The Path of the Sword (68 page)

“But sir,” Gaven protested, “I got men killed.”

“Yes you did and a damned shame too. There are too few Soldiers who show the promise you do. Higgens does—believe it or not—which is why I sponsored him for his commission. I thought certain that by the end of the year, you would make sergeant.”

He could not speak. He turned his gaze down and managed a bitter grunt. If he had only remembered his place. If he had only kept to his duties. If...

“I spoke on your behalf, you know,” she spoke and Gaven caught the sorrow in her voice. “Higgens too, believe it or not. He's not a complete asshole. A few others stepped forward after court was out.”

“
Too late, though, isn't it?” It was acidly said but he felt a burgeoning of hope in his chest. He felt a welling of gladness that his captain had tried to stand up for him. And Higgens too? He was not sure
he believed that.

“Perhaps. We'll see,” she said and gave Gaven a mysterious smile. “Time to go, corporal. I'll escort you.”

A short time later, he found himself back in the box. His uniform was unkempt from a night of sleeping in it and he knew he stank but he did not really believe that mattered right then. What did matter was that he still had to piss. Captain Salma had not let him stop and he was close to bursting. Belatedly, he thought he should have made the corner of his cell wet. Inanely, he thought to himself that if the court sentences him to death, he might let loose right then and there. That would show them.

The benches in the courtroom were full again though the tribunal table in front of him was vacant. Muted conversation filled the room like bees around a hive and the rustling of uniforms indicated soldiers shifting to make themselves more comfortable in their seats. He, of course, had no seat. He stood in the box as was proper for a prisoner about to be condemned.

The door swung open and the room fell to sudden silence. Numbly, Gaven watched the members of the tribunal make their way to their seats, led by General Thason. High backed wooden chairs scraped softly as the members positioned themselves and without further ado, General Thason's eyes met Gaven's. In the steely depths Gaven thought he saw a hint of pity. His heart sank. He was doomed.

“This court is now in session,” Thason pronounced and somehow the room went even quieter. “We have reached a verdict in the case of Corporal Gaven Slaynish. We find that, on the charge of gross negligence causing death, Corporal Slaynish is guilty.”

A hum of voices rose at that pronouncement—as if there had been any doubt—but Gaven ignored it. He was still. He was stone. He waited for the inevitable sentence. The general's eyes flashed to the crowded benches and a loaded hush immediately descended. The air was heavy, sagging like wet wool as Thason opened his mouth. Gaven closed his eyes.

“
Corporal Slaynish, it is the sentence of this court that you be demoted in rank to private. You are
to be stationed here in Threimes where you will be given the duty of prison guard. This posting will last until such time that we deem you have learned the necessity of keeping your place in the ranks. Also, a letter of reprimand will be placed in your permanent file. Finally, we demand that the private's five year contract of service be extended to no less than twenty.”

Gaven almost choked, he was so shocked. It was bad, very bad, but his neck would not stretch. He did not realize that he stared slack-jawed at the general, certain that there had been some mistake. The general allowed a grim smile to crease his features.

“Do not feel too fortunate, private,” he warned. “This is not an easy sentence. Everywhere you go, it will be known that you have caused the deaths of several good men. Your fellows will very likely ostracize you and it will be a good long time before you earn anyone's trust again. Colonel Caf, the private is hereby assigned to your ranks.”

General Thason rose to his feet, followed by the other four officers with him. As they strode by, Colonel Caf stared at Private Gaven with a malicious grin that promised hard, hard times ahead. The same Colonel Caf that had been upbraided by the general yesterday for speaking out of turn.

Gaven did not know what to think. He would live but he had been handed a life sentence of hard labor serving under a colonel that already held a grudge against him. Perhaps a good neck-stretching would have been preferable.

Oh god, but did he have to piss.

Chapter 58

Time meant nothing in his hole. He had no idea how long he had been in there. Days? Weeks? Months, maybe. It all blurred together in the seamless, stinking darkness. At first, he had tried to keep track of time by the meals—a slimy, tasteless slop that he probably would not have eaten if he could have seen it—shoved through the little square at the bottom of his door, but it seemed to him that they came at irregular intervals. After what he suspected was about three days (but was in fact closer to five), he had given up.

The gravity of his situation had weighed him down from the first moment he was shoved into this pit of the underworld and as time wore on, for he knew that time still passed, it pressed further and further, worming its way into the cracks, pushing out bits of himself, until sometimes he could not remember his name. It suffocated him along with the stench of decay and offal.

The skitter-pitter-patter of tiny claws clicking and the vulgar squeaks that had so repulsed him for a while when he was first brought here, began to seem almost seductive and it awoke in him a savage, animal hunger. As yet, disgusted with himself, he had managed to ignore that urge. He kicked the furry little blobs that scratched over his feet and his chest.

Sometimes, something caressed his thoughts like a warm breeze, and a familiar voice whispered from the deepest recesses of his mind, but he could not seem to remember who that voice belonged to. It was a friendly voice, a calming voice, but it was alien,
apart
, and as is often the case with things unknown, it was frightening. He had known that voice at one time, he had known the name attached to that voice but the knowledge eluded him and that frightened him more.

So he drew in on himself and when that voice called, light as a tulip's petal, he shied away, retreating deeper into himself, and ignored it.

When he slept, he dreamed and those dreams were broken things that caused him to toss about fitfully on the pile of wet straw that someone, somewhere, dared call a bed. They were slivers of the life he thought he must have led before the here and the now and they made him ache, the half-remembered bits and pieces pulsing like a fresh bruise. Bright light—
the sun,
some part of him supplied—dazzled the green
grass
, tall structures of wood and brick stretching as far as the eye could see.

