I opened my eyes to birdsong. I was on my back. There was a pattern before my eyes. After a time, I resolved it into tree branches against a dark gray sky. The air was cool and crisp as I breathed it, and very clean. I lay perfectly still, wanting for nothing, in deep satisfaction and harmony with all that existed. The sky above me lightened, and the frequency of birdcalls increased.
I don’t know how long I would have remained in that state of awareness without connection if Clove had not come up and curiously nuzzled my foot. I looked at him and then lifted a hand and scratched my face. I felt as if I had returned from a very long journey, and now all that had once been familiar was strange and new. I sat up slowly, and then reached around to brush a few twigs and leaves from my naked back. A glistening black beetle was crawling on my thigh. I brushed him off and yawned hugely.
I was alone. “Olikea?” I called softly, but there was no response. I came back more to the world, and noticed my scattered clothing on the nearby moss. I yawned again and got up slowly. I had expected to be aching or stiff. I was fine.
“Olikea?” I called more loudly. A bird cawed a raucous response to me, and then I heard it take flight from the upper branches. I had no more than a glimpse of black-and-white feathers. Other than that, my call brought no response. Either she had left me and gone back to wherever Specks came from, or she was close by but choosing to remain in concealment. It was unnerving to be uncertain.
“Olikea!” I shouted her name, and then felt almost angry with myself for calling for her like that. She knew where I was. If she chose not to be there, then I would not demean myself by bellowing for her like an abandoned child.
I gathered up my dew-damp garb. In the dim forest morning light, my clothes looked drab and shabby. I felt reluctant to put them on, yet I was not accustomed to walking about naked. It was difficult to dress. Pulling on damp, chilly clothing made the day seem cold. I put on my old life with my discomfort. I suddenly shivered, and became aware that my constant hunger was not only present but raging. I rubbed my whiskery face and felt as if I had only just wakened.
I went to Clove and leaned on him, taking comfort in his warmth and solidity. My experience with Olikea seemed like an excursion into an imaginary world, one that made no sense to me as the stronger light of day dissolved its mists. I felt a hundred years apart from yesterday.
“Let’s go home, Clove,” I told the big horse. I was troubled by the idea of returning to the cabin after an absence and empty-handed, but not so troubled as to linger to look for fenceposts. The urgency of my hunger was strong enough to make me tremble. Olikea’s vanishing seemed a shoddy trick. I couldn’t understand her behavior, and then I wondered why I was bothering to try. She was a Speck. What had I expected from her? It was time to go back to where I belonged.
As I had anticipated, Clove’s big hooves had scored the forest moss heavily. It was easy enough to go back the same way we had come. I led and he followed willingly. There was little in the shaded forest for him to graze on. He was probably as hungry as I was. We wended our way down through the forested hills we had climbed the day before.
It came to me that the forest no longer breathed either terror or weariness at me. I wonder if the magic had stopped, or if I’d been granted full immunity to it. In either case, it was something of a relief. I could finally see the forest as it truly was. Its beauty was breathtaking. The shifting shade of the overhead branches mitigated the bright sunlight. It was the perfect light for the eyes of a hunter. I stopped to catch my breath and let my aching calves rest. The long climb up the hill had become steep.
As I looked around me, two things struck me: this area looked very familiar, and I did not recall going down such a slope as this yesterday. But Clove’s tracks were clearly imprinted in the forest soil. I glanced up at the sky, but the trees overhead obscured most of it. I could not tell if I traveled east or north. An icy shiver ran up my spine. I knew this place, yet I was suddenly certain it was not yesterday that I had walked this way, but last year, and then I had walked as my Speck self and Tree Woman’s acolyte. I knew that if I followed Clove’s trail up the steep incline to the top of this ridge, I could then follow the ridge until I came to the path to the Tree Woman’s waterfall.
My mouth was dry. I wanted to go back. Yet I knew trying to avoid this was futile. The forest had brought me to this place, and the magic would not be satisfied until I had followed it. Behind me, Clove snorted, irritated with halting on such a steep slope. I resumed my steady climb. Now I could see, ahead of me, a large opening in the forest’s canopy. I knew who and what awaited me there.
