Oath of Fealty (59 page)

“The Marshal said I shouldn’t tell you things,” she said.

He remembered Paks saying something about her time in Kolobia, how annoying it was when people wouldn’t explain. “Perhaps you should find the Marshal, then,” he said. She eased her hand out from under his head, set the mug back on something—a table?—with a
little clunk, and went out. The door was on his right … her receding footsteps told him of a passage.

A current of air from his left suggested a window; the smells with the air—rotting vegetables, human filth—meant a city. Had he caught a fever and been left behind? But he knew better than to drink tainted water or eat the foods most likely to give men fevers.

He tried again to sit up, but he felt dizzy and sick. He lay back, feeling for the side of the bed, for the wall. He had these few moments—for he heard heavier footsteps, booted footsteps, coming down the passage—to prepare himself, to master the turmoil he felt.

“Suli—your private—said you were awake. I’m Marshal Harak. I saw you at your camp, but we did not meet.”

Harak. The name meant nothing to him, but a memory came of the Marshal who had come for the Captain, and later ridden away with him … and he himself … he had been … the memory faded.

“Suli said you could not see.”

“It’s dark,” Stammel said. His voice was firm, at least.

“I’m going to look at your eyes,” the man said.

Stammel felt the warmth from his body, the breath on his face.

“Your eyes are bloodshot, as if you’d been slugged,” Marshal Harak said. “They were like that when your captain brought you here. Do you remember anything about that?”

“No.” Stammel struggled with a darkness as black as the flames had been white. “Only the fire. White … hot …” Sudden nausea twisted his gut. “I—I need the jacks—”

The man called out; other footsteps came running; the man’s strong arm heaved him up and another grabbed his arm and put it over a shoulder. The two men half dragged him out … through another door, to a room he could smell. He heaved, felt the stuff come out his mouth, smelled it, felt the splash on his bare chest. Again … again … they supported him; he was too weak …

When that was over, they wiped him down with wet cloths, and carried him back to the room … he could still feel his own warmth on the bed when they laid him down. “Drink this,” the Marshal said, holding the mug to his lips. This time the water had
some herb in it, not numbweed’s bitterness but something … he wasn’t sure.

“You’re alive and sane,” the other man said. His was the gruff voice he’d heard before—how long before? “I am Verstad, a Captain of Tir, and I tell you, soldier, you have fought long and bravely to come through so hard an ordeal. Though your captain brought you here, the Marshal has granted me the right to tend you alongside Marshals—”

“I’m in a … grange?” Stammel said.

“Yes.”

“Gird has no quarrels with Tir,” the Marshal said. “And your captain said you followed Tir.”

“I do. I … did.” Stammel struggled to keep his voice level. “But if I am blind—”

“Tir does not despise the wounded, and that includes the blind,” the Captain said.

“But I can’t fight—”

The Captain grunted. “You fought off a demon without sight or movement … I would not call you helpless.”

“I … don’t …”

“If you remember anything, now or in the next days, it would be good to tell us about it,” Harak said. “We know only what Captain Arcolin told us happened, not what happened inside you.”

Stammel lay still a moment. “I want to know why I can’t even sit up.”

Again Verstad grunted. “That would be because you lay for days in a high fever without eating and with only the little water we could drip into your mouth, the flesh melting from your bones: your clothes would be loose on you now. Anyone is weak after a long fever. You will have to rebuild that muscle.”

“I must—I have to be able to get to—to the jacks myself!” He hated the sudden whine in his voice, as he lost control of it, his diaphragm seized in a cramp.

“You must eat and drink first,” Harak said. “Has the nausea passed?”

“Yes.” One word at a time he could manage in close to his normal voice.

“Then we start feeding you. Or rather, your own soldiers will. And you consider giving thanks, Matthis Stammel, for your captain’s quick wit in bringing you here, and the days and nights your own people have watched over you.”

“I—do. I am … I am just …”

“Mazed, still. Very well. We’ll see what some good meals do for you.”

T
he others were all embarrassed; he could hear it in their voices. Suli alone was not, though still clearly timid with him because of his rank. He finally asked her why his blindness bothered her less.

“My uncle Saben,” she said. “He was kicked in the face by a cow; he had an infection in one eye that spread to the other—it nearly killed him—but after, when he decided to live … he was still my uncle, you see. He still knew everything he had known. He could still tell when one of the animals was sickening, by the sound of its walk, or its smell, better than my father. The dogs knew his whistles; I would take him out to the hill, and tell him where the animals were, where the dogs were, and he’d work them the same as ever. And you aren’t even scarred as he was.”

