The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (24 page)

His gaze flicked over toward me as he spoke, and I could see the other guards eyeing me as well. There were five of us sitting around Quentin: me, Payne, Chatwin, Teague, and Devin. The other guards were gathered on the opposite side of the fire, quizzing Carle about the details of a new court case that Neville had told us about.
Quentin didn't look my way, but as he reached over to his side to pick up his water flask, he said, "Soldier Adrian, I know that it will be difficult for you to discard momentarily your Emorian way of thinking, but I would appreciate it if you would cast your mind back to the days when you were a Koretian and explain to Payne what you would have done if I had tried to disarm you before you had drawn your blade against me."
"I would have killed you." The answer was so obvious that I didn't pause to think, but a moment later, I felt my spirit jerk as though it had been torn in two, for it suddenly occurred to me that there was something odd about what I had said.
I did not have time to analyze the matter, for Quentin had turned his attention back to Payne. "In Koretia, Payne, the symbol of manhood is a blade. No Koretian man will disarm himself except for the gravest of reasons, and any man who tries to disarm a Koretian who has not threatened him will find his life in danger."
Payne's expression had been tightening during Quentin's speech. Now he burst out, "But that is barbaric! How can they be so childish?"
Quentin lifted one eyebrow, then glanced over at me, sitting with fists clenched, trying to keep control of myself. "Adrian, please tell Payne – passing your mind back to your Koretian past, of course – what you thought the first time you saw an unarmed Emorian man."
I was uneasily aware that I did not have to return as far as all that to find the answer to Quentin's question, but I obediently replied, "I thought he looked like a child."
Too late, I realized that Payne had put aside his sword. Fortunately, Payne's expression was so comical that the other young guards burst into laughter, and after a moment, Payne gave a weak smile.
"If Adrian could find room in his spirit to appreciate your manly qualities, despite your obvious deficiencies," Quentin said, rising to his feet, "I imagine that you can learn to appreciate the barbaric Koretians. . . . Sublieutenant, two men are approaching from the north." He said this quietly to Carle, who immediately abandoned his food and rose to his feet. I was at his side within a few seconds, and when the day patrol left moments later, I heard Payne say, "Good hunting, Adrian," although I had not had time to flame my blade.
The fifth day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.
Since arriving back in the mountains, I've continued to accompany Carle on patrols, though he has not yet allowed me to participate in a hunt; I'm supposed to watch from a distance and learn how hunts are conducted. Much of our work, I've discovered, consists of stopping legitimate border-crossers and asking for their credentials. We usually hunt at least one border-breacher a day, and sometimes several. If the hunted doesn't resist capture, we interrogate our prisoner on the spot and either send him back the way that he came, or – in the rare cases where the breacher has a legitimate reason for crossing the border – we allow him past us.
I was surprised, though, to learn that border-breachers who draw their blades are all treated in exactly the same manner as I was: they are hand-bound and eye-bound, roughly led to the patrol hut, and questioned in a harsh manner before being placed on trial for their crimes. I asked Carle about this, and he said that fear was the patrol's secret weapon.
"It's our only weapon in most cases," he said, speaking to me in a low voice because we were standing on a mountain overlooking the pass. "If the breacher doesn't attack us, and if he isn't a lawbreaker such as an escaped slave, then we can't punish the prisoner in any way. We simply scare him in hopes that he won't try to breach the border again. If the breacher is violent, we try to give him the impression that his life is forfeit in our hands, though in most cases the lieutenant only condemns the prisoner to a beating."
"So my trial was a sham," I said unhappily.
"No Emorian trial that I've ever attended has been a sham. You were in real danger of being executed at the start, and we were really angry at you for what you had done – but even if we hadn't been, we would have acted as though we were." Carle's head turned slowly as he surveyed the landscape below us. "The only way in which your trial was different from the others is that it was more formal, because part of your defense was that you had escaped to Emor to learn about the law. So the lieutenant was judging you partly on the basis of how you acted during your trial."