I cannot describe my feelings when I came to that intersection of my worlds. I had heard of battle shock. I think I experienced something akin to that. My ears rang and I could not get a full breath. My face and lips flushed, tingled, and then went numb. My ears felt blocked and I was uncertain of my balance. Yet I tottered forward, my shaking hand outstretched.
The cold hilt of the cavalla sword rasped against my hand. Its blade was deeply sunken in the partially severed giant stump of the fallen tree. Impossible that such a blade could have cleanly swept through the huge tree, but that was how it appeared. A single slash of a saber had felled a tree, yet the cut was wildly disproportionate to the length of the blade. I could have parked a wagon on the cleanly cut portion of the stump. I had swung this saber, not at a tree, but at Tree Woman. And it had swept through her belly and then stuck in her spine. I’d seen her entrails spill and seen the slow gush of her sap-thick blood. She had toppled backward, just as this tree had fallen, not cleanly split in two, but with part of her torso still intact and the saber wedged deep in her.
I had never been here before. The last time I had physically touched this saber, I had been standing on my father’s lands in Widevale. Months later, I’d found its empty scabbard where Dewara had disdainfully discarded it. Now I stood gripping the cold hilt and shaking with discord. I had called this weapon from the real world into Dewara’s dream world, and it had come to anchor one end of a spirit bridge. I had seized it and used it to slay Tree Woman, and then abandoned it in the other world. And now, impossibly, it was here.
Which world did I stand in today? Did Gettys even exist in this place?
I looked around me again. There was no Tree Woman that I could see. The fallen tree was of the same kind as the one that had gripped the corpse, the same as the trees at the end of the King’s Road, though not their equal in size. It was still a giant compared to any of the trees of the Plains or Old Thares. The long trunk had measured its length on the forest sward, brushing aside lesser trees as it fell and opening a huge gap in the forest canopy. In the year that had passed since I’d felled it in a dream, moss had crept up the sides of the fallen log. Mushrooms sheltered beside it. What had been a branch on the top side of the trunk was metamorphosing into a sapling growing upward from the fallen tree. And as I looked at it, I thought of another thing Tree Woman had said to me. “Such as I do not die as you do.” She had fallen to my sword, but her tree lived on.
I tugged on the saber. It did not budge. I set my teeth and jerked on it as hard as I could. It remained where it was, as if it had become a part of the tree. I released it and looked around the clearing that Tree Woman’s fall had created.
Other great trees surrounded hers, but none were as large as hers had been. I still felt a sense of antiquity that surpassed anything I’d felt from the buildings of Old Thares. These trees had stood for generations and unless something disturbed them, they would continue to stand.
But would they?
As if summoned, I left the uneven stump of her tree and followed what had once been our path. After a short walk, it emerged from the twilight of the forest onto the rocky end of the ridge. I toiled a little higher, to a jut of stone that had been our lookout, and suddenly I felt I was standing at the edge of the world. Below me was a billowing sea of green treetops in the cup of a shallow valley. I recalled it as full and green from my dreamtime. But when I looked down, I saw the King’s Road trickling to a halt in the forest below me. It cut through the foliage like a worm’s trail in an apple bound directly through the stand of ancient trees below me. I could make out the road crews at work; they looked like busy insects eating their way into the forest. That straight avenue of empty space was a gash of light and bared soil that pointed directly toward me.
The roadbed would follow the easiest path up into the hills. From here I could see what was not apparent from the road. All the trees along the road’s edge had been weakened by the slash opened beside them. The leaves of some were a sickly green; the road had cut through their root systems. Some of the trees at the edge of the road gash were starting to lean out into the open space. The next snow load would bring them down, in turn weakening those who stood behind them. Those trees would die. I was saddened by the thought but knew they were ordinary trees. More could be grown. But the three trees that had been cut at the end of the road were kaembra trees, the same sort of tree that Tree Woman had been. They were irreplaceable. The loss of three of them was a cause for mourning. For more to fall would be disaster. If the road continued, it would cut a wide swath through an ancient grove of them. I turned and followed the trail back to my tree.
“I see why you are making a stand,” I said. I stood beside the fallen trunk of her tree. “I see why you thought you had to strike back at the very core of my people. We had attacked the core of yours. But eventually, the road will be forced through and the kaembra trees will fall. It cannot be changed.”