The worst was when there appeared images of a face. It was a hawkish face with piercing eyes. When that face smiled in his fractured memory, he felt a small part of him die. The name—Dade? Dasit? What the hell was the name?—was important to him and he wanted nothing more than to remember it. Even more than he wanted to remember his own name. Names were powerful. Names brought memory. He knew the name yesterday, he was sure of it. Or perhaps it was last week?
What the blazes was that man's name?

Invariably, he could not remember and he wept bitter tears that burned streaks into his face. When that happened, he jumped up and down, roaring out his frustration, pounding soundlessly at the heavy door, and scratching at the stone walls certain that if he pushed just a little harder, he could break through, could see the sun. He did not remember his first view of the cell. He did not remember seeing the bloody scratch marks left by a previous occupant, or maybe it was the one before, identical to the ones he was surely leaving. His hands were hot as torches at the ends of his arms and when he touched something, he left behind a wetness that would have chilled him to the bone if he could have seen the color of it.

How long had he been trapped in that pit? Who cared? He could not even remember his name.

Pulling his filthy clothes, tattered to rags, and damp with excrescence and mold, around his rapidly diminishing frame, he curled up and prayed into the blackness to a god whose name he could not remember for a sleep that he hoped would be blessedly dreamless.

Part 5:

Knowledge

“
He will rise to life from the darkness.

He will bring darkness to life.”

-Chronicles of Gaorla

Chapter 59

Well, this was just dandy. Six days ago, he was sentenced to live. Six days, and already he wished the sentence had been more severe. Or less severe, depending on how one wanted to look at it. Colonel Caf had ridden him relentlessly, picking at the tiniest nits and assigning extra duties at every imagined slight until his schedule was so full of duty shifts that he was sure he would not get more than an hour of sleep on any given night for a month. He had so many shifts that he brought his mess with him to his post so that any time off he did have would not be wasted eating.

The other members of his regiment shunned him, completely ignored him much to their colonel's delight. Until his back was turned. Then they snickered amongst themselves at the corporal who would be a private. At the gullible fool who had believed a heretic's promises. To them, he was already no more than a heretic himself. Six days and he had already found himself the target of more practical jokes than a hundred green recruits could expect in a month. But then he was lower than a raw recruit, was he not? A raw recruit at least had sheer lack of experience to explain away any stupid gaffes, any boneheaded mistakes, they made. He was no new recruit. He had two years. He was nearly a veteran. An experienced soldier who, with one foolish act, had condemned good men to death. As if his own nearly overwhelming guilt was not enough punishment, there was no one to turn to. There was not a single friendly face to be found anywhere in Threimes.

Four days ago, on one of the few occasions when he'd had no assigned duties, he had gone into the city to find a bit of peace away from scornful eyes and spiteful comments, and bought a cold beer from a surly innkeeper. A comely wench had smiled at him seductively, eyed him
suggestively, and he had thought he might avail himself of some company, even if that company had to be paid for. Then two sergeants had walked in, drunker than drunk and even though he had ducked his head, they had seen him. They had roared out their scorn, deriding him.
Heretic,
and
half-wit
were about the nicest things he heard from their mouths. By the time they were done, everyone in the tavern knew his story. The innkeeper had coldly informed him that he was not welcome there, and even the pretty whore had turned away in disdain. Baser than a whore: that was rich. The sergeants had allowed him to leave unmolested but somehow, the story had raced on ahead so the entire way back to his bunk, he saw cold, accusing eyes glaring at him from the streets, from windows and from shops suddenly closed.

And more duty shifts assigned by Colonel Caf with the reasoning that any private who had enough time to go dallying off in town, had enough time to do a little work.

No, not a friendly face anywhere.

Private Gaven sat in his rickety chair at his tiny desk, in his musty office, an office he shared with the other guards when it was their duty shift—guards who loved reminding Gaven often that they rarely saw that office anymore since Gaven's arrival. He was certain that the first person to call this little stone box an office had likely snickered as he said it. Except for the fact that there were two doors, one leading to the outside world and fresh air, the other leading to the rank intestines of the dungeons he guarded, he would have sworn this was no more than a converted cell.

He was nearly halfway finished his fourth double-duty shift, supposed it was somewhere around the mid of night, and he shuffled through pointless paperwork. Meaningless names blurred in his exhausted vision, names of prisoners and their cell numbers imprinted themselves in his dulled mind. Not because he had to memorize them and not because he grieved for them, but because there was nothing else to do but stare at those neatly written lines until the black ink stuck in his mind, until they began to lose all meaning. Almost all the names.

Near the bottom of the last page, he saw two names that he recognized. One of those two names brought a dull ache whenever he saw it. Jurel Histane. Kurin was down there too and from the cell numbers, it really was
down there
. As far as Gaven could tell, they were both on the very bottom level of the dungeons, at opposite ends from each other. They were so far down that no one else, not one, occupied the same level. He was a little surprised they were still here. He did not understand why they had not had their fair trials yet. But then, it had been made very clear to him that it was not his place to
judge. They were still down there because his superiors deemed it necessary. That was all that mattered.

Gaven had been given a tour of the dungeon by a corporal who probably wanted to lock him up in one of those cells and throw away the key. He saw the animals that were once men and women, covered in filth and blood, their faces pale and thin as phantoms, and their eyes as dull and blank as the stone that surrounded them. Broken voices had called for mama or papa, a favored brother or loving wife. One had called out his little daughter's name in such an anguished voice that Gaven had covered his ears and fled with eyes watering and the corporal's laughter nipping at his heels.

This then was his real sentence. Not the demotion, or the extended service contract, not the letter of reprimand that would forever be on his file. Not even the torments of, and isolation from, his comrades. This. The knowledge that he must endure the suffering, must harden his heart against it, that he must know his friend was down there in the pits. It seemed designed to change him, to break him so that he well and truly became one of them.