Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy) (30 page)

It had frustrated him so much at the time, but somehow sharing his frustration with Tebin eased it. “Can’t really blame them, I suppose.”

“I can’t say for certain,” said Tebin slowly. “But there’s only one way I can think of to do this. They’re folding it.”

“What?”

“They’re folding the metal. You start with two or three bars—three, say, since the pale layers look bigger. Light, dark, light. Like a sandwich. Heat them till they’re pliable and beat them together. I’m not sure if they’re going wider or longer, but I’d go longer. Beat your bar out till it’s twice a sword’s length, and fold it over on top of itself—now you’ve got six layers.”

Kavi shook his head. “I see what you’re saying, but you’d have to work forever—there are hundreds of layers in this blade, maybe thousands.”

Tebin laughed. “And you a peddler! Do the math, lad. One fold gets you six, two, twelve . . .”

Kavi counted folds on his fingers as he added them up, eyes beginning to widen at the fifth fold. “By the Tree! Just eight folds gets you seven hundred and sixty-eight layers. And nine gets you . . . a thousand five hundred and thirty-six.”

“Exactly,” said Tebin. “Looking at this, I think they’re stopping at eight. Eight’s work enough! But if it got you watersteel . . . You say you talked to the miners. Could you bring in some bars of dark steel? I’ve got to try this!”

“I can,” said Kavi. “Some. The miners don’t find much of the ore that makes it. I’ve heard rumors that the ore from the Suud’s desert is better, though there’s no way to be knowing the truth of that. But, Master . . . even if we learn to make watersteel, we still won’t be able to beat the Hrum. Not forever. Not even for eight more months. They’ve got ten thousand more men, just over the border in Sendar. All Garren has to do is send for some of them, and they’ll overwhelm Mazad.”

That was the one lie Siddas was allowing himself: that it was possible for them to win.

“I know they’ve got the men,” said Tebin. “But one thing you’ll realize when you’ve lived a bit longer is that you can’t ever tell what direction Time’s Wheel will turn. Why, look at this morning.”

Kavi snorted. “You mean when I got off for a crime they should have hanged me for?”

Tebin set the chip of watersteel on the table. “Do you think you should have been hanged? Really?”

“No,” Kavi admitted. “But then I wouldn’t, would I? There are a lot of people who wouldn’t agree with me.”

“Maybe, but the council did. For all of Siddas’ talk of how much we need that food—and we do!—they wouldn’t have let you off that lightly if they didn’t accept . . . extenuating circumstances. But that wasn’t what I meant, anyway.”

Kavi struggled to track the conversation back, and Tebin grinned. “Don’t bother. What I meant was that this morning, Time’s Wheel turned to bring my best—and worst—journeyman back to me. And if that can happen, lad, then anything is possible. Anything.”

P
EOPLE SCAMPERED OUT
of the streets of the Kadeshi village as Rakesh carried Jiaan closer, and he sighed. It was more than a month after the battle before Jiaan felt he could leave his troops and go in search of allies. But now, as summer dragged itself to a close in a spate of afternoon rains, the wounded were all well on their way to healing—except for one man the healer-priest couldn’t save, and he had finally died.

It happened after a battle, Jiaan told himself firmly. He had visited the man when he could, and tried to forget him as he went about his business the rest of the time. It was Fasal who had made a habit of speaking to the man daily, who had sat out the
death watch in the healer’s cabin until, in the dark time before sunrise, the man had died.

Fasal had asked for permission to take the man’s body home to his village, but Jiaan had refused—he needed Fasal for training.

Jiaan wasn’t certain if Fasal had changed, or if he was seeing something he had missed before. But the army had definitely changed. They were angry now. Angry at the Hrum for killing their comrades, but even more angry at themselves for the lack of skill that had made it possible for the Hrum to slaughter them so easily. Jiaan was surprised they weren’t angry with him for leading them into battle so ill trained, but they didn’t seem to be. Instead they tackled their training with a fierce determination, driving themselves harder than Jiaan and Fasal had ever thought to drive them. And they were learning fast. The beginning swordsmen had almost outstripped Jiaan’s tutoring—he could leave them to Fasal’s training now, and turn his attention elsewhere.

