Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy) (45 page)

J
IAAN’S IMPULSE WAS TO RUN,
to run until the whole situation disappeared. That way he wouldn’t have to make an impossible choice. He couldn’t let the peddler live—he couldn’t!

But in fact, he hadn’t run more than a few hundred yards before his feet slowed. It was a foolish impulse; choices couldn’t be outrun.

His anger, his desire to see the traitor’s blood pouring onto the desert sands, still burned. If he’d used his knife instead of his fists, it would all be over by now! If only he’d been wearing his sword . . .

But the Suud were allies, and uneasy allies at that. Wearing a sword to visit them had seemed both foolish and discourteous. And what if he’d
killed the traitor, and then discovered that they needed his help to defeat the Hrum? Then what?

Then they’d have found another way! The thought of letting him live was intolerable enough—the girl wanted Jiaan to work with him?

No. Not ever.

Not even to defeat the Hrum?

The girl was right. He could all but hear his father’s voice, complaining about deghans who thought with their honor instead of their brains. Still . . .

“When the world’s been kicked this hard, it’s not easy to know who to trust, is it?” The old woman’s voice was the first sign of her presence, but somehow Jiaan wasn’t surprised.

“I know who not to trust,” he said, turning to face her. “And that filthy traitor is at the top of the list. We’d have to spend every moment watching for a knife in the back—and sooner or later, there’d be one.”

“Hmm,” said Maok. “Maybe, maybe not. To me, he seems like a young man who has reasons.”

Jiaan didn’t care. “I just hope you didn’t leave him unguarded. He’ll sneak off in an instant—and he already knows too much.”

Maok smiled. “Sneak from camp, maybe. Sneak from the desert before we could stop him? I don’t think he’ll try to go, even from camp. I think he wants to stop the Hrum, to save Mazad, as bad as you do. Maybe more.”

Jiaan half believed that she might know. “Why do you think that? What makes you so sure?”

For a moment he thought she would shrug it off, as Soraya had, but instead she said, “I’ve heard some things that happen in the old land, on the other side of the mountains. By what I heard, he’s done much to fight the Hrum.”

“You think he’s Sorahb? There are dozens of Sorahbs. He’s probably claiming credit for what they did.”

But there was one other Sorahb in particular, the one whose plans were so economical, so successful, so . . . sneaky. Jiaan had been certain that that Sorahb, the one he’d wanted to meet, had been in charge of the last strike against the Hrum garrison. It had felt like his work. Soraya said the peddler was behind that, said it as if she knew. If that was true . . . could the peddler be that Sorahb?

No, surely not. And even if he was, it wouldn’t stop Jiaan from killing him.

Maok must have seen his expression harden, for she sighed. “I see. But you may not kill him here. Your father didn’t fight us, and he didn’t fight others in our camps. If you wish to stay in the desert, to keep our trust, you must take the same path. You may not kill him while he is under our protection.”

But if the peddler escaped, it might be years before Jiaan found him. If he fled Farsala, Jiaan might never see him again!

“You talk about my father as if he was here for some time,” said Jiaan, trying to gain time to think. His army needed this desert base.

The woman studied him for a moment, then nodded. “It was a secret we kept, for fear he would find trouble from it. But he is safe from trouble now, and it is time for you to know.

“A tribe of miners came to the desert, to search for the good iron they say is here. They captured many of our people, and forced them to dig for them. But the clans of the people they captured attacked and freed them—those who had not already died. Then the miners sent to your gahn
and asked for soldiers to protect them, and so your father came to the desert.”

Jiaan frowned. “I thought he went to look for a group of miners who’d gone missing.”

Maok smiled. “That’s what the miners told him to say, because they didn’t want word of what they found to be known. And that is a secret you must keep,” she added firmly. “But when your father came, the miners were mostly alive. We played tracker with your father’s men for a time, but whenever he met our hunters, he greeted us, and treated us well. Not like the miners at all. So one night we crept into his camp and woke him, and he followed our warriors into the desert alone, not telling his men where he had gone. We spoke to him then and told him what the miners were doing.”

The old woman’s smile was full of amused respect. “He was a smart man, your father, and a good one. He made his men look for a time, and then said the miners must be dead, and sent them out of the desert to wait for him. When they were gone, he came to us. He helped us fight the miners. He killed several of them, even though he was sent to protect them. He said Farsala law wouldn’t
punish them, not for killing us. And though I don’t know it, for our tribe was not doing much with this, I think those miners maybe called your father ‘traitor’ too.”

“But . . . but he had good reasons for what he did.” Jiaan’s mind was spinning—he’d never heard a word of this! It sounded like his father, though. Especially the part about him following his enemies alone into the night to parlay. And sending his men out, so if one of the miners survived to accuse them, his men would be safe.