“Do you think so, still?” she asked me. Her voice reached my ears plainly. I did not turn to look at her or her stump. I did not want to look on what I had done.
“They will not stop, Tree Woman. You can send magic waves of fear or weariness or sorrow at us. But the convicts who do the work are little better than slaves, and live constantly in fear, sorrow, and weariness. Your magic will slow the work, perhaps by years, but it will not stop it. Eventually the King’s Road will flow up these hills and through the mountains. People, trade, and settlers will follow. And the kaembra trees will be no more than a memory.”
“Memories are what we are right now. I have not been bone and flesh for many hundreds of seasons. But age does not make me less powerful, Soldier’s Boy. Rather, I grew in strength as I grew in girth. The wind through my leaves carried my thoughts across the forest. Not even you with your cold iron could fell me. You have brought me down, but I rise again, and there will be another me, containing the past and sinking roots and lifting branches into the future. Do you understand now?”
“I understand less now than I did before. Let me go, Tree Woman. I am not of your people. Set me free.”
“And how shall I do that, when the magic binds me more tightly than it does you?”
I could almost see her from the corner of my eye. She was a fat old woman with graying streaky hair, or perhaps a willowy girl, her pigment-speckled face as engaging as that of a fierce and friendly kitten. She smiled at me fondly. “Flatterer!”
“Let me go,” I begged her again, desperately.
She spoke softly. “I do not hold you, Soldier’s Boy. I never did. The magic binds us both, and it will have of us what it wills. In the days of my walking the world I served it, and I serve it still. You, too, must serve. From the moment it seized you from the Kidona coward and turned you to its own end, you have served it. I have heard the whispers of what it has done through you. With your hand, it stopped the turning of the Plains Spindle, did it not? They will never threaten us again. That was the magic working in you, Soldier’s Boy. It has quenched a mighty people who once spilled over all the flatlands and thought to creep up into our mountains. Do you think it will do less against those who encroach from the far sea? No. It will use you, Soldier’s Boy. Some task of yours, some word, some gesture, some act will destroy your folk.”
“I did not do that,” I said faintly. “I did not destroy the magic of the Plains people.” I spoke the lie as if by saying such words I could undo it. Her truth had struck and sunk into me, cutting and sticking just as my iron blade had done to her. I had been there when the Spindle stopped turning. I’d felt that magic falter and fail. If I had not been there, if I had not chased the boy from the Spindle’s tip, would he have gone to work his mischief at the base of it? If not for me, would that wedge of cold iron have fallen to where it stilled forever the Spindle’s dance?
And if I had done that, and by doing it, had begun the final end of the Plains people, did it have to mean that I would also be the demise of my own folk? “I cannot do this. I cannot be this.”
“Oh, Soldier’s Boy.” The wind or the caress of a ghostly hand moved through my hair. “So I said, too. The magic is not kind. It makes nothing of what we would or would not do. It takes us as we are, small and simple folk for the most part, and makes us Great Ones. Great Ones! So others name us, thinking we have power. But you and I, we know what it is to be a reservoir of power for the magic. We are tools. The power is not for us to use. Others may think so, and they may think that by befriending us or claiming us, they will gain influence over our power.”
“Are you warning me about Olikea?”
She was silent. I almost wondered if I had embarrassed her. Was it possible that she felt jealous? I think she heard more than I intended. She gave a soft laugh that held echoes of regret. “Olikea is a child. There is little to her; you have already experienced all she has to offer you. But you and I—”
“I have no memories of you and me,” I interrupted hastily.
“You do,” she asserted calmly. “They are deep in you, as deep as the magic. As real as the magic.”
Her voice had grown warmer. I bowed my head, and my throat suddenly tightened with a sorrow that did and did not belong to me. Tears pricked my eyes. I groped out and my hand touched the rough bark of her stump.
“Do not grieve, Soldier’s Boy.” Fingertips of moving air caressed my cheek. “Some loves go beyond bodies and times. We met in the magic and there we knew one another. I schooled you for the magic; it was what the magic demanded of me. But I loved you for myself. And in the place and time where ages and shapes have no meaning, and there is only the comfort of kindred spirits touching, our love remains.”
