could
hear the hooves of the horses suck and spatter within it. Had I foresight I would have
seen this as training for blindness. But foresight in this country was as dim as the
horseman ahead of you.

And the footmen sang no songs about Huma's breast, about the kingfisher, crown, sword or
rose, or about the high honor of battle, but a new drinking song picked up on the march -
a song the knights had hushed before because it was an embarrassment to ladies, a song I
suppose they figured was no longer embarrassing because there were no ladies among us.
Perhaps you have heard it, the real song of the army:

YOUR ONE TRUE LOVE'S A SAILING SHIP THAT ANCHORS AT OUR PIER. WE LIFT HER SAILS, WE MAN
HER DECKS, WE SCRUB THE PORTHOLES CLEAR AND YES, OUR LIGHTHOUSE SHINES FOR HER, AND YES, OUR SHORES ARE WARM; WE STEER HER INTO
HARBOR - ANY PORT IN A STORM.

THE SAILORS STAND UPON THE DOCKS, THE SAILORS STAND IN LINE, AS THIRSTY AS A DWARF FOR
GOLD OR CENTAURS FOR CHEAP WINE.

FOR ALL THE SAILORS LOVE HER, AND FLOCK TO WHERE SHE'S MOORED, EACH MAN HOPING THAT HE
MIGHT GO DOWN, ALL HANDS ON BOARD.

I trust you will not show this song to Mother, for I could almost hear the nurse blush as
I sang it, she who has bathed me and dressed my wounds over many weeks. As I think
further, perhaps it would be best to show none of this to Mother. The story becomes no
more pleasant.

We were speaking of snow and the trip to the tower and the indecent singing of footmen.
One of the knights - it might even have been Sturm Brightblade, whose name you have no
doubt heard in the histories and will hear again and again in this story - took exception
to the song, and raised his voice in the Huma chant of which you are, dear Bayard, so
fond. It faded into the fog behind us, for few knights took it up, weighted down as they
were by the drizzling cold, and the footmen were not about to join in, the only version of
that chant I had heard pass their lips an immodest parody in which the breast is no longer
Huma's, is a different and softer reward entirely for the warrior.

I keep forgetting that the nurse is here. The Measure is still new to me. And I forget
where . . .

THE SNOW, she says.

The snow. It was misery on horseback. I trust it was more miserable on foot, for boots
were scarce, and most of the men had wrapped their feet in rags against frostbite and the
sharp edges of ice. Breca, an old veteran among the foot soldiers, had bargained, begged, and finally threatened my boots from me on the road to
the tower. And though I was angry at first, when I saw the boy to whom he gave the boots,
saw the blisters and blackness about his ankles, the blood through the rags bright on the
merciless road, the threats were unnecessary.

We passed the first night of the blizzard in marching. Breca returned the boots the next
morning. Averted his eyes, said that the boy had no further need, that he rested with Huma
now. Breca rejoined his column, and Sir Heros, uncomfortable but safe at least upon
horseback, told me I had SEEN THE DARK SIDE OF WAR, THAT MEN DIE, BOYS DIE, LAYING DOWN
THEIR LIVES FOR JUSTICE AND FOR A HIGHER CAUSE. It was almost inscribed, surely a speech
he must have prepared for this moment as a promise to our father, something that smacked
of the SONG OF HUMA to reassure and hearten his squire, the son of his fallen comrade. As
if I had no idea that men die, boys die, from the ambushes that had followed us for a
week. Breca, among others, began to claim that we guided our march by ambush - that when
we were waylaid, again the knights were assured that we headed in the right direction. For draconians, Bayard, do not fight
in the lists. The Dragon Highlords may show elegance, breeding, but the war has nothing to do with the
Measure, with a stately dance of challenge and courtesy. Often a footman would drop at the
rear of the column, a barbed black arrow sprouting in his back, a chorus of catcalls and
sometimes hisses from the woods nearby. Indeed they have no love of the cold; their blood
thickens and their movements slow. But there are humans among them, and even the
draconians can survive such weather, wrapped in furs they do not bother to cure or tan,
and they know we have no love of the cold either.

