The Returning (17 page)

Ban pulled at the strap of Acton Mansto's satchel and began to cast about in widening circles, until he picked up the girl's tracks again. After a time the pines began to take over; their deadfall would have been harder to read, but that she'd been less careful here to hide her tracks.

That's where he caught her. That is, he knew she was hid just
there
, watching him. He sank to his heels and remained still, as he would for a woodland creature he wished not to start from cover. And she did not: She remained in her hide. Ban—slowly, slowly—lifted the strap of the satchel over his head and laid it on the dried brown needles.

“They did call off the hunt. Do you stay clear of the village, you can go back to your people.” Backing away, he waited, looking straight at her hiding place.

She came out, wary, but not as frightened as he had expected her to be. Ban nudged the satchel toward her.

“Acton Mansto did give it to me. Ellaner's gone, who it was intended for, so I don't think Acton will mind.”

The satchel was in the Uplander girl's lap, and her arms around it. She looked at him, and young and pretty as she was, her gaze was like a mallet.

“You can't understand me, but I did want to tell you.” He picked up a stick and scratched a cross with it in the soil. “Here.” A squiggly line. “The River Kay.” He drew rounds, for the houses of the village. “Kayforl.” Triangles for the tents on the creek flats. “The camp.” He pointed at her.

The girl touched her forefinger to the mark on the map that was the camp, then to her nose.
Me
.

Ban drew another village, to the south. “Apstead.” He laid his hand on his chest, pointed again to the map. “I am going to Apstead.”

He handed her the stick. Her strokes were lighter, left such slight marks on the hard soil as made them difficult to read, but Ban knew.

“North.” He looked at her.

“Yaya.”

“Home.”

 

BAN WRAPPED ONE of Mam's cheeses in his spare shirt. “I have thought it out.”

“That's not what I did mean!” Ardow took the bundle out of Ban's hands. Ban calmly took it back.

“No, but it is what I mean to do. I want to.”

After a long, long pause, in which the only sounds were the settling of the fire, the stirring of the forest, Da said, “Where?”

“Apstead?” Mam could not understand. She did not cry, but Da did. “For why?”

“Ellaner?” Ardow spoke in his ear. “Is it her you're going for?”

“No. But she did put the thought in my way. Mam, you've ten more sons, don't say you'll miss me that much.”

Ardow came with him through the woods to the Apstead Road. “I'll ask what Da asked: Why?”

“To walk lighter.” Ban started southward along the road, turning backward to shout, “And it's only a day from here. I'll visit, what do you think?”

“
H
AVE DONE WITH it!” Gyaar Ryuu bade his valet.

The man wound the sash about Gyaar's hips, fussing with the set of it. “My Lord's father will be as angered by an ill-dressed son as a late one.”

At last the sash was ready to the valet's satisfaction. Gyaar thrust his short sword into it, stood for one more brief inspection, then walked toward the council hall as quickly as befit a Ryuu prince in times of peace.

The doors to the hall were closed, and Gyaar was bidden by Father's secretary to wait in line with the other petitioners. So was he punished for the discourtesy of unpunctuality. When the council broke for mid-morning rest, Gyaar was allowed in.

Father signed for a servant to pour Gyaar's tea, another slight. “I would know what was of such interest that you could not make council in time, Only Son.”

Gyaar poured tea for Father, placing the pot so that Father could later return the courtesy, pour for him. The councils had grown duller with peace. Gyaar held his teacup correctly, not toying with it, looking hard into it. No, not duller—the issues of tax and property, of wrongs done, were of interest, but they seemed small, petty, after the huge concerns of war.

“Unrest!” said Father when council resumed.

At his tone, Gyaar sat up straighter.

“I've reduced taxes, brought peace. This town boasted nothing but inns and a keep ready to rot, a guard that pillaged its own land and people. And yet there is unrest!”

“You brought war, Father, before you brought peace. And . . . Dorn-Lannet was a Downlander town, but you are not Downlander.”

“Half the town is not Downlander.”

Gyaar reached for the teapot.

They threw it back and forth between them, Gyaar, Father, and the councilors, and decided upon a Winter Festival and a census.
Distraction,
wrote Gyaar in his notebook.
Information
.

 

WHEN GYAAR WAS small, Father made a circuit of his lands and in every single town he held a Hearing. Six times yearly, every second month, he did it. Gyaar was taught this catechism:

He did not know what any of it meant, but he could repeat the words to Father.

“Everyone comes to the Hearings so that each is like a fair,” said Gyodan. As eldest son, he attended the Hearings. He told Gyaar of the food stalls and jugglers, the beggars, the tents that served as inn and brothel.

“Older Brother, what is a brothel?”

Gyodan laughed and laughed at that.

“I want to go,” said Gyaar.

“You must ask Father.”

When next Gyaar was taken to the audience chamber to see Father, that is what he did.

“Take me with you, Papa,” Gyaar begged.

Father spoke to Jak-jak. “Teach him to ask like a man, and a warrior.”

The circuit took a month. When Father and Gyodan returned from it, Father sent for Gyaar. “How is my younger son? Is Jak-jak making a man of you, yes? Is he making you a warrior, a proud Ryuu?”

Gyaar stood firm and stared at the air by Father's ear. “I will come with you next time, My Lord Father.”

Father hit him, striking with the flat of his hand. “Ah, it is good. Very good.” A cuff from Father was a loving stroke. Gyaar picked himself up off the floor, proud and heartful.

“If he is to come to the Hearings, he should start to attend the councils.” Gyodan stared not at the air by Father's ear, but at him eye to eye.