“I’m so sorry I killed you,” I cried out. I fell to my knees and put my arms about the standing stump of the great tree. I could not embrace it; it was far too large. Still, I pressed my chest and face against her bark, but could not find her there. There was another man within me, one who was me but who had lived a separate life from the young man who had attended the academy. I had battled that self and won, but he resided in me still. The tearing grief I felt was his. It was and was not my sorrow.
“But you didn’t kill me. You didn’t,” she comforted me. “I go on. And when the days of your mortal flesh are done, you will go on with me. Then we shall have a time together, and it will be a far longer time than humans can count.”
“That’s a cold promise for now,” I heard myself say. And it was my own voice and it was me. The tree I leaned on was just a stump with moss creeping up it. I pressed hard against the stump, trying to recapture Tree Woman’s presence, but she was gone, and with her my awareness of my Speck self.
I stood up, and smeared the tears from my face. I left that place. I was only a little surprised to find that a single set of hoof tracks led me uphill to it. We had not come this way before. Neither Clove nor I had ever been here in the flesh before.
I came eventually to where I had diverged from the correct trail home. I plodded along it, hungry, tired, and confused. Was I a dutiful soldier son, a loyal trooper in my king’s cavalla, or was I a disowned son masquerading as a soldier in a threadbare frontier existence? Was I the forest mage’s student who had both loved and slain her? Had I shamed myself deeply last night by having relations with a Speck, or had I simply had a wonderful, extravagant sexual experience? Without success, I tried not to wonder what my encounter with Tree Woman and my other self meant. I had felt the echoes of their emotions and could not doubt the sincerity of what they had felt. It was all the stranger in that I had been a dumb and blind participant in their romance.
When I saw daylight breaking through the forest roof ahead of me, I knew it traced the demarcation between the ancient forest and the younger trees on the burned hillside. My steps slowed. I would soon be leaving one world for another, and as I approached the boundary, I was not entirely sure that I wished to do so. If I left the forest, I would be making a large decision, with consequences I didn’t fully grasp. What did the magic want me to do? I didn’t know, and I also didn’t know if I wanted to fall in with the magic’s plan for me, or fight it with every ounce of my strength. Tree Woman had said that if the magic had its way, I would be the downfall of my entire race. That seemed impossible. But I had been there when the Dancing Spindle stopped turning. It seemed that with my aid, the Speck magic had hastened the end of the Plains magic and all its people. Could I possibly bring a similar destruction down on my own kind?
As I led Clove from the old forest to the new, my eyes fell on a neatly stacked pile of cut poles beside the trail. There were about twenty of them, no bigger around than my wrist, and only about eight feet long. They had rough gray-green bark still on them. I had no doubt that Kilikurra had cut them and left them there for me. I was surprised that he had felt comfortable cutting trees in the forest when the Specks seemed to so oppose our tree cutting for our road. My second emotion was disappointment. He had misunderstood me completely. I had intended to harvest some hefty logs for stout corner posts that I could set deep in the earth. By the time I dug holes for these posts, my fence would be only five feet tall, and so spindly that the wood would likely rot through in just a couple of years.
I half expected Kilikurra to step out of the dappling shadows and claim the credit for his good deed. When he did not, I decided that I could not be sure he wasn’t there, and that my best course was to appear grateful. I put a hitch line on the bundled poles, and then bowed gratefully to the forest.
Clove didn’t like the strange contraption scraping and jolting along behind him, but eventually we managed to get down to the cemetery. I left the poles there, having decided I could use them as stakes to set out the straight lines for my barricade. I was freeing Clove from his unwanted load when I heard the heavy thunder of running feet. I straightened and turned to find Ebrooks coming at me at a dead run. Kesey, panting heavily, was some distance behind him. I looked behind me, saw no cause for the alarm on their faces, and turned back to them, shouting, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“You’re…alive!” Ebrooks gasped out the word. He reached me, seized me in a sweaty hug, and then leaned on me, panting. Kesey had given it up. He stood, bent over, his hands on his knees, his mostly bald pate bobbing as he tried to catch his breath. After a time for breathing, Ebrooks panted, “When you didn’t come back by nightfall, we waited for you. But when night shut down and fear was flowing out of the forest thick as tar, we went back to town and told the colonel you were dead. God’s breath, Nevare, how did you survive? Are you sane still? No one knows how you can stand to live this close to the forest. And now you’ve gone and spent a night in there. Are you crazy, man?”