Two days from the tower they struck a final ambush, a flurry of arrows from a stand of
vallen-woods, falling harmlessly short. We could see them through the mist and the snow
and the bare branches, some recognizably human, all moving like spectres or shadows. A few
of our archers returned fire, their arrows falling short, too, which was what the
dragon-armies wanted, their own supplies virtually endless.

One of them called out, FOOTMEN! LISTEN TO THE VOICE OF THE DRAGONARMIES! Melodramatic,
yes, but effective across the mist and the dead land. Our bowmen ceased fire, glancing at
one another nervously.

FOOTMEN! the man shouted again. HOW DO YOU LIKE BEING FODDER FOR THE KNIGHTS? An old
trick, spreading dissension in the ranks, and indeed some of the knights - Lord Derek,
Lord Alfred, our own Sir Heros - were outraged, Heros reaching back to me for his sword,
Derek preparing to charge the stand of trees, alone if necessary, Sturm and his strange
companions bristling in their wet saddles, until the loud voice of Breca stilled the
bravery and muttering in the column.

I EXPECT I COULD EXPLAIN IT BETTER OVER HERE.

PERHAPS YOU COULD, the dragonsoldier shouted back. BUT ANSWER ME THIS: HAVE YOU EVER SEEN
A DEAD SOLAMNIC KNIGHT?

It was as though the eyes of the world had refocused. We knew it was a lie, A BASE IGNOBLE
CHARGE, as Heros would have said, and I thought of our father returned on his shield. I
thought of the centuries since the Cataclysm, of the Code, the Kingfisher, the Crown the
Sword and the Rose, of the sacrifices. But all of that meant nothing after such a
question, do you understand? For it was Breca's answer, not Sturm's or Hero's or Derek's,
we awaited, had to await.

The smell of oil in the room. My nurse has lit a lamp so she may continue to write. Bad
for the eyes, my dear. They play tricks enough as it is. We shall continue this in the
morning.

It was Breca's answer we awaited, there on the road to the tower, the landscape white on
white and blending into a faraway whiteness, only the thin dark lines of the trees and the
shapes among them giving us any idea of distance, of measure. And the answer, though it
lay nowhere within the rules set down by chivalry, not a THEE or a THOU or an elegant
challenge, could not draw complaint from even the most strict of the knights - after all,
he was not one of them, and after all, the footmen listened and applauded, their backs to
the rising wind.

EVERY DEAD SOLAMNIC KNIGHT I'VE SEEN, Breca shouted, HAD ABOUT A DOZEN OF YOUR LIZARD BOYS
ON HIS DANCE CARD. WE FIND THEM AROUND THE BODIES, ALL STATUED AND PRETTY LIKE A DAMN ROCK
GARDEN.

The footmen laughed, but most of the knights sat uneasily atop their uneasy horses, who pawed and snorted as though they had crossed into a country
of leopards. Sturm and Lord Alfred smiled. But Sturm had traveled with outlandish folk -
he had, after all, served with dwarves.

But what even Sturm and Lord Alfred knew, what most of them knew, and Breca especially,
was that the dragonsoldier was not finished with Breca, that this attack was as fierce and
as lethal as any with a bow or with those terrible curved swords I still see in sleep
until the welcome darkness of morning comes again. For the heart of the battle was at
stake before the arrows flew, before the swords clashed, at least in the eyes of the
knights, who thought in terms of spirit and morale, of a high game which begins not when
the first piece is taken nor even the first pawn moved, but when the players sit before
the chessboard.

Breca, on the other hand, was past strategy and morale, safe for now in another world I
came to witness in the weeks that followed, in the tower and in the waiting. He was a
swordsman, any thrust the same as any other, to be deflected or parried if he were still
to call himself a swordsman. The snow settled on his helmet until I feared that soon it
would cover him, cover him entirely in the face of his enemies, and then cover all of us -
on foot, on horseback, on mule-back - until what remained was a pitiful series of drifts
in the country of the enemy.