Maok’s smile widened. “I think traitors mostly have reasons.”

She turned and walked back to camp, leaving Jiaan torn between outrage and the fact that he couldn’t immediately think of an argument. How could she compare his father to that . . . that contemptible peddler! Yes, what his father had done was probably, technically, treason, but he’d seen a terrible wrong and known there was no other way to right it. He’d had good reasons . . .

Could the peddler have reasons that seemed good to him?

Jiaan thought about that for a moment and decided that he still didn’t care. But Maok’s story
had reminded him of something else his father believed: that there were things more important than the deghans’ code of honor.

The deghans had always put personal honor, personal glory, first—and it had crippled the Farsalan army. Was putting personal vengeance first any better? Jiaan knew what his father would say.

He walked back to the Suud camp. The peddler sat by the central fire, pressing a damp cloth gently against his face. The lady Soraya stood nearby, watching him with the intensity a leopardess bestows on a threat to her cubs. She’d cut her hair, Jiaan noticed. She looked stronger, and far tougher, than when he’d seen her last. For a moment he almost pitied the peddler. Almost.

He walked up to the fire, stopped in front of his enemy, and folded his arms. “All right,” he said. “I’ll accept your help in destroying the siege towers. I’ll accept your help to fight the Hrum, until their year is over, and they’re either gone or here to stay. But then I’m going to kill you.”

The peddler lowered the cloth and stared at him. His lower lip was split and swollen, and
Jiaan was pleased to see that he had the beginnings of a magnificent black eye.

“You want me to work with you for six months, and then you’ll kill me?”

He looked at Soraya, who nodded.

“I’ll help him,” she agreed, with something that might have been enthusiasm if it hadn’t been so cold.

The peddler snorted. “You’re certainly knowing how to motivate a man.”

Jiaan shrugged and watched him think it over.

“But you’d work with me for those six months?” the peddler finally asked. “I’d be in no danger from you, till the Hrum’s year is over?”

“Yes,” said Jiaan. The girl nodded.

“Done,” said the peddler. “At least, the working together. You’ll understand that I don’t agree to the killing part at the end.”

Jiaan expected him to resist that. In fact, he was looking forward to it with a savagery even he found appalling. But that was what he felt.

“Done,” he agreed bleakly.

Soraya echoed it. “Done.”

None of them attempted to clasp wrists to seal the bargain. It would be intolerable working with
someone he hated, and worse working with someone he didn’t trust. The peddler could never go unguarded, never be allowed to know their secrets. But they needed him, and he seemed to need them, so for six months Jiaan would endure it.

Until Farsala was free.

S
ORAHB WANDERED ON,
until one morning he saw a man with only one leg, hobbling down the road on crutches. Sorahb urged his horse to a faster pace, thinking to assist the man. But when he drew near he saw that the man wore the tunic of a Hrum soldier, though his scarlet cloak had been replaced by one of drab brown.

Sorahb hesitated then, but the road was rough and muddy, and he had known Farsalans who had lost a leg in the war. He would hate to see them struggling alone on the road.

He offered the soldier a ride to the Sendar border, and the man gratefully accepted. It took some effort to mount him behind Sorahb, but soon they were able to set out. The soldier told Sorahb that his horse had pulled a tendon, and
he had sold it to a farmer who could give it time to heal while he went on, for his eagerness to reach his home was too great for delay.

As the marks passed they fell to talking of war, as soldiers will. “I lost my leg, but we won the battle,” the soldier told him. “I count it small loss, when all is said, for I’ve my life, my wits, my hands, and my pension into the bargain.”

“Then you are more fortunate than I,” said Sorahb. “I’ve kept my legs, but all my battles have been lost.”

The soldier was seated behind Sorahb, so he did not see the man’s eyes, which were suddenly far too old for the young face that surrounded them.

“Then you have been given a gift,” said the soldier. “For only when the last battle is lost, only when he’s desperate, will a man discover new ways to fight.”

S
ORAHB LEFT THE SOLDIER
at the Sendar Gate and returned to the army he had abandoned.

“I’m sorry I left you,” he told them. “But at the same time I am glad, for walking in the world I found wisdom. The deghans’ ways have failed, and only a fool such as I would have tried to use them again. We must find new ways to fight, ways that will work where the deghans’ did not. We will take them from Kadeshi raiders, from Dugaz
swamp rats, even from the Hrum themselves. But first, I ask you to teach me your ways, peasant ways. Now is the time for you to speak, and for me to listen. For we will be able to defeat even the mighty army of the Hrum, once we have learned to work together.”

Read all the books in the Farsala Trilogy

by Hilari Bell:

Fall of a Kingdom

Rise of a Hero

Forging the Sword

(coming soon)