“Clove and I got turned around in there. We had to wait for dawn to find the way home. That’s all. It wasn’t pleasant, but I’m not hurt at all.” The lies were nearly effortless. “Why did you tell the colonel I was dead?”
Kesey had staggered up to us by then. “Well. That seems to happen a lot to fellows that have this job.”
“And the colonel was really upset to get the news. He said, ‘That’s all I need, with this review coming up! Another dead cemetery sentry.’ And he tried to tell us we’d have to take on guarding the graves. But we said, ‘No, sir, thanky kindly.’”
“I didn’t think you could just say, ‘No, thank you’ to an order.”
Kesey and Ebrooks exchanged a look. Ebrooks spoke. “It’s been a long time since the colonel issued a real order. I expect he’s afraid of what he’d have to do if he did and no one obeyed it. Easier not to test his authority than find out it’s gone.”
Kesey shook his head sadly. “It’s a shame, really. That man used to be able to blow fire when he wanted things done. But since we come here, well. He ain’t the officer he used to be, that’s all.”
“And we ain’t the regiment we used to be, either,” Ebrooks pointed out sourly. “It’s one and the same. We’ve lost so many men to desertion and suicide or just plain bad ends that the colonel worries all the time about his numbers. They keep sending us scads of prisoners to work the road. Well, pretty soon they’re going to have more prisoners than their guards can manage, even with soldiers to back them up. And if the prisoners don’t turn on us and burn the place down, then the Specks will get us. Gettys is a bad post. I wish they’d send their high mucky-mucks to inspect us and have done. They’ll turn us out of Gettys, probably send us somewhere worse. Though it’s hard to imagine anywhere worse than this.”
“Well. I suppose I’d best get cleaned up and go let the colonel know that I’m not quite as dead as he’d heard.”
“That would be good,” Ebrooks agreed. I think he was happy that I’d offered to do it myself, rather than suggesting that he should have to correct his own mistake. They went back to their groundskeeping while I went to my cabin. I was ravenously hungry, and I emptied most of my small larder. By the time I’d washed, shaved, and changed my clothing, it was late afternoon. I saddled Clove and headed for town.
Several surprises awaited me there. The first was that a contingent of Specks had set up a scattered tent village on the outskirts of Gettys. I would later learn that they always came by night to pitch their tents for the trading season. When it was over, they vanished just as swiftly. Within the tents’ shelter, both male and female Specks were strangely but decently clad in a mix of Gernian garments and Speck versions of Gernian garments. Those I saw outside the tents’ shade were veiled in head-to-toe shrouds woven from bark cloth supplemented with fresh leaves and flowers. The garments looked like fishnets that had been dragged through a garden but protected their sensitive skins from sunlight.
Their trade goods were furs, carvings, smoked venison, bark, and leaves for brewing what the Gettys folk called “forest tea,” as well as mushrooms, berries, and a prickly fruit I didn’t recognize. I looked, but did not see any of the fruits or mushrooms that Olikea had brought to me. Either Olikea and her father were not among them or they were veiled and unrecognizable. I thought it intriguing that despite our fear of the Speck the trading was brisk, with local merchants competing with traders from the west to buy the best furs.
The Speck trade gave an oddly festive air to Gettys. It was the liveliest I had ever seen that mournful place. The Specks were acquiring fabric and felted hats, mostly for novelty, I suspected. Glass beads and brightly painted tin toys were almost as popular as sugar, candy, and sweet cakes. One wily Old Thares trader was exchanging casks of honey for the best furs
When I walked into the colonel’s offices, his sergeant jumped as if he had seen a ghost. He didn’t make me wait to speak to the colonel, but ushered me right in. When he left, I noticed that the door didn’t shut firmly, and I suspected he listened outside it. The colonel was extremely pleased to find me still alive. He actually offered to shake my hand before giving me a rambling lecture on not straying too far from my post and letting my superiors know when I thought I might be gone overnight. He claimed that he had just been putting together names for a search party to send after me, though I saw no signs of such activity. He was singularly uninterested in what had befallen me in the forest. Instead he actually patted me on the shoulder and gave me a silver piece from his own pocket, telling me that he was sure I could use a drink after my “jittery night.”