And the dragonsoldier called once more out of the vallenwoods. YOU AREN'T DRESSED WELL FOR
SUCH BRAVERY, FOOTMAN. EVEN FROM HERE I CAN SEE THE DENTS IN THE ARMOR. I CAN TELL WHERE
YOUR BREASTPLATE IS CRUMPLED AND USELESS, WHERE MY SWORD WOULD DO THE MOST DAMAGE. YOUR
FEET ARE PROBABLY WRAPPED IN RAGS. THOUGH THE SNOW IS TOO HEAVY TO TELL FOR CERTAIN. YET I
SUPPOSE THAT SUCH IS THE FINERY THAT KNIGHTS ISSUE THEIR FOOTMEN.

And they retreated into the thick boles and branches of the woods, so that they probably
did not hear Breca's retort, which we heard nonetheless, which the footmen heard, which
rode in my ears with its flat and furious blessing as we approached the gates of the tower:

YOU THINK WE DRESS UP TO KILL HOGS?

Inside the tower gates, dismounting, the breathing and steam from the horses misting the
air, but not as densely as the snow had misted the air outside, I remember most of all my
sense of relief. Of course we were to learn of the frailties later, that in its endurance without change and restoration the tower had become
indefensible, but at the time the walls seemed tall and strong, the fortress unbreachable.
I would imagine, Bayard, that you have heard the stories, and that in the hearing you have
imagined walls of your own, more vividly than the ones I could describe, down to the stone
upon stone, to the mortar and to the tightly arranged masonry that permits no mortar, and
perhaps your walls are as accurate, as real as the ones I saw, because I knew no more of
fortresses and their construction than I did the songs of birds.

Now we fight from defense, I thought. Now we fight at advantage. But more than that, we
fight from warmth, on the leeward side of the walls. That warmth, that comfort, was most
important then, and the chambers to which Heros and I were escorted, as damp and drafty as
an old attic, were a palace, were more than enough. I am spoiled now in the hospital, for
there is a fire here and curtains, curtains that for all I can tell may be sackcloth, a
plain burlap, but nonetheless do what curtains were intended to do in that time before we
saw fit to embroider and adorn them.

If Heros had known what I was thinking, he would have said I thought like a footman. He
would have been right, for they were talking when I went to tend to the horses, most of
them wrapped in blankets and standing, sitting, lying around the banked fires that
spangled the dark inner courtyards, a few others, the older veterans, crouched and circled
around Breca, who sat upon his helmet, cupping his enormous red hands as he lit his pipe,
the glow arising from the bowl spreading over his face in a light both saintly and violent.

I nodded to Breca, receiving a nod in return as he singled me out from the darkness. He
had what Heros called THE INGRAINED POLITENESS TO HIS BETTERS, not as common as you might
imagine among footmen, but a quality all were urged to adopt and cultivate. Still, I liked
to think - and DO think - this initial politeness to me was something more, stood for
something. After all, he remembered the boots on the trail to the tower, and perhaps in
that soldier's mind used to self-preservation and necessity, small gestures of decency
counted for more than the horse and elaborate armor. Then again, he may have thought only
that I was foolish, or felt sorry for me because of my youth, or he may have thought all
of these things and not have been wrong in the thinking.

His face glowed above the pipe like a signal fire, or it could have been from the reflected light of his audience. For there were twenty or thirty
men around him, some of them Lord Alfred's age, several nearly as young as I, but most in
between - as I have said, the veterans. All of them were like children in the presence of
a storyteller, but instead of awaiting the tales of high deeds and magic we heard and you
still hear in the spacious courts of Solamnia, they were questioning, all questions
amounting to one: WHAT CHANCE DO WE HAVE TO HOLD THIS FORT?

Nor did he coddle them, assure them, as the storytellers do at Mother's - so IT IS ELVES
YOU WANT, YOUNG MASTER? THEN YOU SHALL HEAR OF ELVES. None of that for footmen. Breca was
honest, or pretended honesty in a way that came closer to the truth than simple honesty, which sometimes allows for
dishonest imaginings.