It had taken almost a month for him to get a Kadeshi warlord’s permission to enter his land for a parlay, anyway.

That was the second reason he was leaving
Fasal behind. Someone had to supervise the training, and he now felt it was safe to leave the army in Fasal’s charge. But the real reason he was leaving him behind was that Fasal had been so outraged at the very thought of asking the Kadeshi for aid.
They’re our enemies! We’ve been fighting them for thousands of years. And they may not be as strong, but they’re
worse
than the Hrum!

At this point, two days’ ride past the ambiguous, shifting border between Farsala and Kadesh, Jiaan was beginning to think Fasal might be right.

At the time Jiaan had pointed out that better or worse, they were the only ones who could bring an army to Farsala’s assistance. Since they were the next conquest in the Hrum’s path, they might be motivated to fight that battle in someone else’s country instead of their own.

It wasn’t the patrols that troubled Jiaan—though when the first ragged band galloped up and surrounded him, Jiaan had taken them for bandits instead of warriors, and he still wasn’t certain he’d been wrong. But whatever they were, the intricately embroidered strip of silk that Warlord Siatt had sent to Jiaan as a pledge of safe conduct had stopped them, snapping and snarling like dogs
restrained by a master’s hand on the leash. It had also protected Jiaan from the next two groups he’d encountered, so they probably weren’t bandits—though Jiaan hated to think what might have happened if he hadn’t had that strip of silk. No, it was the villages that bothered him.

He told himself that he was accustomed to seeing doors and shutters bright with peasant paint—that it was the absence of color that made Kadeshi villages look so bleak and dark. And that might have been true. But he’d never seen any Farsalan village where the women and children ran and hid when a man wearing a sword rode in. At first Jiaan hadn’t noticed that all those he spoke to were men. He’d ascribed their wary, guarded gazes to the fact that mounted on Rakesh rather than one of the Kadeshi’s tough, shaggy horses, with his ring-studded, silk armor, he was clearly Farsalan—an enemy solider to them.

It wasn’t until a young girl who’d been uprooting weeds in a field hiked up her muddy skirts and darted into a grove of trees at the sight of him, that he realized the truth. And she, and the others who hid from him, might have been doing so just because Jiaan was Farsalan . . . but somehow, he doubted it.

Rakesh was currently plodding between the first decrepit houses on the muddy street of a village that looked even more ramshackle than the others Jiaan had passed through—he was glad he would be spending the night at the warlord’s manor. He tried to convince himself that it was just the effect of the gathering clouds, but the growing overcast hadn’t caused the sagging thatch, or the door that listed off its hinges. And while the Kadeshi were a slender people, these men’s bones were far too prominent.

The man he was looking at shrank from his frown, and Jiaan hastily softened his expression. The man’s robe was even more ragged than the buildings.

“You, man. I need to find the house of Warlord Siatt. Can you tell me where?” His Kadeshi was rough, but all Farsalan soldiers spoke a bit of it—especially any who had worked for High Commander Merahb. And he understood it better than he spoke it, which might be useful.

The man was still backing away, and Jiaan didn’t think it was his accent. He pulled out his purse and the jingle of coin froze the man in his tracks.

“It’s not far,” he said, his voice barely loud enough for Jiaan to hear him. “Just take that road around the side of the hill, and you’ll see it.”

Jiaan smiled and tossed him a coin. Ordinarily such a small service would only call for a brass foal, but he’d offered a copper stallion instead. For a moment, seeing the man’s eyes widen, he wished he’d given him a silver falcon, or even a gold eagle. But Jiaan had a whole army to feed, clothe, and shelter. There were no eagles in his purse, and very few falcons.

Kicking Rakesh into motion he hoped, wryly, that Warlord Siatt wasn’t expecting to be bribed.