I thanked him for it as humbly as I could manage. Sometimes his eccentric kindness toward me grated on my pride. He dismissed me, but spoke again when my hand was on the doorknob. “And do something about that uniform, soldier. You know we have a contingent of nobility and officers coming to inspect us at the end of this month. Since we arrived here, I’ve never had a man in my command look less like a soldier than you do.”
“Sir. I’m sorry, sir. I’ve asked several times for a better uniform. Supply always tells me that they have nothing in my size.”
“Then you may tell them I said they should issue you something that you could have altered. You should at least be somewhat presentable, though it would probably be best if you avoided town while the inspection was in progress. I don’t intend to have our inspection team visit the cemetery, but the good god alone knows what they’ll take it into their own heads to do.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied grimly. I tried to keep my face expressionless. I knew that he only spoke the truth, but it did not make it any easier to accept. I touched the doorknob.
“Trooper. Regardless of what others may think of me, I know what goes on in my command. Your efforts with the cemetery have not gone unnoticed. I’ll add that although you look the least like a soldier of all my troops, in your efforts to protect our honored dead, you’ve behaved more like a soldier than most men in my command do at present. Now go have that drink.”
His words smoothed my rumpled feathers a bit and I left in a better state of mind. The silver piece was a generous bonus, and I decided I’d take his advice and have a beer before I left town.
Gettys was a lively place today. In addition to the Specks coming to town, several western traders had arrived with merchandise to sell to the soldiery and trade goods to barter with the Specks. The streets were busy, so when I encountered Spink and he frantically signed to me that I should meet him in the alley behind the blacksmith’s shop, I was not much worried that we’d be noticed together. Nonetheless, even in that noisy area, I resolved to maintain appearances.
“Nevare! I heard you’d gone missing. Thank the good god that you’re alive and unharmed!”
That was how Spink greeted me, but as he moved to embrace me, I reminded him of our varying statuses with a brusque, “Thank you for your concern, Lieutenant Spinrek. I assure you, it was not much of an adventure, but mostly my own foolishness that delayed me.” I hoped the look on my face conveyed that there was far more to tell, but that it would have to wait. Behind us, the smithy’s harsh clanging of metal on metal screened our words.
He drew back and stood still for a moment. I could tell from his eyes that he took no offense from my caution. Instead, he said carefully, “A lot of mail has arrived from the west. A washed-out bridge on the road had caused a great bottleneck of wagons and travelers. Perhaps there is some for you. My own lady wife has been very pleased to hear from her young cousin in the Midlands.”
Now it was my turn to practice restraint. I wanted to demand to see the letter from my sister immediately. Instead, I kept my voice steady as I said, “I trust all is well with her family, sir?”
“Oh, excellent,” he replied, but his eyes said differently. “She wrote that they were enjoying a long visit with houseguests from Old Thares. Her father seems to think that the young man would be an excellent match for her, and his uncle is prone to agree.”
I racked my brain for whom he could be describing. No one came to mind. At last I said, “Well, for her sake, sir, I hope the lad is of a good family.”
The pleasant expression on his face looked forced and sick. “Oh, they are not of the first quality, but they are still well placed. His father was in charge of the King’s Cavalla Academy for a time.”
That shocked me out of my pose. “Caulder Stiet? Impossible.”
Spink’s smile grew wider, but there was nothing of pleasure in it. “There Yaril agrees with you. It’s a desperate letter, Nevare. She still thinks you are dead. She risked her reputation to slip away from the house and go alone to a little town to post her letter to us.”
“What am I to do? What can I do?” I felt frantic with worry. The thought of Yaril being given over to that shallow, trembling boy filled me with loathing. I hated the idea of him being near my sister, let alone claiming her as his wife. I wondered if my father was mad, if this was his vengeance on Yaril, or if he genuinely thought it was a good match for her. Caulder wasn’t even a soldier son anymore. If Yaril married him, her sons would be “gatherers of knowledge” like Caulder’s geologist uncle.