I EXPECT, he said, THAT A CENTAUR DESIGNED THIS TOWER. I EXPECT HE DONE SO AFTER A
CELEBRATION OF VICTORY, ON ACCOUNT OF THE BUILDING SPEAKS MORE OF WINE THAN OF TACTICS. I
COUNT FOUR GATES IN THE FORTRESS, WHICH IS THREE MORE THAN YOU NEED, FOUR MORE THAN I'D
FANCY NOW THAT WE'VE GOT INSIDE.

AND WHAT IS WORSE THAN FOUR GATES I WILL TELL YOU IS FOUR WIDE GATES, GATES WHERE A HALF A
DOZEN CENTAURS MIGHT GALLOP IN ABREAST. THE DRAGONARMIES DON'T MIND SPENDING MEN, AND EVEN
SEEM TO FAVOR SPENDING DRACONIANS, SEEING AS THEY HAVE SO MANY OF THEM. WHAT IS MORE,
THEY'RE LIABLE TO SEND DRAGONS OR SOME TERRIBLE MACHINERY RIGHT THROUGH OUR DOORS. And he
sat back, the smoke curling like snow or a morning fog, like the mist from the horses, around his enormous, ragged head. The footmen waited, not for the quick
and easy answer, the inspiring speech that would tell them that despite all these things,
we would win by tactics and by bravery, that one man in the service of Solamnia could
defeat a dozen draconians. They awaited his judgment on the walls.

WHICH ARE NOT OF YOUR BEST MATERIAL OR DESIGN. I AM NOT A STONE MASON, NOR AM I A BETTING
MAN - this last drawing laughter from some of the older soldiers - BUT IF I WAS, I WOULD
WAGER THAT A FAT MAN AT A HEALTHY TROT COULD CAUSE STRUCTURAL DAMAGE TO THIS MIGHTY
FORTRESS.

More laughter followed, and I drew nearer the group, curry-comb in hand, the horses
forgotten. If what he was saying were indeed true - and I had no cause to doubt him - we
were cornered, backed into a shoddy and vulnerable place where the walls stood not between
us and the dragonarmies, but between us and our own escape. And the footmen sat here
joking and spinning stories.

LOOK AROUND YOU, Breca muttered as the laughter died again, as some of the men looked up
uneasily, skeptically, looking into the rose embroidered on my doublet as if it were an
orb of prophecy, looking at me as though I were a messenger from another planet.

LOOK AROUND YOU. SOON ENOUGH YOU'LL SEE THE BIRDS NO LONGER LIGHT HERE. THE NEWS HAS A WAY
OF SPREADING AMONGST THE ANIMALS, AND NOT JUST FROM KIND TO KIND. SOON ENOUGH YOU'LL SEE
THE RATS LEAVING. THE HORSES HAVE THE SAME INSTINCTS, BUT THEY'RE TETHERED AND STABLED AND
- he glanced at me, smiled briefly, and stared at his pipe - AND CURRIED. ALL THAT KEEPS
ANY OF US HERE IS THE KNIGHTS, WHO THINK THEY CAN HOLD THIS PLACE WITH HONOR ALONE. HONOR
IS WELL AND GOOD, BUT IT DON'T STOP A SPEAR, BOYS. BEST IT CAN DO IS LEAVE A CLEANER WOUND.

BUT DON'T FRET, BOYS, he concluded, looking directly at me with those huge gray eyes that
the folk tales say are the sign of marksmen or madmen, I forget which. DON'T FRET, FOR AT
LEAST YOU'VE FOUND YOURSELF A WARM PLACE TO DIE.

Not a comforting philosophy to take with you back into the upper chambers, where there
were swords and armor to be polished, and wine and a warmer hearth, and where the truth
muttered below you, scarcely heard for the crackling of the fire, like a ghost in the
stables or the barracks.

MARKSMEN, she tells me. GRAY EYES FOR THE MARKSMAN. Then was it green for the lunatic or
for the poet?

Instead of the legends of eyes let me talk of monotony, of the boredom in waiting for
battle. It is no quick thing, no gap between lightning and thunder, but a long waiting in
which breastplate and sword shimmer uselessly, in which you worry the horses into a sleek
and healthy gloss, in which you watch the sky and speculate on wonders. No time to be
slow-witted, this waiting for battle, but a time to attend to tasks, to trivial duties, until the duties become reflex and you return to your
thoughts alone.