Father made a swatting motion at Gyaar.

“He is my heir,” said Gyaar's brother. “As I am yours, until I am father of my own children. He should learn, Father, as I learned.”

“He is too . . . bah. Born for the shrine, that one.”

“He is gentle, that is all.” Gyodan stalked from the audience chamber, boot heels loud on the floorboards.

“Phhh,” said Jak-jak later. “Always one thing or another to shout about with those two.”

Gyodan won though, for Gyaar began to sit in on the councils.

 

AS GYAAR GREW OUT of childhood and began to look manhood in the face, Gyodan won another victory against Father: If Father had had his way, Gyaar would have been gone to train for priesthood at the great shrines north of the City; instead, Gyaar came south, to the war.

Gyodan had told him, “War is art: strategy, sword-work, archery.” But to Gyaar, it was grass churned to mud, the mud red. It was Father's men bowed, all the same, knee and fist to the ground, heads bent. War was Father, in his blood-colored armor, running up the avenue they made. Running across the mud and muck and ruin, the black cloak of his hair lifting with the speed of his movement. War was Gyodan lying on his banner, eyes bound with blue cord, and a cloth folded over the wound that had killed him.

Father ran to Gyodan. Gyaar ran to the rim of the battlefield. The gray-brown plain curved up to meet the sky. The gray sky curved down to meet the plain. He crouched in this bowl and watched the slow rain beat on the grass. The haze softened everything, blurred what was ugly, gave all an air of mystery.

“A proud death,” said Father, later, when the body had been burned, the prayers all said. The words were the right ones, but Father's face told Gyaar something quite different. “You are my eldest and only son now.”

It was all Gyaar could do to speak, for his grief was strangling him. “I will not be a disappointment to you.”

Father slapped a hand, heavy, on Gyaar's shoulder; clenched hard enough to bite bone. “Jak-jak has done well with you.”

Jak-jak, tutor and other father, he too was dead, an old man.

Gyaar was fifteen when Gyodan died, and was made a man, there on the same bloody battlefield.

 

FATHER'S BANNER HAD already spread north to the City. After Gyodan's death it moved south, keep after keep, year after year.

“Knew what they did, those warriors of old,” said Father. For each keep commanded a vital passage of land or river or coast, each one immensely strong. Yet Father beat them down, keep and keep and keep, links in a chain that led them farther south.

Father's generals were crowded about the map table. At last they were within reach of the region called the Waist, where the sea had chewed away the eastern coast and only Wasy Lake lay to the west. That narrow passage of land was a cork in a bottle, which, if popped, opened up the rich lands to the south. The keep that held the Waist was called Dorn-Lannet.

Dorn-Lannet Keep had been built into the southern base of Mount Lannet, a great hill that rose twenty times the height of a man. Like many of these keeps, Dorn-Lannet had started life as a warrior's house—larger than those of his vassals; walled because all warriors had enemies in those long-ago times when these forts had been built. On the flats to the east, below the keep, was the town, filling the space between keep and sea. On the western side of Mount Lannet was Wasy Lake. Once, there had been pleasure houses on the shores of the lake, but they had sunk into the soft earth and all this eastern point of the lake was now swamp, with the remnants of the long-ago summer mansions rotted and drowning.

“It is the last barrier to the South.” The first of these forts to fall had been the death of Gyodan, six years earlier. Inside the tent it was quiet but for the clapping of the canvas, and Father's voice. “Take that, and you have taken the South.”

From the flanks of the foothills, Dorn-Lannet Keep was small. Father passed his spyglass to his generals and it went the rounds of them in strict hierarchical order. Gyaar took it in turn. Squat gray tower, squat gray hall, wide, high gray walls. The outer bailey was grassed, the inner graveled, gray gravel. The walls were well-manned, yet the outer bailey was empty.

“Center field is your command, Only Son.”

Gyaar looked at Father.

“We move on Dorn-Lannet tomorrow, first light.”

 

GYAAR'S FORCE CROSSED the lake on rafts, skirting wide around the marshes to come up on the keep from the south. His father's force waited in hiding on Mount Lannet. The third and fourth forces would close, pincers, upon the township.

Gyaar led his men to position using the cover of the hillocks of this lumpen land.

“When I drop my sword.” Gyaar lifted the blade above his head. His men cheered.

Ryuu's archers had already formed rows and were firing, dropping, reloading, firing. The surgeons stood by, ready to pull out the wounded, take them back to the tents for care. On the walls of the keep, the enemy archers opened fire. When one fell, others moved to cover the gap. After a time they did not.

Gyaar watched for the moment, the right moment. His sword was still held above his head, his arm aching, more than aching. Finally he swung his arm down, finding it hard to move, and his company surged forward, a wave, drowning all before it. Gyaar rode the wave, and killing was a joy—until his brother's face was under his sword. He screamed, “Gyodan!” and turned the blade aside, but not enough—

After they'd taken Dorn-Lannet, after Gyaar had set aside his armor and washed the slaughter from his skin, he went to Father. “My Lord, there is something I must show you.”

The hospital tent was pitched in the outer bailey. Father looked across at him, once, and again, but Gyaar strode silent across the grass. The surgeon himself met them at the entrance. From neck to toe he was bloody. The smell of it was in Gyaar's nostrils and turning his stomach. The tent was filled with people bringing water, bandages, medicines.

“This is he, My Lords.”

Gyaar looked down on him: a man-boy, as young to Gyaar as Gyaar had been to Gyodan, sweating and filthy and far gone in fever and pain, his right arm severed at the shoulder.