“Write to her. Tell her you’re alive. Give her a refuge, or at least the strength to defy your father and refuse Caulder.”
“How can I get a letter to her?”
“Write to your father. Demand that he tell her. Write to your priest-brother. Write to her friends. There must be some way, Nevare.”
Were the fates listening? I looked past Spink’s shoulder. Carsina was crossing the street. “You see that girl. That’s Carsina, Spink. My erstwhile fiancée and once Yaril’s best friend. She’s the best chance I have of slipping a letter to Yaril past my father. Excuse me.”
“We need to arrange a meeting later,” Spink hissed after me, but I didn’t pause. I strode hastily down the street, on a deliberate course to intercept Carsina. She hadn’t seen me yet; I had to reach her before she did. I cringed as I thought of my appearance. My uncut hair hung shaggy around my ears. My boots were starting to crack at the sides. My trousers showed wear at the knees and seat, and I had to buckle my belt under my belly these days. Above my belt, my gut bloomed out in a swell that my shirt strained to cover. I didn’t blame Carsina for recoiling in horror from the thought that she had once been betrothed to me. But I didn’t desire any acknowledgment from her, only a small and simple favor. All I needed was an envelope addressed in her hand to my sister.
My hat was shapeless and dusty. Nevertheless, I removed it as I approached her. I’d give no one any reason to think I was being less than courteous to her. “Excuse me, ma’am,” I addressed her respectfully. I kept my eyes lowered. “I’ve a favor to ask you, not for myself, but for my sister, once your friend. Grant me this, and I promise I’ll never ask anything else of you again. I won’t so much as nod at—”
I got no further in my humiliating plea for her aid. A sudden blast of sound assaulted my ears. I clapped my hands over them and lifted my eyes. Carsina had raised a brass whistle to her lips and was blowing blast after blast on it as if her life depended on it. Her cheeks were distended with the effort, her eyes almost bulging. If her action had not been so irrational, it might have seemed humorous. I stood transfixed, staring at her.
But elsewhere on the street, others had sprung into motion. My first warning was when a small woman in a white apron brought a broom down firmly on my back. It stung and raised dust. “What?” I asked in consternation as I dodged away from the enraged shopkeeper’s wife. But that only brought me into range of a young woman with a furled parasol. She whacked me solidly with it on the back of my head, shrieking, “Get away from her! Leave her alone! Help! Help! Assault! Assault!”
All the while, Carsina continued to shrill on her whistle and women continued to converge on me, also blowing whistles. I gave ground hastily. “I’ve done nothing wrong!” I shouted at them. “I said nothing ill to her! Please! Listen to me! Please!”
Men were gathering as well, some to laugh and point at the sight of the big fat man beleaguered by a flock of angry women. Others were striding more purposefully toward the scene of the confrontation, anger on their faces. One tall, thin man was being dragged angrily toward me by his fussing, scolding wife. “You get in there, Horlo, and you teach that rude fellow what happens to men who say foul things on the streets to good women!”
“I’m leaving!” I shouted, not wishing to be attacked by the ineffectual-looking Horlo or anyone else. “I’m going. I’m sorry the lady took offense. None was intended. I apologize!”
I’m not sure that anyone heard my words over the shrill whistles and shriller voices that surrounded me, calling me names and raining abuse on me. I lifted my hands over my head to show that I was not returning any of the blows from the brooms, parasols, fans, and dainty fists. I felt both a coward and a buffoon, but what could I do, assaulted by a mob of angry women? I had broken clear of the circle and thought I’d escaped when I heard an angry voice shout a damning accusation. “He’s the one they say raped and murdered that poor whore! He’s the big fat scoundrel who killed that Fala woman and hid her body!”
I turned back in horror. “That’s not true! I’ve never hurt anyone!”
The mob of women surged toward me. A flung stone struck me in the face. A larger one rebounded off my shoulder. I didn’t know the man striding fearlessly toward me through the hail of rocks, but he was well muscled, fit, and grinning the snarl of a man who loves a good fight. A wash of cold rose through me. I could die here, I suddenly knew. Stoned, beaten, kicked to death by a mob of folk who didn’t even know me. I caught a sudden glimpse of Sergeant Hoster. He stood to one side of the crowd. His arms were crossed on his chest and he was smiling grimly.