“And now that you’ve left home? What does he do now?”

“My little brother, who has no desire to leave the farm, is learning his whistles and goes everywhere with him. You did not think I would leave before I was sure—?”

“No. No, Suli, I know you would not. I’m sorry.”

“It is hard, the first year, my uncle said. He thought of finding a ledge, and stepping off into the air. One night he went out into a storm, when everyone else slept. He was sure he knew how to feel his way to the cliff, even in the storm … but the gods led him round, and his dogs found him, herded him just like a sheep, nipping his heels when he faltered. I remember waking the next morning and we all went out to look for him—there were his tracks, around the cow-byre and then in … he was in the straw, with both dogs on top of him.”

“So you will not let me find a ledge—not that there are many
in Vonja—” Stammel put the thought of bridges and the Immerest’s swift current out of his mind. Suli would be disappointed in him.

“
You
would not go looking for ledges,” Suli said. “Not a sergeant in the Duke’s Company.”

I
n the night—the true night, not the night of blindness—the dreams and memories came. He was not always sure which was which. When the grange was quiet, and the night breeze changed the scents that blew in, he lay, sometimes dozing, sometimes truly sleeping, sometimes wakeful. Now he remembered most of the day it happened, remembered the soldiers drilling, the trips in and out of the city with Arcolin. He could almost see the faces, the places. Marshal Harak—his face would not come clear. That last ride into the city … he could almost feel the saddle between his thighs. Arcolin had called him in to speak to the Council about … about something. Someone.

One night it burst in on him. Recognizing one of the caravan guards as Korryn, his fox-head brand camouflaged with more scars. His own testimony to the Council—the Council’s request that they go see the man in prison to be sure of his identity. And Korryn had said—something—and then hands at Stammel’s neck, choking; he had fallen—unconscious—found himself under bodies, a welter of blood and guts, with Korryn free, and everyone else motionless. Arcolin’s hand, near his sword, had been trembling with the effort he made to move.

But he, Stammel, could move, and he had struggled out from under the bodies, stabbed Korryn, and Arcolin had struck at once … and then … and then … like a blow inside his head, he had been stunned, and the fires began.

He woke, aware that he’d cried out and was soaked with sweat.

“Sir?” Suli, as always, was first to his side.

“Bad dream,” he said. “Just a bad dream.”

The fires, he’d been told, were the demon’s invasion. But Korryn … that was not a demon, inside Korryn. He was sure of that. It
was something else, something less than a demon, something … almost human.

What humans had powers to hold men still? Arcolin had told him what the prince said of the assassination attempt. The Verrakai had such powers. Magelords. But if Korryn had been a magelord, had such powers, why go for a soldier?

A
t first Stammel could totter only a few steps to the jacks, leaning on someone’s arm. Then he made it out to the grange itself. His soldiers applauded. He tried to grin; he hoped it looked normal. Day by day, days he found it impossible to count without light, he pushed himself for more, knowing from years of training that his body would respond. All the way to the front entrance, where he stood gasping for breath, feeling the sun on his face. All the way back, one hand on the wall to guide him. Around the interior, still touching the wall, until he could find his own way to the jacks, to the bathing room, to the little kitchen.

A
s Stammel became more able to navigate in the grange on his own—as long as he kept one hand on a wall—he was aware of discussions carried on just beyond what his people thought he could hear … but now, concentrating on hearing, he could hear all too clearly sometimes.

Arñe, doing her job as corporal, made sure they kept the grange clean and fetched whatever anyone needed—“We must not be a burden on the grange,” she said, perhaps more often than necessary. In truth, they weren’t busy enough, and soldiers needed to be kept busy. They polished everything that could be polished, to the point where Stammel heard the yeoman-marshal complain that he had nothing to do. Arñe arranged what drill she could but lacked space, since this city grange had no barton, and the street outside was busy dawn to dusk, noisy with the sound of smiths at work. Stammel could distinguish the solid whang-whang of the ironsmiths from the lighter tink-tink-tink of whitesmiths.

Some hands of days after he’d wakened, Stammel laid a hand on Bald Seli’s shoulder and came into the grange on a drill night for the first time. The big room was full of strangers, all talking, it seemed; it smelled of sweaty people and stale breath. Seli eased him onto a stool near the entrance.