As Rakesh carried him around the broad slope of the hill, Jiaan wondered what a warlord’s manor would look like in this land of shoddy buildings. But the reality, perched on another hill directly in front of him, left him breathless.

It wasn’t the high walls surrounding it. Jiaan knew that, unlike Farsalan deghans, the warlords fought among themselves as often as they fought outsiders. He had expected something defensible, but defensible was an understatement; storming this towering fortress struck Jiaan as pure suicide.

But what amazed him was the manor, whose
towers he glimpsed beyond the walls, glowing even in the dim light. It seemed to be made of polished marble in dozens of different colors, and the builders had laid patterns into the tower walls. One was layered dark and light, like the goal post in a flags-and-lances match. Another had a pattern of diamonds spiraling up the side, and on another, light stone fountained up the darker background like leaping water. Each tower flew its own banner of bright, streaming silk, but the tallest tower seemed to be roofed in . . . No, it had to be polished brass, despite the way even the diffuse sunlight made it gleam.

Jiaan set Rakesh trotting up the twisting road that led up the hill to the . . . palace was the only word. This was no simple manor house, like the high commander’s. At every bend he realized how vulnerable an army on this road would be—all the defenders would have to do was roll down a few rocks. Archery fire from those walls would be pure murder.

As he drew near, the walls and the thick, iron-plated gate looked even more defensible than they had from below. Evidently the sentries were alert too, for the gate was already opening as Jiaan
approached. He rode down the echoing tunnel through the wall, very aware of the gratings overhead.

Siatt’s offer of safe conduct was evidently sincere, for he came out into the courtyard unscathed. A man waited to greet him, clad in the good but sober robe of a Kadeshi upper servant. One servant, and a dozen armed warriors.

“Lord Deghan Jiaan,” said the servant in good Farsalan. “Warlord Siatt is pleased that your journey has come to a safe end.”

Not all deghans were lords, and Jiaan wasn’t even a deghan, but saying any of that wasn’t a proper reply to the traditional Kadeshi greeting. “All journeys end safe, in Warlord Siatt’s house,” said Jiaan formally. He couldn’t help adding, “Please, call me Commander Jiaan.” He wasn’t really comfortable with that either, though he’d begun to get used to “young commander,” which was the title the army had settled on. But if he wanted the warlord to pay any attention to him he had to have some rank, and it was better than “Lord Deghan.”

“Commander Jiaan,” the older man repeated, accepting the correction with polished grace.
“Will you care to refresh yourself before your audience with Warlord Siatt?”

Given no other alternative, Jiaan took that as an order despite the courteous tone. In truth the chance to wash, to change into the good clothes he’d purchased in a town near the border, was welcome—though Jiaan wasn’t accustomed to either the presence of a servant who the older man had summoned to assist him, or washing in rose-scented water. But after seeing the silk draperies—expensive, Farsalan silk—and the carved, inlaid wood, the porcelain vase, so brilliantly glazed and so delicate, Jiaan knew that even his new tunic wasn’t up to the surroundings. He was a little surprised that the wash basin was made of plain bronze—but if that was intended as some kind of subtle insult, Jiaan didn’t care.

When he was dressed, he told the servant he was ready to see the warlord, and the man nodded and departed in the same silence he’d practiced so far. Mute? Or too discreet to gossip with strangers?

Jiaan’s father believed that you should learn everything you could about an enemy. Jiaan had thought he knew a lot about the Kadeshi, but now he realized he hadn’t learned nearly enough.

The superior servant returned—and if Jiaan’s tunic wasn’t up to his standards, his face was too well disciplined to show it.

He led Jiaan toward the warlord’s rooms. Jiaan could tell when they grew near, for the furnishings grew richer and the carpets grew deeper with each corridor. The thunder of the approaching storm rumbled distantly, softened by the thick walls. The door the servant finally stopped outside was plated with gold. He opened the door, stepped inside and intoned, “Most glorious warlord, savior of your people, vision of the god’s grace, supreme warrior, mighty leader in battle—Commander Jiaan comes to beseech your aid.”