But even among the thoughtful and the imaginative, there were great dangers. After all,
dear brother, there was an enemy approaching, an enemy magnified by his absence. The
dragonarmies grew larger, their atrocities greater, as we waited and imagined. A story
passed through the ranks that the slaughter of Plainsmen had been even more horrible than
first reported, that the draconians had found a way, in the dark recesses of lore and
intricate magic, to breed more of their kind upon the Plainswomen - a hardier strain,
maturing quickly and able to withstand extremes of climate - and that on the plains these
children grew, feeding first upon what little provision the country offered, then turning
upon themselves in a frenzy like sharks, until only the largest and most hardy of the
brood survived. Survived to be armed with the black bow and the terrible curved knife,
which they would carry over the miles and the snow to the Tower of the High Clerist.

And in addition to the rumors of war, a nightmare closer to home, for the second night in
the tower the wine ceased to flow in the quarters of the knights, and we turned to water
and to mare's milk, knowing that those, too, would dry in the long weeks of waiting. We
were fortunate, then, that it was cold, for the food did not spoil as readily, but even
the youngest eye could pass over the stores in the larders and see there was less today,
would be less tomorrow. Soon it would be biscuit, parched corn. Then horses, and some of
the older footmen talked ironically of rats, providing they are stupid enough to still be
here when the time comes down to them.

So you occupied your time upon other thoughts, in other pursuits. The footmen wagered,
exchanging coins over the strange, many-sided dice from the east. None wagered against
Sturm's friend the kender, who eagerly sought to join each game, standing on tiptoe to
peer over the shoulders of the crouching footmen, once climbing the back of a rather tall
archer for a closer look at the proceedings, only to be shaken off like a dog shakes off
water. On that occasion I asked Breca if it would hurt to let the little fellow play, and
he told me that I had yet to learn the difference between disdain and respect. Told me
that compassion toward a kender was the ruin of fortunes, or some such rural proverb I
scorned until later that night, when I had lost a substantial amount of money to the
little creature, trying to guess under which of three walnut shells he had placed a piece of dried corn. Indeed, I was no gambler, but I was drawn by the kender, by the sense of childhood and of play, by the sense that he felt distracted from
his true business by the preparations for siege. It reminded me of how things stood with
me ten years ago, when I was six and put away childish things in the service of Solamnia,
and perhaps those memories lost me even more money at dice, for I challenged the kender at
gaming often, trying to decide whether I pitied him or envied him.

The other outlandish folk were more distant, in keeping with the customs of their people.
The dwarf was impatient for battle, at the ramparts often, wrapped in metal and furs and a
sullen quiet, brandishing his wicked-looking axe and staring out over the expanse of snow
for dragons, armies, movement. I had little to say to him, and suspected he preferred it
that way.

Nor had I much to say to the elf maiden, exotic, distant, and a little frightening in her
shining and most unfeminine armor. Golden hair, green eyes - the legend that their women
are more beautiful than ours cannot be proved true or false by one example, one woman, but
if it could, no doubt the elves would have sent this one for comparison.

Yet unlike many of the girls of our country, posing, giggling, bearing garlands and gloves
for the knight of their fancy, for any boy at the borders of knighthood, this one, this
Laurana, was not caught up in her own beauty. Indeed, she seemed to have forgotten or be
forgetting such things, rapt in a story of lances and of high battle, the like of which I
could not know, with all my imagining, with all my waiting. And forgive me, kind lady who
copies my words to an absent brother, but now it seems that flowers and scarves, the
tedious attention to hair, to the slope of a dress on the shoulders - it seems that such
things are distant now, the meaningless steps to a dance I have left early, no longer able
to see my partner. More important now is the memory of the elf maiden, kneeling and
glittering perhaps less brightly than I remember but as brightly as I saw her at the time,
above the lances she had brought for the defense of the tower, offering to instruct us in
their use, had we not been so rigid and scornful and dazzled as to refuse her teaching.