Spink had always had more guts than common sense. Even when I’d been a lean and fit cadet, Spink had looked small beside me. He charged into the fray, shouting, “Desist! This moment! Halt! That’s an order!” He reminded me of a barking, snarling terrier protecting a mastiff as he spun to face the oncoming tide of roused people. “Halt, I said!”
They didn’t exactly halt, but they stopped advancing. The crowd roiled, and another stone came winging from someone in the back and bounced off my chest. It didn’t really hurt, but the fury it symbolized was frightening. The women were all talking, and several were pointing at me. I no longer saw Carsina anywhere. The large man I had glimpsed pushed his way to the front of the mob.
“Halt!” Spink barked again.
“Sir, are you going to let a filthy lout like that get away with insulting a decent woman? The least he merits is a good beating, and if the rumors are true, he ought to be hanged.”
Spink’s shoulders were very square. He kept his eyes on the crowd as he spoke in a stern voice. “I’d like the woman he insulted to come forward, please. I’ll take her complaint right now.”
My mouth went dry. I knew he had no choice, but once Carsina accused me in public, she’d be far too proud to back down. The least I’d get was a flogging.
“She’s…she’s not here, sir!” The young woman who spoke had a quavery voice, as if she were about to burst into tears. “She was overcome, sir, with what he said to her. Two other ladies have helped her home. I imagine her brother or her fiancé would be glad to speak on her behalf.” This last she uttered with savage satisfaction. She glowered at me as if I were a rabid dog.
“Direct them to me. Lieutenant Spinrek Kester. I’ll take down the details of any complaint they wish to lodge. As for the other, until a body or a witness is found, it remains a foul rumor and no more than that.”
The man’s brow furrowed and his face flushed an evil dark red. “So what are you going to do, sir? Just let him roam around loose until we find a body with him standing over it?”
Sergeant Hoster suddenly decided to act. He strode over to Spink, saluted him, and then said, “I’ll be happy to escort him to the cells, sir.”
Spink held his ground. I felt a fool standing silent behind him, as if I were a huge child cowering behind his diminutive mother’s skirts. “I appreciate your offer of help, Sergeant Hoster. But we don’t lock men up on the basis of rumor. If we did, likely not one of us would be walking free.”
Hoster dared to question his decision. “Perhaps this is a time when we should choose to err on the side of safety, sir.”
Spink reddened at the man’s insubordination. But he kept his calm. “Do you have any hard evidence, Sergeant? A witness?”
“No, sir.”
“Then there is no reason to hold this man prisoner.” Spink turned suddenly on me, and the anger on his face was convincing. “You, soldier. Take yourself out of town. Innocent or guilty, tempers are hot over this, and I judge it best that you isolate yourself until these rumors are resolved. I’ll speak to the mess hall, and have some supplies sent out to you. And I warn you, behave in an exemplary manner. I’ll take it on myself to check up on you from time to time. You’d best be where I expect you to be. Now go. Now!”
I looked from Spink to the mob. It would only take one wrong word to ignite them. But I couldn’t just slink away like a kicked cur. I came to attention and looked only at Spink. I spoke, trooper to lieutenant, but I made sure that my voice carried to the crowd. “Sir. I did not speak rudely or suggestively to the lady. And as to Fala’s fate, I do not know what became of her. I am innocent of both these things.”
An ugly muttering rose from the gathered folk. I feared I had pushed them too far, as did Spink from the expression on his face. He spoke sternly for their benefit. “I hope in the good god’s name that you are speaking the truth, trooper, for I will be looking into this personally. And if you have lied to me, you will find the punishment I extract for a lie will be the equal of the other two offenses. Now go!”
I obeyed him, my cheeks burning and resentment simmering in my heart. I felt that all of Gettys stared at me as I walked to where I’d left Clove tethered. It took all my self-control not to look back over my shoulder to see if I would be followed. As I mounted up and rode out of town, I wondered if I’d chosen the wrong world.