I discovered today that Carle was right when he said that most patrol trials are less formal. Our prisoner was a Koretian who held to my theory that it's better to find the patrol guards before they find you – only in his case, his motive for finding us was to cut our throats. This type of episode happens every few weeks, Carle assured me with a grin, and is the reason why patrol guards are trained to be the hunted as well as the hunters. It's also the reason why we patrol in pairs, and in fact it was Payne's patrolling partner, Gamaliel, who saved him from death and sent out the Immediate Danger whistle.
I had thought that I knew about moving fast before then, but I found that the implications of the danger whistles had been so firmly planted in my mind that I was beyond the doorway of the patrol hut before I even realized that I had awoken from sleep. We captured the hunted alive, brought him back to the hut, and then, with only a short preliminary of questioning, placed him on trial for attempted murder. This time there was no court summoner or herald or clerk, and the prisoner rejected the use of a guide. Only the lieutenant acted the same, wearing his gold chain and sitting in judgment with cold formality.
The prisoner's defense – such as it was – was that he wished he'd murdered the lot of us. Quentin's patient questioning failed to elicit any stronger defense. So, in the end, Quentin pronounced the sentence of death that could have been mine.
I don't know what I expected to happen after that – some sort of small ceremony, I suppose, before the prisoner was discreetly taken outside and executed. So I barely took in what actually did happen: Quentin asked the prisoner whether he wished to appeal the judgment and sentence, waited only the mote of time necessary to receive a negative answer, then pulled out his thigh-dagger, stepped over to where the prisoner was being held by Carle and me, and plunged his blade into the man's heart.
The Koretian wasn't expecting this either; he died with a look of surprise on his face. After I had managed to still my queasy stomach, I asked Carle about what had happened. He told me that Quentin was following Emorian law, which states that a prisoner must be brought to trial as soon as possible, and that his punishment must take place immediately after the trial.
"We Emorians think that the cruelest punishment of all is fear," said Carle. "We try to spare condemned prisoners that much at least."
Thinking about the fear that held Mountside in its frosty grip in the days before I left, I decided that Carle was right.
The sixth day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.
I'm beginning to realize how hard it is to think like an Emorian.
This morning, as we were waiting for the night patrol to arrive back from duty, I was taking my turn at tending the stew. The food in the patrol surprises me; from the stories I'd heard of army life, I'd expected a steady diet of blackroot nuts. The patrol, though, gets its food and other supplies from the merchants that pass over the border every few days, so we're much better fed than other soldiers – we dine as well as nobles, even eating meat. I've almost reached the point where I expect to be introduced to such delicacies as Daxion nuts.
I was saying as much to Carle and joking with him in our usual manner, when I realized that the other members of the day patrol were giving me dark looks. This puzzled me, as I couldn't think of anything I'd done to earn the other guards' wrath.
"Soldier," said Carle sharply, all of a moment, "I wish to speak privately with you."
I looked around to see whom Carle was addressing, and then realized with chagrin that I was the one he was glaring at.
He took me as far as the fall, where we could not be heard. I realize I must take a detour in my narrative here, because I haven't explained fully about the waterfall. It tumbles down the mountainside from one of the high peaks, where the snow lies year-round. From the fall we gain our drinking water and bathing water, and our latrine is located in the area where the water rushes underground.
Using the latrine at night is a chilling experience. Even more chilling is bathing under the fall; I always take care to do so when the sun is up. All of the guards do except Carle, who sneaks out to bathe when the rest of us are asleep. He receives a great deal of teasing for his bodily modesty.
Speaking low under the soft roar of the fall, Carle said, "Adrian, didn't anything Neville said to you penetrate your spirit? You mustn't call me by my name alone in front of the others."
I stared at him uncomprehending for a moment; then I felt the chill of the waterfall's flicking bite against my skin fade away as heat rushed across my face. I said stiffly, "I am sorry, sir. I thought . . . If I had realized . . . Sublieutenant, when
may
I address you by your name? You will always be above my rank, so will I ever be able again to . . . I mean, I thought the wine . . ." I fumbled for words, struggling to keep control of my voice.
Carle sighed and turned me away so that my back was to the other guards, who were watching us out of the corners of their eyes. "Strictly speaking, not until one of us retires," he said. "Army rank isn't carried over to civilian life, so we'd be free to address each other as equals then. But in reality . . . Curse you, Adrian; I suppose Emorian life isn't as orderly as I sometimes pretend it is. When I first joined the patrol, I tried to adhere to the rules of rank at all times; I was determined to be a good soldier. The lieutenant, though, soon cured me of my naiveté. He pointed out the folly of the two of us always addressing each other formally when we had to patrol together for eleven hours a day, every day of the week, for eight months straight. So now the rule I follow is to address my fellow guards in accordance with their rank, but only when we're in active pursuit, or when orders are being given and received, or when we're in the presence of others. But for love of the Chara, Adrian, I expect you to follow that rule as though your life depended upon it! Do you know what it looks like for you to call me by my name when the others cannot?"
I hadn't, but I understood well enough when I arrived back at the balefire, where the others were waiting in watchful silence. Still burning from my unofficial reprimand, I poured out soup for Carle and handed it to him, taking care to address him by his title – and immediately grins spread from one guard to the next, like a peace oath travelling swiftly from one town to the next. Not long afterwards, Iain put his arm around my shoulders and offered to tend the soup in my place.
Every time I stumble in my understanding of the law, I grow weak with fear of what I might do next. How far will go in breaking Emorian rules before I enter into serious trouble?
The tenth day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.
Now I know.
As I mentioned before, I haven't yet taken part in a hunt. This can be frustrating, for I must watch the pursuit from afar and gain what knowledge I can from the tiny figures I see. By last week, I was already growing eager to put my knowledge to the test, but Carle, after reciting the names of all the patrol guards over the centuries who had died during their first hunt, put my request aside.
Today, as the sun was setting in the sky, Carle went a few paces ahead to speak with Hoel and Chatwin. Rounding the side of a mountain, I discovered a border-breacher making water against the rock.
That he was a breacher I had no doubt; he was wearing an Emorian dagger and was well past the point where we would have sighted him if he'd been travelling from Emor in the normal manner. I concluded that he must have travelled through the nearby mountains, somehow retaining his orientation, and that he now believed himself to have journeyed beyond our patrolling ground.
He very nearly had; if he went any further, a pursuit by the patrol would be hard, as we were less familiar with the mountain areas to the south of our patrolling ground. With no thought, only instinct, I quietly drew my sword, crept up behind the breacher, and placed my sword-tip against his spine.
He yelped but did not move his hand toward his dagger. I had doubted he would; I had already learned that most Emorian border-breachers are defiant only up until the moment of capture, whereupon they surrender quietly. And so, feeling the same triumph that a bridegroom might feel after taking his bride's maidenhood, I sent out the End of Hunt whistle.
Carle reached me within seconds. Hoel and Chatwin were not far behind, and I relished the look of Iain and Jephthah as they arrived two minutes later and saw who the captor was in this hunt. Carle waited long enough to be sure that the prisoner would not resist; then he pulled me aside. "What happened?" he asked. "Did he attack you?"
With eager joy, I explained how I had saved the patrol from a difficult hunt. Carle said nothing. Though Iain was leading the interrogation of the prisoner, I could see that he and the others were eavesdropping on what I said. When I had finished, Carle said only, "Let's deal with the prisoner first."
I was disappointed, but I told myself not to be foolish. Carle's matter-of-fact acceptance of my ability to capture a breacher single-handedly was a greater compliment to me than if he had shown amazement at my accomplishment. So I followed him over to where the prisoner stood, babbling forth his story.
As it turned out, I was wrong; the Emorian had not been leaving Emor but returning to it, and he had been armed only because he had been travelling amongst the dagger-wielding barbarians of Koretia. In fact, he had travelled from Emor to Koretia while Carle and I were at the army camp, and he was known by the rest of the day patrol to be a legitimate border-crosser.